Controversial decisions.

[DAVOUT]

In the best interest of the friendly cocperation between all people of España, I kindly suggest that either explanations are given, or a decision is made by His Grace, on the following points :
1. The travel of the worker without working causes a pure loss of 2 turns work; the road has a hight degree of priority as well, and the end result cannot be improved by wasting the worker work. A second worker should be produced soon by Madrid.
2. It is planned to settle the new city on a shield tile, loosing so a potential of 2 shields (after mining). Why ?

[ruby_maser]

Señor DAVOUT, on your first issue, I agree that another worker should be prioritized ASAP. I think we have been blessed with the best early growth potential, but we need to give a little back to insure our improvements do not fall too far behind. Let us build another worker quickly.

I agree that the road is a high priority. It seems shortsighted to put it off. It will have to be done, and it will only take 14 turns from the year of the founding of City #2 to when the network would be completed.

However, I also know, from the demographics, that we are currently 7th in shield production.

On the second issue, I would like to point out we will only be losing 1 shield. The city itself will still generate one shield for that tile.

[DAVOUT]

Originally posted by ruby_maser
On the second issue, I would like to point out we will only be losing 1 shield. The city itself will still generate one shield for that tile.

Señor ruby_maser, the tile where a city is found ALWAYS produces one shield; if we settle on the tile SW of the tile planned, the city will produce one shield. The potential of two additionnal shields is lost. Is it reasonnable for a civ ranking 7th in production?

[Arnelos]

I know we need roads and a worker at Madrid would help with that, but Madrid really needs to stay a settler+spearmen factory for now. We need to continue with REX from Madrid while we still can (before civs can build up armies to threaten us). We can catch up with roads once we have an initial batch of cities in place.

It's really more critical to have the cities AT ALL (by building settlers and spearmen) than delaying settler production by throwing workers in the queue at this early stage.

If people want to convince me of the true necessity of a worker over keeping Madrid a settler+spearmen factory for now, I suppose I can be convinced... but we really need to REX more than build improvements at the moment.

[DAVOUT]

We need settlers, not for rex, but for luxuries, in view to have our first four cities growing to six pop (with temple). And you can insert a worker between two settlers. At six pop in Madrid and Pamplona, we will have a serious production capacity soon. Without roads, it will take 9 turns to go from Madrid to the spices (only seven from Pamplona). The roads will completely change our grasp on the game. We do not play against AI, no need for rexing; our aim should be to show just enough cities not to appear in the last two ranks.
Summary :
We have two excellent sites, lets develop them to pop 6 in order to be able to produce what we need soonest as possible.

[DAVOUT]

Of course, this is IMveryveryHO, but I strongly believe that a lot of what will happen is decided between now and a few turn ahead.

[Togas]

There is no controversy. Our mission is to quickly expand into the El Valle de los Torros. I'd also like to add that we should quickly establish Barcelona as well. After those two cities are up, and as our population growth allows, we should balance workers and military units.

--Togas

[DAVOUT]

I am afraid there is a controversy : it is not demonstrated that the planned choices reach overall the quickest expansion, and it has not even been answered to the question regarding the site of our second city.

Of course, if it means that Your Grace has blessed those decisions with your approval, I will refrain discussing any more those points, until the final triumph of your Greatness.

[OliverFA]

Señor Davout. I feel very sad that you have doubts about the plans that have been decided for the workers. This is clearly a failure in our office to explain our plans, so I will try to explain them better.

First, as you can see our workers have always roaded all the tiles they have been on. This is going to change with the mountains because they would take 450 years (9 turns) in doing that. This is unaceptable at that time. It is much better to "lose" a turn in our way to Pamplona than to lose many turns of extra food because our workers are doing a road in the mountains instead of irrigating. This stage is a very crucial one, and a very little difference will mean a very big difference later.

About extra workers: I agree that if we had more workers we could finish our tasks more quickly, but I also agree that right now workers have a too high cost in citizens that we cannot permit ourselves. A temple in Pamplona is a must, and once we have two fully established cities we can think on more workers, but not right now.

[pikesfan]

Points in favour of the site of Pamplona:

1. It is close to Madrid and can be more easily defended.
2. It has a gold in its immediate radius.
3. The loss of the tile is compensated by the many mountains nearby that we can mine, and the forest too.
4. It uses our land efficiently. If we moved it, then we would have gaps in our city grids and waste land.

[OliverFA]

Originally posted by Arnelos
If people want to convince me of the true necessity of a worker over keeping Madrid a settler+spearmen factory for now, I suppose I can be convinced... but we really need to REX more than build improvements at the moment.

Señor Arnelos, if this have some value for you, I can tell you that the Slave Master supports you in your idea of delaying workers productions a little bit. I do that because I also think that at this stage we need to grow and this way we would have many more slaves at the future,

[DAVOUT]

Señor Oliverfa,

I am sure you do your best.

[GodKing]

REX, with a subheading of MILITARY.

Instead of 2-4 cities with OPTIMAL roads, defences, and culture, IMHO it is better to have 8-12 cities without knowing that they will be improved soon.

[Thrumble]

REX, although there is something to be said for a quick warmonger period if we are as close to all of the other teams as some people have been saying. With our resources near the capitol we may have an early advantage in growth and production which could be leveraged against a close team.

[ruby_maser]

Originally posted by DAVOUT


Señor ruby_maser, the tile where a city is found ALWAYS produces one shield; if we settle on the tile SW of the tile planned, the city will produce one shield. The potential of two additionnal shields is lost. Is it reasonnable for a civ ranking 7th in production?

And the tile where the city is not founded can ALWAYS been mined to produce 1 shield... assuming it is the grassland tile to the SW of the bonus grassland

We would be getting 2 instead of 3.

I don't know if the City #2 can be blamed or made to fix the lack of production of our empire. We have the luxury of fast REX. Whether we are balancing production with growth is the real issue. More to come; the whistle is blowing.