A Tale of Two Cities

[Blake]

Okay basically, working a floodplain to grow as quickly as possible, with the FP start the first warrior is completed at turn 15. For hill, it's turn 8. The scout will be completed at turn 30 for FP, turn 15 for hill. We COULD work a grassland forest in either case. We might have to for the FP start.

My vote is firmly for Hill. We need intelligence on other teams to know what we can get away with. Hill gives us a couple of extra scouts over the course of the early game, and even later on the health effect isn't too large when we only grow to size 6 then whip 3 population. Each pop point (working floodplains) only takes 2-3 turns, so say it's 2 turns of -1 health, then 4 turns of -2 health. The Hill start only denies us about 10 food every time we train a settler. Since this takes about 10 turns, in that time the Hill will add 10 hammers. Thus both starts are nearly equal until we stop pop-rushing.

And we can just loan off the floodplains to other cities. We'll probably want to give city #2 3 floodplains so it can be constantly working floodplains while growing to size 4 for whippings. Depending on other city sites we might want to loan off another 2-3 floodplains to city #3. We can work around a lower health cap (especially since we get +1 floodplain!). We can't easily work around less early intelligence.

[nbarclay]

For a hill start, building settlers in the capital, is whipping really a better strategy than using a mine for production? Working two flood plains, the sheep, and a mined hill yields a production time of nine and one eleventh turns for a settler. (Additional flood plains can add commerce but have no effect on settler construction since they add no production and, as long as we have health problems, are a break-even proposition in terms of food.)

[Blake]

I think whipping is better. The reason is that we can build cottages and work them, instead of building mines and working them. This results in a non-trivial increase in commerce.

Also if I kept track of it right, growing from 3 -> 6 takes 8 turns, then a turn of production into the settler, then the whip. The settler pops out on the 10th turn (that's starting from 3.5 population, not 4 population as in the case of the mine). In the meantime 4/hammers turn have been going towards something else, so that's another 36 hammers. So in total it's about 12.5 h/turn, vs 11 for the mine.
And extra commerce to boot.

So with a granary... those mines just really don't compare. less hammers, less commerce, less cottage development

[Theseus]

Whipping kicks butt. Also, if we do city placement properly, we can keep cottages continually worked.

My gut still says 'hill.' Extra early hammers, and, godz forbid, a bit of worst-case safety. I think it's also marginally better for tight CP.

(Sidenote/humor: I always pause a bit whenever I disagree with Nathan, though... I'm still smarting from his having KICKED MY ASS in AU!! )

[vmxa1]

Hill, the quicker scouts tips it IMO.

[nbarclay]

I definitely don't have Civ IV's economics down the way I did Civ 3's; at least not yet. And it looks like one of my biggest weaknesses may be being too slow to use the whip, judging from Blake's figures.

For the record, I'm currently inclined to favor a hill start. (Consider that my vote unless I indicate that I've changed my mind.) I'm probably a bit prejudiced by the fact that I seem to be better at playing a hill start than a flood plains start, at least comparing my experiments with NYE's. But I don't like how slow a flood plains start is to develop, at least unless growth is sacrificed for production, and sacrificing growth for production would almost certainly negate whatever advantage a flood plains start would otherwise give us.

[Arrian]

Speaking of AU, is it dead?

As you all probably already knew, I'm torn on the issue (having initially supported the hill and then waffling based on NYE's and Blake's analyses).

When I voted floodplain, I admit I neglected the military side of the equation somewhat (shocking lapse, I know ). The hill not only provides better cap. defense, it gets our first few units out the door faster.

Hill

-Arrian

[Theseus]

Originally posted by Arrian
Speaking of AU, is it dead?

I'm going to kick-start it shortly... been focused on other things.

[notyoueither]

Originally posted by nbarclay
And it looks like one of my biggest weaknesses may be being too slow to use the whip, judging from Blake's figures.

Same here. I did my tests without the whip at all intentionally, because I didn't see it being that large a part of the equation. I'll have to go back and figure out how Blake is making a symphony out of the whip.

