City Management

[Sullla]

I'd like to offer an alternative to sooooo's worker management, so that we can decide what works out as the most effective path. Here's what I had been planning to do:

T58 Winston moves directly south of the capital. O'Brien moves one north of the rice to mine the grassland hill (4t). Airstrip One finishes settler, starts worker (5t).

T59 Winston starts cottage (4t). O'Brien starts mine.

T60-62 (same) Both finish on T62.

T63 Winston moves one tile west, starts second cottage. New worker for Blue moves onto same tile, also works on cottage. O'Brien moves SW onto forested grassland hill to mine/chop.

T64 Second cottage finished. Airstrip One can now work two cottages while growing to size 5. Winston can build cottage #3 (probably on the forest tile east of the capital) and build some roads. New worker goes to improve Blue.

The main issue is that cottages are cheap and quick to build, which is why I don't think we need both workers to return to the capital. I'd rather keep O'Brien down at Pink and start mining some of the hill tiles there, personally - especially since we're going to want to build some archers there, and we can use more high shield tiles.

sooooo, can you make the case specifically as to why we should send both workers north, instead of keeping one behind in the south? We can have two cottages built (almost!) in the time it will take the capital to finish a third worker. Only one turn of non-cottage working in there as I see it.

[sooooo]

The main issue is that cottages are cheap and quick to build, which is why I don't think we need both workers to return to the capital. I'd rather keep O'Brien down at Pink and start mining some of the hill tiles there, personally - especially since we're going to want to build some archers there, and we can use more high shield tiles.

sooooo, can you make the case specifically as to why we should send both workers north, instead of keeping one behind in the south? We can have two cottages built (almost!) in the time it will take the capital to finish a third worker. Only one turn of non-cottage working in there as I see it.

The main advantage of sending both workers north is that the cow pasture at blue dot is finished earlier. This means that the work boat (and the exploring boat that follows it) will be finished quicker. My thinking is that the mines at Pink Dot are not that urgent since they only add +1 hammer and we will be building a settler there. The mines can still be build by the worker that Pink Dot will make.

If we leave one worker at pink dot, and begin another worker at pink dot (this is in my plan), then we have 2 workers at a city which is already doing OK for tile improvements while blue dot and our capital need improvements more urgently.

[Zeviz]

4 workers would be too much for our cities, considering that they are going to be stuck at size 4 or 5 for the foreseeable future. So I still prefer Settler at Pink Dot.

I am worried that we are already 2 cities behind PAL. Our lands aren't very good, so we have to make up with quantity what we are missing in quality.

[sooooo]

I disagree. There is a lot for our workers to do, especially as we are planning on another settler. 4 workers for 4 cities is a minimum. I don't see the point in producing another settler to arrive 6 turns before we know where the iron is.

[mostly-harmless]

There is no such thing as too much workers in the early turns, I feel.
But I also disagree with sooooo here. Waiting for iron before deciding on our 4th city would be too long a wait. There is Twin Peaks, a strategic city we have to land sooner or later.
There are plenty of fishing cities we could settle. With our production, we are ready to settle the 5th city when iron comes in, provided it is not covered yet.

mh

[sooooo]

I don't believe the best way to build an economy is simply by cranking out settlers as fast as possible. There are some situations where it is necessary, where our proposed positions would be taken by another civ. But in this case where we have a bit of time I think we need to make every city we build quickly productive. And I do mean quickly.

Having cities just growing using a grass forest while it waits for workers is a waste of money. In my mind, we want workers on hand as soon as the city is founded, preferably with roads already built to it. Then as soon as the city is founded and the maintenance hits, the food is improved asap and the granary is whipped in. Then the mines are built, the buildings and the cottages. This requires plenty of workers around to get things speedily off the ground for every settler built.

That's why I think we need 2 more workers before the third settler is built. The worker from pink dot can even chop the settler, so it doesn't delay it all that much.

[darrelljs]

Yeah, I would suggest we build at least one more Worker. Ideally we would have a Settler complete on the turn IW comes in, so I'm not sure we have time for two more Workers.

Darrell

[sunrise089]

I agree w/ Soooo as well. Fishing villages in the back aren't spots we're likely to use. In my games, I only settler w/o workers when I need to secure land in the front before someone else does.

[mostly-harmless]

With the Templars "squeeze" a bit lessened and our decision to largely ignore Barb City we can probably wait for few more turns before getting back to military units.

How about:
Winston goes ahead with completing that 1st cottage south of Airstrip One, which will take him 4 turns.
He can then go to Blue Dot (still need a better name for it) which will be settled the very turn Winston is done with the cottage.
That turn also the worker at Airstrip One should have finished and can go ahead building the 2nd cottage for Airstrip One.
O'Brien stays at Pink Dot for now as Pink Dot needs at least one more improved tile asap, and goes ahead with mining 2N of the city. After that O'Brien can move up to Airstrip One, helping to create a 3rd cottage and/or road towards the mined plain hill 1E 1SE of Airstrip One, not only gambling that this will be pur Iron hill, but also starting the necessary road towards twin peaks.
Pink Dot meanwhile will have completed the Barracks and has started the next worker, which will stay at Pink Dot.
So after approx 10 turns we have 1 worker at Blue Dot, 1 worker at Pink Dot and 2 worker at Airstrip One, preparing also to aid Twin Peaks or Iron City.

After that we need a couple of archers for protection of workers and settlers before IW comes in and we settle 4th city.

Hope that makes sense.

mh

[Sullla]

I'm pretty happy with mostly_harmless' plan of worker actions. Does anyone have any further suggestions? I'll hold off on playing the turn until then (aside from having Winston start the first grassland cottage, on which there is universal agreement).

Looks like the general consensus on builds is something along these lines:

Airstrip One: worker -> archer (while growing/working cottages)

Pink Dot: barracks -> worker -> settler (?)

New City/Blue: work boat

[Zeviz]

Sounds good.

One more question is: when are we going to build barracks at Airstrip One? Training unexperienced units feels wasteful to me, so I'd build barracks as soon as we are done with worker.

[mostly-harmless]

How about we go with Pink Dot pumping out some archer after the worker and Airstrip One gets going after the settler once it has reached size 5? In the meantime it could work on a granary?
We definitely need archer cover when going for Twin Peaks and/or Iron City.

mh

[Zeviz]

The reason Pink Dot has to be a worker/settler pump for now is that it has high food surplus and happiness cap of 4, so training workers and settlers is the only way to avoid wasting that food, unless we want to keep whipping the city for 2 population points.

[Sullla]

Actually... a double-whip on a settler for the last 60 shields at Pink could be an excellent investment. We've got +9/turn food surplus there and a low happy cap, after all.

Definitely something to consider in maybe a half-dozen more turns.

[Zeviz]

In that case, what about whipping a worker and growing back while training an archer, letting Capital focus on barracks first?