What happens after the war?

[DeepO]

It seems that some of the choices were going to make now, will have an effect on what is going to happen once this war has finished. I thought to collect some ideas in a separate thread...

We're probably alone on this patch of land, together with Vox. For the moment, it looks like we can get away with focussing on war now, and turning to growth later. The point is when to grow...

next city
I'm personally sure that we need to build a 2nd city sooner rather than later. I'm even prepared to go to the extreme: we're currently building skirm #3, we might consider a settler next. The reason for this is that we will know where bronze is, and in case it's not reachable we can research AH before we need to settle down. Skirms are great, but let's face it: we're going to need axes, swords or HA to really deliver some punch.

So, a second city is a guarantee to win this war, also because as it starts to grow it will quickly give us more units than the initial investment of hammers.

economics
I think many of us are underestimating one side of war in CIV: the cost of it. We're talking about running a large, even very large army on a single city. It will break us in the long term...
Further, we're going to need to develop a strategy for immediately after the war: we'll want to grow in number of cities fast, to make up for the lost time. As a result, our expenses are going to rise quickly, and will stay bad until enough cities grow up.

One way of solving this, is getting a second city, with some income of its own (and a higher limit for free troops). As it starts to grow now, it will be mature once the war finishes, and might even support an extra city.

Another way of solving it is to start on cottages asap. We've got the land, but hardly the time to develop these...

religion
This whole thing started out as a religious war, and obviously we're not aiming to stop until we've got a religion. However, I dare to propose to maybe consider getting a second one. We're in a good position to actually do it, especially if we would find bronze nearby.

Consider this: Vox got Hinduism, and has other things on their mind than persuing religions. We nearly have polytheism, but not quite. Monotheism is close... we could go for masonry, monitor how much polytheism is costing (and thus how many civs discover it), and in case we're clear steam forward to Monotheism.

The gains? some other civ doesn't get an early religion, and +2 happy for us, without anarchy (+1 from religion, +1 from hereditray rule). It doesn't have to cost us much either, and even if we fail we get partial results (+1 happy)

tech
Apart from Mono, what other goals we've got? Obviously, we're going to need a strat resource. If BW: great. Otherwise, either IW (so we can get to MC fast), or AH (sheep, but we need to go to HBR to really leverage horsies). This has absolute priority, but we might only need 1 of the 3.

In case we're not sure we're going to make it against the Voxian defenses, and especially if they would be able to make it to 60%, we'd need construction asap. On that path is also pottery and writing, both very worthy techs later on, but of lesser use right now (no time to build cottages atm, and no time to build libs).

As we seem to be alone for now, alphabet is of lesser importance, but obviously that is going to change fast.

For our economic growth after the war, we're going to need either currency or CoL (or both). It doesn't look like there is any chance we'd get to CoL first.

IW, than MC is another good path in most circumstances, but in ours? No jungle to clear, no time to build forges. The Colossus, however nice as a wonder, is not going to happen either. Swords are of course excellent, but a gamble...

DeepO

[Blake]

Second City:

The Wines Site!
There are numerous reasons why this site is good. Firstly is the high yield city tile - an immediate +2 commerce. Next is floodplains, floodplains are simply flat-out better than any other terrain type, it's like grassland with a free farm and the option of yet another terrain improvement. The wines site is essentially pre-improved for us and gives the best payoff with least investment.

An exceptional copper site might change my mind, though.

I think that it would be best to train the settler as soon as we hit size 5 but I'll consider the merits of training it now - we would be spreading our defenses a bit thin but it'll give City#2 a good head start (and with floodplains after 8 turns City#2 can whip a skirmisher).

Tech:
Hmmm, of high priority... Pottery. Pottery. Pottery. Pottery. Pottery. Pottery....
Yep, I think Pottery is pretty important. Cottage floodplains will put us on the fasttrack to economic success. I'm not saying it's essential to get pottery as the very next tech, our worker can keep himself busy for at least another tech... but then again he might be better off keeping himself busy building cottages rather than roads.

This also raises the granary/slavery question. I'll say this for sure - it's better to work pure cottage floodplains and whip with a granary than it is to work mines. Cottage floodplains >>> mines. However until we have the Cottage Floodplains and Granary, slavery is not as effective. I would say then that we should consider getting the granary once we have more cottages than we can work - that would be something like 20 worker-turns.

We MIGHT want to whip the settler out but it's not a clearcut thin, the problem is when you reduce your pop on a floodplains city you also reduce your food surplus. So I think we should stick with the max hammers plan for now.

Religion: Ugh. I don't like to think how hard it is to monitor the cost of Polytheism. Remember it's not the tech cost that changes, it's the discount factor changing, this is reflected in the amount of progress it shows visually so monitoring the cost comes down to pixel-counting.... possible but darn tedious.

However once we have Pottery we are pretty much set in terms of terrain improvement, so I'll support Pottery -> Masonry -> Monotheism, but not mono before pottery...

[Arrian]

Blake,

Do you think research AH and then going for pottery is too much delay?

If so, I'm happy to go pottery and get your granary/whipping going. But I sure would like to see (and hopefully hook up) horsies!

I agree on the wines site... at least until we see the copper situation.

-Arrian

[Cort Haus]

If we have no bronze then we must surely go for AH. If we have bronze, then AH could wait for pottery.

[DeepO]

The only option I see now why we might not choose the wines site is horses. Or better put: no bronze nearby.

