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

[ReallyEvilMuffin]

I can't remember exactly now, the worker chopped 1 forest before farming but apart from that I cannot remember what I did.

[retep]

I see that in the spreadsheet you are settling 3W of the capital (on the hill). I don't think that is a good spot. If you are going that route then 4w is just better.

Agree with Mardoc that corn/pig is pretty far away. Difficult to defend, slow to contribute.

I must say I still like 1S of the corn the best, and a third city to grab pig/ivory.

I may even go and make a microplan/sandbox.

[retep]

Second city has already the granary. The cooper is disconected though so there is that.
I have anything to compare. I'm guessing the spreadsheet isn't good enough for T25 (eot24 actually for pbem)



Here cooper conected for extra security but if you go for hunting after pottery this means you can't build warriors anymore.

This isn't perfect (mostly something I make in between responding e-mails) just throwing ideas out there.

[Ichabod]

Awesome! Now I can finally ask my question - and this was unrelated to the capital copper, I had this in mind before I knew that was there.

You seemed to hone in on going agriculture first straight away without much thought to anything else. Why did you not consider BW first, to get the workboat out, grow to size 2, slave the first worker as you are expansive which would be faster than slowbuilding it? I did this in my similar start in a pitboss where I had the same starting techs and it worked out well. You are also spiritual so you don't even lose a turn revolting.

Without using the knowledge that there was copper you could have got the settler out turn 20 with 2 workers and a granary built next turn - that is what I managed to get using a quick sim I put up before you started playing a week or so ago.

Was there any reason you didn't try this?

Well, I did try this opening, going WB first, teching BW and slaving a worker. The answer I can give you is that I tried it and didn't like it, looking back at my notes (which are difficult to understand after two weeks without looking at them, I'm definetely not an ORG leader). I have a not that this opening would be strictly worse than worker first or WB first, followed by worker at size 1.

That doesn't mean that the opening you suggested is definetely worse than the one I chose. It's just that I wasn't able to make it work. Turn 20 settler with 2 workers and a granary definetely seems strong, so I guess I missed some pretty interesting option when simming.

So, I did try it, I just wasn't able to make it work.

Awesome! Now I can finally ask my question - and this was unrelated to the capital copper, I had this in mind before I knew that was there.

You seemed to hone in on going agriculture first straight away without much thought to anything else. Why did you not consider BW first, to get the workboat out, grow to size 2, slave the first worker as you are expansive which would be faster than slowbuilding it? I did this in my similar start in a pitboss where I had the same starting techs and it worked out well. You are also spiritual so you don't even lose a turn revolting.

Without using the knowledge that there was copper you could have got the settler out turn 20 with 2 workers and a granary built next turn - that is what I managed to get using a quick sim I put up.

Was there any reason you didn't try this?

Well I did vote for WB first
In the top of my head, how many forest did you chop? If the answer is 1 or more then you are doing it wrong.

Ichabod said that one(wb first) give more commerce and the other (worker) have more food, probably something to do with getting the worker 4t early, which help to improve the corn early and stuff like that.

Wait, maybe Ichabod was lying? Danm Ichabod!

Don't mistake incompetence for dishonesty. Hanlon's razor, is that it?

I'm still here too, still watching. I haven't found any time to analyze anything, so take the following with a grain of salt:

I like the corn/ivory first ring option the best of the second cities you've found so far. Early happy is important.

I agree with retep that a good option for a third or fourth city is to the east, to share capital food. I would like it if you could get a scout over that way to gain us more information. This is because I think the capital might have too much food to always work, and I want those tiles always worked.

Your corn/pigs proposed cities seem good. My only worry is that it's a lot of distance before we have cottages to pay for it or roads to defend it. But maybe I'm being too pessimistic.

Although I like an early religion, I wouldn't push too hard for it. There are only four competitors, and therefore a good chance that a religion will still be there if we delay. More important to get worker techs.

Thanks for the suggestions, Mardoc. I still haven't spent enough time thinking about second city and dotmaps, so anything you see here are merely something I intend to try, not anything set in stone.

The to go or not to go for a religion is a decision bind to a lot of other decisions. For example, if we decide to settle the pigs in a third city, we'll need AH, so we can't go for religion this early. I'm sure we'll manage to get a religion sometime, but the strategic decision to go for one right now is more related to the benefit in poping borders for free, I'd say, rather than based in the benefits we can get from a religion later. So, I'll probably give the idea some more thought.

I see that in the spreadsheet you are settling 3W of the capital (on the hill). I don't think that is a good spot. If you are going that route then 4w is just better.

Agree with Mardoc that corn/pig is pretty far away. Difficult to defend, slow to contribute.

