[Spoilers] Shallow Thought and Hitru's series of (unfortunate?) events

[shallow_thought]

Well damn. I moved our scout, first onto open flatland, then onto a forested hill, gambling the defense would be enough if there were any animals around. There was a lion, so things were dicy. Sadly, there was also a wolf. It combat odds of 0.3%, but somehow managed to hit the scout 3 times, leaving him an easy lion snack. I was going to have to move blindly at some point, so this I'm just going to chalk it up to bad luck.




In the west, our warrior's path along the coast is blocked by a bear. Tackling bears on flatland is a no-no, so he moves back into the woods, hoping to head around to the N. Boris over there is a genuine threat, so care will be needed to minimise risk.

Our second worker is born, and moves to start our first chop of the game. We're going to be building one-and-a-bit warriors while growing the cap to work the copper. I have a bad feeling it should have been only one warrior if I'd managed that extra turn working the wheat, but that's water under the bridge now. Probably with the remains of a scout floating in it.

[shallow_thought]

So, turns still flying by, including a double, pre-coffee turn this morning . Aided by actually having the micro written down I managed not to mess up getting our first chop into our first settler build. Progress, I guess . I need to rework the micro a bit; after discussion with Hitru we're going Fishing before Pottery. This is justified by the fact that all of our first three cities have seafood, and none will share good cottage tiles. Also, prerequisite beakers.

Out in the west our warrior got sight of a lion as well as the bear re-appearing; they then both vanished on the turn roll. I decided to take a small risk, and move the warrior into forest that could have put him next to the lion, rather than onto open desert, where anything could have been lurking in the fog. However, the lion hadn't moved back towards us - instead he's two tiles away, and wounded. The problem with the double turn is that I can't be certain he was healthy the turn before, but I'm pretty sure he was. Looks like we just missed contact with someone. I'm happy moving the warrior next to the injured line in the hope of some XP, I think (if the lion attacks - I'm not attacking him on a forested hill). And maybe try to get a peek from that range of hills...

[Old Harry]

Or you could let the lion fog bust for you if you don't need to kill it. 1XP isn't worth much.

[shallow_thought]

Or you could let the lion fog bust for you if you don't need to kill it. 1XP isn't worth much.

I did actually consider this - it would have been one fewer barb warrior on the map, as there's a limit to the number of barb units, isn't there? It was however in the way, blocking me from seeing over the hills, so I moved, it struck and died with no damage to the warrior. At least if I get attacked again - and survive - I'll have a promo-heal available.

Moving onto the hill shows ... not a huge amount actually, because of more hills and woods. I'm in various minds as to whether to keep pushing W, head N or head back. However, the view from the jungle the previous turn (it was another double-turn before breakfast ... I've got to stop doing that) was much more interesting. Gems, cows, jungle rice? Hmm. Hitru had suggested a push for the silver to the NE with a fourth settler, based on the information we had, but this area might be a better plant.




Speaking of settlers, our first is out in the field. He's just hanging about inside of our borders with half-a-move left: next turn he and his worker buddy will sprint to the city site.




The turn pace has been so fast I've not had a chance to finish fixing up my micro. Previously I had a sequence of slow-built worker, warrior, chop/whipped settler, but that had a mass of overflow into a granary, and we're not going to have pottery by then, now that we've gone fishing first. To delay the decision slightly I've gone into slavery this turn rather than next. I suspect the answer is to dance from worker to warrior and back again, getting the existing overflow into the worker, filling the food bar on the warrior and whipping the worker into a settler. But I need to try it.

[shallow_thought]

Our warrior's progress W was blocked by yet another lion. This one I decided to leave to fog-bust in peace (with more forest peeping out from under the fog, we wouldn't have seen much from the hill anyway), and moved off to the north. Nothing to see, so no screenshot.

Useful discussion with Hitru last night helped me sort out the future micro a bit. He also pointed out that those gems are jungled, which I hadn't immediately noticed . So, expansion towards them may have to wait on iron-working. The micro falls into a slightly odd pattern of whip/chop a worker/settler into another one, swap to something to grow, swap back, repeat. Makes sense, I guess.

With a bit more a view, it's dotmap time. Hopefully the appalling quality of the art will distract from the mediocrity of the actual work . Note to self - turn signs off next time, and don't chop in the middle of resource bubbles. And find a better tool than Paint.




