[Team 2 & Lurkers Only] Kragroth: Orc Warchief Speaks!

[Kragroth]

Chapter 13

Kragroth, Tasunke, Cardith Lorda: Eat that Pirate Scum!



Ezzard the Hippus Scout slew the troublesome Lanun pirate scout who threatened the Triad's lands. Its citizens were safe again for now!

That night the Triad nations celebrated their victory over the sea hag Hannah. Tasunke stood before the amalgamated crowd.
Tasunke: Let us all celebrate! To Ezzard and Victory!
Everyone Else: To Ezzard and Victory!
Cardith: May Ezzard continue to protect our lands from those who would harm us!
Kragroth: May Ezzard crush our enemies and show no hesitation!
The crowd cheered once more.
Tasunke: Let the feast begin!
The citizens and warriors of the triad nations feasted and celebrated. After much eating and drinking, a cadre of lizardmen cooks in black robes came in with specialized dishes for every table. Bit by bit every table had a sample of the dishes
Lrizzle Lizardman Cook: Try thisssss tassssty dish fellowsssss in our of our conquesssst!
The crowd began sampling the dishes as well as Cardith, Tasunkke, and Kragroth
Cardith: So exactly what is this dish? It's.....interesting
Lrizzle Lizardman Cook: Why, the purified remains of our enemy scout!
The Clan Citizens begin eating with satsfaction while the Hippus and Kuriorate citizens begin puking

[Kragroth]

Chapter 14

Kragroth sits upon his throne having finished much thinking
Kragroth: Bouquetin has killed the Evil Kuriorate Scout. Now, we have 2 veteran scouts we can use to defend ourselves and harass our enemies.
Tasunke and Cardith Lorda nod.
Kragroth: Why is it that such seemingly puny scouts are so feared?
Cardith: Scouts can harass workers and hurt an economy
Tasunke: Scouts give the enemy knowledge
Kragroth: Yes, but why were we particularly worried about a scout. A Warrior in our lands would be seemingly more dangerous and harder to remove.
Tasunke: A scout is faster.
Kragroth: Yes. Exactly. That little bit of extra speed makes all the difference. That one extra movement gives the ability of a scout to potentially run circles around the warriors with one less movement.
Cardith: True, but a scout can hardly decimate an empire, even a well promoted one. Moreover, they cost the same as a warrior which has better strength. Hammer for hammer, the scouts could never make a dent.
Tasunke: Yes indeed. If the enemy anticipated an attack, they could simply create an equal amount of warriors to defend and the scouts could not gain.
Kragroth smiles
Kragroth: It's true that scouts aren't strong enough, but what if there was a unit that was sufficiently stronger that was quicker than a scout and easier to bring out before the enemy can raise sufficient defenses?
Cardith and Tasunke listen silently
Kragroth smiles and brings out three pictures:







Kragroth lays the picture of the Centaur, wolf rider, and horseman before his allies.

Kragroth: We have several advantages in pursuing this path before us.
1. Horseback Riding Technology is available immediately after Animal Husbandry. Kuriorates and Clan can immediately build Centaurs and Wolf Riders while Hippus must build stables first. But, Hippus already start with Horses and do not need extra time to research Exploration and connect horses to cities or hope to get lucky to have horses within capitol range.
2. Horseback Riding is fewer beakers than getting Crafting then Mining then Bronze Working.
3. Building Centaurs and Wolf Riders is cheaper and faster than building training yards or archery ranges first.
4. Mounted Units live longer because of their offensive and defensive withdrawl rate and are able to effectively recoup their cost by dying less.
5. Mounted units can reach the enemy much quicker than 1 or even 2 move units.
6. Mounted units are much better able to pillage improvements and steal workers
7. Mounted units are much better able to engage in guerilla tactics and wear down an enemy better than 1 move units
8. Mounted units are much better able to scout and switch target cities to find the weakest link to attack

Cardith: So, it doesn't matter if the enemy and us created an equal number of units?
Tasunke: Heh, The enemy can only defend so many places at once. The mounted units can all combine into one stack and attack the city of their choice.
Cardith: The advantage will be with the mounted units.
Kragroth Laughs
Kragroth: You see, not only is a sufficiently large mounted stack likely able to break the first city it encounters, but it can easily move around to find a poorly defended city and attack it there. Even if for some reason the mounted stack is not enough to take out the enemy, it can engage in a guerilla campaign to pillage its improvements and stifle its growth. Meanwhile our cities would continue to prosper while we continue to settle and expand.
Tasunke: What's the defense against them?
Kragroth: A sufficient number of High Str Defensive Units which they won't have in time. Barring that, they'd need their own force of mounted units for a counterattack. And, there we would again have the advantage, Aggressive trait makes a big difference as does guaranteed Horses for Hippus and Warcry.
Kragroth smiles

[Kragroth]

Alright lurkers. You can post. I've noticed at least two lurker names as the last posted person on the EITB VIII Summary forum for the Team 1 Thread.

[Mardoc]

I'm watching with interest. But you don't leave a lot of hooks for a lurker to jump in .

Remember, we're restricted to comments that we're confident aren't imbalancing. For one example, it'd be really bad to say 'hey, what would you do if Team 2 horseman rushes you?' Or even 'hey, why do you think they chose those civs, does it suggest anything about their plans?' That's part of why it's really hard to comment on high-level strategic plans - so much depends on what the other team is doing. And no one wants a game to be decided by a careless lurker comment.

