[SPOILER] PB37 Dark Savant tries not to be a blatant MP n00b

[Dark Savant]

Turn 36 (2560 BC)

The barb warrior disappeared into the fog, either N or NE.

I had Frodo complete the road.

I'm not sure where to move the warrior.  I did read up on barb AI enough to know that it won't actually enter my territory with this few cities total planted.  I could try to run onto one of the forests, but I don't think the barb AI will necessarily take those kinds of odds.

Logged out for now, currently frantically reading what I can get on barb AI.  

[Dark Savant]

Turn 36 continued

AI barbs this early that aren't Raging apparently simply wander randomly unless they are directly adjacent to a unit.  So I moved our warrior NE:



I can claim one of those two forests, the forested hill if I can take it.  The chance of the barb warrior taking it first would be 1/2 * 1/4 + 1/2 + 1/6 = 20.83%.

If I can take it (~80%), Maura will move NE to the plains tile and build a road for 1 turn if not threatened, or move directly onto the forested hill with the warrior if so.  Our warrior would have ~99% odds of winning on defense.

If the warrior moves onto the forested hill, our warrior will claim the other forest and I'll have Maura move north onto the hill.  The warrior has ~97% odds of winning there if attacked; the barb AI rolls a die to determine if it will attack.  If not, the chance Maura is threatened (no way of defending him there) is 1/3; I can move onto the forested hill and have the warrior cover him while the other warrior visible to the northwest closes in.  That would delay the planting of orange dot by 1 turn minimum.  (If we plant orange dot while the barb warrior is adjacent, it'll attack with ~20% odds of winning.)

In other news:

There are two food resources two squares diagonally across the seas.  There's that deer visible on that island to the north, and also crab south of blue dot for some future island cities:



Krill's scout moved SW onto the grassland hill, avoiding a scouting war with Gavagai for now, though he probably will declare next turn to crash through; he'll only see now that Gavagai's warrior isn't at full strength.  Unless barbs really ruin our day, we can prevent Krill's scout from getting past orange dot  .  The main reason I can think of not to is some tacit deal where he lets our scout live in return.  Our own scout found this:



C&D: Ventessel (last to play on t35) planted his second city either at the end of last turn or the start of this turn.  It has 1 water tile in first-ring (+8,000 land area).

dtay whipped his capital for 1 pop.  We can't do that until we have our rice farm ready to go; I'll probably first whip the capital to produce a granary.  It'll be able to quickly grow to size 4 after that, maybe size 5 -- that'll happen just around the time when we can get our first luxury or two online.

Krill isn't putting any espionage into us; not a surprise.  I'm sure Gavagai is thrilled to be next to Expansive/Aggressive us (researched Bronze Working and The Wheel before Agriculture!), and Aggressive (and aggressive) Incan Krill.

Krill grew his capital to size 5 (demographics shows someone with 90,000 citizens).  Enough time has elapsed since growing to size 4 that he likely produced a worker, so I believe he still hasn't even started a settler yet, though he should be able to chop one out quickly now.  He isn't yet in Slavery.  GermanJoey also grew his capital, to size 4.  I've started to keep track of all city sizes in my C&D spreadsheet.

dtay showed up with a technology that has to be The Wheel.  JR4 showed up with Bronze Working, so he researched Mining before.  No sign of anyone going for religion, though this is about when I expect the race to begin.

[Dark Savant]

Turn 37 (2520 BC)

The barb warrior moves to the forested hill.    I make the planned moves with the two warriors and worker for that move:



Harmondale reaches size 2 and whips its barracks (anyone doing serious C&D should be able to tell I did exactly that):



Our scout in search of Krill's homeland finds another barb warrior.   At least we're safe for this turn:



C&D: CML's second city hit size 2.  He planted his city 1t after ours; he'd need to have planted on a 3 food tile to have grown that fast  or have 2 workers at his second city.  I think it's actually the first -- his initial development was worker -> work boat -> 1 or 2 warriors -> settler, and he didn't get Bronze Working until t30; I don't see how he could have produced a second worker before ~t33 (he didn't whip it), which wouldn't actually help the second city in time.

CML and Coeurva both showed up with new technologies, in 7 turns and 6 turns respectively.  Let's see if this is Mysticism (cost 79) or The Wheel (cost 96); Archery is too cheap to have been this slow and anything else would have taken longer.  CML probably revolted to Slavery early in that span, and his capital has been size 3 for a while and probably is working the three food resources, so not the oasis.   Coeurva would have been working the oasis until recently, which might be enough to get The Wheel in 6 turns if he's running 100% science.  So I think CML has Mysticism, and Coeurva more likely than not does too, which I can double-check next turn once the power report comes in.

[Dark Savant]

Oh, and Ventessel's capital also hit size 4 just this turn (t37).

If you want to know how closely I'm tracking this:



The fact that the city sizes follow a strange progression (1k, 6k, 21k, 48k, 90k ...) makes this relatively easy to calculate and double-check against the Demographics numbers.

(edit: I also just realized I confused t36 with t37.  The new version of the spreadsheet fixes that.)

