Remember, the Deer can't be hooked until with have Animal Husbandry, so the deer time is blank until t70.
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[Spoiler] PB42: Rusten and mackoti play Krill playing Bismarck of Portugal
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(November 23rd, 2018, 18:09)Rusten Wrote: I could be persuaded to settle pigs+copper as 5th or 6th and ignore copper until then. With the copper being 1st ring that is feasible. Closer to AH by then too. Given that dry corn is the best time we have beyond the city 3 wet corn, I think it is less about what is a fast started in absolute terms, and what is going to be quickest here. We could completly change this plan, and just go Agri>AH, and then to pottery, but that doesn't help the problem of every city hitting size 4 happy cap and we have nothing to do except slave axes. In fact, unless we have a way to get 2 happy into each city I don't think we can do anything longer term. We will just get run over by someone that did luck out with precalendar happy who could rush HBR, which is the main reason I'm flippant about copper. I feel any plan about rushing to 4 cities and a capital granary is about then being prepared to spam out and defend 2 cities that grab distant happy resources, and we are stuck planning for something we don't know is true. Anyway, if we split the pigs.from the capital, it has to be at size 5 with 2 cottages and 2 mines, or 4 cottages and a granary to be of any real value, as we stop all horizontal expansion to give the pig over. I can't see how we can fit that in earlier than city 5?
I was planning under the pretence that we'll get monarchy with Oracle, but I might've changed my mind anyway. Perhaps corn+copper is not so bad, but it's not just about the dry corn, it's the lack of any natural commerce. I consider you/us to have a big advantage over most of the field so I'm naturally risk averse and would therefore like early copper. Firstly for overall skill and secondly because IIRC the demos show that the most land tiles another capital has is 18, and ours is at 21, on a river no less. That means we have a good chance of running away with the game later if nothing terrible happens thanks to starting location alone. Mackoti talked about this early in the thread, and I completely agree after having played on shitty maps for most of my civ career --> a good bureaucracy capital carries the entire empire in research in the mid-game. Stack it with warriors and multipliers and let it shine.
You can choose 2 ways to settle. Relying on monarchy and giving 2 of the NW cities double food, or you can space them closely and expect a lower happy cap. The latter would be OK with settling city #4 as you suggested and then another city for fish 1st ring. In other words, copper+corn, Yb, xa and filler. I could get behind that.
November 23rd, 2018, 21:00
(This post was last modified: November 23rd, 2018, 21:30 by Rusten.)
There's always a number of ways to play an opening. One late night thought that occurred to me is skipping the granary in capital short term but chopping it immediately in copper+pigs instead to ensure quick growth from 1 -> 4. Copper on size 2 (great tile), 2/2 deer on size 3 (decent even without improvement --> whip settler on size 4.
Instead keep capital size 4 or 5 working fp+sheep+mine+mine without whipping much. I'm not entirely sure this is good, although I like it at first glance, but the point being that I'd try looking for ways to make it work. Not settling copper is not a 'gain some efficiency at some risk' play. It's a 'gain efficiency at the risk of having a game over'. There's a big difference there. It's not long ago that you talked about having too many hammers and needing something productive to put them into (SH), so I fail to see how investing in such a city can slow us down that much.
sincerly i see no problems with cooper beeing there. You can get city 3 between the deer and cooper grow to size 2 and build workers, setler with it till turn 70 when deer will get conected.Will be a marginal city but still very stron anfd having a conection with capitol right away. From my experience will pay back .
Now I'm back in front of a keyboard, I'll try to explain myself better.
Quote:I'm not entirely sure this is good, although I like it at first glance, but the point being that I'd try looking for ways to make it work. Not settling copper is not a 'gain some efficiency at some risk' play. It's a 'gain efficiency at the risk of having a game over'. There's a big difference there. It has long been accepted (IMO) that this is an acceptable decision to make, simply because it means less time spent logging in and playing a turn that has limited meaning. Not specifically commenting on the correctness of such a decision, just that it's not a taboo. Quote:There's always a number of ways to play an opening. One late night thought that occurred to me is skipping the granary in capital short term but chopping it immediately in copper+pigs instead to ensure quick growth from 1 -> 4. Copper on size 2 (great tile), 2/2 deer on size 3 (decent even without improvement --> whip settler on size 4. Part of the issue with the granary comparisons, between which city it is best to chop it in, is that the capital granary isn't chopped to completion. It's produced by a one pop whip overflow from settler3, base overflow and production (however, the settler does get a double chop which contributes about 10 hammers overflow to the granary). The chops are mostly going into settlers and workers. The other problem is that of how the food is distributed. With a capital granary, it takes 8 turns to grow from size 2 (due to the one pop whip) to size 5, and it needs the pigs for all of these turns. Without building the granary, it takes 4 turns to reach size 4 (and produce 1 warrior), 7 turns to reach size 5. After that, it can give the pigs up about half the time (doesn't need it when stagnating at size 4 or 5, only needs it for 2 turns per pop growth, so if it regularly double whips, then only needs the pigs for 4 turns out of every 10). And it's worth noting that the capital granary is critical if we are planning to grow that onto the 15 cottages it needs. The copper/deer city needs about 5 turns to just get the granary with a double chop, and then needs the pigs for 2 turns per