[SPOILERS] WillPlunder as Mehmed of Arabia: Noobs meet world

[WilliamLP]

Updated sandbox

Well, settle in place, agri -> AH, worker -> warrior (work PH twice before rice is improved, to sync warrior with growth to size 2) -> settler, gives us a settler turn 35 at size 2. I'm concerned about beakers with this start though, BW is still 13 turns away, pottery even further, no fishing.

I have to say I'm still pretty torn, liking 1W for the beaker advantage of working the two clams early. I'll explore some more starts with settling in place, putting off AH for a while. I wonder how bad is mining the pig. It's wasting worker turns in the long run but 2/3 is a pretty productive tile in the very early game, especially in this start.

[Plunder]

desert and desert hills, I can't say I'm overcome with joy.
A dry rice is better than nothing, I guess that makes SIP just a littlebit better? At least for a bit later in the game. It'll bring our capital to +9 food when working all bonus tiles, I guess we can't complain about that. It just doesn't make for an extremely fast start
Also we're now +5 health +0 happiness (after improving the tiles) maybe some gold is hidden in the desert?

What about starting with warrior instead? a worker is particularly useless with SIP and no BW. And roading the forests seems only of secondary importance at this point. We might grow to size 2 and go/while going for workboats? improved clams are still superior to improved dry rice (4/0/2 vs 4/0/0 right?). And the rice is a long walk away.

I'll try a sim this evening/afternoon (eu-time)

[Plunder]

4 people SIP
and Azza moved his settler, I guess we're not the only ones with this dilemma :D
4 others didn't end their turn yet...

(as far as I can learn from civstats.)

[WilliamLP]

Long term when we have all four food hooked up, lighthouse, and can irrigate the rice, we have a ton of food in the capital if we settle in place. Plus hopefully there would be a good city site to share food with the capital. This is a part of the game all the good players do and it makes sense but I usually don't think through my personal games that carefully.

I want to get out of the idea that growing onto unimproved tiles is worth much. It really is just +1 food or hammer (or +2 commerce if we have fishing). That being said we're going to need warriors anyway; maybe you're right and immediately is the best time to get one out? A secondary advantage is the extra scouting and map info that would give us for the 2nd city site.

We're going to want some road net eventually so taking the spare worker turns to build it isn't terrible, but it's of secondary importance like you say.

Anyway, I'm going to look at it too after work today (Canada - eastern time).

[Plunder]

mmm If I do my math correct we can have turn 13 the clams online if we start with warrior-FB and grow at turn 14, or if we go for agri + worker first we have the rice online on turn 11 and grow to size 2 at turn 13. The latter is a bit faster, but misses out on 2 commerce after improving the bonus tile in comparison to the fishing start.

(assuming I didn't make any mistakes) edit: and I did, I forgot techs are more expensive on this difficulty level, but I don't know by heart how much.

[WilliamLP]

Yeah, I've run a few sims, will post out some details tonight but my thoughts so far:

- Clams are the best thing in our empire right now, unfortunately. How soon we work them is also how soon we get techs online like BW, Pottery, etc. So it's basically essential to get the two hooked ASAP.
- SIP with agri starts seem a little weak, which isn't surprising I guess since our only tile to work with it (dry rice) is like a nerfed floodplain.
- If we're going to do warrior -> WB anyway, the advantages of SIP seem small to nonexistent, at least in the short term.
- Man, if only there were a 2H tile somewhere near, 1W would be a lot better than it is. As it stands, it just can't get many hammers out to get a WB very fast.
- Despite this, I'm still not sold against it. +1H in the capital forever is awfully nice. And hooking up the WBs immediately isn't even that trivial.

I'm going to put a few starts in a more organized chart form. Basically what turns key things happen (builds, techs, growths), and to gauge general state of the empire by a certain turn, maybe 35 or 40.

[Plunder]

I did some sims, but I couldn't get something satisfactionay from SIP somehow. This extra hammer in the capital is somehow really significant.
If I go for 1W I can get a settler at turn 39, 2 improved clans, and grown to size 3, improved grassland tile, researched Fishing, mining, BW and pottery. + 39 into Agriculture. (And chopped 2 forests)
It's pretty much the same way we discussed earlier with the warrior start.

edit: Just trying with some screenshot below, seems that the turn # fell off. But that was at least 39 turns into the sandbox Not too bad I think

< why is this not working?

[Cornflakes]

< why is this not working?

Did you rename the picture after you copied the dropbox link? Try going back to dropbox and re-copying the link.

[WilliamLP]

Here's a chart showing 4 starts: Link Hopefully that's decypherable. A couple of builds require a little bit of micro to time growth at the same time with a build, but it's not that intense.

I think W1 is basically your start. I was able to get the settler out T38, with size 3, 2 clams improved, pottery, hill mine.

The best I could do with SIP was SIP-2, with worker first, mine the pig. This got the settler out, also T38 at size 3, pottery at T39.

I think my W2 might be better, it's settling west with worker first while researching fishing. Then researching mining gives the worker time to move to the pig, one turn of road. It gets the settler at T37 at size 3, pottery T38. Here's the result:



At this point... honestly it feels like a wash. SIP-2 feels good to me, gets a warrior to scout a bit T16, gets the settler T38. It mines the pig, but 2/3 is still a really good tile for the start, and means we don't need AH for a while maybe, depending on what we scout.

SIP has more intangible advantages. One more is that settling will immediately give us some scouting info. Also future workers get a head start into action, for what that's worth

If you feel like 1W is slightly stronger, I can't say I really disagree. But at this point on my own I think I go SIP just because it's more interesting, e.g. it puts a mass chop wonder on the table, and a monster capital in the distant future.

[Plunder]

< why is this not working?

Did you rename the picture after you copied the dropbox link? Try going back to dropbox and re-copying the link.

I played around a bit, but the link works: https://www.dropbox.com/s/q1h93rl9wjsfkxi/test1.JPG
but the embedded image not:



When I use freigeben (liberate?) I have to give an email or share it via facebook or so.

This website gave a working hint to at least use my google-drive and it seems to be working:
http://googlesystem.blogspot.de/2013/02/...mages.html