[SPOILERS] Back to Basic - Mardoc plays Augustus of China

[Mardoc]

Will the city of Durkon have contingency plans for dealing with incursions from the nearby forests?

No, not contingency: we're simply going to chop them all down!

Because forest chops are worth about 3x a FFH chop, I think it's usually the best idea to chop them early for the snowball. Doubly so when you have sufficient hills around.

[Commodore]

That is an awesome second city...except for being backline. Actually, looks like you're in the SW, might want to scout east and north.

[Krill]

Settler at size 2.

[Mardoc]

Settler at size 2.

Because the workers and worker techs won't be caught up? Or just that the 2nd best tile is the sheep, so get it worked ASAP?

Had a very lucky turn! Borders popped the hut, giving us Animal Husbandry! And I'd been still delaying the tech selection, so we got the full value. I think, from what I've read, that T5 I'd better choose a tech, though, or it'll be chosen for me. So next turn we'll start on...I think The Wheel. It's either that or Bronze. I suppose if we follow Krill's advice, we'll want Bronze available by the time our settler is walking so it should be Bronze first.

And, border pop also revealed a third good city site . Well, one and a half, really. The obvious one is the corn; I'm torn on whether that should be on the plains hill or coastal. But regardless, corn is enough for a city, and this one can even overlap the capital a bunch.

I think it's slightly less good than the sheep to the south, because the corn isn't wet. But we want them both ASAP.

The half-site is the cows/gold. If I don't find any more food down that way, those are just about the only tiles a city down there can work. But Gold is a darn good tile, and we'll want the happy, so we'll need to grab it eventually. Just hoping there's a little more food down that way than we see.

[Krill]

If the capital doesn't have good tiles to grow onto then yeah, you always want to get a second city down ASAP provided you can keep it improved, get a trade connection down, and defend it. You capital has 1 food tile, and it's only a 5 food tile at that, and a bunch of hills. It's not actually that great, but it will do. There are 2 basic choices for that capital. You get an early pottery, cottage both flood plains and a single grassland (and mine two overlapping hills with the second city), get a granary and run 6 turn whip cycles on it. This takes a lot of investment in tech and worker turns and buildings, but it is the most efficient way to run the capital.

The other way, is to just grow it to size 4 or 5 (depends on how many warriors you need and available food but I think size 4 might be best), mine 3 hills (hills 63, 66, and either 32 or 1, that choice depends on worker MM), and hammer out the necessary items. Two of those hills are on the river, so you don't even lose out much on commerce

It actually works out best, IMO, to transition form the latter to the former as you gain tech. This is because as a high hpt city, when you get to Pottery, you can easily build that granary with hammers (14 hpt@size 4 = 3 turn granary), and if stopped growth at size 4 (only need 47 food to reach size 4 anyway, leaving the food box empty) you can immediately double slave out a worker and use that to cottage the flood plains as you regrow. No problems with any of that weird MM shit you see with avoid growth and building granaries, as you haven't wasted any food in filling the food box in the first place. The new worker gives the necessary worker turns to improve the flood plains, and you haven't had to waste any of your early worker turns on improving less productive tiles. And two of those tiles you improved, those hills (63 and 32), can be given to the second city to work.

So you Tech BW next and then reassess needs after you see where copper is, with Wheel>Pottery the ideal next choice, but don't have it set in stone.

[Mardoc]

Makes sense. And we'll want our third settler fairly early, too, but perhaps not quite at size 2.

The best news of the turn is that it only arrived 2 hours after the last one

Scouting info for this turn isn't super awesome, but we've found yet another Forge-doubled happiness . This is looking to be a good map to be Industrious on.

[Krill]

I'd place serious consideration on Oracle>MC. 40 hammers for +2 happiness and +25% production...you could just leave the capital at size 9 working the pig, 3 cottages, 3 grass hills and 2 plains hill for 25 adjusted hpt. You got the forests to chop, you're IND...you could grab religion to pop borders in that strategy, and this land doesn't have an over abundance of high food tiles: you will have difficulty getting good dot maps without border pops. For example, a city 4S of Roy would be the ideal city location to get the gold worked, considering current information.

[Commodore]

I haven't noodled on the timings, but how easily could you settle 4N of Roy the turn you get Meditation (assuming BW, Myst, Med)? That's "cute play", but lighthouse lakes would make that one heck of a grower.

[Mardoc]

It's been a while since I've reported, so time to catch up.

First up, scouting info for the past few turns:



I've marked the two schools of thought on dotmap, which mostly depend on whether I'm willing to gamble on getting a religion or otherwise invest in culture. Right now, I lean toward taking the religion risk. I want to go toward Priesthood regardless, to get the Oracle into Metal Casting, so it's not much of a sacrifice even if we fail to get the religion. On top, the culture-assumed dotmap makes it much easier to claim the silver. Need to do some math, though, to figure out timing.

Oh, and we researched our first tech. Is there Bronze?




This is...

Ok, so worker micro is rather set in stone for the next 10 turns or so - pasture the pigs and mine the copper.

Anyway, more to come as I fuss with arithmetic.

[Commodore]

First off...STONE!



Secondly, sweet on the copper, that's pretty huge...otherwise, your dotmap would have had to change for securing metal.