[PB 55] Miguelito and Mjmd help Amicalola avoid a repetition of last time

[Miguelito]

The monument comment was not meant in a snarky way, more out of interest. It's 15h for a happy face, dirt cheap and very useful once we have granaries and food is not the limiting factor as much anymore. I would not build it for the culture, because there might be a very long way to go until masonry, but the happy alone should make it worth it, and eventually of course the city wants to pop borders.

I'm not sure what you mean by "idle on 6 cities until currency"? You mean actively halting expansion? I would be very much against that, with FIN on Monarch we really should never go broke, and there should be lots of room for expansion left, the corn city, an island city (probably a net plus on the economy), even a chunk of that floodplains river, and then all the south...

I also support Mjmd's alt spot for the pink dot (corn city). We leave 2 subpar tiles in the NW out of our BFCs, but they can be picked up by a late filler city. No need to have marble first ring imo.

[Amicalola]

Micro is so far going to plan. Only thing of note by T43 is that it's tarting to look like SD might have another neighbour to his East, there is a lot of land.



To answer questions, Coffee monument was for the happy, and also lined up perfectly with completing at size 4 worker-time. Coffee whips a crapload of workers for us, so the happy is almost guaranteed to be useful I think. Might have been an early noob trap, since it's just so cheap. Coffee also gets a really early granary, which helps.

If the spears cause massive problems you can both I told you so at me.  Even archers could be a problem with this setup if they show up in the wrong place; we're pretty skeletal. 

Monument before work boat at White Wine is so we could get the monu out working the copper (which we want to do anyway, imo) and also pop the borders super quick to grab the other tiles. It's a super nice city at size 4. 

The three workers are definitely needed at White Wine, but maybe Nat could do a chop at Coffee instead of his cottage if we want to 2whip a settler instead of a worker there. I've been doing all the settler builds so that we chop 1 forest into it, then 2-whip it, since that seemed to work well and efficiently at Water. It's probably doable, though sacrifices even more commerce than I have already. I'm not sure where we'd get workers to road and improve 6 though, although Nat could probably head up afterwards, and Tea could 2-whip a worker pretty soon afterwards. This is why I prioritised granaries so hard; it just allows SO MANY WHIPS! I can't resist!

I think I like that alt spot for corn too. Decent chance that's city 7, plus island for 8, I think? I'm not sure I want to idle after 6 cities, but to be honest I was focusing very hard on expansion like I said, so I'm not actually sure what the economy is going to look like by T60. My gut is that we can keep expanding though, as long as we have workers and build cottages, which we NEED to start doing after T60 anyway (I only had Nat's one and the floodplains, and it looks like the former might change).

[Amicalola]

Also, we need to decide; archery (in my opinion) serves no purpose to this point, since by the time we get to it chariots will be on the scene, and copper will be ~10 turns away. That makes it not attractive to me, but I could be persuaded.

To me, the main research options are either writing or meditation right now, after Pottery. What do you think? It's only a day or two away, this game is moving fast!

[Mjmd]

After pottery is right when I would try for one of the early religions if you fancy to do so. Game is going at a good pace.

I try to avoid archery unless its absolutely needed or your going for horse archers. With spears being upgraded in queue hopefully we will be fine. I would say that warriors should go on barb busting duties where possible and then have the chariots cover the interior.

I don't mean idle idle. I mean we go for city 6 fast, then get workers 6-8. I would say Nat could do it. Put the chop in and then start up and put a chop in for a monument there. Another worker could then road. It is unfortunate all 3 workers are needed up north. They are kind of stuck up there not doing a ton.

1 chop forest into 2 pop whip settlers is the non imperialistic standard.

[Amicalola]

What's the IMP standard, just 2-whipping settlers without the chop? Or chop + 1-whip settlers?

Yeah, same wavelength re: warriors barb busting. Have 1 north already fogbusting the entire White Wine area.

[vanrober]

Someone told me that choping is 20h and choping a settler being IMP is 30, so its like you had Mathematics but several turns before.

[Mjmd]

It's 50% more hammers, so essentially yes.

That is the major benefit to imperialistic is you just get to 2 pop whip settlers no chops required. two whips is 60 hammers *1.5 = 90 hammers. Most size 4 cities can produce 10 hammers towards a settler in 1 turn, so you only spend 2 turns producing settlers. Imperialistic does that one thing pretty darn well, and not much else. Mind it is a really important civ4 thing.

[Mjmd]

Logged in for a sec. PB52 was down. That hill site is looking very good and I definitely think we should have Nat (or a different worker) over there asap for 2 roads and a chop into settler even if it is slightly inefficient somewhere else. Now we don't know much, but it looks like east of that is a lot of plains tiles, so possible they don't settle that way fast, but it is city #6. It is also 1 tile closer to their cap than ours. After that I think all our cities should go south (after workers). Leave those other northern spots for back fill.

With current cities spots, the inland lake isn't getting worked ever. I really do like the 1st ring cow spot for copper city. It does delay silver by a significant amount, which is relevant for our tech, but it is such a faster spot. The 3 workers we have up there could then chop a work boat and improve the cow getting that city relevant extremely quickly. Obviously the other spot is much better later once it gets going and it grabs silver earlier.

[Amicalola]

Hmm, first ring cow is much faster, that's true, but yellow dot is so much better long term. That's double-true if we don't end up getting 6, which I think is a real possibility, in which case I reckon the next best option is 1W of the spice, and sharing the cow. On that note, how risky would it be to have X as 5 and copper as 6? That's too much, right?

If Nat helps chop out a settler at Coffee instead of worker 6, I don't know the exact number but it'd be out around T62-66 ish. Or would you want Nat over there even faster, to grab a settler instead of worker 5? That might also work. Worker 5 is primarily used for getting the yellow dot up-and-running in the current micro, so we'd make that something like 2 turns less efficient, but get another city out faster to our core 6. Worth it, maybe?

Edit: Ah, thanks for the IMP info also, that will be useful at some point I'm sure.

[Mjmd]

1W of the spice is invalid if the hill city is settled. Unless your saying they settle SE of cow (very real spot).

It is pretty risky.

This is where you play around with the micro and see what you can make work / are comfortable with. If you go without the extra worker copper will also be delayed that way, have to figure out how long. You can skip roads to coffee if the settler is coming from coffee.

It is water under the bridge, but did you not follow the micro to get Coffee to size 4 on turn 42? I just noticed it is turn 44 and that worker isn't whipped. I literally only noticed, because I was thinking of when the fastest you could get a settler from coffee, which would be a 2 pop whip on turn 55 and I remember discussing the worker timing there.