Yeah, that's a lot more floodplains in one area than I'm used to seeing in the last few maps. Good, I do actually prefer lusher, handcrafted maps.
I never got around to testing with the sim, but I was wondering if building the wb while working the crabs was the best approach, even if convention is to go max hammers when going wb first.
...stuff. Crabs and silver. Very good. Calendar is going to be important for us with sugar and dyes, as well as bananas. And MC with gems to go with the silver. We won't have any issues growing our cities tall so IMP/ORG is looking better and better. And we have whales too. And ivory. Markets man. I love a high happy cap. We can whip with impunity as long as we keep hooking luxuries.
Want to take an early stab at a dotmap? My work day has been pure sabotage so I've got to run on to the next thing now.
OK, I had a look in-game. This map is certainly pretty lush compared to the last two, but not particularly easy to dot-map.
Hopefully my lettering makes sense: different letters represent different city placement schemes, numbers are for options within that scheme. It should be fairly self-explanatory.
To the south, where I'm guessing our first city will go:
Three options:
Z: best long-term, but very slow start. Too slow imo.
Y: gets the Ivory first-ring for an early luxury but only 1 floodplain
X: ivory is second ring, but gains a floodplain
Personally I prefer Y, for the earlier luxury.
To the east, an embarrassment of riches, but not a lot of food available first-ring (by which I mean no food available first-ring) hopefully theres a deer or something in the fog to the north.
Z: gets the most within one city, and lets us found on the coast to the south, but probably results in a sub-optimal city to claim the whales.
X: more evenly split resources, can share the banana when we get to it, better whales city.
Y: I only thought about this now so it's not on the screenshot, but we could put a city on the inland side of the bananas sop it can share that wheat, but that would orphan the fish and just not be very optimal long-term.
This is a nice location, but will probably have to wait until IW+Calendar to get at the bananas and luxuries. And possibly a religion if we get one for easier border pops for the seafood.
To the west, sheep and possibly seafood? I'm going to go ahead and guess that our copper is somewhere out here, and possibly iron in one of the grassland tiles.
X: Closer to our cap, and so possible to share improved tiles right away, and easier for workers, but fewer tiles/city overall. The northern X can go on the coast there if there's seafood available to replace that sheep
Z: Further away from the cap, more potential for access to resources out in the fog, and possible better locations for cities to the north of this area (NW of the cap). Again, the northern Z can go on the coast if there's seafood (and possibly even if there isn't just for access to that coast)
I prefer Z, just for claiming more land, but would require plenty of workers available to get them up-and-running quickly.
To the north is probably "backlines" as far as neighbor locations go, but there's silver so we'll want it sooner rather than later:
X: Able to borrow the crabs and/or the wheat from the cap, but it does make getting the silver awkward
Z: Better silver city, and possibly a better city on that northern coast if there's seafood by that unforested plains hill.
I prefer Z for easier access to the silver
Overall I think we should settle for the luxuries, first the Ivory and then the Silver. Hopefully copper appears somewhere convenient.
This was early, probably too early, but I wanted some initial thoughts. We will clear out significantly more fogged tiles unless we are horribly unlucky with the barbs and our scout. I agree that the north looks like it may be back lines. We have ocean tiles up there, to the east, and probably to the west as well, as we can see the edge of some body of water that is at least ~4 tiles N/S. IIRC the body of water at the mouths of the rivers is (Joey) freshwater.
My initial instinct is to want to share the capital's food which either means a minimum distance city to the north or something to the west with sugar in the first ring. Possibly sharing both, more map info will decide this, but for now the bare grass 2N of the crabs looks like a good candidate. This tile could also be a strategic resource. Being IMP I want to get the capital using the mines so we can get the food into cities that can grow after whipping/chopping granaries. This will be in the late ~40s, when we can have 4 cities or so without too much strain.
I was thinking the best city placement along the river would be on the plains hill and the capital border pop at T50 is a free way to get the wheat, so if we can manage to settle other cities around the capital with strong food then waiting a little on this location won't hurt us on snowball and will be good long term due to an overall stronger city. To the west, the hill SE of the sheep looks good as it can share the cap's mines when the capital wants to grow on cottages with an expanding happy cap. A size 6 capital working the crabs and its 5 mines will make plenty of settlers and won't need a granary for a long while. I don't remember timings from the earliest sims but it seems a good concept to explore.
