RB Pitboss #2 [SPOILERS] - Speaker and Sullla

[Speaker]

Turn 42 Revealed:



There is a settler under the skirmisher. Assuming we don't get catapulted back toward our capital, we should move onto the hill next turn.

EDIT- S-SE will put us on the diagonal, 2 tiles from his capital. But we won't be able to see it, unless he planted on a hill.

[Speaker]

We need three roads to speed along the settler to the city #3 location. The other two roads connect Antietam to Gettysburg. The last road connection is needed to hook up our copper. It's the most barebones network we can build and still have our three cities hooked together.

You MP guys are too in love with pre-chopping.

Oh, I don't question the road network. If anything, I tend to overroad. But so early in the game, chopping is more powerful than roading.

[antisocialmunky]

Oh, I don't question the road network. If anything, I tend to overroad. But so early in the game, chopping is more powerful than roading.

How does the chopping compare to getting a settler to destination faster? Its 20-30 hammers for a chop compared to a few hammers that you earn back in around 10-20 turns except its in your home city.

Wouldn't settling down quickly on the best spots be worth more even in short term? It seems like a fairly crowded map and denying good spots to you opponents is a double bonus for you. And really the opportunity cost isn't so great since you can just come back to chop it in a few turns right?

Forgive me. My early game sense stinks.

[VoiceOfUnreason]

There is a settler under the skirmisher. Assuming we don't get catapulted back toward our capital, we should move onto the hill next turn.

What's the plan if the warrior gets boxed by the two culture borders and the mountains? squint - or maybe you have room to slip south of the mountains on turn 45

[Speaker]

Dantski planted his city, and our worker was unfortunately teleported back toward our capital. I would love it if anyone could tell me exactly how this mechanic worked.

How does the chopping compare to getting a settler to destination faster? Its 20-30 hammers for a chop compared to a few hammers that you earn back in around 10-20 turns except its in your home city.

You do not earn the hammers back in 10-20 turns. I wrote a ton at the beginning of the game about how hammers become less valuable every turn, and how early advantages multiply. Roading to speed along settlers is smart, but it's a thin line between speeding along and wasting worker turns overroading.

Wouldn't settling down quickly on the best spots be worth more even in short term? It seems like a fairly crowded map and denying good spots to you opponents is a double bonus for you. And really the opportunity cost isn't so great since you can just come back to chop it in a few turns right?

Settling recklessly is a fantastic recipe for getting annihilated in multiplayer. Remember that unlike the AI, a human player will not hesitate to take a bite out of a lightly defended border city.

[Sullla]

That's too bad that our warrior got sent backwards. Ah well, no biggie. We can move Jubal north next turn and that'll give us visibility into Djenne. May as well move him back towards the capital anyway. We accomplished our main goal with Jubal: we found Dantski's second city (and gained visibility into it!), plus we found his capital. Timbuktu is exactly 5 tiles south of Djenne.

Djenne is a nice spot, but actually weaker than our white dot would have been. Keep in mind that that rice tile won't be irrigated until Civil Service, and there's a useless peak tile in the city radius.

Now as far as the ongoing discussion on our development plan, I'm going to have to keep disagreeing with you, Speaker. I love chopping as much as the next guy, but this is not the proper time and place to send our workers off into the wilderness to prechop forests we don't even need until some time down the road! We need the basic framework of a road network for several reasons:

- Military defense/reinforcements (heaven forbid!)
- Free commerce from trade routes. Blue won't be on a trade route without a road.
- Resource exchange. We do want copper and horses to be available in Blue, right?
- Speeding the settler to Blue. We save 2t by building the road ahead of time.

Plus, the T45-T50 is the perfect time to build those roads! It's the short span while we're waiting for Pottery tech to come in, and we're waiting for Blue to be founded. Once we hit T50, our workers are going to be insanely busy, building cottages at Gettysburg and connecting the cows, horses, and furs at Blue. We need those roads in place, and yes, this *IS* the proper time to build them.

Not to mention, we're already on T42 and this alternate chopping dev plan hasn't even appeared yet. Let's just go with what I have, okay? I think that 3 cities and 4 workers by T50 is pretty darn good!

