Master Builder Thread

[ZargonX]

As I realized there was no one single thread for this, I thought it high time there be one. And, if Vondrack wouldn't mind, could we get it topped with the other ministers?

[ZargonX]

Well, within the next 7 turns, we will have two settlers ready to go forth and expand our lands. The question, of course, is where do we take them? One city is already decided; Forkmouth. The second settler leaves room for debate. In the vein, let me put forth a few proposals...

[ZargonX]

Proposal I: The Farmerville settler founds Forkmouth 7 turns from now, and the Legopolis settler founds Kloreepville (or whatever) in 14 turns. This could also be flip-flopped to have Forkmouth in 11 turns, Kloreepville in 10. Kloreepville is a good location, but that would give us three western ports, as well as overlap with Forkmouth in the future. Though, it would eventually have gold within its borders, for what that's worth...

[ZargonX]

Proposal II: Forkmouth founded by Farmerville settler in 7, site 1 founded by Legopolis settler in 13, or site 2 in 15. Site 1 gives us immediate access to the cattle, as well as forest within range to chop down for some production boost, and plenty of land tiles to work. However, site 1 is not a port, and will have unimprovable coastal tiles.

Site 2 gives us immediate access to the fish, as well as a second eastern port. However, it would need a border expansion to make it a really strong city, with cattle access, plus more jungle clearing.

Optionally, Forkmouth could be settled in 11 by the Legopolis settler, and site 1/2 could be settled in 10/11 with the Farmerviller.

[ZargonX]

One more proposal coming.... up later this evening...

[ZargonX]

Proposal III: Don't be overwhelmed by the picture; that's a long-term settlement plan for SE Legos. The pertinent part is Sharpopolis. If we really want to be bold, I would say use one of the settlers to found it as our first foothold in the south. The Legopolis settler could make it in 17 turns. The Farmerviller could do it in 13. Granted, the city would have some big corruption penalties, but it could serve as a worker-generating base to start laying down some infrastructure, as well as an eventual deployment point for further southern settlement.

Oh, and I apologize for the city names; I couldn't really remember what people actually wanted the cities named after them called...

So, there are my thoughts on the subject. Discuss!

[Tiberius]

Zargon, I think the original proposal for Kloreepville was NE from where you put it (which would be better, IMHO).

For the second picture, the location I like most is on the hill between your 2 proposals (N from 1, SW from 2).

PS Could you do your pictures a bit smaller? 800x600 would do it, I think.

[redstar1]

I've actually been working on a proposal plan, guess I don't really have to now

I think everyone fancies the Forkmouth site so thats ok... I prefer sending a settler south though. After these two are done I think we will be churning out settlers at quite a rate. In that case I think its a good idea to get one SE fairly quickly. As its been said, corruption will be a prob but it can fire off a few workers, amybe even a settler or two and then start on the forbidden palace.

[redstar1]

I also think we should account for the possibility of wanting to put a settler on an island in the North. Especially if it looks like the same Island GOW see. Its been my experience that there tends not to be too many islands on these maps.....

[vondrack]

Legoland City Placement - Grand Plan

Considering that we are in a position to perfect the placement of our cities with respect to the future growth and development, I really believe we should first agree on where our cities will be located once we settle all of our landmass, and only then select the sites we want to settle first. So the following city placement plan is my idea of how to cover the whole of Legos Major with as few cities as possible, while leaving as few tiles as possible out of city rings. For the sake of clarity, I divided the map of Legos Major to two parts. The first one depicts the Northern half of Legos Major:



I will, of course, discuss only the city sites not used yet:

Forkmouth

As much as I would like to expand to S/SE immediately, I do not think we can ignore the marvellous site of Forkmouth. Considering that we will be able to found it on the turn immediately following the completion of our settler in Farmerville (thanks to the road) plus the fact that we will have a mined, roaded bonus grassland plus a game forest tile ready from the very first turn of Forkmouth's existence is simply too good to miss. Forkmouth alone should be able to take care of building settlers for Sharpehaven and Benelux, allowing Farmerville to send all its other settlers to the S/SE. Forkmouth is one of the cities I am convinced we should found ASAP.

