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

[Brian Shanahan]

I have a plan for my turns.

Yaqob, let the worker complete naturally and start the Granary. Once I can double whip the granaray do so into a settler.

Drill stays at Yaqob, finishes the farm and roads the gold, before chopping into the settler.

For now Yaqob is probably best as a settler or worker pump.

Bean a Sidhe, kill the chariot and warrior builds in the city (there are no hammers stored in either so it's safe). Do the granary, and either chop or whip that to completion (double whip is preferrable), with the overflow into a barracks. If needed we can emergency whip a chariot. I consider Bean to be our military pump for now at least so a barracks here is good.

Chisel can come here to farm and mine land for the city to grow onto.

Christmas Past, finishes the worker and starts the granary. After that it can go warrior worker duty for a while.


Units produced

The settler goes to purple dot, orange wouldn't be too bad if we had multiple units to escort as with Cre it'd kill the barb city soon enough.
The worker out of Christmas can come down to Yaqob to continue with the improvements while Drill is chopping.
Yaqob's worker goes to Bean a Sidhe, as this city will need the work.

Edit: I see an early library out of purple dot, along with one in Christmas Past (we could maybe use the library there to squeeze a few growths after whips). They both can get a bit extra food for scientists, plus as borderish cities the culture will do no harm. I'll play this tomorrow.

[shallow_thought]

Sounds broadly sensible to me. As you've planned, the must haves are another settler + escort and more workers in the pipeline. I'd love to get enough military to defog the SW, but it's just not as important. I'm not sure if you'll have time to even start a library in CP, but it looks like a sensible place for one once the gold is up. I'd think carefully before sinking hammers into a barracks though; I agree that BS is the right place for our first, but am not sure about the timing. You'll have more facts available when that decision rolls around, in any case.

Ditching the chariot build is fine - I placed it as a paranoid, optional suggestion. I really enjoyed my turns; have fun with yours.

[Brian Shanahan]

Yeah, maybe the barracks is probably a bit too early, chariot first, I'd like to have some form of mobile defence.

But a barracks should be built fairly quickly nevertheless.

[taotao]

The barb city is an interesting development. They usually spawn in pretty decent locations, so there may be something useful in the fog around it. Is it on a hill? I can't tell from the screenshot. If it is, then it is unlikely the AI will manage to take it for a while. If it is on flat land then they might manage it, if they are not busy elsewhere.

I agree that the barb city is interesting. I'd say there's a very good chance that there's a second resource tile in the west/south side of it's bfc. If this was rtr-mod I'd probably say leave it be until you've got swords and take it then. In bts swords don't get as good odds and it's less clear what to do. If you want to go for something slightly more flashy, how about settling orange dot on the coast three tiles away, go for a fairly quick, cheap library and cultural flip the city in 20-30t? Orange is anyhow probably you're best bet for producing GP (unless going for the GL) so the library would be quite welcome.

(purple dot I would put on the solid circle, just for the 2h-plant and saving a forest)

[taotao]

I have a plan for my turns.

Yaqob, let the worker complete naturally and start the Granary. Once I can double whip the granary do so into a settler.

Do you just mean dumping overflow hammers for 1t into a settler and then grow back on units?? Otherwise this is precisely the thing I was talking about that shouldn't be done. If you're finishing a granary the idea has to be to grow two sizes immediately afterwards, otherwise you'd be better off just going straight for the settler (and perhaps double-whipping that instead).

Drill stays at Yaqob, finishes the farm and roads the gold, before chopping into the settler.

For now Yaqob is probably best as a settler or worker pump.

Sounds decent on the surface.

Bean a Sidhe, kill the chariot and warrior builds in the city (there are no hammers stored in either so it's safe). Do the granary, and either chop or whip that to completion (double whip is preferable), with the overflow into a barracks. If needed we can emergency whip a chariot. I consider Bean to be our military pump for now at least so a barracks here is good.

Chisel can come here to farm and mine land for the city to grow onto.

Agree that Bean can be your military city for now. Agree that it's probably the first city to build a barracks. Don't agree that you should build a baracks anytime soon. Atm you're much better off with workers, chariots and settlers. (in that order)
Also, since the city has very little food and your best tile by far is the horses I don't think that you should whip the city apart from sz4->sz3. Therefore you also don't need more improvements here for some time (but it's good if you could start a road towards purple/orange dot).

Christmas Past, finishes the worker and starts the granary. After that it can go warrior worker duty for a while.