[Dark Savant]

Turn 38 (2480 BC)

The barb warrior attacked and lost to our warrior on the forest. Frodo started a road on the hill in celebration.  He'll start improving orange dot one turn late, but orange dot will plant on schedule, and its barracks can still be whipped at the same time, so it's not too much of a loss.  We do need that barracks, not just to claim that position against Gavagai, but also to get its silver within our territory so I can connect it by about t60.

We finish our first building, Harmondale's barracks. It's still strange thinking of barracks as producing culture. Sam finishing chopping the forest into the worker I'm overflowing into; it's due in 2 turns.

Our warriors are posted to intercept any more barb warriors that come our way.  Krill's scout can't arrive until about t45, so I'm not going to worry about that just yet.

Our scout proceeds towards where I think Krill is located:



Boy, that's a ton of food. Gavagai and Krill may well come to blows over that much food!  I'm also expecting Gavagai to plant his third city in this direction; there's not much reason I know of to put it our way, and if his land is anything like ours he's got a lot of water and jungle to his east and southeast.

I think if I continue north-northeast, I'll find Krill.  That is starting to look like the jungle that's south of both our and Gavagai's start positions.

Agriculture is due in 2 turns.  Except I'm not actually in a hurry to farm the rice!  I do not plan to use it until t53.  (Yeah ... a majority of players were already working it on t20.  I'm getting the impression my play is only working out not only because we're Expansive, but because we lucked into copper at the capital.)  I'm planning this in Castle Ironfist:

• t40 settler for orange dot done
  
• t43 worker #4 done
  
• t50 settler for city #4 done
  
• t52 on this turn I anticipate having exactly 30 hammers into a granary, so I can whip it for 1 pop here.  I actually need that random mine I built to pull that off. Castle Ironfist can then grow very fast.
  

In this plan, I intend to hook up copper for Castle Ironfist and orange dot on t43.  The rice farm should finish on t49, and our first cottage should be worked on t54.  Harmondale will not have copper for quite some time (we simply won't have the worker turns to spare for a while), so it can continue to produce warriors.

C&D: CML's capital grew to size 4; Coeurva's second city grew to size 2; GermanJoey's capital grew to size 5; both of JR4's cities grew (to sizes 4 and 2).  I've now committed us to growing laterally instead of vertically until we get Pottery, so I'm going to try to not think we're falling behind. (And we're currently last in crop production, because of that whip. That settler and worker will arrive in 2 turns to start us out of that hole.) GermanJoey is RtR-Protective, has had Pottery for several turns, and he can readily grow onto multiple cottages being Charismatic, so his capital growth makes the most sense.

Ventessel got a mystery technology.  Given how long he's been researching this plus the previous mystery technology, I think he has The Wheel plus either Hunting or Pottery.

Coeurva's technology last turn was actually The Wheel (as he now shows its +4000 soldiers), which would have been enough to give him second place in soldier score (24000), and we know he produced 3 warriors on t23, t31, and t33.  Second place is now 26000, so there's a good chance he just produced another warrior (he may be recovering from that t35 whip); I can check this next turn.

Gavagai also has produced 3 warriors.  His capital has been stalled on growth for a while, so it's been on workers/settlers.

We're going to get graphs on Krill quickly since he's not trying to compete with us on espionage.

edit: Also, Gavagai got 5 extra tiles from Edirne expanding borders.

[Dark Savant]

Long-term plans

Okay, I'm now worrying about long-term planning.  I'd like your input on the following:

• Where do we want city #4?  I'm pretty sure we should plant this on blue dot (see below for map if you don't remember; there's an extra fish there I cropped accidentally).  I believe yellow dot, green dot, and that 5-food location north of yellow dot are all in our backlines (we also don't have the last of those properly scouted), and we need to start securing territory against Coeurva.  Blue dot gets off to a slow start, but I can arrange to get a worker there to chop both the forests there and get it off the ground to become a powerhouse.  (That's the worker I'm planning to have Castle Ironfist build after orange dot settler.)  Blue dot has Moai Statues written all over it.  In the current schedule, it will plant on t52.
  
• How helpful is it to kill Krill's scout, if it shows up?  If I block the forest hill, a warrior can get ~90% odds on him if he tries a scouting war to get past orange dot.  Is this actually that important, though?  It's not too much effort to arrange.  Speaking of scouts, I haven't the faintest idea where Gavagai's is.  At this point I'm guessing some barb warrior killed it.
  
• Do we want to try for a religion after getting Agriculture and Pottery?  I'm thinking no, since we have no reason to research even Mysticism for a while, but I'd like your input.  This depends on what other people do, but I'm getting the impression no one is in any hurry at all to found even Buddhism or Hinduism.  Its opportunity cost is delaying Animal Husbandry (ouch), Sailing, and Writing.
  
• Where do we send our first axe?  I think we need to pressure Coeurva some.  I don't currently intend full-blown hostilities, but enough to prevent him from playing farmer's gambit.  An axe can also clean up barbs and scout all that southern fog.  Being Charismatic, Coeurva doesn't have much reason to research Animal Husbandry, so even a solitary axe can deliver nontrivial pressure.  We can probably produce one from Castle Ironfist by about t57 without interrupting growth much (we can do this much earlier if we do disrupt growth).
  
