What happens after the war?

[Blake]

Sorry I need to refuse the bet (as tempting as it is to make my side of the bet being eating cardboard ).
You see what I'm concerned about is the risk of Vox employing a strategy which makes axe rush harmful. My estimate of Vox behaivour goes something like this:
30% of being defensive/passive and dying slowly.
20% chance of being insanely aggressive to die as quickly as possible, but with some impact.
50% of being indecisive and/or doing something stupid.

In other words, I'm not making any bets on what Vox will do. That's precisely what I'm NOT doing. I'm planning for contigencies and finding the most robust strategies, ones which Vox are unable to "sabotage". We don't want our success to rely on Vox doing, or not doing, something.

Since I'm not betting that anything will happen, just saying what could happen, I can't really make a bet. In fact I'm quite unwilling to make any bet. Vox are in a very poor position, every strategy for them ends in defeat. To chose a losing strategy, they may as well roll a dice.


Also, just for the record, I don't believe that Vox will literally hole up. That would be too boring. But it's quite posible to do things without losing units. For example they could secure tiles with archer pairs, they have a wide expanse of friendly culture where they have perfect vision of our units - they can send their archers out on picnics, or to "dance" with out units, pulling them back into The Voice when things get too hot.

Also, in order to have a credible chance to break/contain a choke of 4 skirmishers, they need to have ~6 archers. So if we send in 4 skirmishers, we should expect them to train about that many archers, if they wish to do something about us. Then they can whip some extra archers at the last minute when things starting looking dire. Thus we can reasonably expect that they'll be able to cram 8-10 archers into The Voice even if it's not their intention to die as slowly as possible.

Anyway it's good we've got the opinions of more GS'ers.


I will at very least entertain DeepO's idea.

If I've got a good feel for the math, that should put us at 8 skirms, 17 axes or something close... it might be even more with chops. What amount of archers are Vox going to have in 45 turns? 14 with whipping as crazy? that's 795h vs 350h, or 2.3x. We should win it, although RNG is always a factor. And we might even improve on that result. Roads towards the front will decrease the 10-turn lag we're facing now.

Again here, the problem is we would have sunk nearly 800h into axes . Units which are near-useless beyond thier ability to take The Voice. We'd be better off spending the commerce on research and the hammers on cities and then a smaller number of catapults. The catapults will not only win more cleanly, they'll also be more future-proof. Also we get to KEEP a lot more of the investment, since catapults have such fantastic odds vs archers.

I think a profitable axe rush has to be a small axe rush. Sure, if Vox decide to suicide 6 archers, then we could probably consider quickly pumping out 8 axes and going in for the kill. Altough even then I'm not sure it wouldn't be better to just wait for the pults, especially considering the RNG.

The more I look at the situation, the more it makes sense to get as many floodplain cottages in operation as quickly as possible. Having that huge commerce base lets us rapidly expand all over our landmass while still being able to keep up in research. There are so many nice city sites out there that we want to found ASAP.


Oh before I forget:
WAR WEARINESS
This is increased by taking cities and losing cities.
It is also increased every time a unit dies in hostile culture.

What this means is we only accrue warweariness if Vox kill our chokers. If they'd rather a staring contest then there wont be any warweariness at all. Also I'd imagine we'd need to actually lose in excess of 10-15 skirmishers to have 1 WW in a size 6 city.

[Velociryx]

Yes well...while all that may be true, your proof of the inadvisability of the axe rush was based on the assumption that they WOULD act in a particular fashion (not that they might, with a 30% probability), etc....which led me to the logical conclusion that since this was what the entire anti-rush campaign was based around, it must be what you felt was most probable....and thus the bet.

But I don't blame you for not wanting to take it, cos there's no way in Heck they're gonna sit idly by and let us have free run of the place....

-=Vel=-

EDIT:

My own interpretation of what they'll likely do is:

Attempt to break the choke: 75%+
Actively try to stop us (with measured acts of aggression, taking full advantage of local tile superiority) 100%

Chances of battles happening outside the city gates: 100%

It don't take many of these to make their position less than hopeless (see my post above on their dwindling chances with each unit lost--a lost unit is MUCH more harmful to them that it is to us, specifically because of all the defensive mulitiplier also lost).

Be that as it may, it seems that the decision is reached, and we need to focus on how to best optimize the approach.

-v.

[Cort Haus]

Originally posted by Dominae
I think we should build Cottages, beeline for Construction, and end this.

Library and scientists, anyone? We have the food.

[Cort Haus]

Hopefuly nye will comment soon on the quick diplo option, as he'll be the one making them the offer.

I think we should say "Guys, it's check-mate, but there are still a lot of turns to go. Do you want to die slowly or concede now and join us for a decent shot at winning this thing."