Alright, more on the current turn. We discovered The Wheel, so time to run the numbers on our next tech, Pottery:

Pottery 3/119 beakers, 5g in bank

100% 16 beakers/turn [TRUE: 20/turn] @ -2gpt
90% 14 beakers/turn [TRUE: 17/turn] @ -1gpt
80% 12 beakers/turn [TRUE: 15/turn] @ +1gpt
70% 11 beakers/turn [TRUE: 14/turn] @ +2gpt
60% 9 beakers/turn [TRUE: 11/turn] @ +4gpt
50% 6 beakers/turn [TRUE: 8/turn] @ +8gpt
0% 0 beakers/turn [TRUE: 1/turn] @ +14gpt

1t 0%, then 6t 100% gets us 121 beakers for +2g cost
1t 50%, then 6t 100% gets us 128 beakers for -4g cost [not as good]

As expected, the best plan seems to be one turn at min science, then max research all the way. We lose a lot of beakers to rounding at the 80-90% range.

This means that we get Pottery slightly faster than expected; I estimated 8t but we'll actually get it in 7t! This means we can start laying down cottages as soon as T49. I made a slight alteration in my outline to take advantage of this; we connect the road to Blue on the same turn that we start our first cottage at Gettysburg:

(T42) Pottery 7t
Gettysburg 4/26 food, [Worker done] Warrior 12/15 [5/1/1 wheat + 4/2/1 cows + 1/3/1 grassland hill]
Antietam 16/22 food, Warrior 2/15 [5/0/1 rice]
Worker A farm (done), Worker B move W-W, farm (2t), Worker C move S and mine (done)

(T43) Pottery 6t
Gettysburg 10/26 food, Settler 4/100 [Warrior 19/15] [5/1/1 wheat + 4/2/1 cows + 1/3/1 grassland hill]
Antietam 21/22 food, Warrior 3/15 [5/0/1 rice]
Worker A farm (1t), Worker B move W-W, farm (done), Worker C move NW and chop (2t)

(T44) Pottery 5t
Gettysburg 10/26 food, Settler 17/100 [5/1/1 wheat + 4/2/1 cows + 1/3/0 grassland hill]
Antietam 4/24 food [SIZE 2], Worker 0/60 [Warrior 4/15] [5/0/1 rice + 1/3/1 grassland hill]
Worker A move N-N and road (1t), Worker B move N-N and road (done), Worker C chop (1t)

(T45) Pottery 4t
Gettysburg 10/26 food, Settler 50/100 [chop] [5/1/1 wheat + 4/2/1 cows + 1/3/0 grassland hill]
Antietam 4/24 food, Worker 8/60 [Warrior 4/15] [5/0/1 rice + 1/3/1 grassland hill]
Worker A move SW and road (1t), Worker B move SE-NE and chop (2t), Worker C chop (done)

(T46) Pottery 3t
Gettysburg 10/26 food, Settler 63/100 [5/1/1 wheat + 4/2/1 cows + 1/3/0 grassland hill]
Antietam 4/24 food, Worker 16/60 [Warrior 4/15] [5/0/1 rice + 1/3/1 grassland hill]
Worker A road (done), Worker B chop (1t), Worker C move NE-E and road (1t)

(T47) Pottery 2t
Gettysburg 10/26 food, Settler 76/100 [5/1/1 wheat + 4/2/1 cows + 1/3/0 grassland hill]
Antietam 4/24 food, Worker 44/60 [Warrior 4/15] [5/0/1 rice + 1/3/1 grassland hill]
Worker A move NW-NE and road (1t), Worker B chop (done), Worker C road (done) [Get/Ant connected]

(T48 ) Pottery 1t
Gettysburg 10/26 food, Settler 89/100 [5/1/1 wheat + 4/2/1 cows + 1/3/0 grassland hill]
Antietam 4/24 food, Worker 52/60 [Warrior 4/15] [5/0/1 rice + 1/3/1 grassland hill]
Worker A road (done), Worker B road (1t), Worker C move NE-NE and road (1t) [A/C road horses]

(T49) Pottery discovered, Hunting 3t
Gettysburg 10/26 food, Warrior 2/15 [Settler 102/100] [5/1/1 wheat + 4/2/1 cows + 1/3/1 grassland hill]
Antietam 4/24 food, Granary 0/60 [Warrior 4/15] [Worker 60/60] [5/0/1 rice + 3/0/1 grassland farm]
Worker A move and cottage (3t), Worker B road (done), Worker C road (done), Worker D move NE-E and road (1t) [A/C road
silks]
Settler moves NE-NE-NE-N

