Getting to know Krillmod before it changes again

[taotao]

Annoying to have to orphan seafood. I actually think we have 4 options for city location here.
- 1E of clams is the snowball location. Settle as city 3 or 4, share pigs, share cottages and generally just do what the empire needs.
- 1SE of clams is similar to option a, but takes a bit longer to get started. Upside is that it'll grab wine for when we get monarchy.
- On the flat desert gets a couple more grassland tiles, and trades 1c for 1f (fish instead of clams), but doesn't help the capital with any cottages.
- Finally we could settle on wine. PH and 1st ring forest makes for a slightly quicker start, but slightly worse end configuration.
In honesty I don't mind that much whichever option we take, but if we're getting SH I'd lean towards c or d to invalidate any celtic city on that part of our continent. Part of my reasoning here is also that I actually believe that capital will want to hold on to those western pigs for most of the time which slightly nerfs the value of a...

I prefer option b, we're already planning to share another of the capital pigs. Helping the cap with growing coattges is a lot more important than working regular cottage tiles due to stacking modifiers and I think we should eventually make this cap a research bureau cap even though it has a ton of hills too. But I don't see any other spot for bureau and the thing with cottages is that you have to start them early, it can be better to make a bureau cap out of an ok first city than a perfect 9th city. The city can have a forest prechopped to hook the clams asap.

Option b on the desert hill sounds good.
If we settle before maths then I don't know if the prechoppings's necessary though, it'll still be 5t before...
Hold on! Work boats are built with food now as well (for some strange reason). Did the cost of them also change? We'd better check that just so as not to be caught off balance.

As to preventing Celts from planting a city, I don't see that as important. They would just shoot themselves in their leg to found such an isolated and foodless city that should be culture crushed especially with SH and very easily razeable.

Aye, it's nothing more than a nuisance and no sane person would settle that. However, if the crazy AI does it then we've got an option of needing to stack up our defences slightly or trashing some potentially nice ICTRs so just wanted to put it out there.

[von Adlercreutz]

Did you make a sandbox or just played around with my starting save when you tested the stuff?

I'd like to see a pre-play-plan with worker micro and city builds before + tech before you start and comment on it.

Sorry, I did the "non-kosher" thing of just playing on with the initial save (fortifying the scout to lessen the impact of spoiler knowledge). Thought about making a sandbox, but figuring it doesn’t matter that much when we’re not doing this in a truly competitive setting anyway. Besides, I really suck at drawing rivers

If you don’t mind, I’ll play until BW is completed and then check back with you for discussion before continuing. In that first timeframe there’s only really one matter of great importance in my mind and that’s second build in the capital. I’d like to go with worker seeing: a) movement is slo-ow. The terrain is rough enough that we lose lots of turns just moving from one tile to another. b) I don’t like working unimproved tiles. c) While I don’t mind working food tiles for a worker I’d much rather build settlers with hammers...

If going for a second worker micro would simply be:
t12: Worker 1 (Augustus) moves 1SW (one turn quicker than the other pigs)
Rome starts second worker working unimproved silk (1f2h1c),
Scout moves towards west checking for city sites past rice.
t13: Augustus starts pasturing pigs (1/4)
t14: pasture 2/4 (scout generally make sure to end on defensive terrain/only use 1mp so as not to be surprised)
t15: pasture 3/4
t16: BW finished, pasture finished. Worker 2 at 20/60 with exactly 5t to build (while working the pigs).

Sounds ok, feel free to play.

We could throw chops in the first settler and use the food to grow while waiting for chops.

And yes work boats are now 25 hammer builds. Good catch on them being foodhammer unit. Getting these things straight before the actual game is important. With shared pigs we'd get a wb in 1t.

[taotao]

Ok, so I went ahead and played until t16.
In the west our exploring scout uncovered some rather dry, but workable lands.


Then the question that I guess you want answered is: do we have copper?
Well, let's see:

Yes, yes we do

Research is tentatively set at agriculture. We really don't need this yet, but I want to move towards pottery and AH fairly quickly and agri gives an arrow-bonus to both.

I've done a micro plan for founding city2 t30 and getting SH t37, but right now my eyelids aren't really co-operating anymore, so I'll wait with posting that until tomorrow when I might catch any really obvious mistakes.

