[SPOILERS] naufragar, Charriu, and Zalson's Threepenny Opera

[naufragar]

We might have vengeance against that panther yet. 96% chance of victory. We'll see what happens.

1st city goes for that clam/bronze, right? That also saves us from having to research archery right away; we will want it when another player comes along but axes and spears should help us beat back the barbs.

Uh...  So here's where I admit I didn't reevaluate after the copper pop. I had planned on planting city #2 for the cows/sharing pig and didn't deviate after Bronze Working. Next turn is decision time, so not a lot of time to think about it. I still think cow/pigs beats our copper/clam for a few reasons. We won't be able to get fishing or a work boat for a bit, so that city depends on capitol rice. The travel time is considerable. A city there gets founded on turn 35 whereas cow city gets founded on turn 33. If we found that city on turn 35, city #3 gets founded on turn 39. (As opposed to turns 33 and 40 for the other plan.) If we do clam first, there will be a stretch where cities 2 & 3 will both need to steal a food resource from the cap because they don't have their own. So I still think cow first, bronze second is better but I'll try to sim it. I might be able to get the work boat out early enough to make it work. I don't think I'll have time tonight. Also falling behind on C&D. Cairo founded this turn. Rusten and BGN the turn before.

Here is a stitch. I've tentatively placed some dots, but the only ones I have any real feeling for are cows and clams.


I apologize that the grid doesn't line up. I guess I didn't zoom out far enough.

Edit: Clams/Bronze would get founded 34. Working on it.

Additional Edit: I'm having trouble getting clam city to work. We'd have to halt work on pottery to pick up fishing. If we don't, city 2 has nothing to do for a while. The worse problem is that getting our workers over to the copper makes them very slow to do anything else in the empire. I'm putting civ aside for now. I'll try to get back to it tomorrow before I need to play the next turn. If either of you want to take a stab at it, I'm about to send you an updated sandbox. We should have a little bit of time before turn 32 demands our attention. (This is my bad. If I had put half a second's thought into it, I could've planned before I put beakers into Pottery. I don't think it would've been better, but the diligence should've been done.)

[Charriu]

I thought about dotmapping and here is what I came up with.



The Good ones:


Yellow: I have to agree with Zalson. With the addition of Copper this city looks a lot more intersting as second city. It can serve as production in the beginning and can shift into commerce later. Like Zalson said we could delay Archery and instead of Archery we could go for Fishing. To be honest I thought we already had Fishing. Don't forget that you can build Work Boats without Fishing in this version and you are EXP. In the beginning The rice from the capitol will be enough to grow in the beginning until you have the workboat.
Dark Blue: I moved this 1NW of your spot the reason for this is that it gets two more hills and one forest into the BFC. Like Yellow it can serve as production in the beginning and later with Civil Service it could work as a Great People farm or you can cottage all those grasland tiles. It no longer shares the pig with the capitol, but that should be fine, because if both Yellow and Blue take the rice and pig from the capitol it no longer has any food resource for itself. Blue can also help growing those cottages for Yellow later.
Green: Settling on the copper allows this city to grow big with the fish and clam. The biggest problem in the beginning is production but for that you have 6 forests in the BFC. It's been settled third so that Blue can build some workboats for it. Note that this city is only viable because we are CRE. It also can help the capitol grow two cottages.

The Bad ones:

Light Blue: It's not totally bad. Actually it will be a decent production city, but it's big flaw is the amount of deserts to the south and therefore some food shortages. In the beginning in can use the clam from Green until it pops borders for it's one fish. And with the floodplain and grasland to the west you can raise the food count a bit. Obviously you also want to have Masonry and a quarry to make this city work.
Red: I moved this city 1W from your spot for the following reasons.

• It gives another forest to chop for the city
  
• This way the city works as a mini-canal. Might be useful later.
  
• But the main reason is that this gives us access to dye without Iron Working. So that way we don't need Iron Working soon. 
  

Other then that this city won't be that great. It will mainly be a filler city, sharing the copper with Yellow and help growing cottages there. It also needs Civil Service to irregate the rice. Best time to settle this would be when we get Calendar before Iron Working. Note that your initial city spot also isn't that great, which isn't your fault rather the terrain.
Orange: This city screams Moai Statues. The only problems:

• It's far away from our core.
  
• It needs another city to build a workboat for it
  
• We would need to chop the two forests into the Moai Statues.
  
• We would want Iron Working so that we can mine those hills under the jungles.
  
• For the above reasons it's a pretty late Moai Statue.
  

The Ugly ones:

Pink: Let's be honest this city is terrible. Here are some reasons why:

• It lacks food, which is why it shares the rice with Red.
  
• It lacks production, which is why it shares two hills with Blue
  
• There are jungles all over the place
  
• It has no irregated tiles anywhere near it, which is why it could get irrigation from the rice or some farms in Blue's BFC.
  

I think the best use for this city is as a commerce city, just because of the 3 dye tiles. Let it grow big enough and fill all it's tiles with villages. You only want to settle this with Iron Working and maybe Civil Service.

I would advise to settle the Good ones first and hopefully by that time we found some nice cities overseas.

Oh and one minor detail. Next time you post us a map like this, could you turn off the fog of war with the toggle down-right (forgot the exact name of this). That way the map looks a bit better and you can see more clearly where everything is.

[naufragar]

So, first off, I realize I screwed up my micro. I was supposed to chop a different forest and (if we keep to original plan) we lose out on a road segment. It made me really mad.

On to more important stuff. I'm going to disagree with some stuff you've put forward, so I want to preface all this by saying I'm really grateful you guys are taking the time to check my work and make me think of alternate angles.

