[SPOILERS] Panzersmackdown with Justinian (Mack/Seven)

[SevenSpirits]

We've found two huts! AH and BW right? Also there's the gold and deer I dreamed of, both on worst possible terrain though (which for deer means it's pretty bad).

I looked up hut mechanics. There's a list of things we can get, and it picks one. But some of the things, we can't get.
1) We can't get a warrior because it's multiplayer and also because it's been <20 turns (either condition would be enough).
2) We can't get barbs in one case because it's a scout, and in the other case because we have only one city and the hut is less than 8 away from that city. (i.e. it's in the city's 7th ring, if there was such a thing.) You also can't pop barbs if you have no city, but then you couldn't pop techs either.
3) We can't get healing because our units aren't wounded.

So here's what's left, on Monarch:

High Gold
Low Gold x4
Map x2
Scout
XP x2
Tech x2

So 12 possibilities, 2 are techs. 1/6 of a tech, twice? Not too bad. The other results are not terrible either. Btw High Gold is about 70g, Low Gold is about 40g (but there's some variance).

I also looked up whether we have to choose a tech yet, because it would be a shame to put beakers into a tech right before popping it from a hut. I thought on the turn you found, you don't have to; your beakers are collected as overflow and then you can choose next turn. But maybe this was only on the first turn of the game?

Well guess what, it's actually the first FIVE turns of the game, where you don't have to select a tech, and your beakers just pile up in overflow! Only problem is it might be hard to end turn if the only thing left to do is choose a tech, so I guess you have to leave a unit unmoved or something, and then force end turn. Anyway I don't think we need to worry about that, it's already the fourth turn. We don't mind choosing a tech next turn after our two hut pops.

[SevenSpirits]

Right now (and barring any hut techs) we are thinking BW first and worker-settler or worker-worker-settler. The first worker can mine the river plains hill. He finishes right before BW comes in so we can do a chop next, which isn't so bad on normal speed. The settler would probably settle next to gold and rice. Probably tech Agriculture second.

[regoarrarr]

So do you feel that your T3 capital location is better enough to make up for the 3 lost turns of beakers and production?

[SevenSpirits]

Yes.

Lost production is entirely made up for by the worker being 3t faster. So we are talking 30 beakers cost in exchange for the different nearby tiles and 1hpt starting after the first worker completes.

Beakers vs hammers is a tough trade to measure because you need a harmonious balance of both in the early game; they're not that easily fungible. But like I said in the espionage post I consider 1hpt forever to be worth about 22h up-front, and 30b for 22h isn't bad in the abstract. Given we have to opportunity to work a 0/2/1 tile instead of a forest so we can easily do 1-for-1 trades in the other direction and we certainly won't be doing that as a general rule, though maybe in an edge case of finishing a tech at the right time, so it seems at worst we lost 8b.

Then there is the terrain, where I think we won out significantly but I'm not sure. The original start had a terrible handicap that there's no improvable tiles to start. If we e.g. went BW first, the worker would be idle for two turns and we don't have an improved tile to work for a very long time. And if we go AH first, he builds a pasture but is then idle for a very long time. (Furthermore if we try to grow to size 2 first, we don't have a 3f tile! So bad.) Here we gain a riverside unforested plains hill which is really great for an imperialist, and which we immediately have the tech for.

We also gain a corn (5f tile, irrigable with CS) which easily beats a clam unless we wanted to ignore Agriculture but get Fishing after BW, a proposition which was extremely dubious for just 2 clams on a pangaea.

While we haven't scouted the south yet it looks like our best second city so far would be the gold site. Not only is that site less accessible to our original spot which is squeezed up against the coast, but we'll get it faster because the plains hill plant is giving us 1-2 extra hammers into a settler every turn with IMP. In fact the plains hill plant going worker-settler with BW would get the settler a turn sooner than our original spot, only have to chop one forest instead of two, and additionally have completed a plains hill river mine which has caught us up by 5b already!

And of course every turn we get the gold site sooner is another 7 beakers returned.

Finally there's the psychological factor - everyone else can see we spent three turns moving, so they hopefully think we're doing terribly instead of just pretty darn badly.

Overall I'm very glad we decided to move. Of course I was hoping for better (like, say, a river... what a difference those make) but this is definitely an improvement over the starting position, so I'm happy to take this small victory.

[regoarrarr]

Thanks for the detailed response. Good luck!

[Thoth]

Any word on the possible ETA for the 'Mids?

[SevenSpirits]

Shortly after Guilds perhaps? It's too early to make plans to build them; we don't see any stone.

t4:


Warrior got 59g, not bad. Scout popped another scout and revealed Azza's warrior. The other scout moved and found Azza's borders. Later, Azza logged in and moved his warrior out of sight (maybe NW) and a scout from the north onto the gold hill.

1/19/12 9:46 pm Azza Logged out
1/19/12 9:43 pm Lord Parkin Logged out
1/19/12 9:41 pm MackSeven Logged out
1/19/12 9:38 pm MackSeven Logged in
1/19/12 9:37 pm Azza Finished turn
1/19/12 9:35 pm Lord Parkin Logged in
1/19/12 9:34 pm Azza Logged in
1/19/12 9:25 pm MackSeven Logged out
1/19/12 9:19 pm MackSeven Logged in

Azza is Washington (EXP/CHA) of Vikings, a fantastic leader and mediocre civ hurt only by its poor starting techs.

I said hello in the public thread:

Greetings, Lord Parkin! You are our first contact.

We'll leave you be if you leave us be. As I'm sure you know, early conflict is bad for both parties.

A reply:

Good to meet you! Happy to agree to a mutually peaceful early game. Feel free to let that Scout pass by to explore further - as you can see we moved our Warrior away as a gesture of peace.

Brings me back to the best parts of playing werewolf. I wonder if and how Azza will respond.

[SevenSpirits]

Oops, misclicked the selected scout to go south. (He was supposed to use just one movement and end turn there, to avoid walking next to an enemy, since there's a wall of forests/hills anyway.) Luckily there's no Azza warrior adjacent, this turn anyway (we could still get double-moved). Next turn probably onto the wine.

So far we've only seen 2 huts, I hope we can get a couple more still. In test games 5-6 was normal but I guess we're relatively boxed in here.

We're thinking about axe-rushing Azza. Since he didn't start with mining nor wheel he might have trouble defending (even with 2 more turns of teching than us), and if we don't, well, fighting over these lousy scraps all game would not be great. But we'll see.

[SevenSpirits]

Glad to say my scout misclick did not cost us his life. Even though Azza got 2 turns in between our scout moves, his warrior is not in sight. Instead I moved the scout onto the wine and beheld the most beautiful sight: another hut just 1W of the wine, which will hopefully be ours next turn!

[SevenSpirits]

Got that hut and 1 more too a couple turns afterward. Now we have 161 gold. Better than nothing, a lot worse than a tech though. We were due 0.8 techs by now with our 4 huts.