What happens after the war?

[DeepO]

You're right Vel... but still, a worker immediately after the settler seems too much risk for me. I much prefer this order:
finish skirm - settler - skirm - worker - axe,
or even
finish skirm - settler - skirm - skirm- worker - axe

The thing is, one of these days we're also going to start seeing barbs. Even if a warrior defends city #2, we need to have skirms pressuring Vox...

-----------

What can Vox do? (might as well start a new thread on this one )

Looks to me like they've got little options. They need to go for BW, then AH and IW. Or they go for construction asap (resourceless cats). Or, they somehow pour everything into production, without much research.

Further, either they wait in their city, or they somehow try to disrupt us. Personally, I think they'll try the latter... which means we need to scare them with enough skirms (but not too much either). If going for settler+worker, we'll be vulnerable for a while, we can't have pillagers /chokers.

DeepO

[Mudhut]

ATM, I vote for

finish Skirm - settler - skirm - worker - axe

I just feel we'll need another unit in there if we are to truly keep laying the smack down on Vox.

Oh, and does anyone have the lowdown on when Barbs start showing at these settings? And when they start to enter cultural borders? Ta muchly.

Oh, and I also vote for Agriculture -> Pottery next, even though I think the consensus has already formed around that path anyway.

[Blake]

I'm really not happy with chopperating the forests. REALLY.
We are going to be health-starved here, it's a tradeoff of +40h now, for -1f forever. Food is pretty valuable, it's really +40h now for -1.8h forever. Using a reasonable discount rate (3%/turn) that means it takes about 36 turns for the chop to be net hurt.

A worker while chopping generates 5h/turn - while chopping. But building a floodplain cottage yields ~ +3c forever, obviously once a few of those cottages are being worked he's generating a lot more value per turn.

Of course you could connect the deer, but then it's like 8 turns of chopping and 6 turns of hooking up an otherwise useless health resource, the yield from chopping becoming a lot lower than building improvements.

I don't mind choppign the fractional forest and maybe an argument can be made that we need to clear another 2 to secure EotS.


Builds and Stuff:
I think we want to get a granary, asap. Neglect mines, don't bother with the grassland mine, this lets us get by with 1 worker (yes, I'd love a 2nd worker, but other things are just more important). We now have Axemen, and those are great to whip (unlike skirmishers, which are terrible to whip), so we want to get a granary and whip axemen.

But I want to do a testbed first.

[DeepO]

Originally posted by Blake
But I want to do a testbed first.

Excellent, Blake.

I'm especially interested in seeing how you'd put in a granary, without chopping.

BTW, in my own games I rarely chop when there are fp nearby, but this might be a special situation. There is someting to be said for burning all we got asap, without looking at the long-term effects.

DeepO

[Velociryx]

Guys, we've got a sufficient number of forests that the health cap isn't gonna be an issue. I'm not advocating clear-cutting, cos I am mindful of the need to keep a balance between those flood plains and our health cap, but let's face it....we're gonna hit the happy cap before we hit health, and with a granary in our future, we'll be setting ourselves up for additional health benefits in any case.

THE way to put this war to bed quickly is speed, and where speed is concerned, we've got two options. Pop and Chop. We need to be doing some of both if we're serious about NOT having a two thousand year war on our hands.

WRT the build order....IMO, there's no risk to going Settler - Worker - Axes....Vox is in no position to launch an attack, and we can ALWAYS do an emergency pop rush to speed out a defender if they (extreme outside chance) made the attempt. In the meantime though, the extra 6-8 turns of turn advantage that worker could be giving us by not building more Skirmishers (who are about to be relegated to a supporting role in the attack, in favor of Axes)....support costs are going to start biting into our research...why saddle ourselves with a weaker combat unit when we could alter the build order slightly and get more bang for the same support?

-=Vel=-

[Blake]

Okay the testing indicates it is NOT in our best interest to get a granary and whip.
I ran two parrallel cities one with the 12hpt configuration and the other with whippage. The 12hpt city had produced a dozen axes and the granary city was still 70h shy of the raw unit output of the 12hpt city (accounting for the 60h spent on the granary, it was 10 behind total).

So in short with the sweet mines we have, we don't need a granary until we want to grow to size 6.

Whip and granary will probably prove very useful in our 2nd city though.

Returning to the chop issue. Again I want to stress the low output of chopping - it's only 5hpt. For example, Vox, with their crappy land and a worker out chopping (assuming NOT molested by Vidane) will bring in 6hpt from The Voice and 5hpt from the worker - that's only 11hpt total, as long as the forests hold out. EotS is beating that with 12hpt - that's without chopping.

Also it's not as if the commerce from cottages wont be useful. Cottages will soon DOUBLE our research rate, a tech like Monarchy combined with Wines city will immediately increase our happy cap by +2, which will do amazing things for EotS and make whipping very powerful (the more floodplains being worked, the more food surplus there is). But that only works with health from the forests - without those forests we are basically stuck at size 5 (in terms of production), since I presume we'll connect the deer for the first 2 forests, then the sheep for the next 2. That great city, stuck at size 5? And almost as many worker turns spent reclaiming health as was spent chopping? Those workers will be barely pulling in 3hpt.


