[Spoilers] Fintourist and Old Harry have nothing to see here

[Old Harry]

Turn 28

No hut. But we have finished scouting our immediate surroundings, so we could think about a dot map now.


(Big image, click to enlarge). I think the Lion city is the obvious second city, then it's a toss-up between going NE or SW next.
- #2 has a lot of forests to chop, but will probably end up working a lot of mines (not a bad option in rbmod).
- #3 can have the fish improved ready for it, but just has to work cottages until we get iron working and calander. I think 3a is faster starting but 3b would make a better eventual bureau-cap if we were so inclined. We could build a library to pop borders.
I think #2 sounds better as it can pump out more units for us, but I haven't tried playing the two through to check yet.


After that how do we go about claiming the river valley? #4 is a rubbish city (only +4 food if we cottage the flood plains), but might be a decent defensive site if dtay is nearby to the north. 5a and 5b are also great cottage sites, but won't grow particularly quickly. 7 will be a good city and 9 gets international trade routes.

Then 6 and 8 are just a question of when we get iron working and calander. If copper doesn't turn up anywhere should we go for IW early?

The paint.net image is here if you want to have a play...

Demos

[Fintourist]

Couple of random dot-mapping thoughts:

• I suggest settling #3 before #2. #2 only gets plains cow as a new resource, while #3 gets fish and bunch of riverside grassland. I really would like us to start developing a decent commerce city out of #3 asap. We will need it.
  
• I believe also that we have to take #3a instead of #3b. Yeah, we lose 3 river tiles, but food in the first ring is kind of a must have at least for our first 5-7 cities.. And then #3 can work gold as well.
  
• In order to not fall further behind (or even catch up), lets make it one of our micro targets that #3 gets immediately fish hooked up when we settle the city. (I can live with 1-turn delay, but not with much more)
  
• Based on our current map knowledge our expansion opportunities are quite limited. It seems that we need to settle some fairly stretched cities if we want any decent locations. Our 5th and 6th cities will probably be targeted towards E unless we find attractive island sites
  
• It seems we end up needing our UU (Bowman) We might well have opponents just couple of tiles in the fog (N, NE, SE, S..) and "the river valley" gets contested. And even if our opponents are not bugging us, I can't see us having enough fog-busters in the near future so that we will have to fend off at least some barbs. Actually quite many if we stretch us towards E.
  
• And that #4 is terrible
  

One random micro note:

• In my earlier 2-worker sims I found it useful to chop first the forest SE of the capital, and thus move our worker NE-SE next (T29). That way our 2 workers can chop the forests W-W and W-SW (from our capital) at around ~T37 and be in position to support our 2nd city more comfortably
  

EDIT: I expect that it's easier to fit the chops of forests S-SW and S-S from our capital later in our microplan as they are closer to #3a/b
EDIT2: What were your plans on next worker movements?

[Old Harry]

And that #4 is terrible

Yeah, I wasn't suggesting settling them in numerical order! But we'll want to fill that gap at some point to make a pretty border...

One random micro note:

• In my earlier 2-worker sims I found it useful to chop first the forest SE of the capital, and thus move our worker NE-SE next (T29). That way our 2 workers can chop the forests W-W and W-SW (from our capital) at around ~T37 and be in position to support our 2nd city more comfortably
  

EDIT: I expect that it's easier to fit the chops of forests S-SW and S-S from our capital later in our microplan as they are closer to #3a/b
EDIT2: What were your plans on next worker movements?

I was thinking:
Worker A chops forest W,W of cap, then roads W,SW then chops, then builds a mine
Worker B chops forest S,S of cap, then helps with W,SW and builds the road to our second city

But I can see the argument for chopping SE of cap. Chopping WW means the settler doesn't need the road to settle city 2 - how do you feel about not linking the cities?

Also I like the mine for capping production in Agincourt and sharing between three cities, but getting more chops in instead might be more useful at this point - should we aim to be completely deforested before building any mines?

[Fintourist]

I should finally have time today to test stuff! Fingers crossed though..

We will definitely want another mine for our cap, but we don't really need it before Agincourt reaches size 4, which means that we probably have a bit more time for chopping.

Linking the cap and our 2nd city has definitely value (2 commerce per turn + safety).. But worker turns are at this point expensive as well.. I don't know yet how we should balance chopping, mining and roading.. But give me at least until this evening time for one sandbox run!