I must say I still like 1S of the corn the best, and a third city to grab pig/ivory.

I may even go and make a microplan/sandbox.

3W of Capital was just a placeholder, I agree that it's not a good spot. I like the idea of 1S of the corn and I want to try 2S of the corn. If we can work the copper with that city until the granary is done, we could wait for the Capital to pop borders to get the corn, than we could improve it. It's definetely slower than 1S of corn, but it has better long term potential, being coastal and having (likely sharing) bananas. What do you think about this option?

Thanks for the sims. I'm working on a updated sandbox, but my computer was having problems the whole night and that delayed things. I'll use your sims as a "to-beat" objective, which will likely help.

Remember that this game has barbs on, so we can't stay so long without a strategic resource hooked up.

[Ichabod]

Thanks for all the comments, by the way.

As a prize, here's an off-topic question. I intend to name my second city Lapsang Souchong. Have you ever tried this tea? Do you like it?

[Ichabod]

As a bonus, I got a new turn before going to bed.

Interesting news! Marble!




And demographics after ending turn, just so I can inflate my ego while I still can.

[Mardoc]

As a prize, here's an off-topic question. I intend to name my second city Lapsang Souchong. Have you ever tried this tea? Do you like it?

Haven't, no. I only moved from tea bags to loose tea about 18 months ago, and I'm still exploring the world of tea.

From what wikipedia says, I think I ought to try it.

[Ichabod]

I need to think of another objectives, to keep my focus.

A. Things I need to make:

1. A dotmap.

2. Simulations on the sandbox involving the second city.


B. In game things I need to take into consideration:

What do we need to look for so early in the game?

1. Strategic resource for defense purposes.

We got that covered already, now that we already have copper. I like the idea about roading it right now, so we can build axes if needed, but I think retep is right about the advantage of building warriors. This is a point towards delaying hunting.

2. A way to pop borders.

Religion would obviously be the best way to do this, this early, but it involves a risk. There's a chance I'll make a bit of C&D to try and discover what my opponents are teching, to try and make such a decision more informed. Though getting Myst > Poly/Medi as 5th and 6th techs isn't a very reliable plan, I have to say.

If we can't get an early religion, we only have monuments. I don't want that, because monuments are a waste of hammers and Myst a waste of commerce. Obviously, there are situations where you can't forgo them, but I'll try to go without culture expansions through monuments, if at all possible. That's something to be taken into account on the dot map. If we can delay this culture expansions, we can use Caste or a later religion to pop borders.

3. Techs to improve the resources we settle.

Right now, that means basically AH. If we want to settle the pasture resources, we need AH. If we want to tech in another direction, like writing or religion, we have to settle for fish/farms.

All this questions are related to each other, so we need to organize our thoughts a bit. We need to think about where all this questions come together, sicen we can't really answer them all separately.

The key rule right now is that we need to expand: expansive saves us a lot of hammers this early (and gives us "more turns" through granaries) and we have to use this hammers as an advantage to win the game, otherwise FIN will easily surpass us later. There's nothing to build right now that presses our advantage other than settlers/workers/granaries (i.e. expansion). Using our extra hammers in military units, barracks, libraries is a waste -> our opponents won't build those and they'll get even with us in expansion, while the benefit we get from these builds will be negligible so early.

If we expand fast, we'll go broke. We can't really avoid this, but we can make it less painful. We need to turn our early production advantage into commerce that will enable us to keep expanding, for more advantages. We also need to avoid "wasting" beakers, investing them in things we are not going to use this early.

How can we make commerce?

1. Through specialists.

I don't think that's a good option here. Libraries are very expensive this early in the game, and I don't think the investment on them will be worth it. The big prize would be an early GP, for a bulb/academy. But a low slider will make an academy bad and I don't see anything good that we can bulb with a scientist right now. The library % on science will also suffer with our expansion. Finally, we are SPI, so GP can easily come through Caste later.

2. Through cottages.

We are getting very early pottery, so we have to use cottages to our advantage. The cities we settle need to be able to work them, so we can't slack on the number of workers and we have to try to expand to river areas, since non-riverside cottages are more of a late game investment, but aren't worth it right now. The second city we are planning won't have a river of its own, so sharing cottages with the Capital is a must. This speaks in favor of a city 1S of the corn, not 2S, since 2S only gets 1 riverside cottage tile to work, while 1S gets 3.

That's something to take into account when deciding for a third city site, especially since there's no easy plants for riverside tiles to the W (easy plant would be one that get good resources, nice amount of river tiles and doesn't require a border pop for any of this). This speaks towards exploring to the E, to find a place to settle a city sharing a food from the Capital + river tiles. I'm considering bringing my scout back from the W after exploring the big river, in order to head E. I have to see if this is feasible.

