Micromanagement Sims/Planning

[Lord Parkin]

Could set up a poll with the box checked for individual votes being visible. Might be quicker and easier than everyone typing individual responses.

Four options, I guess (though two probably aren't an issue at this point):
Settle in place
Settle on banana
Settle 2N
Settle 1NE

Maybe include the starting screenshot and a link to this thread.

[novice]

Well maybe. I mean in most game strings you're right, I'm just worried about the super high maintenance here(which promotes vertical growth over horizontal). Also, an early religion might give us sone free border pops.

Check out my earlier screenshot. City maintenance won't be crippling for our first few cities. The main reason the start is slow is tech costs caused by huge/emperor, and those are the same for a vertical strategy.

[nabaxo]

From the discussion, I'm in favour of settling on the banana. (Why does that sound like an euphemism for something?)

[Sian]

could someone toss a link so you don't have to threaddive?

[Lord Parkin]

Here are the main sims (with pictures) so far. Let me know if I missed any.

Option 1 - Lord Parkin

Option 2 - Sullla

Option 2a - kjn

Option 3 - Uberfish/Sullla

Option 4 - Novice/Sullla

[Lord Parkin]

Started a voting thread on where to settle. Figured it'd be the easiest way to tell who's in favour of which option.

Note it's a public vote, so if you click on the numbers you can see who's voted for what. You can also choose more than one option if you're not sure.

[SIZE="4"]>> Vote here <<[/SIZE]

[kjn]

Going on to techs:

I've done quite a lot of tries on the sandbox now and I think I have a decent feeling about how the possible tech openings will play out. Here are some notes from quickie testing, all of I played out similarly and to turn 32.

Pottery -> Hunting -> AH

Will generate the largest amounts of commerce, but the least amount of production (the deer probably won't be improved until T32).

2 warriors and 2 workers built, 37/100 in settler (due in 5).

AH on T29, 61/90 in Mining (due in 2). Total beakers 457.

Hunting -> Pottery -> AH

This is similar to the opening Sullla did. Will give the fastest growth curve, with two high-food tiles early.

2 warriors and 2 workers built, 64/100 in settler (due in 3).

AH on T30, 42/90 in Mining (due in 3). Total beakers 438.

Hunting -> AH -> Pottery

This gives quick growth, but the worker had very little to do but make-work after finishing the camp. I ended up farming a flood plain.

2 warriors and 2 workers built, 62/100 in settler (due in 3) (I sacrificed a few hammers to get Pottery quicker).

AH on T20, Pottery on T30, 24/90 in Mining (due in 5). Total beakers 422.

Pottery -> Mining -> BW

I built one cottage first, then a mine, and the second cottage was finished by both workers.

2 warriors and 2 workers built, 57/100 in settler (due in 4).

Mining on T21, 195/216 in BW (due in 1). Total beakers 429.

Mining -> Potter -> BW

Here production outran growth, so I ended up with three warriors instead of two.

3 warriors and 2 workers built, 42/100 in settler (due in 5).

Pottery on T20 or so (no note), 187/216 in BW (due in 2). Total beakers 421.

My thoughts about this?

I think the Pottery openings are strong. Both Pottery -> Hunting -> AH and Pottery -> Mining -> BW are quite viable.

Opening with Mining is good if we want an extra warrior in the beginning.

However, I think we should open with Hunting:

It gives the fastest settler among the conventional openings, and I'd rather have WCs than Axes given their strengths and the distances to our opponents. It also makes Archery a very quick research, if we would want it.

ETA: a zip file with T32 saves for each game above

[Sullla]

I agree with kjn. Now that we have a consensus on the 1N bananas capital spot, we know that we're going to have the deer tile in play. That is an incredibly powerful tile at 5/1 yield, equal to an irrigated wheat tile. Not improving that tile and leaving it at 3/1 makes little sense; we lose out on 2 food every single turn that it's not being improved. Believe me, I agree that cottaging the floodplains tiles is important, but it's better to improve the corn and then the deer first, so that the capital at size 2 produces 10 food / 2 production. At size 2!!! The capital also hits size 5 on Turn 23 with this approach: 10t to build the worker, then size 2 = T15, size 3 = T18, size 4 = T21, size 5 = T23. Only 13 turns to grow to size 5 without a granary. We don't come anywhere near that pace with Pottery first... worth trading some commerce for the superior growth rate, IMO.

Here's the tech path I would suggest:

Hunting -> Pottery

We don't have to decide on the following tech for about 20 turns. This will give us time to explore the surrounding area and decide whether we want to go for Animal Husbandry, Mining -> Bronze Working, or something else entirely. But I do think Hunting needs to be first, followed by Pottery. Without those two techs, we can't improve the deer and we can't cottage the floodplains (in that order). Our starting techs are just about perfect for this local landscape. No other combination of techs would allow us to do this. CivFanatics and CivFr (Mining/Mysticism starts) are REALLY screwed if they have a start that looks like this. They need Agriculture, Hunting, The Wheel, and Pottery!

[waterbat]

In a mirrored start (I know we arent expecting that) would the Mining/Myst civs be forced to SIP and go Wheel->Pottery and skip Hunting and get those FP cottages up? Or would you expect that they would also move to the banana?

I guess they'd go Wheel->Agriculture->Pottery as they get the prereq bonus then.

[novice]

I agree with kjn and Sullla on hunting first. That's all we need to decide now, really, since all microplans will look identical up to turn 10, and we'll have a lot more map info then.