• Do we want to plant purple dot here?  I'm seriously thinking of planting purple dot as the 6th or so city:
  
  This city will produce basically nothing until we get Iron Working and will probably orphan the furs, but it gets two easy luxuries for us (auto-chop of jungled gems, and you don't need to chop jungle for ivory) and can later serve as a canal to ease naval movement.  We are going to feel the need for luxuries starting around t57; we can hook up silver and furs relatively quickly (both by about t60), but we can make use of more, and we could delay researching Iron Working quite a bit with this specific plant.
  

What do you think about all of this?

[ipecac]

I need to get back to you on which city #4 I think is best, but meanwhile to address your points:

- 3f plant on blue dot is by no means that slow. You should put a unit on the corn (and probably silver too) to prevent jungle from growing on the tile

- Killing's Krill's scout IMO is a very big MP metagame error. Gavagai's two main adversaries now are you and Krill, so Krill is a natural ally, and will most likely do a win-win OB with you (assuming sea + river trade connection or something), seeing you as not much of a threat.

As of now, Krill is your only candidate for friendly trading partner. There's not much benefit in declaring war while a great deal of loss to be had from bad relations with Krill (OB gold, possible resource trades, stuff like gold loans to speed to Currency etc).

- As to where to send your first axe, the main alternative is to pressure Gavagai. Whether you want to get involved in the fight between the two big tigers to the NE is up to you

But you *should* pressure somebody to take advantage of AGG.

-Religion: not needed. You have culture from barracks (though I would carefully consider before building them in all cities if you don't need the border expansions, as that's basically foodhammers not going into snowball), and you're not starved for happy. And mysticism -> whatever religion tech is throwing beakers for a not-certain gain, and you don't need mysticism for border expansion anyway with cheap barracks.

On purple dot:
- do you even need that much happy this early? Furs come into capital third ring t50.

Now is also the time to decide where and when you're building cottages, and whether you can lean on stuff like furs (by planting 1W of purple) and silver for commerce and build cottages slightly later.

[ipecac]

If you're not rushing anyone, then you need to plan how to recover your economy after it crashes. And if you do invade someone, then you need a plan to recover even faster/

I) Trade routes

a) Plant island city for IC routes. Are we /certain/ those are islands?
b) trade routes with Krill or some other person

II) Tech to beeline
a) Iron Working for those jungled gems (note they'll take quite a bit of worker turns to improve, and you need to get a city to size 2 to work them both
b) Writing for Scientists, though libraries are expensive and early specs hinder snowball growth
c) Currency (needs quite a bit of beakers, but you can then build gold which is massive)
d) Metal Casting (for Colossus). Huge amount of lakes and coast in this game, the Colossus race is bound to be competitive (which also means failgold as consolation prize). This might be the only reason why you'd tech Mysticism for Oracle, but note that MC cost is reduced in RtR.
e) Code of Laws (courthouses are ex, you don't need religion, you probably don't need early CS). Plus iirc Barracks reduce some maintenance anyway.
f) Sailing for Great Lighthouse (expensive to chop, and people might not want to OB with you because of them. Then again,  you are a newb so they'll not generally figure you as a threat and will likely OB with you if it's win-win)
g) Anything else???

III) Cottages
cottages are not *that* big in RtR, which has a greater emphasis on hammers economy and building Gold (and maybe beakers). Some cottages may be good at the beginning to speed your way to key techs like Currency, but after that you'd probably be farming/workshop/windmilling. And your first two cities can work lakes.

Your city plans will depend on your tech plans. If you want Colossus, you might want to plant where there are lots of trees to chop . If you want to go IW first, then don't settle purple dot on jungled gems since you will want to work them. If you want Sailing for intercontinental routes, then you need to plan a good coastal city that can access an island, and maybe think about building Great Lighthouse, which requires a city with lots of trees to chop into.

[ipecac]

And your short to medium turn tech plans must depend on your overall plan to win: which boils down to 'who to invade, when, and how?'

As of now, your plans can't be too firm since you dont' have enough info about the placement of other players, which will affect metagame considerations, but you have to think about invading Couevra or Gavagai (or some other unknown neighbout). It has to be done sooner rather than later, so you need to think about what troops to attack them with (Chariots? HAs? Knights?) and when to do so. Then you need to plan a tech path, or at least have a good idea of what techs you want to priorities even if you haven't decided on a specific order.

It's not expanding for the sake of expansion, but expanding and teching to reach a certain goal. Important questions are:

Who to invade, when and how?

What techs do you need (or really want)? What can you do without? Ditto for wonders.

When do you want to trigger your first Golden Age? Assuming you're running two Scientist specs, it'll take 17 turns to pop out one. Is there some trick you want to do with a Great Person, such as rushing a key wonder or bulbing a key tech?

[ipecac]

I hope all the above considerations are not too much to dump on you at once, but these are key to actually winning especially against such tough competition. Of course, if you can take it easy this game and treat it more as a learning experience.

Myself, I don't really think through all this because I play casually, which is why I don't win.