I'm leaving my laptop at work tonight so if the turn comes up feel free to grab it so we can get these early turns out of the way. I marked the grass tile 1N of the dye as the best spot to end turn for the scout and then moving (probably) 2E of that next turn. We will find out quickly if this seeming peninsula is back fill or the pathway to our future enemies.
OK, sounds good, I can easily grab the turn tonight.
I had considered relying on the cap 3rd ring border to grab the southern wheat for a city down there but I figured we'd want the Ivory earlier than turn 50ish.
settling 2N of the crabs is ok as well, it just hurts my soul to found a city next to 2 plains hills like that. And I'd rather settle towards our enemies early on (assuming our enemies are to the south).
We'll have to see what else is uncovered but yeah, ideally the PH plant is better. It just depends on what other resources may be lurking in the fog. The benefit of the grass location is a part-time +1f for the lake with a lighthouse that the capital otherwise will not need. The grass location will always want a lighthouse with the seafood. But all of this could be moot as resource placement is likely to dictate where this city goes.
As for settling backline for efficiency vs. forward plant for grabbing territory, with what I've seen of this map so far we want to claim all the land we can. There's nothing new there. However, we are IMP and are unlikely to lose out in settling races so I am inclined to do whatever improves the snowball the best, regardless of where that initial city is located. For me, typically that has been a strong hammer second city that can churn early workers/settlers/units and probably one that shares significant overlap with the capital. Geography will settle this debate soon but that's my 100 word theory on the case.
Of course, everything is subject to change as soon as we meet a neighbor and can assess traits, playstyle, and what their map conditions are.
Ah, just re-read your post, did you mean to move to the tile 2E of that his this turn? Shit, sorry if that's the case, I thought you meant "go here (the ph) Turn 7 then 2E turn 8". I wasn't really thinking about it much beyond following your instructions since you've been playing most of the turns so far and would have a better idea than me about the scout. I only just thought now that it might not be the best move and re-read your post.
Well, hopefully 1 lost scout turn doesn't come back to bite us.
Don't worry about the scout turn. I doubt that is going to be the difference in this game.
I've updated our sandbox with new terrain.
While updating I noticed that barb animals have started appearing in worldbuilder so the same will be true for us. We need to be careful about scout movements now. Always end turn on a forest or hill if you can. And while I hate doing the one tile and creeping thing with the scout, we may consider doing that once barb warriors arrive.
We don't get free wins vs. barbs and barb warriors will begin appearing on T20. If I'm remembering correctly barbs won't enter cultural borders until 2n+1 player cities, so as soon as someone gets their third city down (probably us). My few very early sims were weak on military units but we will have copper and other resources to use so we'll end up with more available hammers than the sims provided. We can get out what we need without throttling expansion. I see plenty of good settling options but I'm going to refrain from dotmapping until we clear some coastal tiles so that I don't have to scrap a plan every other turn.
There are so many nuances to barb mechanics that I always have to look things up. Here is a basic overview and here is additional information about barbs entering cultural borders.
Well, here is what I found digging through the 3.17 SDK (finally with a new Debug dll, yeah!):
Barbs enter cultural borders if an appropriate mission is chosen in CvUnitAI::AI_barbAttackMove(). This function is only called for barbarian units with UNITAI_ATTACK (barb animals always have UNITAI_ANIMAL and they cannot enter owned plots anyway). So this represents a direct effect of the difficulty level as non-animal barbs (Warriors and Archers) spawn earlier plus in greater numbers on the higher levels. The indirect effect is indeed given by the conditional behavior of the barb units depending on the total number of non-barb cities on the whole map (not continents! -- the continents(=areas) only determine their number of needed barbs according to their unowned tiles).
There are 2 thresholds:
A) NumCities > 2*NumPlayersAlive:
Barbs will enter your territory if they can pillage an improvement on their next turn, so the common 1 barb Warriors and Archers will intrude to pillage improvements in your border tiles. I'm not certain about 2 mounted barb units (do barb Chariots spawn regularly?). I know about a random event which places barb Horse Archers on the map, but they demonstrate "special" behavior (they directly target the barbs' TargetCity of the area).
Barbs will enter your territory if they can attack a city on the same turn --> this should only be possible for the uncommon 2 units.