Without a need to connect bronze or horses, the wines site is indeed best. In case we don't have bronze nearby, we might consider going for AH. With AH, the site on the west, close to the cows looks excellent as well. If either bronze or horses are near that site, my preference changes to there.


Cottages: I'm not so sure on the need for cottages over roads, however we are going to run into economic trouble, that's for sure. I can certainly live with early cottages, but probably after we chop at least once.


granary/pop-rushing: I totally agree, Blake. However are we going to have the time to build a granary? pop-rushing is most important when you can rush 2 pop at once, but there aren't too many options to do it (skirms are only 1 pop, right?)

And tech-cost spotting... we only need to do it once, the moment we discover masonry. Further, by putting research to 0%, we get 1 bpt... set research to poly, and you know exactly how many beakers are still left by the amount of turns left... any flaw in that way of thinking?

Even if that wouldn't be possible, simply pixelcounting the moment we get masonry (and possibly somewhere half way there, or 1 turns before discovering masonry so we also know who has that tech) will be enough.

I'm not saying we need to do it, but if we have bronze nearby, I'd say we go for masonry now, count progress, and either start on pottery or mono depending on how it looks. If we delay mono, Judaism won't go to us for sure... either we go for it to the max, or we better don't bother.

DeepO

[Arrian]

Ok, we have copper. It's just outside our workable radius, but will be in our cultural borders shortly. The surrounding land is meh, so the wines site remains our best choice, IMO, for our next city.

I still want AH, but I'm open to being convinced that Ag->Pottery is the better way.

-Arrian

[Hot Mustard]

Originally posted by Arrian
I still want AH, but I'm open to being convinced that Ag->Pottery is the better way.

-Arrian

Ditto. Will connecting the copper soak enough time that we can squeeze AH in before wanting our worker to be building cottages?

[Arrian]

There are actually a bunch of things for the worker to do, even w/o cottages (road to/mine the copper, road to Vox... even camp the deer if we want). The thing is, though, that the quicker we get cottages up, the more benifit we will get from them.

-Arrian

[Hot Mustard]

Yes, true. As you imply though, some are lower priority than building cottages, so rewording my question...

Will connecting the copper (which I assume is a priority) take enough time that we won't be having the worker do low priority tasks (like connecting the deer) while waiting for Pottery to be researched? (If we do AH first.)

[Velociryx]

IMO, with the flood plain rich site we've got, Pottery is the answer to all our problems (and since we're not coastal, obviously the best play of our choices would be Ag to Pottery).

AH is a good tech, and would be absolutely crucial if we found ourselves without copper, but we've got copper....and even better, we've got *convenient* copper. At this point, AH is a supporting tech, at best, while Pottery essentially represents the engine that will finance the whole of the war effort.

I strongly support Deep O's notion that our very next build be a Settler. Faster we get that second city up and working, the faster we can start getting serious about kicking some Voxian teeth in.

I'd recommend temporarily suspending Skirmisher builds after this next one completes to make a Settler, immediately followed by a second worker, both of which could be chop-assisted for speed. Both workers could then hit the copper and have it hooked up in no time, and from there....

-=Vel=-

[Krill]

Agri>Pottery>AH>Masonary>Writing>Maths>Construction>Kill Vox

[Krill]

BTW, didn't Blakes original plan call for a granary and lotsa pop rushing? If so, pottery gets us more than gold it gets production as well...

[Arrian]

Originally posted by Krill
Agri>Pottery>AH>Masonary>Writing>Maths>Construction>Kill Vox

I can't really complain about this path.

-Arrian

[DeepO]

Great, we've got copper. Now how are we going to make the most of it?

I'd suggest we might want to try a barracks/warrior/warrior/etc path, and send out 2 or 3 warriors to gain another promotion. Upgrades to axes are relatively cheap.

Other option would be to get a second worker, however I doubt it will give much speed advantage unless we chop massively (i.e. everything asap).

Building a granary while we wait for the iron to get connected might be better than a second worker: it will let us pop-rush efficiently.

OTOH, we still need skirms, or at least we can still use them. After a settler, there will be a time where Vox will outbuild us, possibly getting to 3 archers for every skirm in their borders. That's not much of a choke anymore... we need to keep the pressure on the lid.

As for tech: I don't particularly care for AH. I'm not convinced we'll find horses closeby, especially if we're going for the wines (which I think we should). Without religion, there won't be cultural expansions in the 2nd city. Without that, there is a very slim chance any of our land contains a horse... AFAIK these won't appear on fp, desert, or forested tiles.

Besides, we already have sheep, wouldn't a horse be a bit too easy, and thus unbalanced? We already got copper in our starting radius.

DeepO

[Velociryx]

We've got plenty of trees inside our borders and we're at war...there's no good reason NOT to chop heavily, IMO. Plus the fact that if we're going to rush to found a second city, then a single worker is completely inadequate to the task of keeping pace with everything we want and need to do. IMO, if we're gonna do a settler next, then we need a worker hot on his heels.

To prevent Vox from gaining the upper hand in the field, we may have to take risks with our warriors (or possibly start bringing one back to garrison the new city, relying on our Skirmishers in the field to keep any would-be attackers at bay).

It's *possible* to do it with only a single worker, sure, but I believe it would be akin to intentionally making life harder for ourselves than it has to be....remember that this war isn't going to be a quick (ten turns or less) affair, and those workers will be out there every turn creating turn advantage for us. The more of that they can do, and the more quickly they can do it, the better for us.

-=Vel=-