Turn Players' Thread #1

[sunrise089]

The very concept of a cottage before all first-ring tiles in the capital are chopped is totally alien to me. Obviously this isn't crazy kill-em-all typical MP, but perhaps we could aid our expansion more by chopping a bit and researching archery. Then when the worker had chopped as much as we wanted and roaded to the new city we could build our cottages?

[mostly-harmless]

I lean towards Pottery first as I see little risk of enemies fortifying in large numbers in our first ring forests without plenty of forewarning. (Anyone knows when to expect barb archers on Prince?)

Until we have Pottery the worker should chop to speed up the settler and another worker afterwards?

Ideally chopping the tile 1E of the capital next?

mh

[Sullla]

OK, let's try to break down this decision a little more scientifically. Some of the things thrown out here are great opinions, but not necessarily feasible given the actual situation.

We have two real questions that the team needs to answer, which correlate with one another:

- What action does our worker take next?

- What do we build next in the capital?

Winston finished building his mine this turn. (I swapped over to the mined grassland to pick up one extra shield and commerce.) At present, we do not have Agriculture or Pottery, so his options next turn will be limited to building a road, building a mine, or chopping a forest. My recommendation at the moment would be to mine the grassland hill one tile north of the cows. That gets us another 4 food/hammer tile for settler/worker production, and chops another forest for 20 shields to boost the growth curve. (I would probably run max growth at the moment though, after finishing settler, to try and reach size 4 ASAP. Unless we decide to build a worker next... see below.)

Building a cottage next is not an option because we do not have Pottery. And what everyone has forgotten is that we lack the necessary pre-requisites for Pottery too! We have to research either Fishing (6t) or Agriculture (8t) to even be able to select Pottery. We may actually want to do that, but since I had to pick a tech when I logged in, I selected Archery (7t) for the moment. If we go for Pottery, I think the obvious choice is Agriculture first, not Fishing.

Now, to get back to the second question. What do we want to build next in Airstrip One? The settler finishes in 5 turns. We will not be able to finish Archery in time to go right onto an archer, so keep that in mind. Do we want to proceed right to a second worker for Pink Dot city? That could be a powerful option, if we feel confident about not being attacked. If not, the other options are likely a fourth quickie warrior, or putting 2 turns of shields into a barracks. I must say that I find those options a bit less attractive, however.

mostly_harmless, is there anything in the Demographics info to suggest a certain course of action?

[sunrise089]

Even against Inca, I would avoid putting hammers into a warrior. If there is significant overflow from a chop then I'd place it into a worker and work on that while archery comes in. Otherwise 2 turns into a barracks makes sense to me.

[sooooo]

For the non-archery supporters:

Are you not worried about barbs? A barb warrior has 50/50 chance against our warrior guarding our new city. We'd need 2 warriors tied up just to defend a city. That's unless 2 warriors approach, in which case we'd be relying on luck. Archers have such good odds defending cities to warriors that we could just put one in a city and have peace of mind until barb archers appear. Even barb archer odds vs our archer in a city are very good for us.

Another thing about building cottages is this: We'd have to work them. That slows down our production of workers and settlers.

I think my preference of a plan is this:

Research archery. For the couple of turns after the settler completes, put hammers into a worker. Yes I know this doesn't grow, but the worker hammers are really valuable here. After archery arrives, build an archer then at size 4 finish the worker. Research agriculture.

[Zeviz]

Originally posted by sooooo
For the non-archery supporters:

Are you not worried about barbs? A barb warrior has 50/50 chance against our warrior guarding our new city. We'd need 2 warriors tied up just to defend a city. That's unless 2 warriors approach, in which case we'd be relying on luck. Archers have such good odds defending cities to warriors that we could just put one in a city and have peace of mind until barb archers appear. Even barb archer odds vs our archer in a city are very good for us.
...

A Warrior in a city gets +25% from city, +25% from hill (or +40% from capital's culture), and +25% from fortify. That's at least 3.5 vs. 2.0 when defedning against Barb warriors. In practice you'd still want 2 units defending each city you don't want to lose to a bad die roll, so with Archers you'll just have to use 2 expensive archers, instead of 2 cheap warriors.

Also note that our research into Archery will speed up arrival of Barb archers, because barbs get free research based on how widely a tech is known. I used to defend my entire empire with warriors until late middle ages, and while this wouldn't work against humans, I wouldn't be too worried about barbs on low difficulty.

A question for people who are arguing for Archery first: How do you plan to catch up economically to our neighbors who have gold next to capital and plenty of floodplains?

[sunrise089]

Originally posted by Zeviz

A Warrior in a city gets +25% from city, +25% from hill (or +40% from capital's culture), and +25% from fortify. That's at least 3.5 vs. 2.0 when defedning against Barb warriors. In practice you'd still want 2 units defending each city you don't want to lose to a bad die roll, so with Archers you'll just have to use 2 expensive archers, instead of 2 cheap warriors.

Also note that our research into Archery will speed up arrival of Barb archers, because barbs get free research based on how widely a tech is known. I used to defend my entire empire with warriors until late middle ages, and while this wouldn't work against humans, I wouldn't be too worried about barbs on low difficulty.

A question for people who are arguing for Archery first: How do you plan to catch up economically to our neighbors who have gold next to capital and plenty of floodplains?

1) The warrior won't be at full fortification instantly.

2) This simply isn't true. The odds of a single warrior taking out an archer in a city on a hill are essentially zero. There is no need for two units until we're facing archers, and at that point two defending warriors would be risky.

3) Who says we have to out-tech them based on one city and it's land. We already know we have worse land, so it's probably a loosing game. But perhaps we can expand to more land/cities, or perhaps we can out-produce them and then wipe them out.

