[SPOILER] Willem II of England

[Nakor]

Feels good to be "back"... what one night of more then 6 hours sleep can do to you...

Anyway... the thing I don't like about your plan is that city 3 will take quite a lot of time to be settled. I'd like to get that third city up and running a bit earlier. We need at least one warrior for that, therefore my warrior build proposal in Bergkamp before the settler (and the growth to size 4). We can also 1-pop whip the settler, but a 2-pop whip will be better in the long run since we have enough food to grow to size 3 in 1-2 turns. We can build the Granary while re-growing to size 4. But if you want to go for the Granary first, we can do that and chop whip the settler afterwards. Only problem I see with that is that we want to regrow after the whip, so going for a settler isn't an option then...

I'd stop chopping untill Maths is in. That way we won't "waste' any more hammers. We can chop workers in all 3 cities once Maths is in, I think and then we're pretty good in workers again.

Once more axes are online, we can send a few warriors scouting to meet more neighbours. That fits in with your plan of building more scouting units.

Thoughts?

[T-hawk]

Maybe T-hawk can pop in and explain to us what's the better food to production conversion with Math and this much forest -> Workers or Slaving? I'm sure T-hawk would love to do so, right?

What exactly was the question?

I'm not sure treating worker chopping as a whiplike food->hammer conversion is really the right approach. Of course a worker can eventually chop more forest hammers than the whip would have turned the worker's food cost into. But the chop costs a second type of input: time, while the whip works instantly. I'm not entirely sure we're really comparing apples and apples there.

I guess you're asking for the time crossover point? The whip converts ~15 food to 30 hammers right away. A worker (suppose it cost 30 food and 30 hammers to build) pays back its own hammer cost with the first forest, pays back its own food cost as compared to the whip with the next two forests, and comes out ahead on the fourth forest, so 16+ turns. (All numbers for normal speed.)

[Gaspar]

Alright, well, I decided I could try and work some of this stuff out in a spreadsheet or some such, but it *feels* right to get the 3rd city up as quickly as possible. I agree having the chariot option is useful, if only because they're much more hammer cheap than a ton of Axes, and eventually when we've chopped harder, we'll appreciate having 2-movers to react to barbs.

So Bergkamp will finish its current worker and move onto a warrior for MP for City 3. Bergkamp will grow in 4, we could configure it to grow in 3, but would lose too much commerce. Need to get a couple more improved tiles around the Capital so we have more flexibility there, IMO. When the worker comes in, he will head to help Jol with the copper/connecting city 2. Hiddink starts roading/connecting horses, city 3. Second war out of Bergkamp heads north for scouting purposes. Bergkamp the starts a settler which it double whips after getting requisite production in the box. After the settler, regrows with a granary.

City 2 starts on a granary until copper/horses are connected, at which time it builds military to grow. Likewise for City 3. Once the workers are in place, all cities chop out an additional worker (perhaps 2) to work on improving them.

City 4 should go in the location north of the city most likely. I've been thinking, and we are probably going to lose that lake location to Whovus. Its 6 tiles from his capital, almost 10 tiles from ours. Therefore we need to locate which of the lakes is more near our borders so we can be sure we take advantage of it prior to someone else settling on us. I wish we had 2 move scouting units!

All that said, turn was played, and I did all of the things I just said. If I some more, please let me know.

Also, Malakai let us know that he made contact with Whovus, accepted OB, and will move EP spending to him next turn.

[Gaspar]

BTW, thanks for the answers, T-hawk. I suppose I was sort of aware I was asking the wrong question. I think it boils down to - ultimately, we will probably whip less than normal this game, because not only is there forest everywhere, but there's also less food potential than on normal maps. Still, the opportunity cost of waiting to get cities up and running is lower than growing back once without a granary. We could slow build the granary instead of those warriors, but as Nakor said, we'll need at least one as MP for the new city before the metal/horses are online and we can build more valuable units.

The turn came around again - wasn't really any decisions to be made at this point, so I didn't hold it up for you, Nakor (which was my original intent. I certainly didn't mean to become the guy taking all the turns, I just seem to see the save first most days.) Anyway, Feyenoord 1 will be attacked by a wolf on the IT, which will be just fine, kind of amazing he's picked up no XP yet. I think we're 2 turns from hitting the next Civs borders, as I believe we are currently at the equivalent of 2T south of the horse tile.