If we REALLY want to kill Vox quickly, then it can't be with a second city. We need to spend the hammers for the settler on units, and chop the forests for more units. Because any plan involving a settler just isn't going to have Vox destroyed within 30 turns - that's when the forest chop becomes a net negative.

In short we can grind ourselves into the dirt to destroy Vox as quickly as possible, or we can grow into a jaggurnaught and casually squish them.

Think about this. Wines site is BETTER than The Voice, at least in our hands (in Vox's hand The Voice has the palace). Wines site will soon come to outproduce The Voice (don't be decieved by the Gold Mine, gold is only truly useful with a big fat food tile to feed it, the gold tile is borderline harmful for The Voice).

That is how screwed Vox are. Not only do they have to compete with our super capital, but even our second city will be outproducing them. Why hurt ourselves fighting on a level playing field when we can beat them through exponential growth?

And I want to point out, that if Vox are determined to die slowly, then however hard we try, we CAN'T kill them quickly, we can only hurt ourselves a lot trying. And unfortunately Vox have shown every indication of being a bunch of pussies, or at very least they approach us with immense caution. If Vox have a change of heart and start throwing away units like confetti, then we would do well to crush them quickly.

As for what Vox will do? I'm willing to bet they'll chop The Voice clean, or at least try to do so while their workers are molested by skirmishers. Why? Because if they don't, we get the chops as spoils of war. Chopping those trees is win-win for them, they have no future to worry about. For us chopping is win-lose.

Lets assume we settle the Wines site, aggressively, taunting Vox. They have some chop fired archers. How many could they realistically bring to bear on the Wines site while still dealing with our skirmishers? 4 maybe? That's 100h worth (at least 9 turns of production for The Voice, with chops included). Is 4 archers enough to kill 2 skirmishers? Nope. And right as they arrive at the wines site, they'll meet a stream of Axemen, popping out at 1 every 3 turns, the Axemen will quickly cleanse the floodplains of Vox archers and the Wines site can happily grow to size 3. They can't take the wine city, they can't even choke it (sure they can park on forests, but so what? floodplain whipping is better).

I believe that Vox will intend to die slowly and leave us with as little as possible. Chop all the trees which we havn't choked, chops for them, less chops for us. As D-Day approaches, whip the population of The Voice to death, less whips for us. Leave us with a size 1 city and our precious Hinduism.

[Blake]

Man that was a long post. Okay onto the details.

OUR HEALTH CAP IS SIZE 5.
OUR HAPPY CAP IS SIZE 5.
CHOPPING RESULTS IN A REAL LOSS OF FOOD.


SO far as builds go, we can time growing to size 5 and compleiting the skirmisher - we do it like this:
Grow to size 5.
At size 5, maximize hammers.
The skirmisher completes in 1 turn.

At that point we have 4 skirmisher.

We should then train a settler, at 12hpt this will take 9 turns, with a chop it'll take 7 turns (if we chop+mine GL hill, then it should complete in 7 turns despite being at 11hpt for some of the build).

The settler should scurry over to the Wines site.

EotS can start producing axes at 1 every 3 turns.

So back to our military. 4 Skirmishers.
I say we use 2 skirmishers to choke, and 2 skirmishers to protect Wines, Vox MIGHT try bumrushing it with every unit they can spare, it'd be a daring move and one they might be willing to try. But I'm pretty sure 2 skirmishers will prove to be too formidable a garrison (Vox don't have their worker yet).
Once the Axe stream arrives at the front (and I think we want to train at least a couple of axes) then Wines will be safe.

I think that's as far ahead as we want to make plans. Assuming we found Wines, then Vox can choose to either pressure it or ignore it, if they pressure it, AND lose units, that can be a green light to quickly kill them. If they ignore or pressure with great caution, then we should proceed to focus on economy for a little while, because as I've said, if Vox chooses to die slowly, well... they're going to die slowly. Our choice is how much we want to sacrifice to kill them a little bit faster.

If Vox do indeed choose to die slowly then we can look at Iron Working, or just getting barracks and a lot of axes. I think getting Monarchy is in our benefit, it would also allow for a last-moment whip-fest, converting all of Wines population into units. After The Voice has fallen we should have plenty of spare military police...

[Krill]

Don't we have 7 forests? And IIRC, each forest accounts for .5 health, rounded down, so can't we chop one forest?

The forest hill 1 of EotS could be chopped to speed the settler without damaging health, no?

Also, what are we planning on doing about gaurds for the wines city and EotS?

Sorry for making your life hell Blake

[Velociryx]

I gotta say, I disagree for two reasons:

* At present, we have two +1 Health tiles inside our borders (deer + sheep--equal in benefit to four forests), and our planned research path will make them both improveable in short order--one of them already is--which puts Health higher than happy, which gives us some room to chop.

* I count seven(?) forest tiles in our borders, and at least one more to be snagged by our borders, the next time they expand. Surely we're not so desperate for health that we can't spare at least a couple of these to speed us on our way, especially given that health can easily be bumped above our happy cap (making happy the real limiter in the equation anyways), and thus, eliminating all downside to doing so.

