RBP3 [SPOILERS] Team Nice Shot - Pacal of Carthage

[Mr. Nice Guy]

I'm also very curious what Morgan sees. They have ended T1, and still have not settled. Seafood?

[Shoot the Moon]

I'm most curious about the area to the NW of our start. The way that river wraps back intrigues me.

Either way, we are probably reading a bit too much into the movement and choices of the other teams. They may not have actually seen anything, but may have just had a starting screenshot comparable to ours and decided to take a gamble like we did.

[Mr. Nice Guy]

I moved the warrior NE this turn, onto the forested hill. Plan is to stick to defensive terrain as much as possible while getting a generic lay of the land. Will probably reveal a couple more tiles east before swinging either north or south depending on what the land looks like. Will probably have to save the NW for the first warrior produced out of Carthage. But I also am very curious regarding what is up there.

We were the second to last team to play this turn. If Swiss can manage to play his turn soon, I will log in and take care of T3 right away. If not, it will have to wait until tomorrow morning. The early turns are pretty easy!

[Mr. Nice Guy]

Nothing too new. Completed T3 since T2 finished (barely) before bedtime. I plan to head E-SE over the next couple of turns. Basically, nothing exciting to be expected but that is good news right now. Tomorrow I would like to determine roughly how many land tiles each team has in their "territory" to get an idea of how many cities we each can easily fit as well as an idea how close other teams might be. Also... put together a brief and preliminary list of worker tasks so that when the worker completes I won't have to think about the micro, I will just have to do it in the order we have predetermined.

[Shoot the Moon]

I'll run some worldbuilder sims tommorow to figure out some worker and tile management possibilities.

[Shoot the Moon]

Please don't end our turn yet, by the way. My initial sims seem to have BW first coming out ahead of Agri-AH first, by a good amount. The next post will have results, with screen shots.

[Shoot the Moon]

My first sim I went Agri-AH-BW. Builds went Worker-Warrior-partial warrior (grew to size 2)-switch to worker-finish warrior-partial barracks (grow to size 3)-switch to settler

The settler finished on T41, so that is where I stopped to take note. On T41, our capital looked like:

We had built:
3 Warriors (completed T16 and T30 and the starting one).
2 Workers (T11 and T28)
1 Settler (T41)
and had some hammers in a barracks mostly as a place holder.
The city was at size 3.
Agri, AH, and BW were complete on T11, T26, and T39, respectively).

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In comparison:
The second sim I went BW-Agri_AH. Build order: Worker-Warrior-Warrior-Worker (with some switching there to get the chops to the worker)-Settler-Worker-Barracks (for growth, this could/should probably be another warrior if we want instead)-switched to settler on T41 to get a chop into a second settler.

Screenshot:


At T41: Built:
3 Workers (T11, T25, 37)
3 Warriors (T16, T23, starting)
1 Settler (T34). Once the settler was built, I assumed that a worker would go off with it.
Some hammers in a barracks (or a 4th warrior) and a chop into the second settler
Capital at Size 2 (3t to grow if not building settler/worker)
1t left on AH
(also in the second sim, I switched to slavery, whereas I didn't in the first sim)

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The main differences I see:
AH first has the advantages of:
Both sheep pastured (In BW first, it would take until T44 and T47 to have the sheep pastured, for comparison)
3t advantage on tech
More forests left
1 pop bigger

BW first has:
an extra worker
7 turns sooner on settler
Slavery already adopted (think of this as saving a turn, sort of)

At this point it seems to me that BW first is superior. Having 7t sooner second city and an extra worker seems quite stronger. It may be that I didn't give having those sheep pastured earlier enough time to really shine, but at least at the T41 checkpoint, BW seems superior.

I'd like to hear what you think. Is it too late to effectively switch? Am I missing something?

By the way, I saved the exact micro for both trials and can post it later if you want.

[Mr. Nice Guy]

That really does seem superior. Capital is only at size 2 but having the settler 7 turns earlier is a big deal. So is having a 3rd warrior. That would give us the ability to grow on a faster curve. Sure, the forests are gone sooner but that's a positive in my book. Forest hammers lose value the further in the game they sit... beyond that, forests are a tactical problem in wartime, so we want to chop them soon. (Of course, Maths changes that but this is the capital in the opening turns...)

I would be tempted to switch to BW effective immediately. If I do, will the worker being produced now have anything to do on T11?

By the way, I also liked how you farmed the sheep. I wouldn't have thought of that, but it gives us +1 hammer. Good thinking!

I'd be more inclined to see the details for the BW sims as I agree that it is a superior method.

[Shoot the Moon]

I had the worker mine that riverside grassland hill that is NE-E of the center tile (that's actually worth it, as it is the most effective tile to work while we build workers until we have AH.) After that mine was done, I partially built a mine on the grass hill to the SE of the center tile until there was 1 turn left on BW (at that point I moved onto a forest).

Anyway, I need to adjust the micro-details to account for the fact that we put 2 turns of research into agri instead of BW.

Considering that the turn timer has 19 hours left, I'd actually be inclined to see if going agri-BW-AH might be most effective at this point before switching. that way, we could have our worker build that mine, then build a farm on the sheep (which is a pretty decent placeholder at 3f, 1h, 1c). Actually, it would probably go partially build mine, switch to the farm when agri comes in and then go back and finish the mine. We'd grow to size 2 building warriors, then at size two work the farmed sheep and the river-grasshill-mine and get out another worker that should be timed pretty well with BW finishing up.

I'll sim that out right now and see how it compares to a sim of switching to BW considering that we have 2 turns of research into agri.

[Mr. Nice Guy]

I'm going crazy with a math problem here... We have .22% of the land right now, with 10 tiles in our possession. So how many tiles are there on the map?