However, I still have some misgivings about the whip being able to be used constantly to keep the hpt up over the developed fp site. If in a military situation, we can't whip every turn indefinitely.

Also, the fp gets to 15hpt at 7 pop. I'm not clear where the hammers are coming from at 20 per pop once every 10 turns to keep it up under the whip.

2 from the city, 2 from the sheep is 4hpt. 3 pop every ten turns is 60 and up to 10hpt. Where are the other 50 hammers, assuming we can whip for 3 pop every 10 turns? I'm missing something.

The fp city can do the same thing, only faster given less food loss over 4 pop, but balanced by the need to work a hill from time to time.

What it boils down to in my mind is the safety factor of being on the hill, and the 4x advantage of earlier exploration tipping to the hill. If that is what a majority of the team want, I can live with it.

I can live with it especially if we settle city 2 and 3 tight so that over the short and long term we maximise the use of the land, and we are cottaging the heck out of the situation to maximise our research.

Gathering Slaves?

[Arrian]

I almost never whip in my games. I was the same way in CivIII.

I've never, ever, set up a city with the specific intention of whipping it. It's definitely a blind spot of mine.

-Arrian

[Theseus]

Gathering Devo?

[Dominae]

Some thoughts after simming the whip (loosely following Blake's excellent examples):

1. If we fail to get a Religion our whipping efforts become a bit more difficult (-2 Happy including the Temple).

2. Throughout the sim there long turns that our capital is working unimproved tiles. While it's not critcal what our laborers our doing if we just plan to whip them in a couple of turns anyway, it's obviously better for them to be working Cottages than nothing at all in the interim.

A possible solution (and a good candidate for some further simming!) is to expand a bit slower, replacing a Settler with an additional Worker or two. Also, we may find that we want Roads for our Skirmishers...

3. As far as I can tell, at 1000BC we are not in a very good position for Wonders if we adopt the whip to expand. We might find a way around this (especially with some extra Workers), but it's very possible going for whip might entail compromising our chances for the Oracle, etc.

[Theseus]

Originally posted by Dominae
3. As far as I can tell, at 1000BC we are not in a very good position for Wonders if we adopt the whip to expand. We might find a way around this (especially with some extra Workers), but it's very possible going for whip might entail compromising our chances for the Oracle, etc.

Why not? Depends on whip timing, as we can grow back to max practical size pretty damn quickly given the food resources.

[Blake]

2 from the city, 2 from the sheep is 4hpt. 3 pop every ten turns is 60 and up to 10hpt. Where are the other 50 hammers, assuming we can whip for 3 pop every 10 turns? I'm missing something.

Whipping 3 population is 90 hammers.

I definitely don't have Civ IV's economics down the way I did Civ 3's; at least not yet. And it looks like one of my biggest weaknesses may be being too slow to use the whip, judging from Blake's figures.

This IS an unusual start. One of the unusual things is that the city actually grows faster as it gets larger.

1. If we fail to get a Religion our whipping efforts become a bit more difficult (-2 Happy including the Temple).

It's not unbearable though since the fast growth means we don't spend much time at unhappy levels. I think the main thing is we get Monarchy ASAP (since Monarchy follows priesthood, there is no change of early research).


On Wonders:
Theseus makes the main point - it's only 10 turns after a whip and we'll be back at the full happy cap since we grow so fast. If we cottage all those floodplains we have CRAZY commerce. We can research things like Monarchy and CoL. I think this commerce-richness reduces the value of Oracle, after all commerce is "free" while we have to pay for the Oracle. (that statement is reversed in hammer rich commerce weak starts :P)

With several teams being Ind (and I think AC and maybe banana might be quite wonder happy) I think we should just forget about early wonders, unless we get stone/marable and/or are confident in our tech lead.
Hanging Gardens might be a good possibility especially with stone, we are going to want the Aqueduct anyway in our capital. Otherwise being non-coastal seems to eliminate the usual candidates. Great Library might be worth having, but it's another high profile target for other teams and we don't need it.

[notyoueither]

Originally posted by Blake

Whipping 3 population is 90 hammers.

Oops