Having actually looked at the result, C (green) and F (blue) should plausibly each be 1N, although that loses the plains hill plant at C. Also need more scouting! The black and white dots are very much speculative - and if RFS-81 lets us get anywhere near the pink I'll be surprised. That implies that the burgundy (?) "E" is also unlikely.

I have no idea how to work elegantly around the foodless hole N of the cap either. Not clearly shown is that thee is room for a filler S-S-SE of the cap that can share clams. Much, much later.

So yes, the first three plants will all be coastal, which should bring joy to the heart of anyone who - say - has amphibous collateral .

[shallow_thought]

Our warrior continues to hack through jungle; it is pleasantly lion free. There are also bananas. Eventually the jungle gives way to desert (there is probably an epic poem in hist travels somewhere if only I could find the time to write it).




I continue to not move the warror guarding AA. I'd like to say that this is a careful balancing of the risk of scouting with them compared to the potential reward from fog busting / keeping an eye on RFS-81, but the truth is I keep forgetting to think about it until it's too late . EDIT: actually, a glance at CivStats showed me I'd forgotten to end turn - so he can move out and take a look from a nearby forested hill.

At home, we finish pasturing the cows at Austere Academy, and 1-pop whip a worker at the cap that would have finished next turn anyway. Overflow into a settler, grow on a workboat (probably - considering another warrior), then back to settler.

This leads to Shallow Thought's rule of thumb number 3 - the whip.

The rule: make two pop whips from pop 6 to 4, timed so you grow back one pop next turn; and

Interestingly, the whip I've just done meets none of the above criteria . Admittedly, that last is because the whip was into a food-hammer unit.

There is actually a few other criteria I didn't break (this time): don't stack whip unhappy, don't overgrow into unhappiness.

There's a whole mass of other rules of thumb that also apply, but aren't core to this - they're mostly around situations where you waste hammers or food if you whip.

That rule is based on BTS, where of course it's 30h a pop, rather than RtR's 30 for the first, 20 for subsequent. I don't know where this rule comes from, really - and could well have got it wrong. I guess it's all around being able to keep a continual cycle going, balancing maximmising tile usage and not busting the happy cap while still getting lots of highly efficient, granary-fueled hammer conversion. You whip, getting 60h, and grow back in 10t (~30f) while not busting the happy cap.

Actually achieving this platonic whip cycle involves carefully splitting your tiles between cities and managing your builds and pop so that everything lines up. Don't expect to see it here.

This rule is highly situational. The actual availability of food is obviously important (too much risks busting the happy cap), building food-hammer units changes the way the cycle works. If your happy cap is only 5 or 4, things are different.

The point of the whip is three-fold:
- If you have a low happy cap, what else are you going to do with that pop? More relevant still if you've not got enough good tiles.
- If you have a lot more food than base hammers, it's a way to build things.
- If you have a granary, you get ~2h for each food (probably the main source of the "1f=2h=2.5c" approximation).

For a while at least, with these cities and no extra happy, I'll be looking to whip every ten turns, quite possibly from 4-3, 3-2, maybe 4-2, throwing in food-hammer units to stall growth if unhappiness is threatened. We need a lot of stuff - more settlers, more workers, barracks for border pops and copper troops to secure things. And we need granaries to get that food to hammer conversion rate up.

I've also been mulling over the tech path. We're getting Pottery next for cottages and granaries (and those things are expensive, dammit), and almost certainly AH next. Beyond that, my natural instinct is to go Writing, and then the core economic techs beyond it - in an SP game I almost always go Writing, Maths, Currency.

Here, I'm not so sure. All that jungle calls for Iron-Working. And that exposed coast worries me. It's never going to be safe, but it's utterly unsecure until galleys, and better with triremes. So that calls for Sailing and then Metal Casting. But I doubt getting even IW, let alone MC, any time soon without some economy. Stuff to think about.

[WilliamLP]

Interesting analysis! What would the tile food allocations look like for a single city on this platonic whip cycle? I'm curious, but too lazy to work it out for myself.

[shallow_thought]

Interesting analysis! What would the tile food allocations look like for a single city on this platonic whip cycle? I'm curious, but too lazy to work it out for myself.

