[Spoilers] PBEM 62 - Ichabod's Thread, feat. Mardoc and retep

[Ichabod]

Another turn, no new resources.




What I find nice is that rivers aren't very abundant in the map. I think this is a bit of a nerf to FIN and that helps me, poor non-FIN player.

Well I'm not a tea hater but sadly I'm anosmic, so tea is like water to me
About the save, either way is fine. Actually I guess that getting the save will help in case you don't report a turn

About the game I'd like to know what is exactly the micro plan if you can spare the time Ichabod.
The map looks good except for the lack of early happy.

I honestly don't think is going to be strategic resources at the capital (at least no cooper or horses) in a crowed map that sounds like a bad idea. But then again PB16 happen so what do I know.
Also going worker first is okay, no need to stress to much about it.

Finally I have always been and I will always been terrible at scouting I think you are doing fine so far. When you will have a warrior? I think scouting a little east of the capital will be a good idea.

I'm sorry about your condition. If you don't mind me asking, does it interfere with your sense of taste or just your sense of smell. I didn't even know this condition before you mentioned it, by the way. Ah, and we can change the naming scheme, if you'd like something you can take more part on.

I'm working on making a spreadsheet with the micro plan I'm following soon. I'll post it here when I'm done, so we can discuss more in depth. I'll have it finished before the worker, if the turns don't go too quickly. As a quick fix, after the worker, my plan is to work the 1/2 forest for two turns, then the 3/0 corn for two turns, then grow with a turn in 6/0 corn. At size 2, we work corn + 0/3 tile to finish the WB. After that, we work fish and corn for a long time.

The warrior will be built after the worker and a WB. It's a good idea to move it to that hill in the East, I'll see if he can do it without being late to escort the settler.

[Ichabod]

About scout moves, I'm thinking 1W, 1SW next.

[Mardoc]

Yes, want to keep getting the save. There are always things that even the most detailed report misses. Usually those are the things a dedlurker can help most with, because they're the things the turnplayer didn't know were important.

Micro sounds reasonable. I'm not sure I understand why we should alternate between 1/2 and 3/0 instead of just working a 2/1 grass forest, though. Maybe it gains us a commerce?

[Ichabod]

Micro sounds reasonable. I'm not sure I understand why we should alternate between 1/2 and 3/0 instead of just working a 2/1 grass forest, though. Maybe it gains us a commerce?

Yes, it gains 2 commerce if compared to 4 turns of the 2/1 forest.

Save hasn't reached me yet today, so there's nothing to report for now. I think I'll usa this as an opportunity to work on my micro and post it here.

[Ichabod]

The early happiness situation is not looking as grim as before, but the food situation is still a bit troublesome.




Scout move will be S, S. Any thoughts?

[Ichabod]

Finally, the spreadsheet!

The format I'm using was developed by SevenSpirits, so all credits go to him.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1...edit#gid=0

That's the initial plan I've been following. It's based on a second city settled 1N of the corn.

If you guys need help to understand it, just ask. I put a couple of notes to explain some of the more "intrincate" micro I did.

[Ichabod]

I know spreadsheets are not interesting (well, to the players that find spreadsheets interesting, I'm certain my micro will be pretty amusing, in a so bad that is funny way), so I think we have to talk about overall strategy too.

I'm pretty set on the following tech order. Agri > BW > TW > Pottery. It would take a completely different micro to make me change my mind on this. But after that, I'm at a loss. We may have our hands tied on the subject if the pig spot is the only half decent third city (we'll need AH). But if we find somewhere that we can settle with our current food techs (agri and fishing), we would have a bit more freedom.

I'm tentatively considering going for a religion, likely Polytheism. That is because if we fail it, we could still go for Judaism in Mono, which we want anyway due to SPI, since it enables OR (and which is likely to get less love from non-SPI leaders, at least this early). But, to be fair, it's late here and I'm tired, so any proper analysys will have to wait a bit.

[Mardoc]

Scout move will be S, S. Any thoughts?

SW - SE, surely?

Finally, the spreadsheet!

Will look at this - but probably not until the weekend. Hopefully it's not too obsolete by then.

I'm pretty set on the following tech order. Agri > BW > TW > Pottery. It would take a completely different micro to make me change my mind on this. But after that, I'm at a loss. We may have our hands tied on the subject if the pig spot is the only half decent third city (we'll need AH). But if we find somewhere that we can settle with our current food techs (agri and fishing), we would have a bit more freedom.

I'm tentatively considering going for a religion, likely Polytheism. That is because if we fail it, we could still go for Judaism in Mono, which we want anyway due to SPI, since it enables OR (and which is likely to get less love from non-SPI leaders, at least this early). But, to be fair, it's late here and I'm tired, so any proper analysys will have to wait a bit.

Religion is often worth having, yes, especially as Spi. It's nice if it can be timed to land in the 2nd city, too, at least when the 2nd city has usable stuff in the 2nd ring.

We'll need Hunting in there, too. And Sailing eventually. I don't think I'll have a good feel for the urgency of either until I spend that time with your micro spreadsheet, though. And you can never go too far wrong by heading toward Currency.