[taotao]

Ok. I'll start with some general comments.
We have copper in a very good place. When I first started making plans I actually mined stat hill as my second worker task even though I wasn't aware of the metal.
Ideally I'd like to get the second pigs improved quickly, but wasting 3 worker turns just after finishing the first improvement seems very... well wasteful
The alternative to mining the copper would be to chop something, but then the second worker seem suboptimal. The chop-hammers would come in without really speeding up the worker and instead mostly overflowing on a warrior (or then a settler, but building a settler at size 1 with mostly food while being imp...). I guess you could find an option we're one would build a settler with the chop and then a warrior before resuming the settler, but so far I haven't gotten a good result out of it.
Being imperialistic we'd want to build settlers with mines, chops or whip overflow, therefore I've mostly prioritized chopping forested grass hills to get those mines ready.

After BW I'd like to sort of work our way towards pottery, but agriculture (which we'll need for city 3 or 4) does save total beakers by being an arrow pre-req. Mysticism we need the turn before starting SH. That's still a little ways of, but in my iterations I had to take it as the next tech after agriculture, being only a few beakers short of fitting in pottery in between. Archery and AH I guess are things that could be considered, but personally I tend to undervalue these a bit.

Ok, with that out of the way, I'll present to you my plan of landing StoneHenge (or really just a plan up to t40):

t17: Augustus moves to copper.
t18: Augustus start to mine (1/4)
t19: Mine 2/4
t20: Mine 3/4
t21: Mine finished. Worker 2 (Brutus) finished. Warrior started in Rome (5t). Growth in 5t. Brutus moves 1E. Agriculture finished. Starts Mysticism.
t22: Brutus starts mine (1/7). Augustus moves 1E.
t23: Augustus starts chop (1/3).
t24: Augustus chops (2/3) then cancels action. (Brutus just continues to mine)
t25: Mysticism finished. Starts pottery (6t). Augustus roads for one turn (1/2).
t26: Warrior finish and Rome grows to size 2. Start settler. Augustus finish chop into settler.
t27: Augustus moves to eastern pigs (without finishing road).
t28: Augustus starts pasturing (1/4). Brutus finishes mine.
t29: Settler finished and moves 2E. Start Stonehenge. Brutus go 1S and finish road.
t30: Antium founded. Starts worker using grass hill mine. Brutus moves to FGH 1W of Rome. Set research to 0% for 1t.
t31: Augustus finish pasture. Antium works it instead of the mine. Brutus start mining.
t32: Pottery finished. Start Animal husbandry (5t). Augustus moves 1N.
t33: Augustus puts 1t into a road then cancels action. Brutus mine, but then cancels action.
t34: Both workers starts chopping (2* 1/3)
t35: Rome grow to size3 (3f in box). Switch of its pigs for 2t. This turn work copper, grass mine and unimproved silk. 2* chops at (2/3)
t36: Switch unimproved silk in Rome to unimproved PHF. Chops come in and have SH at 120/120 eot.
t37: Stonehenge finished. Start settler in Rome (5t) (switching the PHF to the pigs). AH finished, start writing. Augustus moves to floodplain. Brutus finish mine.
t38:Antium finish worker 3 (Cinna), starts warrior. Cinna moves 1E, join in on cottaging (2/5). Brutus move 1N
t39: Brutus starts roading
t40: Workers finish their actions. Cinna moves 1N and starts roading.

Highlights/drawbacks:
3 unimproved tiles worked in total after first pigs are hooked up (and that only to get the wonder one turn quicker).
2 chops for first settler
2 chops for SH (coming in on the last turn so they can be diverted if we lose the wonder before that)
Second city founded on t30
Stonehenge t37 (really eot36)
(could get city 3 next to corn on t44)

So, of course SH does delay our expansion slightly here in the beginning, but considering the nerfed whipping in RTR I'd say we're still not too shabby. (could be that we in this game even could go to three cities before building SH, but I don't see that as likely happening in a large PB). T37 SH also definitely is competitive even if it's not a total lock on getting the wonder. We're light on military though so that need to be rectified soon. I haven't hooked up copper. While this would make us able to produce better units I'd rather build a few cheap warrior first. If you're really longing for better units I'd suggest going archery before writing (possibly even AH, (which of course has the potential to reveal horses)).

