Unfinished business - SG for improving at Civ 4 (sic)

[shallow_thought]

I'll pipe up time to time. Also with the map, you could use one of the old pitboss/pbem maps. The old ones you'll likely not have seen and there is a load of them in a thread somewhere.


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It'll be great to get your thoughts. As for using an old MP map, it's an interesting idea - but you might be surprised how many PBs I've at least skimmed. There's a lot of PBEMs out there though; guys, if we really want to do an MP-style map, this is an option.

Of the random starts, I think I prefer Zara. The leader and start feel the most "MPish" of the three. The Julius start is really interesting, but is too far off the MP mainstream to meet my objective of treating this (at least partially) as training. Also, I can see three possible settling spots, each of which demand choices between workers and workboats. There is a strong risk that I'd still be running indecisive sims when Christmas rolls around. I suggest parking that start - I'm not throwing it away though, and fully intend to try it out sometime. The HC start is fine, but the leader / civ combo is not representative of MP.  Plus, Zara has gold and marble to play with (okay, that may not be terribly MP).

Let me know if Zara suits everyone else. I've not been rushing to get started, as we've only got three main players lined up, which I understand to be a little light for an SG. I've got the inlaws staying over this weekend, and while I'd love to lock myself in the study and focus on Civ my time will be a bit limited until Tuesday. But if we can agree on a start, I'll knock up a WB save (based on a second start with the same settings, so no spoilers) and post it and the actual start, and we can at least try and get our starting scout / warrior moved.

My plan is to take things slowly and discuss in order to learn:
- agree to move scout, take screenshot talk
- agree to move settler, take screenshot, talk
- agree initial techs, production
- actually play a sensible set of turns, hopefully as soon as the house is quiet again...
- go into normal SG mode

One we get going, standard seems to be 20 turns, then 15, and then blocks of 10. Sullla rules, 24 hours to post a "got it" message for the save, then 48 hours after that to play and report. Try this and see how it goes, given the limited numbers and the time of year.

[shallow_thought]

What victory would you like to go for? Space? Culture? The start has about 0 to do with that but it is worth asking now.

My assumption was conquest/domination. It's a pangaea map, so the enemy is all right there for the taking. I'd be perfectly happy with taking enough land to win and then pursuing something else that takes less unit management though, if we think it's going to get tediuous. My instinct is to try to create a tech edge, then inflict violence, use new land to improve production / tech edge, rinse and repeat until done, but I'm not sure how practical that is on Emperor. Might need to do more fighting at equivalent techs than I'm used to.

[Zalson]

Conquest it is. A 3-person roster is totally fine, especially if you want more discussion and critiques.

I think you'll be surprised by how rapidly your play will accelerate with other people looking over your shoulder. I know I was.

And finally: I'm fine with the Zara start.

Since you wanted the feedback:

1. Scout NE
   
2. Settle in place
   
3. Start worker/AH
   

However if you wanted to go really crazy:

Start a settler on t1.

[shallow_thought]

I think you'll be surprised by how rapidly your play will accelerate with other people looking over your shoulder. I know I was.

That really came through in your thread; let's hope I can pick things up as quickly.

1. Scout NE
   
2. Settle in place
   
3. Start worker/AH
   

However if you wanted to go really crazy:

Start a settler on t1.

Every time you feel crazy, just imagine Sullla's calm, slightly disappointed voice analysing your play publicly on YouTube and think whether you really want to do it .

Agree with scout NE. Let's see what's down that river...

Ooh. An oasis:


Key question: SIP or 1 NW for the plains hill? If it's not clear, SIP is a grassland hill. Some very rapid simming actually suggests that the extra production of the latter may in fact get the snowball rolling faster (I was surprised, particularly given the oasis). Of course, we don't know what else is there - fog gazing makes it pretty clear it's not one off the coast or anything stupid, but it could easily be a less good long-term site than SIP.
The tech pace is terrifyingly fast in either case, with the flood plains, oasis (if SIP) and an early gold mine (the worker ends up walking over that hill, so I mined it in my sims; may not be the correct move).


I'll try to get some more detailed simming done and post tomorrow. I've attached both the original start (before the scout move) and the sim (updated after the scout move) if anyone else wants to have a go.

Branch points are:
- SIP / 1NW (any other choices worth considering?)
- AH or Agg first. AH looks "obvious" but I think getting the pre-req first shaves a turn off the pair, and I'm more than happy to farm one of the floodplains, at least to start with.
- Build after first worker: this obviously depends on what the scout sees, but obvious choices are warrior or another worker.
One thing that drops out of the sim is how annoying it is to move the worker around the hills and forests. I'm actually going to look at starting with two workers, Agg-Wheel-AH: seems strange to delay the pigs, but getting the workers paired up and able to lay some roads may actually save worker turns when shuttling between the pigs, gold and flood plains.