[Fintourist]

Ok, I managed to do a quick testing round. I played your suggested opening and I think it works nicely However, I still think we should do things a bit differently..

I'll hopefully provide more details later after I've done a bit more testing (still have maybe 20 min time). But the main part is that I currently believe that
1. We should move worker next turn to SE of the capital.
2. Finish 1st worker with the chop on T32
3. Finish warrior with Overflow
4. Chop forests W-W and W-SW of capital on T36

That leaves us 2 worker turns behind your suggestion (I loved the part where worker B built the road though) But we have 5 more foodhammers (+7 food, -2 hammers) and we have the chance to whip the settler on T37. I think getting our second city 1 turn earlier up has value here and we should go for it.

Here is one unoptimized example where we could be at T50:



3rd city just founded, all 3 fish resources netted, 3rd worker just finished, etc. Beat that! It should be still fairly easily doable!

[Fintourist]

Ok, here is our T50 microplan vol.1 in pictures. It would be great if Harry (and Hydra if interested!) you have time for trying it!

I think it works kind of nicely, but there are of course several things that still can be tested. It would be interesting to know how much better this start can be played (assuming that one is forced to go fishing first)

Of course, I'm crossing my fingers that you Harry come up with maybe something totally different that beats this by a mile!!

Discussed worker movement:


Chop finishes:


Overflow into warrior:


2 workers in action:


Chops come in:


Settler whipped, road built:


WB started, 1 worker supports 2nd city, 2nd one starts chopping (NOTE: the tile E of the current chopping location is better):


New city founded, WB whipped:


Overflow into warrior:


Second settler started with a chop:


Grow to size 3 building warrior while waiting for a chop (NOTE: worker should be on the tile W of its current location):


Pasture finished:


Free worker moves E-SE:


WB whipped (NOTE: worker already mining)


Overflow and chop in the second city go into worker:


2nd settler finished:


Settler and a worker (roading) on the tile SW-SW of the capital, 2nd city working plains forest while capital grows at full speed:


New city founded, fish netted, 2nd mine built (NOTE: already a turn ago )


And then its granaries, more workers, settler, warriors and a barracks either in our 2nd city or 3rd city.

PS. I noticed that we save one worker turn if the forests S-S and S-SW of capital are chopped in reversed order. Therefore those "NOTE"-bla blas.

PS2. There are quite many, but not terribly many, production and tile switches so that we have to pay attention if we end up following this plan

What do you guys think?

[Old Harry]

That looks good! Although I looked at the stacked whip unhappy in horror at first . I've had a couple of goes along those lines. On the second one I whipped the worker t31 instead of t32, allowing the settler to finish eot37, stacking one less turn of whip unhappy and getting an extra worker turn in (the worker chops are out of sync but that's needed to finish the warrior).

I can't think of another approach that might work better, so I'm happy to just tweak this one...

I've made a new sandbox for where we are this turn (unfortunately it's missing the hill you have just north of city C ).

After turn 50 I'm not sure I want to build a barracks in any of these three cities - C should get a library (ages in the future) because it'll be our commerce centre, while Agincourt doesn't need the culture and should probably pump settlers after the granary. But we need to be working that gold soon to boost our research rate and raise the happy cap. So maybe build a barracks after the worker in B? It's only worthwhile if B becomes our unit pump, but with only two hills (city C should work the gold) can it do that job?

Finally there isn't much point leaving the scout to spawn-bust where he is next turn - we're not expanding that way for ages, so better to bring him back, heal him up and have him help with settling the new cities in the south west.

[Fintourist]

I agree with your comments! And yeah, I thought that you have surely tested this kind of openings.

After testing I pretty much determined that the earlier worker whip trades 5 foodhammers for one worker turn. I think we want those 5 foodhammers in this case or were you argumenting for the opposite?

Library first for culture in C is a nice idea and should be tried!

Re scout: ok!

Long working day ahead...

[Old Harry]

Well I didn't test it until you laid out the guide - I hadn't thought about the foodhammers, so your scheme is probably better.

I'll sim out Granary-Library and Library-Granary in C to see how well that works. I think it matters what techs we're going for after Hunting/Pottery - Iron working or Writing/Maths or religion? I suppose that depends on the location of copper next turn...

[Old Harry]

Turn 29

Barring panthers Lunch should be safe next turn. And we should know about copper. And we start another chop. And that Lion is still hanging around. Anyone got a tranquilizer gun?


Demos