The sorts of things that we can talk about:
- Game mechanics questions (example: when exactly does a unit get their bronze weapons? What's the chance to resist a spell?). You don't appear to have any of these, or made any noticeable mistakes about mechanics.
- Decisions that are already past. The game is young, there aren't many of these yet. On top, your reports are mostly high level and text. Generally if you mention a thing in your report, it's because you thought about it, and if you thought about it you probably chose something reasonable. So the easy ones to talk about require you to be posting screenshots, where we can notice things you didn't think to mention.
- Fiction, naming schemes, etc. I like your framing story, but I don't have anything to add to it.


I appreciate your posting your strategic reasoning, but there's not a lot I can say about it. You don't appear to have made any horrible game-mechanics errors, or asked lurkers any questions. The bigger question of 'good idea or not', well, that's not my place to say.

A horseman rush might work! Or it might not! Whether it does or not, I really really don't want to talk you into it, or out of it, or accidentally give the other team a hint it's coming. So it's always safer to keep my mouth shut or go post in the lurker thread

[Kragroth]

Well I'm glad you're trying to act with fidelity.

Very well, questions:



1. Our partner wants to make a worker quickly. It will be 6 turns to create another settler. At what point should our city #2 create a new worker?

2. The next anticipated city site is below:



What's the expected maintenance cost for this?

3. Generally speaking how do I determine how much maintenance cost I will pay for a new city AKA how much commerce do I have to generate to break even beaker wise for a city?

4. How do we determine at what point it's worth it to spend beakers and hammers to build warrens instead of other techs?

[Aurorarcher]

Kragroth, I think you might've misunderstood my email earlier (to Lurkers: I'm unable to play the turns for a while so my team plays the turns for me).

I don't think it's smart to build worker in the #2 city right away. Instead, it might be smart to build 2nd worker before 2nd settler in the capital. That worker could go make road towards #3 city and once the settler is on the way go improve 3rd city. Getting worker first delays #3 city about 3-4 turns. The roads speed up the settling of #3 city a bit.

This all depends on if we have researched Exploration at the point when worker comes out. If it seems that we can't get Exploration in time, then getting 2nd settler first certainly makes more sense.

Also, did you settle #2 city yet? If not it could be settled 1W from wine, gets all the same valuable tiles (+ the wine). Of course settling on the desert gives base -25% defensive bonus. Sorry for this, didn't notice it earlier.

I forgot how the maintenance cost was calculated but what I remember that it depends on the map and difficulty level. I'm pretty sure some of the lurkers also know better how the distance is calculated.

[Kragroth]

Yes a primer on maintenance costs calculation would be helpful

Regarding the Settling Situation.

It was 8 turns until horseback riding and 6 turns for a settler and now it's 7 turns until horseback riding and 5 turns until a settler.



I don't like the idea of settling on a wine because I like the extra commerce, but I don't think the capitol is on a river and we will want derepetus house eventually. We need the city on the river: no other city will be there. We want it one north because of the nice Sheep Tile will eventually be 3 Food 2 Hammer 2 Commerce which is great. Moving onto the desert gives us the penalty to defense which is bad and denies us the river for dereptus for kurio later. I think the original decision is good.

Now, the question remains is how much growth do we wait for City 2 to have before it builds a worker.

[Kragroth]

I did the math and basically if we build 1 worker right away, we'll get a worker in about 10 turns. If we wait until city size 2 to start building a worker, we'll get a worker in roughly 12 turns. Also, this city maintenance will force us to 80% science and delay Horseback Riding by 1 turn to 7 turns.

I'm tempted to say just build a worker right away.

[Mardoc]

1. Our partner wants to make a worker quickly. It will be 6 turns to create another settler. At what point should our city #2 create a new worker?

Can't give a specific answer without spending a lot more time than I want - but as a general rule, you want to keep your workers such that you're never working an unimproved tile. Obviously there are exceptions, like T0, but that's the goal.

2. The next anticipated city site is below:
What's the expected maintenance cost for this?

3. Generally speaking how do I determine how much maintenance cost I will pay for a new city AKA how much commerce do I have to generate to break even beaker wise for a city?

You'll need the map dimensions, map 'size' (duel, small, etc), difficulty level, and to count the distance to your capital. Then you can plug them into the formula here: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.p...stcount=89

To be super rigorous, you'll want to account for the increase in maintenance in cities you've already founded, but I'd expect that to be ~1gpt for city 2 or 3.

I haven't done this rigorously, but would expect your first city to be 1-3 gpt cost, and your second one around ~5-7gpt, given those locations. Might be overestimating it because you're on a flat map, though.

4. How do we determine at what point it's worth it to spend beakers and hammers to build warrens instead of other techs?

Gut feel.

I mean, you could make a formula, but it'll depend on your assumptions anyway. Things to consider: how long does it take to make 120 hammers worth of units? That's the breakeven point after building a warren (er, if I'm remember warren cost right). Can you get by with less units until that point? Would you rather have 1 unit today or 3 in 30 turns? That sort of thing depends too much on how the game as a whole is going, for there to be a single right answer.

Beakers are an even harder question, you've got to compare that to what else you can do with them. At least Masonry isn't terribly expensive as a tech.

[Kragroth]

Auro wants to get the corn in the 3 tile radius. I think it's worth exploring a little bit more. It might be nice to start with 2 production hill for our rush.