IMO, the best uses of those chops would be to speed the settler out, and to speed a second worker out. If we have two cities and two workers out improving, and Vox has neither, there's exactly zero chance that they can win the looming contest.

-=Vel=-

Edit: Cross-posted with Krill, who has the same basic idea.

[Arrian]

I'm ok with building up and squishing Vox like a bug with catapults later.

I also think that 1 chop is a no-brainer (given 7 forests) to speed a settler for the wines site. I lean toward preserving the other 6 forests, though.

-Arrian

[Velociryx]

Just re-read Blake's post, and we're actually closer to agreement than I initially thought (one of the drawbacks to reading while half asleep).

He mentioned chopping out the settler, and I totally agree with this. Also, we'll be getting an additional forest with the next border expansion (that will also bring the copper into the fold), which gives us another forest to speed the second worker along), and that's what I'm advocating.

One thing we definitely need to do tho, is we need to decide how the hell we're gonna run this thing, and we need to decide it soon.

If the consensus is to wait for catapults, then we don't need to build two dozen axes and choke ourselves on the support costs.

That's something that needs to be grappled with NOW, rather than waiting till we've got six axes on the table and then deciding...nope...change in plans....

Worst thing we could do is go about this thing half cocked.

If we're waiting for catapults, that's one thing....if we're attacking with axes, that's a whole different build order.

-=Vel=-

[Hot Mustard]

I would rather not wait for Cats.

It appears most are in favour of chopping out a settler next build. After that we need a time/turn analysis to see whether a worker or Skirm/Axe is better/necessary.

Oh, and yes, we are free to chop forest outside the fat cross without health penalty to EotS, but don't forget we'll want more cities someday...and we don't want to limit those future cities' health.

[Blake]

I've just assumed that chopping 1 forest is a no-brainer, and that it should be the GL Hill forest since when mined that maximizes our hammers nicely.

Research:
Agriculture: 7 turns.
Pottery: 8 turns. Maybe 7.

Pottery in 14-15 turns.

Worker Actions:
Plains Hill: 1 turn Mine.
Grassland Hill: 1 turn Move. 2 turns road. 3 turns chop. 4 turns mine.
Copper: 2 turns road. 4 turns mine.

Worker freed up in 17 turns.
Order could be changed to hook up copper earlier.

Production:
3 turns skirm
3 turns skirm <- note. Micro worker actions so chop lands on skirmisher the turn we grow to size 5.
8 turns settler

Build Queue done in 14 turns.


As you can see the worker isn't exactly going to be bored, any time spent chopping other tiles is time spent not making cottages.


The plains forest to the west about to come into radius could be chopped and would only suffer a mild penalty and is not far from the workers area of operation.
We could chop it, but that would be at the expense of hooking up the copper in timely fashion. I guess we could do this if we want to train another worker or build a barracks after the settler. Again however, this is at the expense of cottage building time.

[Velociryx]

I'd rather not wait for cats either, and with two cities cranking hard, I don't think we'll need cats.

The real issue becomes what can an extra attacker/defender really do for us, and how does that compare with what an extra worker can bring to the table.

IMO, an extra attacker/defender's value is degraded by the fact that we've already got nearly half a dozen on the table (or will have, after this next Skirmisher is done), and have a larger (and better quality) military than Vox. Adding one more to that isn't going to get us anything substantial, and certainly not on par with what a speedy second worker could do.

As to the health and well being of our future cities...I'm not nearly as worried about them, and here's why:

* All future cities will have the health benefits of the pigs and deer (plus whatever else we find, resource-wise) as soon as they're road connected, making the marginal utility of each forest increasingly less important.

* Most cities we found won't be blessed with quite so many flood plains as our capital has, meaning they'll be less dependent on the forest tiles for their well being.

Based on what we can see of the map so far, I don't think that'll be too big a deal for us...

-=Vel=-

[Velociryx]

Just cross-posted with Blake...right now, we've got more work for the worker to do than he can say grace over. That much is apparant by all the possibilities we're kicking around, and in my mind, only underscores the need to get the second worker out there as quickly as it can be arranged (but not before the settler, which, IMO, is even more pivotal than the second worker).

Given all that needs to be done, I'm wondering if we ought not consider a pop to speed the second worker out...yes, it will slow our production of military units down in the short run, but it'll also give us that BADLY needed extra worker more quickly (and by extension, faster cottages).

-=Vel=-

EDIT: Also, we don't need to hook up the copper until we're ready to start building Axes (since it's outside the fat cross anyways). Therefore, the real question is, "can we find things to put in the build queue that will pay us good dividends between now and the time that the copper is connected?"

IMO, yes we can...another Skirmisher if needs be (obviously not my first choice, for the reasons listed above), a Barracks, etc. (and if we drop the second worker in the queue behind the settler, then we'll not need the copper hooked up as quickly, since axes won't be built till after that in any case...at which time we'll have two workers to make up the "lost" time).