Unfinished business - SG for improving at Civ 4 (sic)

[shallow_thought]

Longer term, Brian has some good points. I was thinking we'd cottage at least one floodplain, but we don't need commerce anything like as much as we need food, and I hadn't counted up the total food in the area. In the game, BW before wheel may make sense, particularly if don't go double-worker (anarchy while moving the settler?). And yep, we need scouting units. Some FFH-style paranoia may be appropriate. We have barb archers outside our borders by turn 40, and my (unescorted) settler was one turn short of being eaten by a wolf in one case...

The capital is in no way a commerce site. In fact, there could be an argument to move the palace down the road if we find ourselves a strong commerce site, at Civil Service.

Are you playing trial turns off the base map? For me that's a no-no, as it becomes less of an exercise in sharpening your play and more of endlessly reloading turns.

Long term it's certainly true this isn't a commerce zone. Short term, the gold, oasis and rivers seem to provide enough to blitz through the early techs. Moving the palace is something I've not really tried before - it does look like this map will provide a good chance to learn.

As for simming, I rolled a second map off the same settings and then worldbuildered to make the start match, removing everything within a few tiles and replacing it with ice, so an example run through looks something like this (apologies for the lack of cropping):


So the civs met are a random bunch, not the ones in the real game. And any barbs / animals met are also not specifically relevant. I hopefully uploaded the base for this sim along with the real start.


I have certainly been running through the same 40 turns over and over trying a few different things. I hope that I've been discovering non-obvious things or proving that silly ideas really didn't work rather than just doing a brute force search through the possibilities - as you say, not much to learn from the latter.

[Brian Shanahan]

Longer term, Brian has some good points. I was thinking we'd cottage at least one floodplain, but we don't need commerce anything like as much as we need food, and I hadn't counted up the total food in the area. In the game, BW before wheel may make sense, particularly if don't go double-worker (anarchy while moving the settler?). And yep, we need scouting units. Some FFH-style paranoia may be appropriate. We have barb archers outside our borders by turn 40, and my (unescorted) settler was one turn short of being eaten by a wolf in one case...

The capital is in no way a commerce site. In fact, there could be an argument to move the palace down the road if we find ourselves a strong commerce site, at Civil Service.

Are you playing trial turns off the base map? For me that's a no-no, as it becomes less of an exercise in sharpening your play and more of endlessly reloading turns.

Long term it's certainly true this isn't a commerce zone. Short term, the gold, oasis and rivers seem to provide enough to blitz through the early techs. Moving the palace is something I've not really tried before - it does look like this map will provide a good chance to learn.

As for simming, I rolled a second map off the same settings and then worldbuildered to make the start match, removing everything within a few tiles and replacing it with ice, so an example run through looks something like this (apologies for the lack of cropping):


So the civs met are a random bunch, not the ones in the real game. And any barbs / animals met are also not specifically relevant. I hopefully uploaded the base for this sim along with the real start.


I have certainly been running through the same 40 turns over and over trying a few different things. I hope that I've been discovering non-obvious things or proving that silly ideas really didn't work rather than just doing a brute force search through the possibilities - as you say, not much to learn from the latter.

Simming that way is ok, as you're not accessing information that you shouldn't know until you've played the turns for real.

I think it'd be a good idea to play the set out at this stage, especially if you've a plan down, and we can go from there.

IIRC we're looking at dom/conquest correct? If so the early game will play out normally, as the best time to go a-Viking is probably at around the time of Oromos/Rifles when we can establish a proper tech gap if we set up correctly. Tech up the empire, get good sites and work towards an industrial break out on the war front would be my long term plan.

[shallow_thought]

I think it'd be a good idea to play the set out at this stage, especially if you've a plan down, and we can go from there.

I'd like to wait for Zalson's feedback on the SIP / 1NW decision. More immediately, we have the in-laws round and I'm probably not going to have the right combination of time and sobriety to play until Tuesday evening (maybe tomorrow if there's time before dinner). But yeah, I'm keen to get going .

