Micromanagement Sims/Planning

[Kyan]

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.

I also agree with this.

Food first! Grassland forest deer is a fantastic tile.

[Kyan]

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.

They'd probably go:

Hunting -> Agri. I also expect at least one civ to settle 2N if starts are indeed mirrored.

[Sullla]

Alright, I think we're pretty close to getting this locked down. I went ahead and tested Hunting -> Pottery against Pottery -> Hunting openings, settling on the agreed-upon bananas tile in each case. I used the same build order in both cases:

* Worker first at size 1
* Build warriors until reaching happy cap at size 5
* Second worker, then settler

I also researched the same techs in both cases (AH -> Mining -> BW) so that the beaker count would be comparable. Some of these sims are getting thrown off because AH gets 40% bonus beakers compared to Bronze Working getting 20% bonus and Mining getting 0% bonus. That makes a difference in the math.

Hunting -> Pottery looks extremely similar to the test run that I did in Option #2:





* Settler = 78/100, due T34 with 6 overflow
* Beakers = 432

Pottery -> Hunting looks extremely similar to Parkin's initial test run:





* Settler = 44/100, due T36 with 0 overflow
* Beakers = 466

These two starts look very similar. It's a straight swap of 34 production for 34 beakers. Since food and production are a lot more valuable in the early game, I would argue that this is fairly significant evidence in favor of Hunting first as a tech. Of course, with the Pottery opening you can skip Hunting tech entirely, but then this comparison ends up looking even worse. The worker micro feels a bit more efficient to me with the Hunting opening as well, fewer wasted turns.

I believe that the first scenario laid out here is the one to beat. If you want to try simming this, see if you can get a better result than that one. The alternate route that looks most promising is the one done by Kyan, halting growth at size 3 to produce a faster settler and second city. Does that come out ahead? I have no idea. My gut feeling is that using the high food total here to grow to the happy cap ASAP comes out ahead, but it needs more testing to be sure.

I think this is the best we can do if we don't make the play for a very fast second city.

[Kyan]

I'll beat that or bleed my fingers trying. Tell Mack to stop sending me the damned duel game so fast and i'll get right on it. Will poke him in a bit for a rest whilst I work on this.

[SevenSpirits]

If we go Hunting-Pottery-Mining-BW-AH do we get BW before settling second city, for efficient slavery revolt? How about if we start Pottery-Hunting?

How many turns do we have until we need to commit to one path or the other? (We get the first tech several turns before the worker needs it - how many?)

[T-hawk]

The alternate route that looks most promising is the one done by Kyan, halting growth at size 3 to produce a faster settler and second city. Does that come out ahead? I have no idea. My gut feeling is that using the high food total here to grow to the happy cap ASAP comes out ahead, but it needs more testing to be sure.

Growth to happy cap ASAP comes out ahead in the time frame that you're studying. But it might turn out less efficient later. The problem is what do you do with the big food surplus once you're already at the happy cap? Can't keep building just foodhammer units, we'll need some military. Whipping needs BW and a revolt, and a granary to be efficient, and even with all that the anger penalty is still very costly.

The best thing to do in these cases is often to get a second city out quickly, located such that it can take one of the capital's food resources. Then the second city smoothly continues to use the food for growth, while the capital switches over to mines and cottages instead.

[Kyan]

Ok, detailed sim:

Found t0. Work 3H tile. Build worker. Tech hunting.
T8: Finish hunting. Tech pottery.
T10. Worker completes. Moves 1NW and begins farm. Build warrior. Work deer tile.
T14. Corn farm completes. Work corn tile. Grow end of turn.

option a - worker support

T15. Worker1 moves SE,E. Begin building worker2. Work deer and corn
T16. Worker1 moves NE.
T17. Worker1 begins camp.
T20. Pottery completes. Camp completes. Tech mining.
T21. Swap build to warrior. Worker1 moves SW and roads. Worker 2 moves SW and roads. Cancel all roading at eot.
T22. Worker1 moves 1S and finishes road. Worker2 moves 1S and begins cottage.
T23. Deer is connected. Worker1 moves 1S and assists cottaging. City grows at end of turn.
T24. Cottage completes. Work corn, deer and fp cottage. Build settler.
T25. Worker1 moves 1W and begins cottage. Worker2 moves 1W and begins road.
T26. Worker1 continue cottage. Worker2 moves 1SW and begins road. Cancel actions eot.
T27. Worker2 continues road. Worker1 continues cottage. Cancel all actions eot.
T28. Mining completes. Begin BW. Worker1 moves 1NE and begins cottage. Worker2 moves 1NE and builds road. Cancel all worker actions at eot.
T29. Worker1 move 1N and begin cottage. Worker2 finish road.
T30. Worker1 moves 1N and begins cottage. Worker2 completes road.
T31. Worker2 finishes cottage. Settler completed at eot.
T32. Worker2 moves 1SW and finishes road BEFORE moving settler who can move into position. Worker 1 finishes cottage.

Could settle city2 on Turn33. Micro can be adjusted to fit a different location but an overlapping floodplains area isn't horrific.

Total beakers: 376.
2nd city founded: T33. This means we gain a minimum of 3f,3c per turn on any micro plan that settles the city later.
2 warriors.
2 workers.
Size 3 growing into size4 eot 33 and size 5 eot 36.

I would suggest we then pump out a warrior or two whilst growing and then whipping down once BW comes in.

[Kyan]

The best thing to do in these cases is often to get a second city out quickly, located such that it can take one of the capital's food resources. Then the second city smoothly continues to use the food for growth, while the capital switches over to mines and cottages instead.

Great minds think alike?

[waterbat]

wouldnt the 5-turn leeway you discussed earlier be the limit of when we had to choose one way or the other?

I thought for a minute that we'd be missing the 40% prerequisite bonus on pottery during those 5 turns, but I checked the simulation - we'd appear to lose 2 beakers per turn against pottery, but when selecting the tech, it gives the bonus on them like it would overflow.

Actually a question about that... we have 10 base beakers to start (8 palace, 1 city square, 1 capitol), we have wheel + agri, so we should get the 0.2 bonus for having the mandatory tech and 0.2 bonus for having the prerequisite tech. Shouldn't we be making 4 extra beakers on Pottery? Hunting which has 0 mandatory tech requirement and 0 prereqs would only get the 10 bpt.

[kjn]

Actually a question about that... we have 10 base beakers to start (8 palace, 1 city square, 1 capitol), we have wheel + agri, so we should get the 0.2 bonus for having the mandatory tech and 0.2 bonus for having the prerequisite tech. Shouldn't we be making 4 extra beakers on Pottery? Hunting which has 0 mandatory tech requirement and 0 prereqs would only get the 10 bpt.

Mandatory techs don't give known tech bonuses.

We get a 40% bonus with researching AH with both Hunting and Agriculture, and Writing can get a 60% bonus.

Easy rule: arrows give know tech bonus; symbols in the tech corner don't.