In reporting type news, the demographics seem to indicate at least 3 other civs already have their second city up. Ours will be founded next turn, Settler is in place and Warrior is already fortified on the tile. We should finish our second settler in approximately 8 turns (2T on the worker, 4 turns to grow to size 4, 1 turn to put hammers into the settler, then 1 to double whip.) I suppose anything slower than that we'd really be regretting.

[Nakor]

Great job, Gaspar. No problem with you playing the turn.
I'll see if I can play the next one...

[Nakor]

Wow! Got there first, so I played the turn.

Van Persie founded this turn. Both workers moved to start another road next turn. Third worker will finish next turn.
I had to put research at 90% due to the new city being founded slowing research on Maths to 7t.

Both our neighbours haven't founded their second city yet, so maybe the others.

Feyenoord 1 is very close to Ginger's border.

Nothing else new...

[Gaspar]

Sounds good! And a splendid choice on the name of the city! I was torn between Van Persie and Overmars, though I'm obviously biased. BTW, I left the turn for you intentionally, figured I shouldn't keep hogging it because it always seems to come in while you're asleep.

So its Ginger whose border we're headed towards, eh? I have to say that's a bit disappointing, as I think either Tredje (who has religion) or Kyan (and his fast workers) would have been more interesting. Nonetheless, hopefully he's also met someone else so we can figure out which is which in the remaining two squares. I kind of hope Kyan is "above" us, in between Whosit and Malakai and Tredje is "below" Malakai, that would allow for the most interesting diplomacy.

I think the primary consequence of this map is that it almost assures a builders game. Until all the Civ's have improved the land throughout their squares, there is just way too much forest to launch any sort of attack. While the low visibility allows for greater sneak attack possibilities, the maintenance you'll pay for 10-turn marches to your neighbors borders is insane. We're going to have to find away to leverage our teching capacity as soon as possible. The sooner we can get our new cities building settlers/workers/military and let Bergkamp focus on Libraries, etc, the better.

All of this is obvious, of course, but its in my contract that I must write at least one 3+ paragraph post in the thread everyday!

[Nakor]

Overmars shall be our third city then, but Van der Sar should be founded soon as well...

thanks for waiting with playing. As long as we keep discussing things, you can play the save whenever it comes. Won't waste those precious hours of sleep to beat you to it...

Looking at the minimap, I think there is another civ above Ginger and below Malakai, though I'm not completely sure about that.

Builders game indeed! I must admit that you were correct earlier. looking at the map, claiming the lake is very important. I think city 4 and 5 should both go north, one on or near the GP-farm mark, the other between that city and Van Persie, so we can use those on our way towards the lake (city 6).

Well, time to go to work. Have a good night, Gaspar!

[Gaspar]

Overmars shall be our third city then, but Van der Sar should be founded soon as well...

Van der Sar I can live with, I can just imagine we're talking about his Fulham days. Van Nistelrooy must wait until we're on our 50th city or so, though!

Yeah, like you said, so long as we're talking this much, it doesn't really matter who plays the turn, but still, I don't think it actually slows us down to wait and hour or two til your morning, except maybe on the weekends. Surely Whosit's play time means I'll always get it more often than you, though.

There's definitely a Civ below Malakai. I suppose I should post what I've figured the map to look like now, I'm 99.99% sure this is right. The only question is whether the offset is based off the left column or the centre column. Everything else I'm lead pipe certain of.



Obviously, that's not to scale. But the lakes indicate where the Civ's boxes intersect. Its obvious from what Malakai told us of his lake, being at a further south location than where we saw Whovus' lake and Where we see we're meeting Gingereagle, which is north of where our direct south/north neighbor is likely to be. We can probably most easily test this by heading NE once we meet GE, the Civ south of Malakai will be slightly North of GE's capital.

Bottom line, the best way to leverage this information is to settle the lake sites as quickly as possible, since they qualify as the only actual contested territory in the game. It would be nice to get a couple of fog-busting units our to check out all of the lakes on our borders, so we can see if they have different resources in them or if they are all the same.

[Gaspar]

Also, those are the saddest lakes ever drawn. I apologize to you, the lurkers, the MS Paint application, artists everywhere, lakes everywhere, the color blue everywhere and Poseidon.