Overall I really like this plan, but I'd of course appreciate it if you had a proper look to see if you can improve on it.

[von Adlercreutz]

I'd like to get a good look on this, can you wait until Saturday? I'm bit busy until then.

re tech: we don't need pottery too soon, our workers have much to do other than cottaging and capital has too much else to build than a gran.

re copper: nice place, and I agree, don't want to connect it too soon. I'd like to finish at least a couple of warriors before getting it.

[taotao]

I'd like to get a good look on this, can you wait until Saturday? I'm bit busy until then.

No problem. Might as well try to do this properly if we are to learn anything.

[von Adlercreutz]

A quick note before commenting on our plans: do you notice anything weird about riverside? No extra commerce except for floodplains. Is this a change or a bug?

[Krill]

You are using one of hte test mod versions that had incorrectly compiled DLL. You're going to see tons of bugs due to that.

[von Adlercreutz]

It's much easier for me at least to figure out the micro from a screenie than just text, so I'll post two for comparison.


Your approach. I can agree with the techpath. The parts I'd like to change are working unimproved tiles instead of pigs (I chopped more to SH to same date, resulting to some of), pigs timing (I wanted them available to use faster, so Rome got to use them for growth while settler was moving and then Antium got them immediately.) Also I'd like to start growing the 2nd city, with good food and floodplains to grow on, I think it's good. Early on, I don't consider working some unimproved tiles too bad, especially floodplains. Btw, why are you roading NW, when our next settlement is probably E?


My approach, I messed up with tech, so some more gold and less tech than you, but that's unimportant. Getting some overflow after finishing SH (it felt a natural place to stop), need to decide where to put it. Getting a settler or worker next. Settler next could be a bit pushing it, but we could switch to slavery and whip a worker from Antium after it grows to 4.


PS: stole some material from the mighty Azteca (FinHarry pb18), protips for imp players

[taotao]

Ok,back from my girlfriends summer cottage and I'll start to have a look at this.
First impressions:
- well, at least you didn't beat my SH t37 time.
- pigs, being our best tiles (unless building a settler) are nice that you've managed to use for in total 3 more turns (if I've understood you correctly).
- In general, looking at future expansion, I'm not sure I prefer your solution though.

I'm going to play around with your version though and try to figure out pros and cons, possibly finding lots of good stuff I haven't seen yet

A few replies / clarifications as to my thinking:
- the northwest worker (Brutus) you were querying about: the reason he went north was simply a matter of trying not to waste worker turns. Middle-term I want him to either prepare for clam city 4 (roading/pre-chopping) or chop/cottage between Rome and Antium. That northern tile needs to be roaded eventually anyhow (en route to rice/cow/clams, silk, and probably some city north of Rome). If the worker went chopping instead, the chop wouldn't come in time to speed up settler 3, but would most likely go to granary, warrior or similar. A road on that tile also help with general logistics and worker optimization.
- why not grow Antium?: I think we need that worker. This way we get worker 3 on t38 and grow to size 2 on t43. If you want to 4-2-whip Antium I believe we'd have to wait until something like t46-47? Sure we might get a warrior or two extra (haven't checked at all), but if it's not worked cottage turns or production from good, improved tiles I'm not sure how much benefit we really get from the extra size.
- Another reason why I want improved tiles at Antium is that I want to steal back the pigs to Rome when it's time to grow from 3-4. Working 1*pigs + 2*grass mines that takes 9t. Working 2*pigs + copper it will take 4t...
...
That said, part of why I wanted to get to size 4 reasonably quickly was that I had miscalculated and thought we'd have 15 base hammers working pigs, copper and 2* grass mine (and not 14). This means that I now (changed since I started writing) like your version of mining the plains hill a whole lot better!

Say, would you mind playing on a bit further with your sim to see if you manage quick expansion up to city 4 and keep up with tile improvements and city connections?
(as I generally get slightly sloppy with workers after a while it might be that we actually do manage with your number and my gut simply overestimates their need)
I did some (unoptimized) play and got city 3 settled on t44 and city 4 on t51 with roads in place and one worker to start improving tiles for the new city from the get go...