Suboptimal IV: Indonesian Insanity

[Cornflakes]

I didn’t realize that the envoy bonuses had been moved to the tier 1 building. What do you get from a district now? 1 GPP and a paltry 1-2 adjacency unless you’re really lucky? To me this suggests that population is the key (and therefore housing and settlers). The unique improvement for Indonesia grants +1 housing and might actually be of more value than I initially thought.

There is a city state which gives +1 production to all coastal and lake tiles. That would be an interesting find for Indonesia to boost their improvement.

[suboptimal]

Yes, the districts do not get you anything above their adjacency bonus and GPP when they are built. You need the Tier 1 buildings, at a minimum, to make things work well. This favors a civ like Japan, for instance, with their major adjacency bonuses for other districts. For something like a library it's still a matter of balancing the science of 3 population vs. the production cost. Of course, if you could suzerain a scientific city-state now it's worth 6 population. From a population equivalent standpoint an amphitheater is more bang for the buck than a library (7 pop vs. 3) but people don't build those for some reason...

PBEM 12 spoiler

The players in PBEM 12 still seem to be building districts with few Tier 1 buildings. I don't know if this is force of habit or deliberate calculation. Also don't forget a well-placed Government Plaza can change the adjacency calculation bit.

[Quagma Blast]

From a population equivalent standpoint an amphitheater is more bang for the buck than a library (7 pop vs. 3) but people don't build those for some reason...

Amphitheater costs 150 cogs, Library costs 80. In both cases there's also the cost of the district to factor in, but it's almost always much easier to get good adjacency on a Campus than a Theater Square, so that comparison breaks for Libraries as well. Writers are +8 cpt each, but then Scientists are also usually worth a pretty good chunk of beakers.

The real nail in the coffin, though, is that you can get +2-3 culture by building a Theater Square and an Amphitheater, or by building a Settler and a Monument. The former will get you GWriter points, but the latter will get you all the other stuff that comes with a city AND is actually possible to policy-boost. There's no such equivalent for science, you just have to eat the campus entrance fees.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Assuming I've done everything correctly - thanks to Cornflakes' holding my hand - here is your starting save for PYDT:

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

It's a standard earth map, standard speed, um, 5 players. What else do you need from the settings? I left most of 'em untouched.

[suboptimal]

OK...I'll set that up and see how it takes the save....

[suboptimal]

Prelude

The save is here, PYDT is pending setup and we’re first up. The opposition has been set and it’s:

Me: Indonesia/Gitarja
Woden: Macedonia/Alexander
Alhazard: Korea/Seondeok
Archduke: Scotland/Robert the Bruce
Rowain: Australia/John Curtin

An interesting group because outside of Woden it’s fully a builder’s civ group. I think so long as I don’t wind up next to Woden or he stays in builder mode I should get off to an OK start. If Korea or Scotland start next to me I may have to consider attempting an early invasion (heh, heh, what could go wrong?) as those two civs of the five have the best builder’s snowball potential.

Regarding starts, test games were generally a mixed bag of inland starts and near-coastal starts. I generally found that moving to the coast was worthwhile if there were a couple of sea resources (fish, crabs and especially turtles). In these cases I generally went with sailing early enough (first or second, depending on the land around me) to use fishing boat improvements to help get the Craftsmanship inspiration, particularly if the start had a lot of jungle around it and improving land early was difficult.

Coastal starts also usually meant getting the first pantheon and not needing God King. The second city location was usually dictated by land, and while I preferred coastal spots the inland spots were usually the better option. I was generally not able to get to Political Philosophy until the late 50’s or early 60’s...I don’t know if that was careless play, map-induced slow start or otherwise undefined user error.

One of the issues, which will be magnified here with R&F’s district bonus scheme, is that adjacency bonuses for Campus districts were a bit hard to come by in all of my starts. Granted, the coast can provide some, so it’s not too bad.

None of the civs are religious, so the question here is whether or not to pursue a religion early or put down a Holy Site or two as the second district in a couple of cities. While I didn’t take any of my test games far enough to really use it I think Goddess of the Harvest is the pantheon of choice as the chop faith can build up quick.

CMF didn’t provide start position screenshots (yet) so it’s a bit of a crapshoot in terms of discussing start what-ifs. If I can find a good coastal location that I can get to on Turn 1 or settle on Turn 2 I’ll most likely take it.