Sketch plan is "normal": worker-warrior-settler, AH-AGG-BW (I think we can revolt while settler is moving). Best guess as to 2nd city site is plains hill south of oasis, but that decision will be up to the 2nd player (I guess that's Brian, simply on sign-up order- @Brian does that work for you?), and obviously depends on scouting. Final decision on third tech and third production falls to next player as well.

[Zalson]

If you're waiting on me: Go for the plains hill. We can always move back if it is all desert.
I'll take look at the sim now.

[Zalson]

I tried 3 plans:

1. SIP - Ag - AH - Wheel - Pottery - bw (t40), city 2 on T40
2. Plains hill - Ag, AH, wheel, pottery, BW due T42, City 2 on t39ish
3. Plains hill - AH, BW, Wheel. City 2 by T32.

The plan details are in spoilers below. I think plan 3 is the strongest. I mean, I stopped at T32 and it was significantly faster than the others. Size 2 capital and new city on T32 (with 2T to grow to size 3 at the cap), with 2 workers by T35ish. Just so much better than the other starts I had.

The plan avoids agriculture and farming the floodplains at the capital: We’ve got enough food so we don’t really need the floodplain farms at the capital. Additionally, FP farms take 7 turns to complete. FP cottages take only 5 worker turns.

Our second city should be founded to claim another food resource, preferably a cow or another pig. However, if we need to found on a agriculture resource, we can easily switch to Agriculture and finish that by the time we arrive at the spot we’ve selected (we'll be able to start it on T27 and finish by 32 because we'll work the gold mine into our settler).

Let me know how this differs from your AH first start, shallow_thought.

SIP
Research path: Ag - AH - Wheel - Pottery
T0 Settle in place, start a worker
T8 Finish Ag, start AH
T15 Worker (improve gold)
T18 - Animal Husbandry, Start Wheel (move toward pigs)
T20 - Start Pigs (probably could just move there from the start)
T23 - finish pasture. Aksum at size 2.
T25 - move back to gold
T27 - Finish warrior, start settler (11T)
T32 - Pottery, start BW, Start cottage 1S of Aksum
T36 - finish cottage 1
T38 - Finish settler, start granary (just grow to size 5).
T40 - Finish BW, settler at a founding distance.

Probably could be refined by tighter worker movement but seems pretty decent.

Same tech path, plains hill
Ag - AH - Wheel - Pottery
T0 move
T1 found city, start worker, select Ag
T13 worker - start warrior; worker to gold
T18 - gold mine done, switch to gold mine for a faster AH
T19 - finish warrior, start settler (b/c might as well put some hammers in there)
T20 - AH, worker on pasture
T21 - start wheel, start pasture on pigs
T23 - Aksum size 2, finish pigs.
T24 - moooooove workers….
T26 - finish warrior, start warrior (1t in before switching to settler at 3)
t27 -start settler, (10t)
T28 - wheel comes in, start pottery
T32 - FP farm 1 finishes
T34 - finish pottery, start BW, cottage FP
T37 - settler

I think probably optimal for the plains hill plan is this path:

AH - BW — Wheel - Ag - Pottery
T1 - found city
T13 - Worker
T14 - AH, start pasture
T17 - finish pasture
T18 - lamely move to the gold
T20 - finish warrior, start settler (11t) — there’s not really much point in getting another worker here. might as well have the settler, right?
T23 - gold mine
T24 - move 1E and start a mine for lack of other worker actions
T25 - 1t mine,
T26 - move to a forest
T27 - BW (no anarchy), chop forest
T29 - chop into settler (finish)
T30 - settler, 15 overflow can go into a warrior but we should put it into a worker.
t31 - warrior in order to grow. I mismoved the worker in my sim; it should go chop into the second worker at the cap (instead of chopping into city 2). so, moves to chop here and there are like 5 turns to growth, i think.
T32 - start a worker b/c at city 2 because why not. Realistically, we'll probably want a warrior, just so the city can grow. Although a worker might not be a bad choice if we're trying to get workers in place to hook up a food resource -- might as well grown in something like 5 turns as opposed to 8 turns on a warrior we don't really need yet.

