GeneralKilCavalry and thestick talk it out

[GeneralKilCavalry]

Very fitting, our capital's coastal workers will be whipped, and their mounds of seashells used for settlers and workers

[thestick]

T26 Report

As mentioned, going for Pottery. The current plan is to go Worker (Completes T34)->Granary (whip T36). Then we regrow to Size 4 on T40.

Small wrinkle, we'll need the military police happiness on Size 4 T40 with our only Warrior. Just as the human barbs start to appear... hmm. We may have to squeeze out a Warrior before Granary and just eat the lost food from delaying the Granary.
   

   
(Please tell me that the 26 land tiles Rival Best is Cairo's creative capital, and not a second city)
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Reread Sullla's PB2 writeup since it was posted in the Discord, so time to babble about cities and dotmaps.

   

Black is the next city, Lodi. Will be settled T33. We will hit Size 2 and have the Copper hooked up by T40. Build order will probably be Warrior (upgrade to Spear) -> Axe. Then, maybe Barracks? 

Long term this place will pump military. We have 8 food surplus from the two sheep and Spices, and working 2 plains mines + 1 plains copper mine + 2 grassland mines = 21 hpt, and we can do stuff with farms and windmills later. (We'll probably have to bring irrigation from the East, since there's tons of plains to the east, and Toulon/Red Dot have relatively more food). This is a potential Heroic Epic spot.

Yellow is our potential third city. Pretty straightforward, cottage and mine all the grassland and do whatever we want with this city. This or Dark Green might be good National Epic locations, high food but no grassland cottages that we need to work.

Light green is our potential fourth city, but I'm starting to think that we might want to settle it third for those sweet riverside grassland tiles, and the ability to grow Cottages for Toulon. Short-term we'll get 5 food from the Sheep, and we'll be able to work 4 grassland riverside cottages (5 if we Cottages the Spices) and 1 plains. I'm starting to think that will be good enough even pre-IW, especially since our happy cap won't be too high. Eventually we might want to move the capital here, for Bureaucracy cheese?

Red is a nice spot, like Yellow. We'll get 6 fpt, enough to work the 5 grassland mines + ivory = 18 hpt.

Dark Green probably comes afterward for those Wines. Or that offshore island.

Orange and Blue to the east, I have no real idea how to dotmap pre-CS. Those 4/1 Sheep tiles are... not amazing. Maybe move Orange 1E and cram in a junk city 3N1E of the current Orange site? We'll probably want Black to keep the second Sheep, so not hot on moving Blue west.

Further potential spots/fishing villages to the west:

   

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I'm starting to think that after Lodi gets up and running, we should build a couple of cottages north Toulon. We've basically used up the cheap commerce we're getting from our Fishing resources, and we don't have any Gold/Furs to work for more resource commerce. (Toulon's Ivory is only a 2/2/2 improved). Might be time to get the economy running.

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Tech: Pottery finishes T30, and then what? 
Mysticism: 52
Masonry: 103
AH/Sailing/Meditation/Polytheism: 133
Writing/Monotheism: 165
Iron Working: 296

Let's see, we won't need AH until T40 when our workers finish with Lodi, but it takes about 7 turns to finish. Going Mysticism -> AH -> Religion doesn't make too much sense, since we don't need Mysticism by itself. Ehh, will toy with the micro and see what makes sense.

Starting to toy with Writing after AH/Religion to chop out a Library at Yellow for an Academy.

[thestick]

Finally, to prevent more last minute scrambling, here are a list of things we need to do/decide and when we need to do/decide them by.
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T30 Next tech
T34 Double-check Granary growth mechanics. Decide whether to go Warrior->Granary or go straight for the Granary.

T40 New micro plan
~T45 Where to settle third city

[GeneralKilCavalry]

So, I think our third city should still go to the corn, and our 4th city should be red dot or light green. these are the really obvious good sites we should be taking ASAP.
We should be clear of barbs till turn 42 tbh. It's not like they'll pop out in front of our capital at turn 40 and take it the next turn. They may enter our lands by 43 at the worst...

There is also a case for the sort-of-shitty corn city 4th, just because we need a buffer to stake our claim against superdeath.

Offshore island should be settled when we are seeing slider problems. It will give us overseas trade boost, and will give us 2+#cities amount of commerce the turn it is founded.

Our second city will pump out a spear and can whip an axe out after - I think that grey dot will just be used for military production for the first bit of its existence. We need the huge food surpluses of the capital for settlers and workers. We will queue up an axe after the granary is complete but we will not build it, we'll switch to a settler at size 4, and then 2 pop-whip it, after which we put more hammers into the axe.

OFC, we will be severely losing out on cheap MP's in this scenario. If you look at my PB45, however, you can see how a skeleton military was sufficient against barbs. On the other hand, in PB45 I had to contain only a narrow peninsula and one far-off city, nothing more. Barbs will be more of a problem here due to the jungle.

Our only warrior should just stay with the capital after we escort the settler coming up with a scout and warrior.

[thestick]

Think we should go light-green for 4th city. Go go cottages.

Ideas on next tech? Thinking AH to get the Ivory hooked up to have enough happy for a size 4- > size 2 whip cycle in the Corn city.

We need the huge food surpluses of the capital for settlers and workers. We will queue up an axe after the granary is complete but we will not build it, we'll switch to a settler at size 4, and then 2 pop-whip it, after which we put more hammers into the axe.

