Smith's College - General Discussions

[Dominae]

The thing about putting Cottages on Flood Plains instead of farming them and putting the Cottages on Plains is that Flood Plains are the better tile (3 Food > 1 Food 1 Hammer). We should always use our best tiles (mined hills, flood plains) before others (plains, grassland).

That's why I think it makes the most sense to couple farmed Flood Plains with mined Hills, and not cottaged (?) plains or whatever. Looking at it another way, if we put the Cottages anywhere early on, it's best to put them on the Flood Plains.

[Hot Mustard]

Any reason we can't balance these, at least early on? Mine the hills and split the floodplains 50/50 with cottages/farms.

That gives us growth, gold and hammers, which will all help us get to the point where we can churn out some skirmishers if we need to.

I realize early tactics are often about putting more of your eggs in one basket over another, but with this start, I'm wondering if a balanced approach might be more appropriate.

[DeepO]

Damn. Just wrote a lengthy reply, when I mistakenly clicked the wrong close button. I'll summarize

Originally posted by Dominae
Even if the chances are slim we have Horses within our fat cross, I think Animal Husbandry is our best bet for second tech, neglecting Religions for the moment.

I agree we need either AH or BW fast (we've got a better chance of finding bronze in our fat cross than horses). I don't think it's so urgent, provided we go for archery soon. We'd need time to hook up any horse or bronze, time which we can catch up with skirmishers.

I'd like AH or BW before writing, but after we try for a religion. We are the only SPI people, better use that to our advantage That shouldn't hamper us too much, unless we intend to do an insta-rush.

Improving the Sheep tile ASAP fits into whatever strategy we might employ, simply because it's our capital's best tile.

a cottaged fp is possibly better: it swaps 2 hpt for 2+ cpt. The sheep is not critical until we hit the He limit.

Being able to see Horses as we scout could prove an important advantage. The long we delay seeing Horses, the more potential for making bad decisions bad on insufficient information (the same can be said for Bronze Working by the way, let's not get too caught up in Writing and such).

See above. We can't risk delaying getting a resource in sight for long, and I agree it should come before writing. I don't mind too much if it would come after our first settler, though, unless we want to do an early rush.

An important consideration regarding our tech choices is when, exactly, our first Worker will be available. Right now we can Mine and lay down Roads. A Mine doubles as a farmed Flood Plain with respect to Settler/Worker construction, so there's little point in researching Agriculture too soon unless we want to grow as fast as possible into our Health cap and use Mines from then on to offset the extra Food.

don't forget specialists... and pop-rushing. I can see us use a combination of both, given this start.

I think we need to decide right now "Cottages or not" and go with it. Worker-turns are at a premium since we need so much early defense, so it will not do to build tile improvements that see little use.

Very early on, I agree. But after that we should have some reserve, so we can switch tiles to our needs. We'll maximize on fp, though, they are our best tiles... but putting cottage on them might not be the best decision in the long term: if later on we need to grow a town on e.g. a grass or plain, it will cost us commerce for many turns.

I personally feel Cottages are our best bet. Going Farms/Mines will help us expand quicker and be better prepared to execute a Skirmisher rush if the opportunity arises. Going Cottages hampers our expansion/military somewhat, but in all likelihood puts us in top tech position. Another advantage of Cottages is that the faster research allows us to be more adaptable in general.

I agree on a cottage-heavy approach, but I fear the military burden of that. a GA, for instance, won't net us that much as normal.

Tech pace, BTW, should be excellent from our starting position, making an academy a big priority. Better to build on our strengths... However, I still feel like most tech advance is made through leaps from GP and the Oracle, and I certainly expect at least one team to go that way (instead of flat-out research). We should be fearful of that.

The ability to pop-rush a few skirmishers as ultimate defense against an advanced rush might be all the incentive I need to go BW before AH, even with sheep in sight.

Fishing is a faster way to Pottery: if we have no short-term use for Agriculture we might consider researching Fishing instead, despite it also being useless to us, as far as we know.

We might be better off to wait, and go for agri as late as possible. The more teams that have it, the cheaper it gets... while not many will go for fishing unless they start near a seafood.

DeepO

[Theseus]

Just to clarify:

My earlier post about a 'sea of plains' was incorrect... I had not realized that nye had posted a "cleared" map.

[Theseus]

Ummm, that said:

Cottage spamming and a stream of Skirmishers... KICKS ASSSSSS!!!

[Hot Mustard]

Originally posted by Theseus
Just to clarify:

My earlier post about a 'sea of plains' was incorrect... I had not realized that nye had posted a "cleared" map.

Heh heh - I thought you knew it was a Sim and were joking/trolling.

[Arrian]

1) We may find we're actually near the coast and that fishing may have value for us.

2) I still prefer farms/mines with cottages on grass/plains, but I see your point, Dom. I'm not saying we don't put any cottages on floodplains. We could certainly do one or two early and then farm the rest. Good point re: mined hill = farmed FP from the perspective of making settlers/workers.

3) As for AH, I like that tech in general since it does three things: a) allows us to pasture our sheep; b) shows horses [if any]; and c) is a pathway to writing.