I guess I'm not much help. I'm in favor of religion as long as we can hook the ivory as soon as it's in borders. And as long as it doesn't fall before we get there - definitely agreed that BW and Pottery are higher priority.

[Ichabod]

Scout move will be S, S. Any thoughts?

SW - SE, surely?

Finally, the spreadsheet!

Will look at this - but probably not until the weekend. Hopefully it's not too obsolete by then.

I'm pretty set on the following tech order. Agri > BW > TW > Pottery. It would take a completely different micro to make me change my mind on this. But after that, I'm at a loss. We may have our hands tied on the subject if the pig spot is the only half decent third city (we'll need AH). But if we find somewhere that we can settle with our current food techs (agri and fishing), we would have a bit more freedom.

I'm tentatively considering going for a religion, likely Polytheism. That is because if we fail it, we could still go for Judaism in Mono, which we want anyway due to SPI, since it enables OR (and which is likely to get less love from non-SPI leaders, at least this early). But, to be fair, it's late here and I'm tired, so any proper analysys will have to wait a bit.

Religion is often worth having, yes, especially as Spi. It's nice if it can be timed to land in the 2nd city, too, at least when the 2nd city has usable stuff in the 2nd ring.

We'll need Hunting in there, too. And Sailing eventually. I don't think I'll have a good feel for the urgency of either until I spend that time with your micro spreadsheet, though. And you can never go too far wrong by heading toward Currency.

I guess I'm not much help. I'm in favor of religion as long as we can hook the ivory as soon as it's in borders. And as long as it doesn't fall before we get there - definitely agreed that BW and Pottery are higher priority.

Nice catch about the scout moves, I was actually going to go S, S with him, before reading your post.

Regarding tech path, I'll make a more detailed analysys soon. As things are now, the discussion is in a bit of a vaccuum, so it's hard for you to help. I need to give more info.

Anyway, here's something I'm thinking about. One of the benefits of SPI is that we can revolt to the civics as soon as we get them, so we don't need to time revolts and stuff like that, giving us more freedom. OR is a civic that is common to revolt to together with HR, but we can get it earlier. OR only helps when building buildings, so revolting to it before we are planning on building something is moot.

So, which buildings we could use the OR bonus to get?

1. Granaries? Not needed, I think, there's hardly any difference between 100% and 125% bonus, especially in a building that costs 40 hammers (one cho or one whip finishes it with 100% bonus).

2. Libraries? Could be. But I don't think we'll want libraries in cities that are not the Capital so soon into the game. And there's a big chance we want the library built in the Capital before we get to OR anyway (the 25% bonus wouldn't be worth delaying it for). Besides, there's the problem of spreading the religion to the Capital, which could make timings even worse.

We could want a library on a city to get a GSci too. Perhaps we could use OR on that. But, SPI also gives us an easy option to use caste for scientists, so we are not tied to getting a library for this sole purpose.

3. Forges? Forges are the buildings that we definetely want to build with the OR bonus. Perhaps the discussion is moot, though, because we are very likely to get OR way sooner than we get MC, so we will have it anyway. On the other hand, maybe the early acess to OR makes MC a more interesting tech, especially if we could get the Colossus. Problem: someone builds the Oracle and gets MC.

4. Courthouses? Another building that we want the OR bonus while building. But, again, I doubt we'd get them so early in the game and, past a certain point, we'd have OR anyway.

I need to clarify that this discussion is focused on a plan to get OR early, in order to get the bonus to build a certain building. After this analysys, I think we'd only want to commit to an early Monotheism push for OR IF we have a very specific plan in mind regarding a certain building we want to build. Or, in other words, if we want to get a certain Wonder using the bonus (either that or if we want to rush a library to get a GP).

What I also started wondering after writing this is the merits of an early OR + forge combo. Of course, this is not feasible to get in every single city, but we could use it in our Capital for great effects, I think. With 50% more building production, considering that our Capital has decent early production potential (15 hammers with full mines), we could get lots of infra early and grow it to a huge size.

This begs the question, can we get the Oracle for MC? Is it worth it? This question depends a lot on what the next turns gives us in terms of what our opponents tech. It's a nice thinking exercise, nonetheless.

[Mardoc]

Although I see your point that many of the possible buildings won't be worthwhile so early, there is another relevant bonus: can train missionaries without monasteries. It's worth a fair bit to us to be able to avoid monuments, and to get the extra happiness in our cities. Especially if we don't find more luxuries. True, a lot of the time natural spread works, but not always, and never where you want it the most. This is especially important if we're going Poly instead of Meditation. Then even if OrgRel only gives us a few extra hammers here and there, it probably pays the civic cost anyway.

If we're short on happiness, then maybe temples would be worth building here or there; we are Spi after all.

I don't know that I would want to push for early forges, at least not unless we find gold, silver, or gems. I feel that half the benefit from a forge is the extra happiness, which is currently not possible for us. A forge costs almost as much as a settler + worker, and I'd typically think an extra city would pay more than boosting an existing city. At least any time that can be described as 'early'.

My biggest worry with this approach is that we're talking 3-4 religious techs all fairly soon. That's a significant delay on other techs, potentially. We need to get enough benefit to outweigh other paths.