[Spoilers] Fintourist and Old Harry have nothing to see here

[Fintourist]

Turn 48

One more turn and city C gets founded:



I let the overflow in the capital to finish us a 2nd warrior and I suggest that we finish a 3rd next turn! I saw that one of your micro plans includes overflowing into a granary (on T49), but I think we should get those warriors out so that we can safely settle our next cities and build cheapest possible military police units still as we can. I haven't yet played T49 so we have still time to discuss.

There were no other interesting domestic news, but if I'm reading civstats correctly:

Retep razed a city from Bacchus!! That's Ok, that possibly gives someone else extra room to expand and a weak neighbor so maybe that's bad for us.. But let's cross our fingers and hope that these guys are our western neighbors!

Aaaaaand demos:

[Fintourist]

Turn 49

I went and played the obvious moves of the turn:



1. Next time let's rename the city to Cannae, right?
2. I have warrior selected in "Canne" too. In my micro I went warrior+worker in the city while your plan says granary. Hmm...
3. Thanks to our 3rd city our demos are so great that we have to show them without spoilers:



3rd in food!

And yeah, our mfg.. And soldier points.. But let's enjoy the fact that we are not totally behind everybody yet.. Let's keep fighting.

Re soldier points: Rival best 73k is quite much.. I can't see a sensible reason for anybody to attack us, but maybe we should just play it safely and tech that damn Archery immediately. We are not building a library that soon anyways me thinks..

[Fintourist]

Microplan comparison

It's a close case. Here is a small "analysis" I did based on the EOT65/Beginning of T66 situation:



So as you can see, both of our plans have produced roughly the same amount of foodhammers by EOT65. This all a bit relative since in "Cities ASAP" a fair amount of food has been already converted into hammers while "Max Infra" has to still do it in order to get a settler + worker out. With nerfed whipping the conversion rate is not amazing (note that the past effect of granaries is already taken into account in the current city size so with a double-whip from size 4 to 2 the conversion is 52 food --> 50 hammers)

Now the case is really, which one is bigger:
1. The benefits of better food->hammer conversion rate that granaries in "Max infra" enable in our cities (1), 2, and 3
2. The benefits of getting cities 4 & 5 functional faster.

I'm really not sure, which approach I prefer, probably still getting those new cities up and running asap, but I might be biased because that's what I've more been working with. I think I really have to play with both saves until T75 or something in order to see what comes ahead and make up my mind.. That said, I'm on it!

[Fintourist]

Ok, here are two very rough sims where we could be at T75:

Granaries first:



And faster cities:



Relevant saves are here and here

Granaries first provides more developed core cities although, especially city C has the library way earlier, because in my sim I spent the hammers on worker instead. However with "cities asap" our cities D&E are already in better shape. D will pop borders next turn and we have a settling party ready heading to settle "island pigs city".

I think I still prefer getting cities faster up although I'm getting a feeling that the optimal solution would be a some kind of compromise between the plans that we have proposed..

Ok, that's enough of sandboxing. For now.

(EDIT) Last comment: The more vertical approach + library is ~150 beakers and 40 gold ahead.

EDIT2: I want both fast granaries and cities...

[Old Harry]

I'm back, but would you like to carry on turnplaying? I'll let you finish this one off in any case..

I think I follow your calculations - I guess it's only after the granaries have been built that you can really compare what extra bonus they would confer, but given that the number of foodhammers is roughly even in thirty turns then lets go for the earlier cities. There must be something we're missing here about earlier development that Seven would describe elegantly in terms of derivative functions or multi-planar dodads or whatever, leaving me thinking I understand it when that couldn't be further from the truth. But my gut feeling is: More cities good.

Can I propose a hybrid though - Cann(a)e starts slow and will not have much food until Calendar + Iron Working, which is why I wanted to chop the granary first there, just to get it big enough to start working cottages as they are built. How about if we do that but concentrate on fast cities everywhere else? As (tenuous) supporting evidence at some point I think Krill implied that his pitboss 5 performance was down to getting cities to the happy cap quick and then working mines, because of how much less valuable the whip is here.

Finally. How does granaries first get so many more beakers?

[Fintourist]

I made it! I mean I finally found a solution that balances nicely between our runs

I'm back, but would you like to carry on turnplaying? I'll let you finish this one off in any case..

Noooo, yeees, nooo! My work takes so much time that it has been great that you have been taking a lot of resposibility! I promise that I won't be as tedious as now too often!

Can I propose a hybrid though - Cann(a)e starts slow and will not have much food until Calendar + Iron Working, which is why I wanted to chop the granary first there, just to get it big enough to start working cottages as they are built.

Absolutely. This is definitely the right way!

Finally. How does granaries first get so many more beakers?

Mostly because of Cannae! Earlier library and more cottages worked! In your original micro Agincourt and Bay of Pigs also have some cottage turns.

But as a conclusion:
I'll go and change both Agincourt and Cannae back to granaries. I also start Archery just in case. We don't need Writing yet and our opening is slighly gambly as our power rating shows..

I will post the detailed micro suggestion here latest on Tuesday (exam in the afternoon). T50 is still identical with your T58 micro plan except that I think I want worker A to start cottaging W of Cannae.

[Old Harry]

Okay, well you're playing at least until you tell me what I need to be doing

Do you want to finish Archery or just have it near enough that we can 1 or 2-turn it?

And I think that Bachus' is down to only one city now. Painful! I did call the firewall-war though didn't I?

[Fintourist]

Okay, well you're playing at least until you tell me what I need to be doing

Now that the weekend is gone, my civ time is again reduced (or practically gone). How about this: I do my final testing today in the evening and play T50 (nothing radical happens there yet, I want to tweak worker micro just a bit). Later in the evening I post the best micro plan that I have managed to create, and then you take charge, correct all my mistakes and lead our empire for the next 20-200 turns

Do you want to finish Archery or just have it near enough that we can 1 or 2-turn it?

I thought that we want to finish it so that if we see an enemy, we can immediately put 1 turn into bowman, next turn whip it without a penalty and on the 3rd turn kill a barb or whatever is causing us headache. Or do you prefer to gamble even a bit more?

And I think that Bachus' is down to only one city now. Painful! I did call the firewall-war though didn't I?

That must be it!

[Fintourist]

Suttree's post indicates that there is another conclict in the world and based on civstats it has to be with Bacchus, Yurimack, retep, Nakor, or us But at least I haven't received a PM from suttree so maybe we are safe.. It also could be pindicooter, I'm not sure how to interpret civstats with regards to them.

It's of course possible that suttree is somehow involved in the Bacchus-retep conclict, but my bet is that he has some kind of situation either with Yurimack or NakorJester. Fingers crossed that this is a real conflict with Yurimack as they are our neighbors...

Ok, now the last sandboxing push.. I hope you haven't lost your nerves with me yet, Harry!

[Old Harry]

Sounds from the tech thread like its Yuris - we should have graphs on them, so I might log in to see what I can see.

Re: your message in the tech thread - Civstats can't cope with pauses - if you reload the page you'll see it keeps going back to 6ish hours and counting down...

On gambling with archery - in a game this size you have to take risks to get out ahead at the end. When I was lurking PB8 Lewwyn was adamant that he had to keep taking risks - I think only one or two didn't pay off, and if they had it's possible Lewger could have challenged Plako at the end... Although its also important to have a decent power level so your neighbours don't get ideas. Right now I don't think Yurimack or dtay have graphs on us though, so we should only worry about a Pindicooter-style invasion fleet.