4) Given the production boost we get from the plains hill, I think we can punch out our first worker pretty soon (perhaps go warrior-worker??).

-Arrian

[DeepO]

Originally posted by Arrian
4) Given the production boost we get from the plains hill, I think we can punch out our first worker pretty soon (perhaps go warrior-worker??).

Not much to do with an early worker, I'm afraid. Scouts are much more useful... we'll need pickets for a long time to come so they're no waste either.

DeepO

[Blake]

Okay I've read through the thoughts on terrain improvement and such.

We have a +9 food surplus from the +3 food tiles, we have a -5 food in river hill tiles, and another -2 food in river plains tiles. If we work the sheep and the entire river (except the desert hill) we end up with a net of +2 food (and another +2 from the city tile), which is +4 for growth. This is plenty, so farms aren't really needed. But there are two factors:
1) The city needs to grow A LOT to actually get additional food, it's not like having a big food surplus in one easy grassland pigs package.
2) We will be hitting health caps.

I think we should farm 2 floodplains and cottage the rest, this lets us work the 2 plains hills and break even on food with those 4 workers. This leaves all the other food for growth and/or a buffer against ill health. Maybe if we get a lot of health we can replace those 2 farms with cottages, but generally having that extra food for rapidly growing to caps is a good thing.

On turning the capital into a GPP:
While the food surplus is massive, again it requires a massive population to utilize. If we worked all the +3 food tiles (with cottages!), then we have a +11 surplus and could create 5 specialists! But that would put the city size at about size 14, so ill health is going to be munching up most of that food surplus! And this means doing mass farming to make up for the health.

A much more ideal GPP city is one with some concentrated food tiles - take a city with a 6, 5 and 3 food tile. It has an easy 8 food surplus and can create 4 specialists, at the comfortable size of size 7. No real health problems.

I wont say that we shouldn't turn the capital into a (specialist) GPP pump. What I will say is that we should only turn it into a GPP pump as a last resort, as it is far more ideal for pumping out a truly sick amount of commerce and hammers, especially under BigB.

I also think we would have an excellent chance of building the oracle, especially if we quickly mine the 2 plains hills. But it should only be priority if we find the surrounding land to be oddly unappealing for mass horizontal expansion.

[notyoueither]

Originally posted by DeepO

a cottaged fp is possibly better: it swaps 2 hpt for 2+ cpt. The sheep is not critical until we hit the He limit.

Which is really right quick if we settle on the hill.

[notyoueither]

Originally posted by dejon


Heh heh - I thought you knew it was a Sim and were joking/trolling.

We all make mistakes.

I couldn't find the team email that I had linked to in the Forum Guide.

[notyoueither]

I think we should farm 2 floodplains and cottage the rest, this lets us work the 2 plains hills and break even on food with those 4 workers. This leaves all the other food for growth and/or a buffer against ill health. Maybe if we get a lot of health we can replace those 2 farms with cottages, but generally having that extra food for rapidly growing to caps is a good thing.

This gives us 10f/9h/5c at -1 He for a net +1f for growth

Pasture those sheep, work a cottage, and we have 8f/12h/7c++ at 0 food growth.

Do you want 23 or 27++ productivity?

I agree speed to grow is a good thing, but we should be more concerned with equalibrium. When we have time we farm 2 of the fp's so that when we want to grow we can switch to 2 farmed fp's from mined hills and fill food boxes asap.

We can have the religion, agri, animalH, archery, and bronzeworking by the time we shoot out a settler.

What we are arguing is what order to do them in.

[notyoueither]

Has anyone ever Ralphed in C4?

I've been intrigued by the idea of settling close to cap for a first ring, and then close to the first ring for the second.

The first ring compresses the cap into food tiles for GPP/workers/settlers while they build buildings and units. Then the second ring does the same to the first ring.

It's a compressed coil. When the time comes you reassign all the tiles to selective cities to max them as desirable, generally springing outward.

In the mean time you have an easily defendable, and extremely micromanagable approach to PBEM in CIV.

[notyoueither]

fer instance.

You can build a city with 3 food bonii in radious with a long term goal of a GP factory. You do so, but in the short term you need troops. You plant two barracks cities that each use 1 or 2 of the food for rapid growth.

Eventually your GPP factory has its basic buildings complete, the barracks are up to size, so you reassign food tiles to the GP factory and leave the barracks to build units.

Ideally these barracks cities are eventually left with a couple towns to work while the empire that they protected springs up and surrounds them.

It can be an interesting way to maximise real estate with just a few classical 'camps' that always pay for themselves (the towns).

[Arrian]

Originally posted by DeepO

Not much to do with an early worker, I'm afraid. Scouts are much more useful... we'll need pickets for a long time to come so they're no waste either.

DeepO

I had the exact same thought as I was trying to fall asleep last night. Warrior-Scout-Worker. Maybe Warrior-Scout-Scout-Worker... but I want those terrain improvements up soon! As for what we can do with the worker, at the very least we can mine and road... but I think we can squeeze AH in there before a worker too, allowing our pasture.

-Arrian