[Velociryx]

IMO, we have a sufficient number of flood plains earmarked for cottages that these will be the better investment, research wise, although setting one city up to bang out a G-Man for an academy would be top notch.

And I TOTALLY think we should pop and chop our settlers and a total of 3 workers (letting the last (3rd settler/4th worker) build naturally). The faster we start working cottages, the faster they grow, but we can't work them till they're in place, and we need workers to make that happen, so the next thing I'll agitate for is to do EVERYTHING we can to get the settlers and workers out there more quickly.

When the borders expand next, IIRC, it'll actually bring us three new forest tiles, and IMO ALL of them should be chopped--plus the one inside the fat cross that we're already angling for--to speed the production of settlers and workers.

Since we have chosen this path, then by god, let's get it DONE. Faster IS better. We need those cottages yesterday, and there's NO amount of Capital growth that can compare with the exponential function of new cities, so there's no valid argument against popping the hell out of ourselves to get that set up.

-=Vel=-

[Cort Haus]

OK, here's a thought on how Vox might consider their options if they decide to take the long road. They'll be watching the powergraph and if they see us building up they'll do the 'F' button thing. If they see us not building many units then they might want to come out to play.

That's why Vel's bet is somewhat moot imo - as whatever we'll do Vox should try to counter it anyway.

Also - vmxa is right. We chose a civ with an early UU. We got lucky with a key resource, for a change. Our opponent didn't. Are we being truly competitive if we have scruples about pressing a legitimate advantage, if we can? I expect that Vox won't take the offer, which is fine, but if two other teams did this when one had all the trumps in their hand, I wouldn't begrudge them.

[Velociryx]

I'd like to see us use the following build order:

(EDIT: REVISED)

Grow to size 4.9

Stop working on the Skirm and start a settler

Pop the settler to completion

Chop a worker

Get back to the Skirm and complete

Second city and second worker founded WAY before we even GET Pottery.

-=Vel=-

[Velociryx]

OK, here's a thought on how Vox might consider their options if they decide to take the long road. They'll be watching the powergraph and if they see us building up they'll do the 'F' button thing. If they see us not building many units then they might want to come out to play.


IMO, no matter what we do it's going to show up in the power chart...even if all we do is build garrisons for the three new cities we want, it's going to look provacative. Remember, they have very limited info at this point, and have no idea what our plans are. We're not creative, and our borders won't be expanding toward them at all, so unless they come out for a peek, there's no good way to know if our new troops are garrisons or if they're attackers/chokers.

Of course, we must assume that they'll be able to understand what the spike in GNP and food production means, but they won't know where our cities might be, and with the choke on, they'll have only limited means of finding out (because if we're able to catch ANY troops in the open (even if it means moving from our established tiles), we should kill them, both to keep them in the dark and for the hammer gains it gives us.

-=Vel=-

[Blake]

Okay build order.

Skirmisher.
Skirmisher. Note Carefully. We need the chop to land on this skirmisher on the turn that EotS will grow. This will complete the skirmisher. I think this will involve spending 1 turn building a road to kill time and the other turns chopping.
Settler. We can't whip until we can build a granary.
I'm not entirely sure how long pottery will take due to the discounting.

Now as for whipping.

NO WHIPPING UNTIL GRANARY, at least in EotS.
I think once we can get a granary, we should get one. Either build with max hammers or whip. It would be okay to whip a worker/settelr then build with max hammers. What isn't okay is whipping a granary then building worker/settler . Generally a worker/settler build should never proceed a granary build. However a worker/settler whip is okay.

Whipping settlers out gives a 4 turn headstart on life, which is good. But it only works with a granary in the picture.

In Wines, we can whip a worker out at size 2 (half whipped), or size 4 (all whipped). We could also whip a granary out at size 4. In terms of "point value" these are all largely equal and optimal - it's just a tradeoff between worker turns and city productivity. Some things like training worker at size 1, building/whipping granary at size 2, are simply absolutely sub-optimal.

Whip Worker Size 2: Maximize Commerce.
Whip Granary Size 4: Maximize productivity <- probably best since we can borrow worker from EotS.
Whip Worker Size 4: Balanced.

I agree with starting on a skirmisher in wines, if nothing else it can be whipped at size 2 in an emergency.

So the exact build is going to depend on when we get Pottery and how the granary fits in our worker/settler schedule. Once we have the granary we want to whip every 10 turns like clockwork.

edit: Oh one other thing. We could consider building a floodplain farm with our worker while waiting on pottery. It does greatly improve growth at size 3 @ 4, and makes it easier to work the sheep without hurting growth. In terms of hammers, a farm equals a chop after about 12 turns - albeit with it taking twice as many worker turns. I'm still not convinced about chopping any tile other than GL hill, it only shaves 1 turn off a settler and if we plan on getting mathematics with much haste, it only makes sense to save them until then.

