The Distance of a Handkerchief: THH duels Q

[TheHumanHydra]

Thank-you, Fintourist. Seems odd; isn't he supposed to be the fast-expander? I built two workers and grew to size two before starting on the settler; what can he have been doing all this time? Maybe he's about to settle ...

I realize I'm stating the obvious, but according to your screenshot he grew to size 5.

It certainly doesn't seem bad to be working all those capital resources.

I'm stupid.

Is that what you would do? I thought this game was expand-or-die, especially against Cre/Exp. I really have no idea how to play this game ... proving my point about not being better than Q, despite his protestations ... I should jump ship and play Total War or something.

[Fintourist]

Thank-you, Fintourist. Seems odd; isn't he supposed to be the fast-expander? I built two workers and grew to size two before starting on the settler; what can he have been doing all this time? Maybe he's about to settle ...

Well, you have many nice tiles in your capitals so it's not wrong to produce cheap EXP-workers improve your tiles and grow your capital a bit. I haven't stared at your starts enough to say what kind of an opening I would have played. I would say that earliest moment to really compare openings is around T35-40 and still it would not be that straightforward even if you would have full visibility.

EDIT: cross-post with 7

[TheHumanHydra]

Thank-you, Fintourist. Seems odd; isn't he supposed to be the fast-expander? I built two workers and grew to size two before starting on the settler; what can he have been doing all this time? Maybe he's about to settle ...

Well, you have many nice tiles in your capitals so it's not wrong to produce cheap EXP-workers improve your tiles and grow your capital a bit. I haven't stared at your starts enough to say what kind of an opening I would have played. I would say that earliest moment to really compare openings is around T35-40 and still it would not be that straightforward even if you would have full visibility.

EDIT: cross-post with 7

Cross-post (and cross-edit) with me, too! Interesting ... all this is really counter-intuitive to me ... see, when you first start playing Civ, you have to discipline yourself to not grow and instead produce those workers and settlers. At least that's what I experienced. Apparently the game comes full-circle ...

[Fintourist]

Cross-post (and cross-edit) with me, too! Interesting ... all this is really counter-intuitive to me ... see, when you first start playing Civ, you have to discipline yourself to not grow and instead produce those workers and settlers. At least that's what I experienced. Apparently the game comes full-circle ...

Don't be depressed. It is just different every time. I think novice's openings in PBEM47 and PBEM49 are a good example (not a bad idea to study those). In 47 he built an early granary and grew his capital to size 6 by turn 18. In 49 he went horizontal and had 5 cities by T36 and a nearly crashed economy. I think both of those openings were praised by lurkers and it's difficult to say if something more "balanced" would have been stronger or weaker.

So as a conclusion, if one has time testing different approaches or at least doing some calculations in your head, it usually pays off. I think nobody here is saying that your approach here is bad or anything. Growing fast to size 3 and working pig+corn+sheep (and then later commerce tiles) feels fairly intuitive, but as those resources are annoyingly far from each other I can easily see how you came up with your variation.

[SevenSpirits]

I think a useful starting model is to try to work as many resources as possible. Of course this involves some combination of growing population, building settlers to claim new resources, and building workers to improve the resources.

Then you can add in more nuance and take into account other things: working bare FP is worth a bit, working a mine is worth a bit, working a cottage is worth a bit, having roads is worth a bit, having trade connection is worth a bit, having additional city center tiles is worth a bit, having warriors is worth a bit... and of course there are some other really important things: having granaries in cities that have high food surplus (they're stronger than a food resource), having enough happiness to use your granaries well, and having strategic resources in time to defend.

However, the sheer raw power of working a 5 or 6 yield tile, requiring only a small investment of a pop point (via growth or new city) and some worker turns, tends to outshine other factors, so you won't do badly putting this in its own priority tier and trying to optimize almost exclusively for this at the start.

[TheHumanHydra]

That's very interesting and informative, Seven. I'm trying to re-evaluate my plans a little, but I must confess I just played another turn on my previous model. I wish I had had this in mind from the start. I need to watch a Civ-for-noobs video or something ...

@Fintourist: You're always very encouraging. You are of course right about testing, but I must confess (again) I felt inclined to take a lazier approach to this game ... which I think is justified by the format and by the fact my opponent is doing the same. I do of course plan things out in my head, though, and scratch some things out on paper too. I just didn't do an intensive comparative approach.

[Sullla]

Echoing what others have said, there's a lot of different things to balance in playing out a Civ4 opening, and knowing what things to prioritize requires a lot of thought and experience. In Seven's recent openings thread in the General forum, all of us picked different things to prioritize and came up with some very different opening moves, most of which were viable to one degree or another.

This starting position is no different, and I can see a lot of different directions to be pursued here. However, you do have three incredibly powerful resource tiles at the capital: the corn (6/0/1), the pigs (6/0/1), and the gold (1/3/8). These are all insanely good tiles to have at your disposal, about the absolute best possible to get, and that gold tile (on a grassland hill) won't even appear normally on most map scripts. Without trying to micro this start in more detail, it looks to me that you'd want to get all of them into play ASAP and never stop working them. In other words, at least one city should be working all three of those tiles non-stop for the rest of the game. (Don't whip off any of these tiles ever.) I see that there are workers chopping forests right now over mining that gold tile, which absolutely feels like a major mistake. Chopping forests is significantly weaker on Quick speed compared to Normal speed, and working an unimproved floodplains tile at the capital because the gold resource hasn't been improved yet is very likely a mistake. People will sometimes get thrown off by the game that Speaker and I played way back in Pitboss #2, but that was both a Normal speed game and had Indian Fast Workers. It was not a normal case. When in doubt, improve resources over chopping.

Long story short: when you have incredible, amazing, outstanding resources at your capital, improve them first and then make sure that you never stop working them. You can figure out the more detailed micro work from there.

[TheHumanHydra]

Thanks, Sullla. That's a pretty clear directive. Not finishing the chop, having already started it, and obligating myself to spend another worker-turn moving into the tile later feels extravagantly wasteful, so unfortunately I think I should let it finish, then I propose to have that worker pasture the sheep while the fresh one from the capital mines the gold and the capital grows a size to be able to work both. Then I'll finish the settler for the third city and focus on developing the three.

I wish I could do a do-over for this start. Looks like it'll be another duel after this one.

Thanks for the advice and thoughts, everyone.

[Fintourist]

On general level I agree with what Sullla said, but just as a quick comment:
I think that the gold tile will be "only" 1/2/8 and since food and foodhammers are typically the most important thing very early in the game I think I personally would prioritize improving 4/1/3 sheep. But yeah, depending on one's goals both tiles have their strenghts (e.g. religion/Priesthood race vs pure REX).

And once again, no reason to worry THH, early 2nd city has its benefits too and the game is still young.

[TheHumanHydra]

Yeah I had actually had the same thought about the gold, Fin, but I suspect Sullla knows more than we do in this regard.

This is what I wrote to Q with the last save (just played):

I only just founded it. Honestly, lurkers are giving me the strong impression it was a mistake not to grow like you before expanding. And by lurkers I mean like Seven and Sullla. I sense a Sullla "Civ IV Openings" video coming ...