The Distance of a Handkerchief: THH duels Q

[TheHumanHydra]

Time for another update - it's been seven or eight turns.

I've been trying in my imperfect way to adapt everyone's advice into my plans, delaying the second settler to focus on some vertical development:




It shows in the demographics:




Q and I actually have equal population:




He said he thought his second city location would be controversial, but I don't think so; I considered it - in fact I might still settle it:




That's the grassland forest hill 2E, 1SE of the capital.

The things that worry me right now are that the pace of settlement is slow - ideally I like to settle a city every 10 turns at the start of the game on Quick, so I'm way behind schedule - and that Q just showed an alarming spike in power that might be a skirmisher, and I don't have my horses hooked yet. I plan to settle toward the horses after whipping the granary in Skuldafn, the workers on the gold roading to the site and hooking the horses. Hopefully that'll be fast enough.

Well, micro-masters, is this progress?

(Also any questions I'm happy to answer.)

[TheHumanHydra]

Having played another couple turns, I have planned out to eot38 in Skuldafn and eot41 in Labyrinthian: both will whip a granary (single- in Skuldafn, double- in Labyrinthian; all resource tiles remain worked), then complete a quick settler for nearby locations and regrow. (I revolted to Slavery this turn, t34.) Two workers are supporting each city's efforts: Skuldafn's are roading actually back from the third city-site and will improve the horses, while Labyrinthian's just finished a cottage and will now complete two chops ('cause I'm an addict and have no more resources to improve) and a mine, followed by roads. I can do a write-up if anyone's interested, or if you just want to see the results, that's fine too!

[Fintourist]

Have you taken into account that granary food box should be about half full at the end of the turn when you whip those granaries?

[TheHumanHydra]

It will be at Labyrinthian, not at Skuldafn. It is at end of turn, not upon whipping, then?

[SevenSpirits]

Say you finish the granary on t50 and grow on t52. Then what you want is for the total food produced on t51 and t52 to be at least half (the smaller half) of the required food to grow. This gets you maximum benefit from the granary. Every point of food you are short of this goal effectively costs you 1f, because what the granary does is give you back half the food you needed to grow... but not more food than you've ever produced since the granary was first built. You want to avoid being capped unnecessarily by this edge case.

The worst thing you can do is grow exactly on the turn you complete the granary. For example, if it's a quick speed game and your size 1 city finishes the granary while going from 9/14 to 14/14, you will end up at 0/16 at size 2 and got no granary bonus from growing from size 1 to size 2. By contrast, if you were instead at 8/14 and go to 13/14 while finishing the granary, then the following turn, you will produce 5f and grow, and the granary will also give you back 5 food. (It was giving you back the smaller of 14/2 (half the food needed to grow) and 5 (total food produced since granary built).) So you'll end up at 9/16, 4f ahead of the other case, albeit with one less turn working the second tile.

As a final super-advanced note, if you find yourself in the aforementioned situation with 9/14 going to 14/14, you can enable Avoid Growth during the turn you finish the granary, and this way you will stay at size 1 despite being at 14/14 food. Then you turn it off the next turn, produce 5f, grow, and get 5f back from the granary too, ending at 10/16.

[TheHumanHydra]

Right, that makes sense ... and now I understand the Avoid Growth trick too - thanks Seven!

Also, when playing just now, I realized I misremembered in my last post; Skuldafn had 10 food in the box at the end of the turn it whipped the granary. So good in both cases, though I confess unintentionally.

Making these plans was very interesting for me. Q and I are to all appearances neck-and-neck right now, though that may change - for better or worse - soon.

[TheHumanHydra]

Wow, was my last update really that long ago (in-game)? The turns fly in a duel ...

Anyway, since I just played t50, I figured it was time for an update. I realized there were a couple errors in my last report, but I'm not going to correct them now - in fact, things have gotten too complex to really comment on micro at all now. Suffice it to say I've tried to keep all resource tiles worked, and coupled that with rapid expansion, adequate worker support, and just enough war chariots to feel safe:




Oops, I forgot to have the event log open. Also, I keep forgetting to rename my cities.

Anyway, the highlighted workers are going to improve the stone next, allowing me to (attempt to) build Stonehenge and the Pyramids in Skuldafn and Labyrinthian.

Edits: You can't really see this, so I wanted to note I have granaries in all but the newest (westernmost) city. Also, I initiated the first violent action of the game the other turn when I attacked Q's scouting warrior with my war chariot out of the fog. I wanted to leave it be, because this means even "wimpy" units like warriors can attack and enter borders now, but he moved it right where I needed to put my settler that turn, so I had to do it.

[TheHumanHydra]

A couple screenshots for your perusal:




I finished Stonehenge in two (?) turns with two chops, the first mistakenly timed before the stone was hooked. Now I can grow these cities I've quickly planted to great heights, and/or whip even more heavily! (I've noticed I tend to whip infrastructure savagely in games I play; I don't know if this is a good thing or not. I've made sure to keep all food resources worked regardless.)

Skuldafn is working some odd tiles; I've probably made a mistake by not thinking far enough ahead and improving some of those hills. It's working hammer-tiles over cottages because I'm trying to build the Pyramids, chopping all those forests with the bonuses from the stone, Mathematics, and the forge I'm sneaking in there now - but I'm still going to need 100 more natural hammers to finish it.

So as you can see the general gameplan was to expand quickly and aggressively toward the stone and build the two strong early stone wonders while developing a bit. Once that's (hopefully) accomplished I plan to start expanding again at a measured pace, working cottages more intensively since my economy's starting to lag, and start working some specialists to take advantage of Representation and the obelisk specialist slots (I haven't planned that out in detail yet). Or I could try and swamp him with Police State war chariots, I guess, but I don't want the game to end (for better or worse) so soon. Also, I'm realizing I'm going to have an absurd happy-cap really early (assuming I land the Pyramids); I wonder what I can do with that (grow on Fin cottages, duh - probably a crap-ton of specialists in one city too).




This is just to show that I have adequate (1.6/city) worker-support and military for police/zone defence. Also I didn't mention that I "killed" a second of Q's scouting warriors by trapping it with a war chariot as it approached my borders, no doubt bent on mischief, obliging Q to delete it (I had all surrounding tiles unfogged; it didn't just escape).

Oh, one other random thing I wanted to mention before I forget is that as you can see in that first screenshot, each player's pair of iron resources is located within one city-radius of each other. You can't see it in that screenshot, but the same goes for each player's pair of horse resources. There's only one copper per player, and it's located vaguely distantly from the capital. All this means it may be relatively easy (as opposed to other games) to cut one's opponent off from a particular strategic resource entirely by dominating one specific region. I'm thinking of trying to do this to Q down the road to deny him his iron so he can't build knights or pikes to defend against my knights (bwahahahahah) (war elephants are banned). Also, while on the topic of resources, it looks like there isn't any marble on this map, unless I overlooked it. Interesting.

Well, wish me luck on the 'mids! (I can't imagine Q gunned for his stone this early too, but still ...) As always, I'm here for questions and criticism.

[TheHumanHydra]

Another turn played; I might as well add the demographics shot since it doesn't look as bad as it did last turn and you probably want to see it anyway:




And the top cities just for the heck of it; as you can see we're about equal there (I don't know how many cities he has anymore):




I'm allowed to double-post in my own thread .

[Old Harry]

This may be too late, but doesn't the forge slow the pyramids? 120 hammers only gives you a bonus of about 60 if you have stone. Or are you IND?

Either way things look great - you're keeping up with Q's early game traits nicely. Are you bothering with c&d?