[shallow_thought]

I tried 3 plans:

3. Plains hill - AH, BW, Wheel. City 2 by T32.

The plan details are in spoilers below. I think plan 3 is the strongest. I mean, I stopped at T32 and it was significantly faster than the others. Size 2 capital and new city on T32 (with 2T to grow to size 3 at the cap), with 2 workers by T35ish. Just so much better than the other starts I had.

1NW + AH definitely seems to be the best start.

T18 - lamely move to the gold

Yeah, this hurts, but there is nothing else to do.

The plan avoids agriculture and farming the floodplains at the capital: We’ve got enough food so we don’t really need the floodplain farms at the capital. Additionally, FP farms take 7 turns to complete. FP cottages take only 5 worker turns.

Our second city should be founded to claim another food resource, preferably a cow or another pig. However, if we need to found on a agriculture resource, we can easily switch to Agriculture and finish that by the time we arrive at the spot we’ve selected (we'll be able to start it on T27 and finish by 32 because we'll work the gold mine into our settler).

Let me know how this differs from your AH first start, shallow_thought.

I'd not got round to trying the early BW + chops. It's obviously faster at getting the settler out (compared to agriculture first), but risks having to work unimproved tiles for a few turns after cap growth to three and at the founding of the city. So long as those tiles are still a net gain (basically, provides at least 2f and something more) it looks stronger to get the new city out; your suggestion is thus a little stronger than my AH->Agg start (in the absence of other information). 

Should be able to get started tonight, but it'll probably be tomorrow before a full report. I may post some intermediate screenshots, but unless the land is truly horrible to the NW and forces a rethink, I'll just plough on to turn 20.

So:

shallow_thought - playing now! (20 turns)
Brian Shanahan - up next (15 turns)
Zalson - on deck (10 turns)

[Molach]

Lurker comment:

Most common victory in MP is "concession victory" which means that the player is clearly ahead with no rivals. Sort of like a domination victory, but triggers much earlier. Tech also plays a part in concession victory unlike dom/conquest. Another factor is if there is a major rival (or coalition of civs) that can oppose the runaway. Also quality of land + improvements.

[Zalson]

If we're concerned about unimproved tiles at size 3 at the cap, we can always whip off them

Maybe grow to size 3-1 and whip the worker for max overflow into the other worker (which we chop out?).

Then we can have 3 workers? EDIT: no we can't, we'd need to get to size 4 to double whip the worker.

Even if the land is absolutely terrible north of the plains hill plant, it still might be worthwhile. 2 cities faster leads to 3 cities faster leads to 4 cities faster etc.

@ Molach: we will happily accept the AIs concession.

[shallow_thought]

I had a quick sim through early BW with chops. Works for me. Hopefully works for next player...

So, I've played up to EOT 19. Am not actually sure whether that is the correct stopping point, but am happy to break here to avoid a putting 1t into the gold mine. May mean one more turn for Brian. Have attached save; can always play one more turn ™.

My father in law is wondering why I am in the study and turned down a beer ( I now have one), so this is report is going to be shorter than I would like. Will try to be better in future! Nothing too exciting.


I sent the scout around in a circle close to the city, looking for second city sites.. Had a scary panther moment but the cat wasn't hungry.

Headlines:
- NW was a mix of plains and grass; some silk.
- Have met Mansa Musa (came from the N) - there are worse neighbours to have. He has founded Hinduism; someone else has Buddhism.
- We have horses nearby, a mix of food around, jungle to the N.

Overview of the known world:




The long days of simming are over - the save is up! Really wondering if anything good is south of the horses.

[Brian Shanahan]

I've claimed the save. Won't look at it tonight, as it's nearly midnight. Have a look tomorrow and post some thoughts.

But from gazing at the map as revealed, we've got some very nice land there. Possible sites off the top of my head are 1) 2N of the Wheat and 2E of the banana (requires IW); 2) somewhere between the wheat and cows (which'll cancel 1); 3) 2N of the horses 1E of the other gold (will require farming grass & plains, a slow grower); 4) there'll be a good site in the north-west; 5) somewhere in the west by the rice, depending on what seafood is in the fog; 6) if we see food, somwhere south of the horses.

Plan looks like to be mine gold, finish warrior, finish bronze, chop settler, start wheel.