[Spoilers] Gavagai, Bacchus and Elizabeth Form a Romantic Trio

[Bacchus]

As for a plan that might actually be used, with the second WB before the settler, here is:



The second chop is obviously up for discussion, as we need to work the corn too, but I kept in it just to show how much it speeds up the second worker — another major need for us.

With this plan, by turn 40 we will have earned 186 base commerce off the coastal tiles. Amusingly, that still doesn't quite solve our voracious tech appetite, but at least makes one feel better.

[Gavagai]

My thoughts:
1. When I simmed, I started to work max hammers at T15, one turn befre meditation. It allowed us to compkete WB on T19 but growth was delayed to T21. Between T19 and T21 I was building a WB working max commerce. Then - worker on max food/hammers. I had 2 hammers stored into the third WB wich we are not getting in your proposal. My settler was completed on T31 just like in your table. Does your plan provide better commerce output than my initial sim?
2. We will be able to revolt to slavery on the turn when our worker is out. It shouldn't delay our settler as we will still be able to whip on T31. But it will reduce overflow into WB which means that WB will be seriously delayed.
3. I'm not sure if we should make this second chop. It speeds up WB but slowers improving corn: we will start to farm it on T37 and finish on T40. Actually, I had it farmed at T43-44 in those sims where I went with the third WB before worker - settler.

[Gavagai]

By the way, our religion beeline is at least partly a result of a weed mistake I have done, making a sandbox on a standard sized map. When you go for an early religion because no worker techs seem to be of an immediate use, you would often run into a tech bottleneck at about T40-50. I specifically checked for this bottleneck while doing sims in a sandbox and found that we can break through it due to a really high commerce output. Now I corrected my sandbox - and the bottleneck is here, of course. We are going to work lots of commerce tiles and still will lose about 5 turns of working a pastured cow and may be a turn of working the corn. And I don't count in opportunity costs of working commerce tiles. Really, I'm not sure now that religion worth it. But we are already too invested in it to turn aside.

[Bacchus]

1. We do get the two hammers, but rather than being stored they get carried over in each build, you can see the excess two in the WB and in the Worker. Still, I think getting the WB out faster gets 3 more coins.

2. We can willingly delay whipping the settler, precisely so that we grab a bit more overflow into the WB. One turn settler delay loses us 3 surplus food, one hammer and gives us a coin in maintenance we don't have to pay, in return we get the WB out 7 turns earlier, which gives us 14 surplus food. We also delay capital growth a bit.

3. The chop speeds up the WB and the worker. I wouldn't make it for WB only, but worker is important, as the first one is busy improving the northern city. In fact, speeding up the worker is the reason I would delay the settler for more overflow into WB. Also, the corn delay is less painful if we delay the settler.

4. From gchat: Revolt into Buddhism probably should wait till after Agri, or maybe even till after AH. We are quite short workerturns.

[Bacchus]

As for the second city, with the settler delay to maximize overflow and the second chop, here's what we can do:

new tiles key: 5 and 6 are unimproved corn and cow, 7 and 8 improved, 9 is the grass hill mine


This assumes that we can take the mine away from the capital on T51, which is handy, as this is exactly the turn we can whip the capital for 3 into a new settler. With the second settler going out on T52 and the third settler going out on T57, with four workers in store (the capital can build the fourth straight after the settler finishing T58), I think we got a decent speed of expansion. In fact, if anything I am now worried about overexpansion. And that's all with only two chops!

By T60 we will have: 4 cities, 4 workers, 4 warriors and no infrastructure, but hopefully both Sailing (T51?) and Pottery (T59? or maybe the other way around) done to start building granaries and lighthouses. We will probably have to send two workers to improve the eastern corn and spam river cottages, one worker to build a copper mine, wherever that is, and leave the last worker in the capital to chop infrastructure. I wouldn't want to whip the capital now until Writing, for the library.

EDIT: We still don't have the Wheel, of course, so no Pottery that early, and definitely Sailing first for the TR's to our eastern river city.

P.S. Note to self — so as not to get chariot-rushed, we need Hunting. Apart from that, Priesthood-Writing-Monarchy.

[Bacchus]

We just noticed that the way we played out turn 10 already precludes us from my variant of the plan, and now Gav's approach is definitely optimal, so:

FINAL MICRO


Note the extra 1 unit of food gained by working the flat forest on T17 is not excess, we will need it to get exactly 26 food in the bin on T42. Also note that on T36 we are only working two netted clams — this accounts for the need to spend a full turn getting to the far clam. We could shove anarchy in on T36 and revolt to Buddhism, but I'd really rather do it after AH, especially as we are not much delayed by having to work an unimproved clam.

[Gavagai]

...not final. It is still unclear if we would want an additional chop on T33

[Gavagai]

Played the turn. We are sprinting towards meditation and our scout finally started to uncover new land.

[Gavagai]

Btw, if I read the demos correctly, Sian is now working 2 grassland forests. It looks like he got a really exotic capital...

[Bacchus]

True, micro final up until T31, then we need to decide what to do with the worker.

First GNP now for the nearest future, one hopes, excepting the T15-T19 gap.

You are correct on Sian, he is rival best on both crop yield and mfg, and he could either be working a 3f and 1f2h tile, or two flat grass forests. Functionally identical and bizarre. But then again, I'm sure there are people reading this and wondering what we are smoking.