[Cornflakes]

Since I was rolling the maps I decided to buy R&F so that the Reefs & new resources would be included. I was therefore able to get our starting screenshots

   

And with the settler lens on:

   

Tough starting position. On the plus side it is coastal and has 3 forests to chop ... but no resources in the first ring and no 4-yield tiles 1st ring is rough I think you have to move to a better location. Tile yields strongly suggest a natural wonder to the south, and settler vision shows fresh water. Switching to standard view it looks like the fresh water to the south is a lake ... does lake give the +2 bonus? If yes then settling on the fresh water between the cows looks OK. That would be a low production site with a lot of food and only 1 chop first ring. 3 hills and 2 forests 2nd ring give it decent long term potential. An early builder would be essential to pasture those cows for some production.

[suboptimal]

<mind spew>
Interesting situation.  I expect we’re on the southwestern portion of our landmass.  The near-equitorial start implies that if we have one opponent they’ll be just north of the equator and east and if we have two opponents they’ll be SE and NE of our initial position.

The natural wonder is going to be Yosemite, with the wonder being located in the tiles SE and SW of the cows.  There will be no mountains in the surrounding tiles and at least one of the wonder-adjacent tiles will (should) be forest.  The tile SW-W of the cows will be land as Yosemite is not supposed to be placed on the coast.  (Hmmm..been deep diving the map scripts, have we? )

The lake does give the +2 bonus.  Hopefully it's a 2-tile lake (or a bit larger) with a resource so we can eventually get a Kampung in the lake.

The settle on Turn 3 is a bit….puckering...but I think that the delay is more than made up for by getting 1 every turn for the rest of the game and having a 7-yield city center () and getting 14 yield upon founding ().  I also like the fact that the capital cannot be attacked from the SW (and thus not put under siege), and is vulnerable to naval bombardment only from the one coast tile to the W-NW until battleships.  Its long term production yields will be low but you can’t sneeze at having 332 over everyone else as soon as the capital is founded even after a 2 turn delay in settling.   Getting a finder’s bonus for a scientific city-state would be over the top, though I think I’d prefer a cultural one if only to have some better culture early.  

I’m thinking that with the yields on those tiles (including the probable 111 in the lake) we can dispense with needing to build a Campus early and perhaps put down a Holy Site next to Yosemite on a second ring tile that’s coastal (1W of genius cows).  The capital could go Holy Site → Harbor for district builds though the adjacency on the Harbor would be low to none.  Gold will be plentiful early so we can afford to buy a couple of tiles around the capital and City #2.  

One other possibility – need to check the Appeal lens as this might make a viable situation for Earth Goddess (+1 on tiles with Charming appeal or better) over Goddess of the Harvest.  That genius cattle tile is going to have Breathtaking appeal, the city center would be Charming (+2 for the NW, +1 for the lake, +1 for the forest) so that’s another +2 from about Turn 16 on.  

That makes the capital our faith/science/gold powerhouse and we work on getting City #2 either in the jungle or over by the mountains to the east (settle SE-E of the copper) as a production center.  For City #3 we’d then look for a coastal location, either in the jungle at the warrior’s current location or to the SW of the capital to capture more science out of Yosemite.  I also think that we’re not going to easily get to a city-state to capture due to terrain so I expect that one of the cities (probably City #2) will be building the settler for City #3.  I don’t know that I’d object to putting City #3 coastal but not fresh water if there’s an aqueduct site or we make an early run at Shipbuiding for Kampungs and their housing.

I know it’s against “conventional wisdom” but what are your thoughts about buying settler #2 for 440 rather than building it, given our gold generation capability?  An alternative would be to build the settler at City #2 as soon as possible and buy two builders, one at each city, to get some chops going.  Likewise I think getting Liang first might be the better option as the intended capital and City #2 do not have significant chops available and the builder charges are worth more.  Magnus would be the second governor when we’re ready to chainsaw that forest & jungle to the north.  Since you’ve got game access can you remind me when the first three civics-based governor titles are awarded (I know the first one is at Early Empire)?

So, proposed opening sequence:

Turn 1
- Settler SE to hill tile as the 3-tile vision will reveal that much more
- Warrior NE along river to start city-state hunting or E to check out that fresh water, depending on what the settler reveals.

Turn 2
- Settler 2 SW to location between cattle
- Warrior NE or E

Turn 3
- Found capital, start warrior build
- Warrior NE or E

Initial Capital Micro

Work genius cows.  Grow to Pop 2 on Turn 8, add plains hill tile.  Warrior out on Turn 13.  Pop 3 on Turn 20, buy 22 forest and work that.  Settler is out on Turn 26, city #2 founded on Turn 32 if going to the copper/dyes location to the east.  Builder is out on Turn 33 if my back of the envelope math is correct.