Thank-you, but calling it analysis is too kind. The rules are based on something I read in a thread years ago, or an old Sullla write-up, or something else that I half-remembered. Working it out - nah, that's effort.

The turns keep rolling on at pace. And we have contact with another player! Magic Science has a lightly injured scout to our north. He then vanished on the next turn, after I'd moved 1E, which means he must have gone NE-SE (the combat odds show he's not Woody II or anything). I'd rather not get into the scout-killing business without good reason, but if he heads S/SE I won't be able to keep him away from our borders anyway, as I won't have a spare warrior in that area until ... well, the next available one comes out of AA in 6t, and is due to head back towards the cap (it's all a bit inelegant, as he'll have an extra promotion but will probably end up on MP duty while others scout).




Our other warriors are securing the pigs/fish city W of the cap and hanging out on a hill to our E. RFS-81 founded his first expansion city t38 (MS already had one), and I think he was the last player to so. I expect to have another city in 6t, so when the human barbs do actually appear, they will be looking to enter borders pretty much straight away.

I've spent some time working on the micro, cursing the fact that warriors upgrade in-queue to spears, not axes. I'm fairly happy, with settlers coming out t41 and t51, with a worker in between (a little slower than my previous iteration, but the extra worker keeps the chop train rolling). The problem is mostly AA - it gets several chops, but has very little to work other than the cows. It demands the first workboat (from the cap) but struggles for tiles after that. I suspect it'll be locked into some sort of axe-worker cycle with as heavy a whip as I can work out how to use. It's been fun trying to get things linked up - just getting a road in time to AA, avoiding losing 4f by whipping a granary a turn earlier - but I suspect I've been bogged down in details when there are big picture improvements possible.

Hitru is hopefully going to have time to have a look and maybe come up with some alternatives or optimisations.

[Old Harry]

If you keep aa at size 2 it won't need mp, so you could stack some whip unhappy there...

And can I recommend www.getpaint.net

[shallow_thought]

If you keep aa at size 2 it won't need mp, so you could stack some whip unhappy there...

And can I recommend www.getpaint.net

Thanks - I'll take a look at that. As for AA, do you mean whipping 2-1 (with immediate regrowth) or 3-2 / 4-2? There might even be some mileage in building a worker with one unhappy face, to allow for a 2-pop whip.

In the game, things are getting a little more interesting (well, I was enjoying the micro, but I wasn't really reporting it in enough detail to appeal to the hard-core lurkers). Magic Science's scout has moved in a really annoying manner - straight towards our cap. This is a mild irritation in itself, but the real issue is that I'm moving our scouting warrior back that way to cover city C, so it looks like I'm being hostile and chasing him. And I can't actually warn the scout off with another warrior, because we need to cover city B (which will be founded next turn - t42).




There is a small chance that the local wildlife will resolve the problem for me. I've opted to move my warrior out of sight of both the scout and a lion that he's ended up next to. So if the lion is hungry... although that jungle should keep the scout alive. Wounded might mean scared though.

You can also see the new settler, who managed to get all the way outside the borders in a single hop, and is being just about covered by the warrior thanks to favourable terrain. I did manage to move them in the right order, at least, revealing the possibly wolf or panther filled tiles before committing. Basic stuff, but the sort of thing I get wrong very easily. We get a nice overflow into another settler  - over half done in a turn - but he'll go on hold for bit next turn while the workboat is finished. That has just enough time to get some scouting in before heading for AA, to arrive just as the borders pop for the fish. If I've calculated everything correctly, that is.

But the real interest is our first barb warrior, who has posed us a problem.




I've yet to move our warrior in this screenshot. 1N puts him across a river, on a forested hill. If the barb attacks that position we get >99% odds (if I've used the calculator correctly). It's also on the direct line between him and the cows. If he moves S or W we have the option of retreating towards the city. So long as there isn't another barb (say a promoted, scout-eating lion ) just out of sight to the N as well.

My concern about just retreating is that if the barb does just keep coming, we eventually end up losing the pasture or having to hit him on flatland. That's only 68% odds. Also, determining this early gives me more time to get another defender whipped or chopped. So, I'm holding off making that final move and finishing turn for a little bit longer while I think and see if Hitru has time to chip in. If I'd been really cautious I would have saved a worker move until after seeing what is 1N (assuming I go with that option), but I didn't think of that in time  .