Granaries will make our cities grow faster and work more tiles and this tiles will likely be cottages. But we'll need to whip often to keep expanding and getting workers, so it's best to work the cottages when we grow back up. Right now, stay at a high pop seems counterproductive, which once again speaks in favour of the riverside cottages -> we want them to get cheap commerce, right now we are not working them as an investment (i.e. our objective is not to stay at high pop getting cpttage turns); this will be an objective later, after some more turns.

Regarding the workers we need to lay down these cottages, I have a question. When do we build workers, considering we are EXP? My rationale to answer this question goes like this:

a. Slow-building settlers and workers is bad, because we aren't growing when this happens.

b. Getting big overflow into workers is bad, because of the discount on the overflow. It's best to finish workers as close to 40h as possible. This means whipping workers is bad (due to the food to hammers conversion and the fact that you need to fill the production bar when you whip, whipping workers always results in big overflow, if I'm not mistaken).

So, it seems the best way to build workers as EXP is to do it with big overflow from another build, trying to finish them in 2, 3 turns tops (likely overflow from 3-pop whipped settlers). Either that or chopping carefully (i.e. avoiding big overflow), but chopping right now is not the best, since we don't have maths. Finally, building them in cities that would not have better tiles to grow to, nor would benefit from a whip right now also seems fine.

3 Trade routes.

There's two ways to boost TRs, that don't involve opponents. The first is Currency, the second is Sailing (IC TRs). We already have an interesting plant for an island city, near the crabs (seems to be a 1 tile island), so we need to plan a way to get one there when it starts being profitable (how many cities we need to turn this into a profitable venture?). Getting a fast currency is also a plan and a pretty safe one. We'd be giving up on a whole bunch of first-to bonueses to do it, so it's not straightforward as it may seem; it would only make sense with a cutthroat expansion style, otherwise there's not much point in rushing it that fast.

The marble we saw and the whole bunch of calendar resources makes me think that Currency -> Sailing -> Calendar is a good plan. We get sailing + the IC city after currency and after we have that powerful city near the marble. We use the marble to get MoM, which fits the heavy expansion strategy. Anyway, that's a bit far into the future.

---

Ok, this is a big mess and I need to go back to work. I'll try to continue these thoughts later.

Next thing to thing about is "How to avoid wasting beakers?".

[Mardoc]

b. Getting big overflow into workers is bad, because of the discount on the overflow. It's best to finish workers as close to 40h as possible. This means whipping workers is bad (due to the food to hammers conversion and the fact that you need to fill the production bar when you whip, whipping workers always results in big overflow, if I'm not mistaken).

I don't understand this point at all. The hammers get multiplied first by the worker bonus, and then the overflow is divided by the worker bonus, and all we lose is a little bit of rounding. Right?

If we build workers with hammers, that is. If we build them with food, then we don't get the exp multiplier, but we do suffer the overflow divide.

But that seems to argue for the opposite of your conclusion - that we want to build workers mainly with whips and chops, and put as little food into them as we can.

[Ichabod]

b. Getting big overflow into workers is bad, because of the discount on the overflow. It's best to finish workers as close to 40h as possible. This means whipping workers is bad (due to the food to hammers conversion and the fact that you need to fill the production bar when you whip, whipping workers always results in big overflow, if I'm not mistaken).

I don't understand this point at all. The hammers get multiplied first by the worker bonus, and then the overflow is divided by the worker bonus, and all we lose is a little bit of rounding. Right?

If we build workers with hammers, that is. If we build them with food, then we don't get the exp multiplier, but we do suffer the overflow divide.

But that seems to argue for the opposite of your conclusion - that we want to build workers mainly with whips and chops, and put as little food into them as we can.

My point about overflow/whips is the following. Let's take our Capital as an example.

Let's say we whip the city from size 3 to size 2 when the worker is at 15/40. We will get exacly 40/40 production after the whip. But, since we also will be working tiles on the turn we whipped, we'll get 9 food + 2 hammers of overflow. So, we'll have 11 hammers of overflow, which get cut to 8 after the multiplyer, losing 3 hammers. Is not something huge, but it's not optimal either.

If we get the same overflow from a settler into a worker (let's round up to 12, because we'd be planning to get it optimally), that's 15 production we get from the overflow, we actually multiplyed the food overflow, instead of dividing it. And if we control our "normal" production after this overflow, we can finish the worker at an exact 40/40 hammers, with no overflow penalty.

So, I guess the conclusion I get is that we want to receive overflow into workers, rather than get overflow from workers. This way, we still get most of the production from hammers (which get multiplyed), but we don't lose production afterwards. Essentially, we are multiplying our "food production", rather than dividing it.