Gaspar and NobleHelium - More Arguments About Buildings & Food.

[Gaspar]

Of course I live up to my reputation. But I don't see why you keep doing these things.

Because I am living up to my reputation, of course. I'm sure we'll lose the game based on my moving a warrior E instead of SE. Far more likely than losing it because of Conservativey McConservatism.

[CFCJesterFool]

Any plans on having a city dedicated to pumping settlers/workers so you can grow the capital? Old Ruins is obviously going to help develop cottages for New Tristram. A city west could work sheep/clams/and borrow the wheat (once capital at happy cap) and only need 1 road for a trade route. Dunno, maybe I'm just used to Immortal AI city spam. Ofc, sometimes you just don't have good food locations to do so (play random maps), but since this is a hand crafted map, imho getting an early settler pump seems like the way to secure the most land since the capital needs to focus on commerce (to fund said expansion). Sorry, don't mean to ramble.

[NobleHelium]

We played turn 27.

And we have great news!



There is dry corn within range of the Horse and Gold, which is good enough for me. Next turn we'll move SE just in case there's some seafood that changes the calculus, but right now the city location is going to be NW of the Gold. We'll move SE with the home Warrior as well, since we just scanned the western approach with the returning Warrior.

Next turn the Settler finishes with an exact 65/65h from the chop.



Pottery is in. We'll do Mysticism (3t) next, which will let us build a Monument as soon as Cathedral is founded.

[Gaspar]

Any plans on having a city dedicated to pumping settlers/workers so you can grow the capital? Old Ruins is obviously going to help develop cottages for New Tristram. A city west could work sheep/clams/and borrow the wheat (once capital at happy cap) and only need 1 road for a trade route. Dunno, maybe I'm just used to Immortal AI city spam. Ofc, sometimes you just don't have good food locations to do so (play random maps), but since this is a hand crafted map, imho getting an early settler pump seems like the way to secure the most land since the capital needs to focus on commerce (to fund said expansion). Sorry, don't mean to ramble.

From my experience a fully dedicated worker-settler pump isn't strictly necessary in MP. The other humans you're playing are facing the same maintenance/happiness/unit cost restrictions you are so they can't fill up the board the way high level AI can. That doesn't mean of course that in an ideal world you aren't expanding fast and growing your capital onto cottages isn't the best play, it usually is if the maintenance isn't too restrictive. Its a myth of course that you want to expand until you crash your economy - generally if you fully crash your economy in a MP game, its too late by the time you recover. Usually my philosophy is to expand hard enough that you're limping to currency but not so hard that you never get there. Its also why I almost always prefer to attack Currency tech hard and ignore the distractions. (So called "Gaspar Road" by NobleHelium.) Of course, I haven't won any of these so the wisdom of my approach is entirely up for debate.

In this game specifically, I think there's a mix of proper strategy. Clearly there are two great cities to be had at Gold/Horse/Corn/Plains Cow and Clams/Grass Cow/Copper. So to me, given we've decided to eschew the early wonders, pushing towards those as fast as possible is the early-game goal. We also don't know precisely how close our opponents are since this isn't a specifically hand-crafted map, rather a meticulously balanced natural one. So we're not guaranteed to be x-number of tiles from our opponents, nor are we guaranteed to have x-number of land tiles as "ours," as is so frequently seen in the games here. This also makes that marble in the desert a priority, as it is entirely likely it is just as close or even closer to Commodore as it is to us.

The trick is against high-skill players - and while none of the heavyweights of the site are in this game all of the players involved have shown high-competence in previous games and all are capable of winning a game in the right situation - you have to really support your expansion or they will punish you for it. You can't fling around Pink Dot cities like you're playing the Templars or an ignorant AI. In fact, the consequences of a perceived Pink Dot against a competent foe who is a little disheartened can often mean the end of your chances to win. A classic example of this was in our last game, PBEM29 where Noble and I were greatly offended by a novice/SevenSpirits city plant that was many tiles away from their next closest city. That basically set together a chain reaction that gave mackoti the win - while mackoti was able to fight Lewwyn on his own terms, Us and N7 fought a seesaw battle of skirmishes that helped nobody. We mentioned several times in our thread that we felt like N7 was treating us like an AI and whether that's true or not, you always have to be aware how people who are emotional and capable of irrational decisions are going to feel about your actions. That's one reason, for example, that we never tried to line up a pop at Commodore's scout - no need to make him feel like he needs to return the favor later.

On the other hand, if the other player can see that your expansion is measured and reasonable, they're less likely to go crazy. But even if they do, if you're able to fully support any far-flung plants you make then you're okay anyway. But no matter how great a city or how useful a resource it does no good if you spend your whole game defending it as a warzone.

Anyway, whole lot of theory in there but I hope that helps explain our thinking.

[Gaspar]

We played the most recent turn. Nothing was discovered over by Gold/Horse/etc:



Settler finished in the capital, onto a granary. Tech set to Mysticism. Workers working, warriors sentrying. All very fascinating stuff.



More numbers:

[Kyan]

At airport, bored. Have you ran numbers to see if founding 1N for first ring corn is not more beneficial?

[NobleHelium]

Hmmm. Well, we could do that. It means we get a bunch of unworkable coast tiles of course which is why we didn't consider it before, but we'd only be giving up one grassland (which can be worked by OR) and three plains tiles for it. There are two forests on those plains though. I've only simulated with the current planned city location.

[NobleHelium]

Anyone know why we're not getting a one beaker bonus on Mysticism? Known tech bonus is 30% right? So .3 / 4 = .075. 1 / .075 = 13.3_ which means we should get a bonus when we make more than 14b, and we make 15 right now.

[novice]

The bonus is .3/5 = 0.06.

[NobleHelium]

It counts yourself? Really? How does that make any sense?