Charriu, I like your dotmap. I think Red in particular is brilliant. I also agree with your assessment of
Light Blue. If we farm its floodplains, it can stagnate at size 7 working all its green tiles and water tiles.

My disagreements are all unified under "Which city is city number 2?"

For reference, here's a sim I ran out to turn 41 founding for the clam first.



Here's a sim I ran founding for cow first.



(I tried to find a fog of war toggle, but I must have missed it. I googled, but google just told me how to use World Builder to remove it.)

They look very close, with clam first perhaps edging out cow first, because clam first gains a copper mine over a normal grass hill mine, despite cow first getting a third worker.

But I don't think they are. Clam sim needs city #3 to be adjacent to the cow, as you've dot mapped, in order for the workers to have anything to do and for the city to have any good tiles to work. But in the medium term, a city with only grass cow to its name isn't strong. It's a four food tile, which is just slightly better than no food resource at all. The two extra mines are a consideration, although 1 extra forest is probably too marginal to matter. The city could cottage or farm all the its grass tiles, but then it does nothing but grow very slowly. And that's in the very long term. I don't think that city is good.

So, if I want to avoid planting adjacent to the cows, the workers have nothing to do after improving copper. They could chop the forest 1E of City 2 into a workboat, but that's about it, and I'm not terribly happy about that trade either. The truth is, a clams tile pre-lighthouse is unexciting. It's 1 commerce better than a farmed floodplains. I think the grass cow isn't a terribly exciting tile, and I think the cow is a better tile than the clam for a long time. So the trade off is, do we want a significantly earlier copper in exchange for settling a weaker city 3? With your plan we get copper on turn 37, with mine on turn 44. If we get blown up by barbs or raiders from the sea, I'll feel foolish, but I don't think that's likely.

I don't think clam city is especially strong (until lots of love has gone into it) and I don't think the 7 turns on the copper are going to break us. In exchange, we get an additional worker and a significantly better eastern city.

And, Zalson, you've convinced me to hold off on Archery even without bronze! We'll have plenty of warriors and we'll be in slavery if the worst should happen.

I meant to go into more depth, but I have to run. Again, I'm very appreciative and I hope it doesn't sound like I'm dismissing your plans out of hand!

[Charriu]

Your tone is perfectly reasonable. After all we are here to get you thinking and justifying your moves.

About that button: I will look into it when I'm home.

[Charriu]

I meant the Bare Map toggle.

[Zalson]

For some reason I thought we had fishing. I agree on the cow spot.

[naufragar]

If I had reevaluated after Bronze Working, I probably would've thought to pick up Fishing instead of going to Pottery. In other terrible news, I played back to back turns and forgot to revolt to slavery on the first one, so lost a turn of production at the second city as well as delaying its border pop which will screw up the timing for the cow pasture.

This game is going to kill me.

[Krill]

This game is going to kill me.

This game is tiddlywinks compared to PB3.

Also, you should write down the micro for the first 30 odd turns when you do the sim, that way you just check that when you play the turn. Much quicker and you don't second guess yourself.

Communication is key, even if it is communicating from your past self to your future.

[naufragar]

The fallout of the two combined mistakes (wrong forest, missed revolt) pushes the plan back a turn. The wrong forest delayed a worker, but he now catches up because borders are popping later. Micro remains the same; I'm just now a step behind.

Here's a greatest cities screen:



Donovan Zoi got Stonehenge. I like this play, I think. Hannibal isn't a fast leader, but Fin/Cha/almost-Cre is nothing to sneeze at. Plus if he'll be planting coastal and therefore have fewer hammers, he won't want to put time into border pops.

I wonder what we should do about our marble. Part of the joy of Creative is avoiding Mysticism for almost forever. So, while it would be eye-poppingly amazing to use the marble to grab Oracle to grab Metal Casting to grab Colossus, I don't know if we can or would want to. Rusten started with Myst, and we know Donovan has it. I worry about winning Oracle, and if we lose it, we've burned a ton of beakers for very little. The other brilliant wonder on this map (besides Colossus) is the Great Lighthouse. This is another we'd have to really book it to grab, but we do need Masonry for marble, so we'll already have the tech for it. It just feels that this start has already needed practically every first and second row tech, so an early wonder is out of reach. What do you all think?

I don't want to waste the marble, however, especially since I suspect few other people have it. It wasn't in the BFC and it wasn't a strategic, so I doubt it was accounted for in a balance pass. The other somewhat close wonders that want marble are the Mausoleum of Maussollos and the Great Library. On this map (normal civ4 lushness, few luxuries), the Mausoleum is probably too expensive to warrant a beeline. I'm toying with the Great Library, however. Literature unlocks the marble-boosted Heroic and National Epics (although I don't know how we make use of them any time soon), plus if we're already there, maybe we stretch for the Music artist.

The city that we plant on copper, Charriu's Green 4, would have 6 forests in its BFC for an adjusted 180h of the needed 350. (More realistically, we'll have to chop one forest for something, so 5 forests, 150h.) This is quite a start.

Going for Masonry, Literature, and maybe even Music pushes our Currency date very far back, but with the possibility of intercontinental trade routes, perhaps that's doable. How does this sound? The potential city isn't very green, but the Library's scientists could be super helpful for something like Astro.

Oh, I just realized that the Parthenon also is marble boosted, but I don't think we have enough food to make that worthwhile.

[naufragar]

The turn has rolled and I'm about to play. I just want to have proof that I've called my incoming fuck up before I do it.



I know in my civ playing bones that I've either lost two workers or am about to lose a settler once I move it. Pray for naufragar's morale.


Edit: No panthers! City #3 gets founded next turn.