[Velociryx]

I disagree about the need for the granary in EoTS....your earlier notes indicated passingly good hammer outputs without a granary, and our best growth options *far and away* lie in new FP cities, as opposed to our current one. There's simply no contest, and thus, no good reason to wait.

Also, the point value between the granary in wines vs. a worker...worker wins, again, because the worker turns are more valuable than the city growth, if for no other reason than it takes time for cottages to improve/mature, but also because the cottages provide US an extra +1c right off the bat.

Until we get enough workers to slam those cottages down, granaries ought not even be a twinkle in our collective eye.

re: the forests....there is some attraction in waiting, since we're making straight for math anways, true, but our NEEDS are more immediate than that. We see maximal gains by founding those cities sooner, rather than later. We see cottage growth by starting them sooner, rather than later. If the forests are a point of contention, why not split the difference?

-v

-=Vel=-

[Blake]

Yeah, but 1 turn off a settler, vs getting +30h in a new city? I think the hammer influx to a new city later in it's life is more valuable than 1 turn headstart (a chop is like 5 turns of production for a fledging city). Also now that those forests are a lousy 17h or whatever they're just nowhere near as attractive as the old 30h chops of old.


I need to sim the EotS granary more heavily, but bear in mind the granary works because it means we can shift more of EotS workers onto floodplain cottages, which are MUCH better than hill mines in every way. A granary doesn't make us expand/conquer any faster - but it DOES increase our commerce without comprimising expansion speed. And as soon as we want to grow to size 6, then it really pays off.

However we don't need the granary until EotS has floodplain cottages going unworked. And to an extent a worker can build a couple cottages at EotS then entertain himself at other cities.

In an expansion I think Granary first is definitely more valuable, because that city can then very quickly whip out a worker, it gets both builds done a lot quicker than Worker then Granary.

Vel, you may be guilty of underestimating the awesome power of granaries. They in effect, DOUBLE food surplus, and that is astounding. In every simulation I've run, cities which build a granary earlier always outperform cities which build granaries later (ie building the granary asap is ALWAYS better than building a granary later). It's like if you have a city with grassland pigs and bananas, and are expansionist. You'd grow to size 3 working both food tiles then whip, right? so that both good tiles are being worked? right? Wrong. You grow to size 2 then whip right away, because it's better to get that granary faster since it doubles food income - doubled pigs (8f surplus) is better than pigs+bananas (7f surplus). Granaries are just plain nuts.
The only exception is when a worker is SORELY needed. Like the pigs aren't improved yet. Quadrupled food surplus from pigs beats doubled from granary. But food resources are one of the few things which are higher priority than granary, and usually a worker from an established city should connect the food.

So sure we can delay getting a granary until we actually get the ability to build a granary, but we can't delay it much longer than that .

[Velociryx]

The two forest tiles I'm talking about are to the west of EToS, and NOT in the fat cross of any of our planned cities. They're fluff forests...pure extras, and they can help jumpstart our drive toward additional FP cities. My notion to chop them sooner, rather than later revolves around a statement you made earlier. That FP's are the best, most overpowered terrain tiles going. That be the case, then the faster we can put them in play (even if it's only one turn faster), the better (and if we're getting 20h from a chopped forest, that's actually closer to two turns faster, is it not?--and with two of them, that's closer to FOUR turns faster, not one)

Also, IMO, the best move we could make would be to stop working on the skirm in EToS at size 4.9, pop rush the settler, and then chop a worker (then get back to the skirm). That would be the FASTEST WAY of getting that second city planted, and it wouldn't interrupt our other plans.

-=Vel=-

[Velociryx]

No, I get the power of granaries. I also get the power of exponential growth, and we've got two FP city sites that need founding. We need at least one of these BEFORE the granary, IMO.

The only exception is when a worker is SORELY needed.

This applies to us then. We have TONS of unimproved FP's that desperately need our attention. Getting them cottaged (given our FIN trait and maturation time), and given that we have FP's sufficient for THREE CITIES easily surpasses the importance of ONE granary.

-=Vel=-

[Blake]

Okay very well. Worker before granary in expansions.

By far the most optimal worker first build is this one:
Grow to size 2, invest 30h into worker, whip.
Grow to size 3, whip granary.

In EotS, only keep the worker around long enough to build 2 cottages. After that send him to the frontier road building or whatever. Once the workers return to EotS, that is the time to get a granary, so more cottages may enter service (/slavery).

[Velociryx]

Sounds like a plan. And I modified my preferred build order in EOtS (a few posts above) to reflect my latest thinking (which sees us plant a second city and get a second worker out well before we even have the pottery tech.

-=Vel=-