Just double-checking, this is for Toulon, right?

Everything else sounds fine, esp. grey/black doing nothing but military to start.

[thestick]

Question: Does Sailing enable trade routes through coast tiles, or trade connections/trade networks through coast tiles? We won't have a road to Lodi, but it's on the coast and Toulon is on the coast, so will Lodi be connected to resources when it's settled?

Updated the micro. Assumed Granary after Davout finishes, and assumed that the next tech is Animal Husbandry. Think we need the happiness.

Toulon: Grow to Size 4, then work on Settler. Quickly grow to Size 5 once the Ivory comes online so that when we do the 2-pop whip, we're still working all of the good food tiles at Size 3.

T36: Whip Granary
T38: Size 3
T40: Size 4, Settler
T44: Settler 52/100, grow
T45: Ivory hooked up?
T46: Size 5, whip Settler
T48: Spear completes, Size 4

(Mmm, feel that whip cycle.)

Lodi: Slow-grow while cranking Axes until at least T50. Very convenient that we get 5 turn Axes at Size 2 and 3.5 turn Axes at Size 3.

Had an idea. Sink hammers into a Barrack, swap to an Axe when the Copper connects. This will only delay the first unit out of Lodi 1 turn. Furthermore, after the Copper is mined, Ney chops the forest 1E of Lodi. This denies the barbs forest cover, makes good use of 2 extra Worker turns, lets us chop out the Barracks for Shock/Cover, and to pick up the other Sheep when the borders pop T55. Then, we chop the Granary so that it completes when Lodi's food box is half-full.

T33: Settled, sink hammers into Barracks
T36: Sheep pastured
T39: Size 2, Copper mined
T40: Copper connected, swap to Axe
T44: Axe done, forest chopped
T45: Barracks done
T46: Size 3, steal Toulon's plains mine
T47: Grassland mine done
T48: Axe done
T51: Axe done?
T55: Borders pop

Military:
Our first axe comes out T44, then basically they come out every 3 or 4 turns from Lodi. As long as we can hold on until T50-ish, we'll be fine. Otherwise, we emergency whip an Axe in Toulon or something.

Workers:
Ney improves the Sheep, then the Copper, then chops the forest 1E of Lodi and builds a mine. Then... builds cottages at Toulon while waiting for Lodi's borders to pop T55 for the sheep? Builds roads to improve the Lodi-north river city travel time? I dunno.

Davout is more straightforward. Improve the Copper, road back to Toulon, camp the Ivory, then start roading towards Corn City.

We'll probably need to squeeze out another Worker from somewhere ~T50, since Toulon can basically whip Settlers every 10 turns. Our first whip is T36, we whipped a Settler T46, and we'll probably whip another one T56. Then we'll need another Worker to come out ~T50 to start roading towards the north river city.

To figure out:
-Mechanics of resource connections. When exactly is the Copper connected?
--Afterwards, fiddle with the Axe and Ivory timing.
-Do we have a name for City 3 and Worker 3 yet?

[GeneralKilCavalry]

Lodi should be connected immediately.

I feel having only 3 cities by T50 will put us far behind others. I would expect Superdeath to have 5 by then...

2 axes at Lodi should be sufficient, it can build a worker afterwards.

Also, I am not sure sinking even a few hammers into a barracks has a point. We need to get a bunch of units to fogbust over having quality units right now. Put hammers into a granary instead.

And finally, I should sim this, but perhaps it is best not to double up on the workers? Moving on the hill wastes a worker turn.

Perhaps, we can use the chop for a worker here instead? Get a third worker early, and get a few last chops into the capital to speed up settler #4.

[thestick]

Re: Lodi, good, then we get Copper T39, and will mess with how to squeeze a Worker.

Also starting to think Lodi should just steal Toulon's plains mine for the next ~20 turns, and Toulon works Sheep/Crabs/Ivory/2 cottages for a while. Frees up Worker labor for City 3 and 4, and we can worry about Lodi growth later.

Re: cities, things should start picking up once we get the Settler/Worker/military pumps going. Then we just try not to irreversibly crash the economy before Monarchy and Currency.

Re: SD, fair enough. Out of practice with RB meta, and have not seen Joao of Inca in action before. Just have to hope that he gets one of his Settlers eaten by barbs or something due to lack of roads or military.

[GeneralKilCavalry]

I’ll sim what I can tomorrow or saturday. Another improvement we can make is roading just the copper, we need not road the second tile if we are connected by sea. This saves us 2 worker turns and can allow us to chop 2 forests for settlers.

[thestick]

Looks like Cairo is first to 2 cities, settling one T30.

Re: barracks, part of it is the culture, plus it squeezes out nicely since we get 12 hammers before the Axe, then get a chop for another 20. But definitely can be convinced on this.

Re: worker turn, you mean from having to road the Sheep?

A little paranoid about our poor road network and slow-moving Axes, but whatever.

Fair enough re: chopping. We get 3 fpt 7 hpt at Size 2 in Lodi, which modifies to 12 foodhammers. A chop gives us 27 hammers, so we could squeeze a Worker out of Lodi with a chop and 3 turns of building.

Though only now am realizing that we only have one forest in Lodi before the borders pop. Hmm.