pop growth. The granary saves 23 food on growth to size 4 (39 by regrowth to size 3) if perfect completion occurs at size 1, which is definitely possible. What this means is that, IMO, we would need both granaries to make this city overlap work. If we go straight to Pottery, we get that around T45. The downside to this is that capital granary lands around T47, and then growth occurs until T55. Around T55 is when the copper/deer city could take the pigs. So to work backwards, that means copper/pigs needs to be settled around T50, unless we settle it earlier, get the copper improved and use a single forest chop on the granary. That is throwing on the breaks both with tech (none of the cottage city tiles are riverside despite the river) and growth (sitting at size 1 for 10 turns? The granary loses about 5 food saving). I would make the argument that it may be better to double whip a settler out of city 2 for the copper (or could single pop whip around T48 if built at size 3). That would settle copper by T53 via double whip, or T50 via the single whip (IMO single whip is better but we produce one fewer warrior due to stopping growth earlier). This would make the copper/deer city 5, and we have two other cities down, with 4 workers. Copper could be hooked pretty swiftly, I think most of the roads would be in place and we'd have cottages at the capital, and the second city would have 5 inner ring forests for Oracle. This then leaves us with the question: where does city 4 go that doesn't break the snowball? (November 23rd, 2018, 21:00)Rusten Wrote: It's not long ago that you talked about having too many hammers and needing something productive to put them into (SH), so I fail to see how investing in such a city can slow us down that much. This point is more about when the hammers become available, and the value of the settlers when the dot map is being difficult. I'd rather have Oracle and Religion than Henge. Krill Wrote:But I'm not sure how much I trust OH to not be a dick in this instance, and scout with fort bonus on a forest hill is a bitch to remove. He could just move straight out of the borders, but that forest hill tile must be too tempting due to the river, even if we had a unit adjacent to it, it's not like I'd attack his scout. Turn 26 Turns out that OH moved the scout out of borders and re-offered peace. I accepted, now he can't screw with micro.  Two new food resources uncovered. Scout N-W next turn and then N-W on T28 seems safest and uncovers the same land as just moving N-NW this turn. Warrior is a little more difficult, but as we have vision on the bear I'd be tempted to just move onto the sheep, and then the fp SW of it on T28, but the coast via SE is probably safer.  Nothing new here, just going to fort in place and the city can uncover the last FoW.  Taken before slave. (November 24th, 2018, 04:26)Krill Wrote:Quote:I'm not entirely sure this is good, although I like it at first glance, but the point being that I'd try looking for ways to make it work. Not settling copper is not a 'gain some efficiency at some risk' play. It's a 'gain efficiency at the risk of having a game over'. There's a big difference there. I'm short of time and haven't had time to digest the rest of the post but this part stood out to me. That is a ridiculous philosophy. Are you willing to throw away a game in an instant for miniscule gains? There are so many opportunities over the course of a game to take risks for potential profit that don't come with massive prize tags. If you're in a situation where you have to risk a game over to remain in contention then I agree, but that is not even close to being the case here. We're talking about minor settling efficiencies.
I'll argue the side that it is not a ridiculous philosophy with two points. The first is that in this specific position, it's not a minuscule gain by not claiming the copper, it's significantly larger. The effect of placing a settler for no food resource is one that I think we accept is bad, and the only way to make this work requires significant investment into two granaries, with specific timing to not break growth, compared to settling for another food resource. In effect, the copper location locks out a significant number of strategies, all of which could have good pay off. One example is that we are much less likely to get Oracle for Monarchy because of the delay by going to Pottery (I've never planned not to, but skipping Wheel and Pottery would probably have ensured Oracle without a large loss in growth). The other side of the cost/benefit analysis is that OH has to make an active move to build a stack of units to pose a real threat (archers can deal with chariots, AH is not a critical tech, and having to juggle around a single scouting unit is not a game losing problem in itself), and within the metagame of an FFA, OH ends up investing in units that give him no benefit whilst help third parties. OH knows this, and is a good enough player to not be opportunistic but measured. If he builds an axe, it's to deal with barb warriors. If he builds a spear it's to cover a front city placed towards us. If he builds a chariot it's to scout, and as he is already scouting us, he won't send that towards us immediately.
The second point is that worker first has always had an inherent risk when we've played games using the base ruleset, due to dying to the starting warrior. This has happened before (Mortius, PB2, not sure if others). Delaying copper is just another part of those same cost benefit analyses. I can give two examples, one of delaying copper that I know were the right, and where rushing for it was wrong: PB5 where I settled it with the 8th or so city, using chariots and HA to manage along with a sentry net and PB27 where I rushed forwards for it against an unknown (sockpuppet or not) Egypt player (in PB27, this was compounded by settling my third city for no food, which at the time I thought was justifiable but in reality was wrong. FWIW, in that game I was keeping up with the leaders in growth until that city, and then I trailed forever in a rush to Astro all because of that delay). --- I'll stress that in this position, I am not advocating that the copper tile is completely ignored, what I would consider is having it second ring with the slower hook up. And I am not even saying that that is a good idea. |