Micromanagement Sims/Planning

[SevenSpirits]

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.

You don't get prerequisite bonuses for mandatory prerequisites. Only for arrows.

[Sullla]

Kyan, looks very strong indeed. Only real problem is the same thing limiting all of the simulations: we have no idea what the rest of the local terrain looks like around our capital. Or where we should place the second city. I think we can use that as the basis for further refinement once the game gets started, and we can actually start exploring more of the map.

[kjn]

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?

No, and yes. Pottery->Hunting->Mining->BW ends up with settler T36 and BW T37 (or Settler T35 is we leave one warrior unfinished in the queue), ie we will have delayed our settler 2-3 turns to get a small efficiency in revolts. IMO not worth it.

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?)

Are you thinking of research-swapping? We need Hunting (or Mining) on T17 or Pottery on T16.

If we want to know a strategic resource before the first settler, then we pretty much have to do Pottery->Mining->BW or Hunting->Pottery->AH with the grow-to-happy cap opening.

I thought a lot about having AH or BW in time before the first settler, but I realised it's probably a bad goal to set, given our opening. Develop as quickly as possible, and let the tech and resources fall where they may.

Kyan - your opening is impressive, but I'm worried that this is Emperor with barbs on (this is true for Sullla's openings as well). If I RTFM correctly, barb units will start to appear T25. Will 2 warriors be enough to guard our capital and escort the settler?

[SevenSpirits]

Are you thinking of research-swapping? We need Hunting (or Mining) on T17 or Pottery on T16.

Yes, that's why I asked. OK, so it sounds like even if it's feasible it won't gain us much. (I.e. maybe we can split our first 6 turns into both and still be able to get either tech done on time? But that's barely more than the 5 turns we get for free.)

Kyan - your opening is impressive, but I'm worried that this is Emperor with barbs on (this is true for Sullla's openings as well). If I RTFM correctly, barb units will start to appear T25. Will 2 warriors be enough to guard our capital and escort the settler?

Yes, 2 warriors should be enough. Barbs won't enter borders yet.

[waterbat]

Thanks for the clarification guys - i was using a spreadsheet-based reference where all the connections were arrows - finally went in-game to see what you meant.

I was using this:

Calculating the Prerequisites modifier

1) Start with 1. If the technology does NOT have a minimum requirement (i.e., the starting techs = Fishing, The Wheel, Agriculture, Hunting, Mysticism, Mining), then use 1 AS the modifier.
2) Add 0.2 to 1) if a Technology has a MINIMUM Requirement that the player has met. Note: Even if a tech has MANY MANDATORY PREREQUISITES, it will still only give you a boost of 1.2 because you MUST have all those prerequisites to research the tech. (IOW, the minimum requirement IS all of those prerequisites.)
3) Add 0.2 to 2) for EACH ADDITIONAL OPTIONAL Prerequisite that the player has met.
Requirements modifier = 1 + (0.2 * MINIMUM Req. met) + (0.2 * # of Optional Prereq. met)

For pottery, I took #2 to mean WHEEL and #3 to mean AGRICULTURE

Now I see that - the requirement for POTTERY is WHEEL AND ( AGRICULTURE OR FISHING )

So we do get the mandatory bonus (#2), but not optional prerequisite bonus(#3) as we have only fulfilled the minimum requirements.

[Gold Ergo Sum]

I am just now caught up on this thread, and haven't played in the sandbox at all.

Gut reaction is that Kyan's plan to an early second city is the strongest I have seen. The second city might move based on scouting, but that would just mean we get an even stronger start because someone found a better location.

In a normal RB game, growing to the happy cap rapidly in a high food capital, grabbing your extra commerce from working more tiles, and slow pumping workers and settlers for ages to avoid growth beyond the happy cap can work well. I did that to get out to a pretty good start in PBEM19. But I expect the meta to be different here. At RB, everyone knows that if you don't farmer gambit and REX, someone else will and you will fall behind. In this game, I expect some teams will think early military is good long term strategy. If we aren't going to build workers/settlers at size 5 because we need to do some military, and we don't have a whip to get rid of unhappiness, building more military could lead to happiness problems. I think I would rather be at size 3 with a second city than size 5 and still waiting to plant city 2. With that much food, sharing it would be strong.

Again, I haven't sandboxed at all, but that is my gut reaction to the discussion so far.

[kjn]

I'm not sure about the early aggression metagame, or more properly, I'm not sure we should be worried about it.

We know the map is quite large (at least 40x80, ie 3200 tiles). We have only nine teams. Assuming a third water, that comes to circa 2000 tiles, or 200+ per team. That gives a distance of 15 or so tiles between each team.

If we are to take PB7 for a model, then the worst-case scenario will be to get targeted by the equivalent of Mack7, with us at Azza. They got four axes (three built and one upgraded) to attack on T41. However, consider the following:

• Any player of their caliber will REX given this lush start, not gamble on a do-or-die military action; any lesser players won't be able to do a rush like that
  
• Mack7 were quite lucky, with copper in their BFC
  
• Mack7 were 10 tiles from Azza, not 15 as I think will be the case in this game
  
• Mack7 got excellent scouting help via huts (scout and map)
  
• Mack7 had lots of forests to chop into axes
  

If we are worried about early aggression, I think the first thing should be to finish our third warrior that is left in the queue in Sullla's sim. I also think we should push hard for WCs. By going with the grow-to-happy cap plan, we will have fast early teching, AH by turn 30, and will be able to plan where to plant our second city to get the horses, and position our workers with that in mind.

We have until T20 (when Pottery comes in), to think if we are to switch to an early settler or continue growing; and if we are to go AH or Mining -> BW next. Until then, I think our starting units should focus on close scouting and securing a good spot for our second city.

[Lord Parkin]

Also, in PB7 Mackseven started with Mining and it was Monarch/Cylindrical (as I recall).

[SevenSpirits]

And remember 2 of those axes were upgrades funded by hut gold. Huts are off here, right?

But also... our current builds wouldn't need 4 incoming axes to crumble. 1 would be enough if we don't have archery or a strategic resource.

By the way, I have to mention...

Mack7 were 10 tiles from Azza, not 15 as I think will be the case in this game
Mack7 got excellent scouting help via huts (scout and map)
Mack7 had lots of forests to chop into axes

* We moved for three turns at the start, at least somewhat towards Azza.
* The scouting help from the huts, while nice, was superfluous.
* We only chopped 1 forest.

[kjn]

I've edited the T0 sandbox with the updated map info - it's not complete and far from perfect (rivers are wonky).

ISDB-sandbox BC-4000