(T50) Hunting 2t
Gettysburg 16/26 food, Warrior 9/15 [5/1/1 wheat + 4/2/1 cows + 1/3/1 grassland hill]
Antietam 10/24 food, Granary 1/60 [Warrior 4/15] [5/0/1 rice + 3/0/1 grassland farm]
Worker A move and cottage (3t), Worker B move E and mine (3t), Worker C move and cottage (2t), Worker D mine (2t)
Settler founds city #3
[A/C build first Get cottage, B/D mine copper at Ant]

Honestly, I don't see time to slip in any pre-chopping here. We barely have enough time to connect our three cities before we're off and cranking the cottages at Gettysburg.

Let me create a new post for some diplomatic messages....

[Dr. Nomadic]

BTW are you guys going to run a specialist economy? I'm planning on doing that in my next game, so some advice would be cool (though I've read much of what CivFanatics has had to say).

[Speaker]

BTW are you guys going to run a specialist economy? I'm planning on doing that in my next game, so some advice would be cool (though I've read much of what CivFanatics has had to say).

No. The majority of our economy will be cottage-based. Have you seen our land? It is 95%+ green and mostly flat, and we are financial. We couldn't possibly have a better setup for a cottage-heavy economy.

[Sullla]

We'll start with Dantski, since his proximity makes him more important. As usual, I haven't sent any messages yet:

Dear Romalinese friends,

Welcome to the neighborhood! :D I hope you didn't mind Jubal Early dropping by to say hello to the lovely new city of Djenne. While I'd be lying if I said we were completely pleased to see you settle in our direction, we understand that there's going to be some competition for land, and our teams were pretty close together to start. So as I said before, we'd like to welcome you to the neighborhood, and ask if you'd be interested in maybe partnering on a Gettysburg/Djenne road sometime down the road, so that we can set up some of those profitable international trade routes.

At the same time, is there any way we can work out an agreement not to settle on one another's borders for at least a little while? I don't think it benefits either of us to have a huge rush to settle that no man's land between us. We'd be willing to promise you that we'll send our next settler towards Jowy, if you'll promise us in return to send your next settler towards Nakor. Can we make a gentleman's agrement to that effect? Or something along those lines? There's got to be some really juicy territory to your southeast... right?

Keep in touch and let us know what's on your mind. Cheers.

Sullla
The Killer Angels

Basically, just trying to stay on friendly terms with Dantski here, because as Speaker said earlier, skirmishers pretty much mean "do not fight with these guys until the medieval era." I'd be willing to promise a lot in exchange for Dantski sending his next settler or two in another direction. Heck, we're planning on sending our next TWO settlers north, so a promise like that costs us nothing.

Only fear is that we might come off too weak-sounding in that message. Speaker, any changes or edits before sending?

As for Jowy, nothing important but we want to make sure to keep talking, even over trivial things:

Dear Greek friends,

We hadn't heard from you in a little while, so we thought we'd say hi and see how things are going. Chamberlain spotted your scout Cover and Duck heading south; please be aware that there is a lion moving around directly north of our capital, so you may want to send him around to the east for safety. I know that this is minimal information, but we'd like to help keep your scout alive if possible as he ventures off into the wilderness.

Is there anything else we can help your team with? Please let us know, and keep the lines of communication open. Best wishes.

Sullla
The Killer Angels

This is pretty much a pointless message, but as I've said before, keep chatting with the other teams constantly to build up a good rapport. Silence is always suspicious in these games. (Like when Imperio stopped answering Realms Beyond's message for two straight months. Not too subtle they were planning an attack.) Wouldn't it be great if Jowy moved his new scout right into another invisible barb animal?

There's more Demographics stuff to analyze, but I think it has to wait until tomorrow. Too much turkey, and feeling tired... :zzz:

[RefSteel]

Dantski planted his city, and our worker was unfortunately teleported back toward our capital. I would love it if anyone could tell me exactly how this mechanic worked.

Me too - it needs testing in worldbuilder, but I'll post what I've managed to figure out so far. Since it's a wall of text though, and only tangentially related to your game, I've dumped the data in its own thread, here.