Units produced

The settler goes to purple dot, orange wouldn't be too bad if we had multiple units to escort as with Cre it'd kill the barb city soon enough.
The worker out of Christmas can come down to Yaqob to continue with the improvements while Drill is chopping.

Haven't looked in detail, but if CPs gold isn't mined yet I'd probably prioritise that. And a quicker road between YM and CP wouldn't go amiss.

Yaqob's worker goes to Bean a Sidhe, as this city will need the work.

Might be the correct call to send the worker that way, but as said higher up I don't see a great need for more improved tiles at BS.

Edit: I see an early library out of purple dot, along with one in Christmas Past (we could maybe use the library there to squeeze a few growths after whips). They both can get a bit extra food for scientists, plus as borderish cities the culture will do no harm. I'll play this tomorrow.

Those cities should probably get libraries yes,but  I don't see either as terribly important right this minute though. If you need something to dump some hammers into while growing, then they could perhaps fit the bill.

[haphazard1]

Yaqob, let the worker complete naturally and start the Granary. Once I can double whip the granary do so into a settler.

Do you just mean dumping overflow hammers for 1t into a settler and then grow back on units?? Otherwise this is precisely the thing I was talking about that shouldn't be done. If you're finishing a granary the idea has to be to grow two sizes immediately afterwards, otherwise you'd be better off just going straight for the settler (and perhaps double-whipping that instead).

This also jumped out at me while reading; I second taotao here. Whipping and then stagnating growth should be avoided if possible. Better to spend turns at a larger size, or regrowing after whipping the settler itself. There are exceptions, such as when a city is working unimproved tiles and the lost population would not have produced more than 2 food-hammers anyway. But if you can work even a forest tile, it is usually better to whip something into the settler or whip the settler itself.

I also think it is still a bit early for a barracks, unless you need to dump hammers to grow. Right now you need more of any units (for escort duty, garrison, exporation to mention items from shallow_thought's priorities list) rather than fewer higher-quality units. While more higher-quality would be nice, the hammers for the barracks are probably better used otherwise for now. I do like the idea of a barracks in your main military city, and not too far in the future. But at least a couple non-warrior units first will probably be more useful since one barb archer has already appeared.

[Zalson]

Brian, your plan gets us 6 workers, which probably means that you have the right idea for the settler as the next build. Where are you thinking of putting it? my vote is for culture flipping the barb city by placing it on new orange dot -- although either purple dot would be a better choice for now, I think.

We get an extra gold pretty much right away and can block of Isabella.

I will 3rd the recommendations from taotao and haphazard1 to avoid the stagnated growth (e.g. what I did). If we can get to a 1/2 food back, then switch to settler and 2x whip it to finish the granary. Otherwise, build the granary and chariots to grow, maybe?

EDIT:

The settler goes to purple dot, orange wouldn't be too bad if we had multiple units to escort as with Cre it'd kill the barb city soon enough.

Le sigh for reading comprehension.

[shallow_thought]

If you want to go for something slightly more flashy, how about settling orange dot on the coast three tiles away, go for a fairly quick, cheap library and cultural flip the city in 20-30t? Orange is anyhow probably you're best bet for producing GP (unless going for the GL) so the library would be quite welcome.

(purple dot I would put on the solid circle, just for the 2h-plant and saving a forest)

I like the way that moving Orange dot even further south allows this (the star in taotao's dotmap). However, while going Orange first would certainly be exciting, but it looks to me like a(nother) slow starting city - we don't have fishing yet (I'd reluctantly consider a diversion from the beeline for it though). Trying to pasture the sheep next to the barb city before it falls strike me as ... courageous.

Thanks for the rest of the advice guys - one thing that made my turnset fun was that the timing let me read through everyone's thoughts carefully before (and during) play. Hope Brian gets a chance to do the same.

[Brian Shanahan]

I have a plan for my turns.

Yaqob, let the worker complete naturally and start the Granary. Once I can double whip the granary do so into a settler.

Do you just mean dumping overflow hammers for 1t into a settler and then grow back on units?? Otherwise this is precisely the thing I was talking about that shouldn't be done. If you're finishing a granary the idea has to be to grow two sizes immediately afterwards, otherwise you'd be better off just going straight for the settler (and perhaps double-whipping that instead).

This is true, but at the very least I'll be putting the overflow from any whip into a settler and looking to chop into him too. Or, better yet, whip/chop the settler into a granary as Zalson says.

@Zalson I was thinking the purple dot myself (the southern version in taotao's dotmap for preference)

[Brian Shanahan]

Turns played. Save attached. Fixing up report.