[Spoilers] PBEM 62 - Ichabod's Thread, feat. Mardoc and retep

[Ichabod]

The other thing we have to decide on the first turn, other than what to build/tech (which will be simed), is where to move our scout.

I think the main thing we want to achieve with the scout is to find the best second city spot avaiable to us. That means exploring the area around our Capital, instead of moving him further away, to try to find opponents, for example.

Settling in place will reveal a lot of info, due to the hills and water. The water we can see is salt water, so it means those bodies of water are actually of decent size. This is relevant because, if we go East with the scout, through that narrow pass, it'll be hard for him to circle around and get back to explore North and West. So, it seems better to move N, W or SW with the scout. It's also better to explore the more land based terrain, since a second city with seafood is submoptimal (sharing a worker is way simpler than building another WB).

With the placement of the lakes in mind, seeing that NE seems to be blocked by water, I think we should start moving north and circle to West and South from there.

[Mardoc]

Agreed, taking Isabella means a ruthless focus on expansion. Which means we need to know where to expand to. I think our ideal 2nd city would be west along the river, if it's got food. That would let it share riverside cottages with the capital, have automatic trade, and be inland.

The only possible thing that would get in the way: it might be worth moving the scout to the east briefly to see what's there. Maybe 1E is a better capital if there's food in the fog?

[Ichabod]

Agreed, taking Isabella means a ruthless focus on expansion. Which means we need to know where to expand to. I think our ideal 2nd city would be west along the river, if it's got food. That would let it share riverside cottages with the capital, have automatic trade, and be inland.

The only possible thing that would get in the way: it might be worth moving the scout to the east briefly to see what's there. Maybe 1E is a better capital if there's food in the fog?

Unfortunately, if we can trust fog gazing the picture, the river is very short. It ends just 2W of the settler. That means no automatic TR will be possible, if my knowledge of how it works is right.

Settling 1E loses too much land for water tiles, I feel. And it loses the 5 hpt to go WB first. But "losing" a scout turn to check for food to the E before settling might be worth it, because it only costs a turn of scouting. But there's actually only one tile that could have usuable food, because one of them is unimprovable for a long time seafood and the other is a grass forest. Furthermore, considering I'll spend a lot of time siming SIP, I don't think I'll move the Capital, even if there's a new food resource there.

[Mardoc]

I agree it's a low percentage chance. Plus there's meta-reasoning: I know mapmakers like to try to keep you in place. Sometimes they mess up, but not often.

Err...especially when the possibility is mentioned before they finish making the map

[Ichabod]

I made some extensive testing yesterday, though probably not in the most effective way.

I found out the following things:

*We need to open with Agri.
*Slowly building a WB is worse than doing it with full hammers from turn 1.

The following questions remain: what is a better opening?

*Worker first.
*WB first, worker at size 2.
*WB first, worker at size 1.

So, here's some tests I've made:

Worker first:

We can get a settler at EoT 18, the fastest I've managed that seemed decent.







WB first, worker size 2:




WB first, worker size 1:




As you can see, these openings are all pretty similar. Opening with a worker first actually ends up with more food/hammers, but it has less commerce. Based on this, we need to try to evaluate what we need more for the next few turns.

This start made me think the following: we need to improve corn and fish as soon as possible. After that, we don't need another worker, becuase there's nothing that important to improve afterwards, so we need a settler. Whipping this settler seems better than slowbuilding it (here I still need to decide which is better, growing to size 4 or 5 to whip). After whipping the settler, I want to put the overflow into something nice: that could be a worker or a granary. I like the idea of the granary, because we need the whip to make food into hammers for the granary, while workers can turn food into hammers when they want/need. Besides, we are likely growing the city after that whip and having a granary will be very profitable.

Using the overflow into a worker, like the pictures shows ends up with us having to slowbuild the granary while growing (which is bad) or grow again and than whip it (also bad, because we again grew without a granary). So, I like the idea of putting settler overflow into a 1 turn granary.

That being said the commerce advantage that opening with a WB has can end up mattering. If that's not the case, which I think it won't be if we plan things carefully, it seems that opening with a worker wins. I need more testing, though.

[Mardoc]

Hmm, interesting.

Tech or foodhammers - in my opinion, that depends on how much tech we can get. Once we have Bronze Working and Pottery, we'll have all we *need* for a while. Granaries, workers, settlers, and garrisons are likely to be all we want to build for a while. We might perhaps need more worker tech depending on what our scout finds. I really think our tech rate early is either 'enough' or 'not enough', though. A little extra commerce isn't worth nearly as much as an extra worker.

So, how much tech do your various runs end up with?

After that, we don't need another worker, becuase there's nothing that important to improve afterwards, so we need a settler.

I'm not sure I agree with this. We need a road to our second city, cottages or mines for the non-resource population, and we can always start chopping our forests (that's an alternate way to get a granary). Once we have a settler, we need the worker to improve the second city's tiles, so the capital has to be finished. Ideally we'd have enough workers that we could both improve the second city's tiles and chop a forest into a granary immediately.

Your screenshots show that the settler is ready before the worker has done much of anything - maybe one tile improved besides the corn. I don't think that's enough.

It's possible I don't have the full picture, of course. But I don't think it's worthwhile sending out a settler without at least one worker to help him, and preferably more.

[Ichabod]

Decided to try going for 2 workers before the settler, in order to synchronize things with pottery + overflowing the granary and get some more improvements, like mardoc suggested. I'm in a hurry, will comment more later.

Worker first, another worker at size 4 before settler:




WB first, 2 workers at size 2:




There can probably be some improvements in these tries, but I'm more worried about general strategy, like what to build in what order. I'm liking worker first more, basically because I agree with Mardoc's comment about tech this early being enough or not enough.

[ReallyEvilMuffin]

Am I allowed to offer micro advice, or is that only if I lurk in purely your thread? I had a similar opening with England in a pitboss that I am playing.

[Mardoc]

That seems better. Why are you farming the grass tile? I would have thought that corn + fish would be enough food and we'd want to use riverside grassland for cottages. Maybe something about not researching Pottery yet?

[Mardoc]

Am I allowed to offer micro advice, or is that only if I lurk in purely your thread? I had a similar opening with England in a pitboss that I am playing.

It's borderline. Not obviously bad like giving us spoiler information, but some people object. It's probably safer if you put the advice in the lurker thread and we can read it after the game - or if other lurkers think I'm being over cautious, then you can post it here later.