Forkmouth shall build a worker first, then maybe a military unit (depending od how well it will be doing shield-wise and where we locate our iron deposits (three turns from now), either warrior for a later upgrade to a swordsman, or an archer, or a Merc) and then a settler for Sharpehaven. Beyond that, I am not really able to see.

Sharpehaven

This should be the first city founded by a settler from Forkmouth. I would strongly favour the location one tile NE of the location Zargon proposed, as it is quite clearly superior long-term - the only disadvantage is that the wheat is only in the outer city ring... requiring some kind of a culture generating building to be built first. And that would be my choice for its first build, too - whether it would be a library, or a temple, remains to be seen... most probably a temple (60 shields), since Library (80 shields) would take longer, slowing down our further use of this city. Once the city ring expands, I would reconsider the priorities at that time and decide on the next build. Quite likely, a settler reducing the city pop, intended for the Kloreepvile site might be built.

Benelux

Hehe... I thought about naming the city to reflect the fact that it will be our bordertown with the future Lux state. "Bene" means something like "good" or "well" in Latin (IIRC), and "Lux" would be for Luxes... put together, it's Benelux, which I find rather funny...

I would consider this city our priority #2 as far as Forkmouth settlers are concerned. Kloreepville can easily be backfilled later, but Benelux will be a very important canal city guarding our border to Legos Minor, while also providing a very important shortcut between the Legoon and Western Seas. Therefore, I would found it right after Sharpehaven (I'd even be willing to discuss founding it before Sharpehaven), considering it nothing more than a strategic chokepoint fort - perhaps building walls there first, then a harbour and only later something else. I would not care very much about expanding its radius soon - the inner ring has good tiles enough to start with...

Dye Fields

I would time the foundation of this city according to the moment our workers finish clearing and roading the Dyes NW-NW (and possibly NW, too) of the city site - that should happen just about the time we will be finishing our second wonder in Panama. From that moment on, the city will be able to grow, contribute quite some gold to our treasury, and build some more workers to clear that jungle mess there. Prior to this, there will be more attractive sites to grab, I believe.

Port Hammer (formerly Suez)

I have moved this site one tile to S, basically to get the fish into the inner ring, to get rid of the mountain, and to increase a little bit the distance between this city and Lux cities that I foresee on the Horse Coast of Legos Minor. I guess that it will be perfectly ok to found this city with a settler built by Panama after finishing our second wonder.

Kloreepville

This city shall be most probably founded with a settler built in Sharpehaven only. The place is quite horrible because of all that jungle plus we will not have to worry about anyone placing a city there, because of the close proximity of our capital. To be left for times where we will no longer worry about other corners of our landmass.

Castlea (formerly Northern Outpost)

Unless we find iron there and only there, very low priority site. Even though with a harbour, the city can once grow to pop 12 and be thus a fine source of gold, speaking productionwise, it will always be mostly just a poor relative...

Tarzania

Named tentatively after all that jungle - there must be at least one Tarzan living there... Pretty much everything what has been said about Kloreepvile applies to this site, too. To be left for later times.

So, my priorities and expansion "relations" for the Northern Legos Major would be:

1) Farmerville->Forkmouth
2) Forkmouth->Sharpehaven/Benelux
3) Legopolis->Dye Fields (depends on the dye tile)
4) Sharpehaven->Kloreepville

x) Farmerville->Tarzania
y) Legopolis->Castlea
z) Panama->Port Hammer

Which leaves all but one Farmerville settlers and all but one Legopolis settler (Castlea would be founded later) for settling the S/SE of Legos Major. Speaking in terms of Turn 100, that's 7 settlers we could use for our S/SE.

I will post the Southern part in the next post.

[vondrack]

Legoland City Placement - Southern half of Legos Major

As shown in the previous post of mine, we should have 7 settlers available from now till Turn 100. Let's see my idea of the Southern Legos Major in the distant future first:



Karina

I hope you do not mind very much that I tentatively named our future FP-city after my sweetheart. If you come up with a catchy Lego themed name, I will use Karina for some other site.