I’ll double check that when I get home.  We’ve got two turns to do so and I don’t have a copy of my city micro spreadsheet with me.

Techs
Animal Husbrandry → Mining → Astrology → Bronze Working → Sailing

Builds at Capital

Warrior → Settler → Builder → Slingers, maybe a scout → Holy Site

Settler before builder is dictated by the delay in getting the capital founded, I think.  Builder will improve both cows and mine the plains hill.  The built warrior will go around Yosemite along the coast to see if there’s a coastal spot for City #2 that beats out the spot to the E of the start location.

</mind spew>

[Cornflakes]

Here's the Great Person roll for this game:
General: Sun Tzu - The Art of War
Engineer: Bi Sheng - Eureka for Printing, and allows city to build 1 more district than the limit 
Merchant: Colaeus - 100 & 1 copy of Luxury 
Scientists: Euclid - Eureka for Mathematics + 1 random Medieval eureka 

First governor titles are State Workforce and Early Empire in the ancient era, and then Defensive Tactics and Recorded History in Classical era. So it will be a long time to #3 and #4.

Moving 2 turns is certainly painful but not the end of the world. I suspect that half of the other players will move on the first turn so you will only be 1 turn behind them. And your quicker growth/science/gold will quickly catch up compared to settling in place. I think you can do better though for the initial capital micro. If you're going to buy the 2/2 GFH (and I think that is the right choice given the current info) then might as well buy it as soon as possible. The additional gold yield will allow you to purchase the tile on T6, perfectly timed with growth of your 2nd pop. Therefore:

Work genius cows. Grow to pop 2 on T5. Buy and work 2/2 GFH on T6 until growth to pop 3 on T13. Work cow + 1/2 PH + 2/2 GFH at 3 pop starting on T14. Warrior out on T12 and from there either ...
A) Settler T23 > Builder T29 ... Settler at T23 (with enough food in the box to remain at size 2) > builder T29.
B) Builder T19 > Settler T27 ... Builder at T19 (improves genius cows T20, mine PH T23, possibly save 3rd charge for 2nd city or improve other cows which may not be worked for a while) > Settler at T27
C) Potentially some other build order after seeing all of the surrounding terrain upon founding. Of particular note is the 5/0/0 Sugar that should be claimed on T8 but is not being worked. We could possibly forego the yields on another tile for a couple of turns in order to speed growth if that makes a big difference. Too much missing information to evaluate at this point.

I'm skeptical of the ROI of early holy sites as anyone but Japan and Russia. (EDIT: but you do need 1 district early for State Workforce, and with Campuses not needed maybe HS really is the best option?)

Science is going to be rocketing ahead early on. How can you best leverage Science into a snowball in other areas? You pointed out not needed a Campus early and I agree 100%. I hope we do not find a scientific CS because balance is better at this stage of the game. You'll be hard pressed to hit the eurekas as it is. Animal Husbandry > Mining is obvious for the first 2 techs. I could see Astrology if you want to go that route and start GProphet points generating. Faith yields from a HS will not pay back for a very long time but that's OK if you are playing for that long game. How do you envision using the faith that you generate from coastal adjacency, HS, GotHarvest, etc.?

Taking Bronze Working to 60% awaiting 3 barb kills would be another option. BW revealing Iron might be critical if you find yourself neighboring Macedon. "Wasting" an early district slot on a 0 yield encampment has less opportunity cost when Campus is unnecessary and Commercial Hubs/Harbors don't do anything until their tier 1 building is completed. If you find Horses at City 2 you could potentially hard research through Archery into Horsemen and rush a neighbor (). Or blast straight to Shipbuilding for a coastal fishing empire 

Buying Settler #2 (I assume for city #3) is probably not in the cards. You'll need 50 to purchase a 2nd ring tile + 440 = 490. Generating gold at 8/turn that's 60 turns. Subtract 5-10 turns if you clear a barb camp or three still puts you well into the Colonization timeframe where it makes more sense to take advantage of the production modifier. Better I think to boost your culture early on with Monument purchases at 2nd & 3rd cities. Culture = policies + governments + governor titles << Considering the value of culture ... God of the Open Sky with the 2 pastures that you can already see at the capital? It really goes back to the question of how do you envision yourself using the accumulated culture from God of the Harvest if you go with that pantheon.