[mostly-harmless]

Cloak & Dagger situation assessment:

Templars:
Nothing of interest happened in the Templar imperium for a long time.
They are definitely not spamming Quechas. They had the potential to build two more Quechas by now, but they did not do that as we would have picked that up from the soldier points in the demoscreen. Jerusalem is due for growth to size 4 on turn 36 based on their current tiles worked. Unless of course they are building a worker or settler. In that case we will see a worker finished on turn 36 or a settler finished on turn 44 the latest.
Templars do not yet know Bronze Working.
Templars do not have any improved tiles yet (except maybe sea food) nor do they have worker at the moment.
Interestingly they have promoted their Quecha south of our capital to shock (? the one that is good against archers).
We lawnchair generals in the Ministry of Truth have no idea why they would do that.
There is a second promoted Quecha east of our capital.
Threat assessment: low - medium

Imperio:
They have invested into a worker first strategy together with going Bronze Working first.
However, so far we have only seen a single warrior.
Also Imperio is quite a long way away from us.
On top of that, despite being the second biggest team with 23 members, they seem to suffer from a certain lack of organization as they have missed at least on turn already and also barely made the last turn (33). There is always very low activity recorded at civstat for Imperio.
Threat assessment: low

PAL:
They are off to a good start.
They just settled their second city.
Growth is fueled by an improved sea food resource.
Bronze Working is known, and the swap to slavery was made to make liberate use of the whip.
Whipping their size 4 capital down to size 1 and knowing they compete against Banana, which also has sea food fueled growth and has whipped their capital, could indicate that they are in a fierce race for land on the other continent.
Threat assessment: minimal

Barbs:
So far no barb warriors have been spotted.
Early barbs are known to just roam around and not go straight for the cities unless provoked.
Threat assessment: low - medium

My personal opinion:
Since Pottery is not an option soon, as Sullla pointed out, I am ok for going Archery next for peace of mind.
This should go along with a swap to Slavery any time soon to deter any human rivals. Since we do not suffer anarchy we do not loose anything.
I am in favor for getting out a second worker asap as we have plenty to do for them.

Another suggestion to the Diplomacy corps:
Can we launch another round of contact attempts to all known rivals asap?
I am a bit stumped by the lack of inter team communication. Especially after our promising start with the Templars.
An increased level of communication is always helpful to avoid misunderstandings, especially as we are going to aggressively settle in the next turns.

mh

[regoarrarr]

Interestingly they have promoted their Quecha south of our capital to shock (? the one that is good against archers).

That's cover. Shock is good against melee.

[sooooo]

So Zeviz and Kylearan: Are you two in favour of agriculture -> pottery -> archery?

I think so far there are 4 votes for archery (Sullla, Sunrise, m_h and myself)

[darrelljs]

Originally posted by sooooo
So Zeviz and Kylearan: Are you two in favour of agriculture -> pottery -> archery?

I think so far there are 4 votes for archery (Sullla, Sunrise, m_h and myself)

5...don't forget me . Like you said, we wouldn't be working the cottages anyway, so why build them?

Darrell

[Sullla]

Originally posted by mostly-harmless Another suggestion to the Diplomacy corps:
Can we launch another round of contact attempts to all known rivals asap?
I am a bit stumped by the lack of inter team communication. Especially after our promising start with the Templars.
An increased level of communication is always helpful to avoid misunderstandings, especially as we are going to aggressively settle in the next turns.

I second this. We should try to talk to the other teams about once every 2-3 weeks if possible. In the game Diplomacy (which I think some of you are familiar with), constant communication almost always brings about positive results. Even if we have absolutely nothing to say, we should still pop in and say "hi" on a regular basis.

I think we should seriously consider a map/information trade with PAL, as we're on separate continents with little conflict at the moment. No clue if they'd be open to it - but more info could only help, and it wouldn't hurt to have a potentially powerful ally over there.

I'm actually not strongly in favor of Archery (picked that because the game forces you to pick something!) Still, it's probably a better call right now in case we get in trouble. Agriculture -> Pottery is probably the next path.

[regoarrarr]

Originally posted by Sullla

In the game Diplomacy (which I think some of you are familiar with), constant communication almost always brings about positive results.

Another Dipper!!

I haven't played in quite some time but I used to be pretty active on the email judges.

And I second what you're saying, both in Diplomacy as well as in this game.

[Zeviz]

Originally posted by sunrise089
...
3) Who says we have to out-tech them based on one city and it's land. We already know we have worse land, so it's probably a loosing game. But perhaps we can expand to more land/cities, or perhaps we can out-produce them and then wipe them out.

Except I have no intention of losing.

More seriously, I think that going for military techs now would be suicidal in the long term. As Sunrise says, in a typical MP game we would have almost no chance from this position, so we have to play things differently than typical MP players do.

Consider the potential threats we face:

1. Barbarians - not a single warrior seen so far. (And I am serious about having successfully defended with Warriors until late Middle Age before.)

2. Imperio - have only 1 warrior out exploring, and are so far away that just seeing a stack coming would give us enough time to research archery and whip out some defenses.

3. Templars - have cover-promoted quechas. So their units might be stronger against archers than against warriors.

So I would strongly advise focusing on economy and worrying about military only when necessary. However, I almost never research archery in my games, and I understand that people might be uncomfortable with cardboard cutout defenses.

[sooooo]

I agree we want the strongest early economy possible but I think the economy is best served right now with production, not cottages. Production for workers and settlers. I don't see our worker using its turns to build cottages, or our city working them. So may as well build archers for city defence. I think we will have pottery by the time we need it if we go archery, agri, pottery.