The city of Karina (the greenish city in the center of the Southern half of Legos Major) shall become our Forbidden Palace city. Mostly because of its convenient geographical location - just have a look how nicely all the other cities (except Ahhmyfoot and Oasis, which are just "filler" cities, and Tipperary, which is in the "second" ring) form a ring around the FP city: starting with Farmerville, then Tarzania, Zargonia Bay, Crossing, Logville, Tiberium, Horsefish, Abilene, Quanto Mechanico and Sandonorico.

I admit that I am hesitating a lot whether Karina should be founded right on the bank of the river there (where Zargon put it) or one tile NW, where my map shows it. My reason for eventually proposing the non-riverbank location is that we would be unnecessarily hampering Logville that is admittedly an outstanding site. Plus, if we build here rather than on the riverbank, we will have an extra choppable forest in the inner ring (+another one in the outer ring), plus one more bonus grassland. Considering the fact that Karina would become the center of our Southern expansion, focusing mostly on building workers, I believe that the fact we would be able to get three high shield tiles (generating the raw output of 6 shields) in the inner ring outweight the disadvantage of having to build an aqueduct in the future to allow Karina to grow past 6.

We do have great riverside sites enough for things like Hoover Dam, so I would not be scared to waive the riverbankness of our FP city in favour of the optimal geographical location and maximum future potential for both Logville and Karina.

Logville

Hmmm... this and Karina were the sites with most forests, so I named this one according to Nimitz's wish . This is a great site that will once become a real powerhouse thanks to its proximity to the FP, river and reasonable number of hills. Because of the irrigable wheat, I'd make it our second city to be built in the South (it will be basically like having a granary in the city), utilizing it for producing settlers and workers.

Zargonia Bay

The cattle and two choppable forests in the inner ring make this site my candidate #3. It is conveniently located on the east coast which we want to settle ASAP, so I would use the two forests and the cattle to build a culture generating improvement and a strong military unit there ASAP, bringing the bonus grassland into the city radius... from then on, I would use this city for building military and maybe naval units, seldom depleting its population.

Crossing

Slightly higher on my priority list because of its proximity to the RP crossing. I would grab this site right after Zargonia Bay, since it - together with Logville and Zargonia Bay, creates a nice "bumper" against any visitors coming from the east.

Tiberium
Quanto Mechanico
Abilene
Horsefish (horse & fish in the radius)
Tipperary (being on a tip of Legos Major)

All of these sites are pretty much of the same attractivity and importance for me. They are, I believe, less likely to be a target of any settlement attempts from outside, because of extremely long supply lines. I believe we would be able to leave them for a little bit later time, grabbing them after securing the most important sites.

Ahhmyfoot
Oasis
Sandonorico (because of all that sand there)

Just "filler" cities, left for future building. Very low priority, since Ahhmyfoot and Oasis will be hidden in the interior of our mainland, not accesible through the ring of coastal cities and Oasis would be unltimately unable to grow because of all that desert.

Considering the 7 settlers we now know will be available to settle the S/SE, I would found the cities in the following order (subject to a revision after we discover Iron Working):

1) Karina
2) Logville
3) Zargonia Bay
4) Crossing
5) Tiberium
6) Quanto Mechanico
7) Abilene
8) Horsefish
9) Tipperary
10) Sandonorico
11) Ahhmyfoot
12) Oasis

Altogether, it is 25 cities, which should be more than enough to allow us to pursue the victory through our economic superiority.

[vondrack]

And for those that have Adobe PhotoShop and would like to shuffle the cities a bit, I have made the source file available here. Mind you the ZIPped PSD file is over 8 MB long.

[redstar1]

Don't forget all the cities from the conquered wastelands of bob

[quantum_mechani]

One city name suggestion... what about Horsefish to Plastic Horse (to keep with the lego theme).

[lmtoops]

I was born and raised in Abilene, Texas. So I'll claim that one as my own.