B) NumCities > 3*NumPlayersAlive:
The restrictions for the missions are lifted to
pillage on the 3rd turn
attack city on the second turn
If the barbs have calculated AREAAI_OFFENSIVE for their AreaAI (huge numbers of ATTACK barb units, most likely after random event; normally it's AREAAI_MASSING) they will straight target their chosen city without any such restrictions.
With GAMEOPTION_RAGING_BARBARIANS it gets even worse (NumCities is irrelevant then):
pillage on the 4th turn
attack city on the 3rd turn
target city when AREAAI_OFFENSIVE
Important things to keep in mind:
Barbs will ALWAYS enter your borders if they can attack one of your units directly (--> watch your Workers!).
Once they have entered your territory, they will consider the following options for their current turn
pillage an improvement (50%)
attack somebody
depending on conditions A and B move to another tile to pillage or attack a city (or target a city)
patrol --> here they always prefer to move into unowned tiles (this is why they don't enter in the first place; if possible they will move out again; if they somehow get boxed in by cultural borders they might also "have to" enter your territory with this mission)
Hence they can also change their minds - if they enter to pillage on their 3rd turn, they will choose to attack somebody on their second turn if possible (if you move a defending unit to an adjacent tile).
There are certainly special situations where barb behavior might contradict the above rules (the code for unit AI is pretty complex...)
Barb units do not differ from other AI units in general, they also have a certain courage to attack. They just behave more erraticly and have lower inhibition thresholds on average. The decision to attack a unit or not is made via a comparison of the unit's AttackOdds vs. a threshold individually specificied for all mission test calls (AI_anyAttack, AI_cityAttack). There are a lot of calculations adjusting the odds and thresholds depending on the situation of the combatants. What I read from all this is, that the AttackOdds are similar to the well known combat odds (depending on the strength, damage and bonuses of attacker and defender) + a "dare-devil offset", the AttackOddsChange. Each AI leader recalculates his/her AttackOddsChange each turn during CvPlayerAI::AI_doMilitary() according to:[pre]AttackOddsChange = BaseAttackOddsChange + RNG(AttackOddsChangeRand) + RNG(AttackOddsChangeRand)[/pre]IIUC this value should vary around an average of BaseAttackOddsChange + AttackOddsChangeRand-1. As you can read from the Leaderhead-xml (or my converted spreadsheet ) the barbs have BaseAttackOddsChange = 0 (it is 0 for Gandhi ... 6 for Ragnar), which would make them cowards, but their AttackOddsChangeRand = 16, that is double the value of all other leaders (8), so on average they should attack more often than Ragnar (0 + 15 > 6 + 7).The great variation of the barbs' AttackOddsChange (0...30) is responsible for their erratic behavior -- they will often shy from combat on one turn and move pass your defenders only to attack them on the very next turn. As mentioned above the thresholds used in CvUnitAI::AI_barbAttackMove() are especially low (20, 15, 10), so that the barbs might attack regardless of the actual combat odds during certain turns, when a very high AttackOddsChange might bring them over the relevant threshold alone.Oh yeah, and they of course have a very advanced radar to detect all your units, cities and improvements. SearchRange = (Range+1)*(BaseMovements+1), with Range being the other parameter passed in the mission test calls besides the thresholds --> a 1 unit will scan a circle with a diameter of 9 tiles at the minimum (Range = 1).Edit: It's not a circle but a sqaure area of 9 x 9 tiles.
Someone has already hooked up their seafood and is size 2 working (presumably) their floodplains at 10f. I was in less of a hurry because after farming the wheat our worker has a few turns to kill until BW comes in. So I went for a little more commerce instead to get BW a turn faster. Partially finished farms don't do a whole lot for me, especially since I don't think I'd ever really want to finish them. Still, we have nothing better to do so we'll do it anyway, just for fewer turns.
Ah, the boring early turns. Nothing to talk about.
Played: Pitboss 18 - Kublai Khan of Germany Somalia | Pitboss 11 - De Gaulle of Byzantium | Pitboss 8 - Churchill of Portugal | PB7 - Mao of Native America | PBEM29 Greens - Mao of Babylon
![[Image: move.gif]](https://forums.civfanatics.com/images/smilies/civ4/move.gif)
barb Warriors and Archers will intrude to pillage improvements in your border tiles. I'm not certain about 2