I promise, I'll pick the pace up and get more decisive after this first turn!

[Brian Shanahan]

I'm in if you'll have me!

I am fine with whatever settings you choose. Just please, no protective/Arabia (I'd like to be able to maybe improve a tile if we snipe a worker).

Also: we can always farmer's gambit with barbs on. The whole "having no defenders" on your interior cities works wonders!

Maybe that's a variant rule? You can only have defenders in a city if the city itself creates them? It's not actually too difficult: you'd just have to have a sentry net and prioritize building a warrior every now and then.

That's just a suggestion: it's up to you if want to take it.

Welcome aboard! I can promise, no protective civs.

However, I've rolled some candidate starts, and it looks like I may be continuing your luck with starting land.

So, noob question. How do I best take upload screenshots? Obviously I can use Printscreen to get a shot, but they're quite large...

I use printscreen, open paint to edit and slap them up on photobucket. When I post I stick spoiler tags around the fullsize ones generally.

[Brian Shanahan]

I'll pipe up time to time. Also with the map, you could use one of the old pitboss/pbem maps. The old ones you'll likely not have seen and there is a load of them in a thread somewhere.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

It'll be great to get your thoughts. As for using an old MP map, it's an interesting idea - but you might be surprised how many PBs I've at least skimmed. There's a lot of PBEMs out there though; guys, if we really want to do an MP-style map, this is an option.

Of the random starts, I think I prefer Zara. The leader and start feel the most "MPish" of the three. The Julius start is really interesting, but is too far off the MP mainstream to meet my objective of treating this (at least partially) as training. Also, I can see three possible settling spots, each of which demand choices between workers and workboats. There is a strong risk that I'd still be running indecisive sims when Christmas rolls around. I suggest parking that start - I'm not throwing it away though, and fully intend to try it out sometime. The HC start is fine, but the leader / civ combo is not representative of MP.  Plus, Zara has gold and marble to play with (okay, that may not be terribly MP).

Let me know if Zara suits everyone else. I've not been rushing to get started, as we've only got three main players lined up, which I understand to be a little light for an SG. I've got the inlaws staying over this weekend, and while I'd love to lock myself in the study and focus on Civ my time will be a bit limited until Tuesday. But if we can agree on a start, I'll knock up a WB save (based on a second start with the same settings, so no spoilers) and post it and the actual start, and we can at least try and get our starting scout / warrior moved.

My plan is to take things slowly and discuss in order to learn:
- agree to move scout, take screenshot talk
- agree to move settler, take screenshot, talk
- agree initial techs, production
- actually play a sensible set of turns, hopefully as soon as the house is quiet again...
- go into normal SG mode

One we get going, standard seems to be 20 turns, then 15, and then blocks of 10. Sullla rules, 24 hours to post a "got it" message for the save, then 48 hours after that to play and report. Try this and see how it goes, given the limited numbers and the time of year.

I like Zara's start. We won't need culture techs early, and we've got a strong hammer start than can contribute a fair share of commerce. Julius game plan is a mite too obvious, tech to IW, try to stomp someone while teching to catapults to stomp more people. And Huayna is make as much cottage cheese as possible while keeping a credible defence and break out at rifles.

As regards the start, SIP. We know we've strong land to the south to carry the mines. To the west it looks like we've plains, plains and more plains. Ag first, those flood plains will be 4-0-1 with farms, and hills pig are 5-1-0 when improved, not much better and the mined pigs are 2-3-0, so pasturing them may not be an immediate need.

We need to find a commerce city fairly quickly, so I'd nearly go worker>warrior>warrior to have two scouting units out there (one thing I really like from FfH/EitB). We'll need to keep the capital farmed to work all the hills, as there's only 8 surplus before biology, if we work all flatland tiles as farms, plus the five from the city centre and pastured pigs.

Final thought, we need mining, and I'd probably put that ahead of either wheel or ah.

Sorry for not looking in the last few days, have been busy.

[Zalson]

There's no rush.

1E puts on the river and gives us a levee at steam power. Since this is a production powerhouse of a capital, that's a worthwhile consideration. However, the plains hill plant also preserves a levee city SE/S.

SiP, the oasis and flood plains mean that we have a base +6 food surplus (pigs +5 at size 1, then +1/+1/+1/-2) at size 5, working the gold. In that case, we should go agg, ah, wheel, pottery and worker first.

Worker first, then units until we get to size 5. Cottage the FP and finance an expansion boom. I'll see what he timeline is for that.

[RefSteel]

Not sure of the tech costs here, but this is normal speed, right? If it's possible to get AH in 13 turns or less after planting on the plains hill (while working the best food-hammer tiles available, making sure to use an FP when the borders pop three turns in) then I think moving to the plains hill and going AH first is the best move. You practically always want a 2H plant (unless giving up an important resource) since it speeds everything up significantly, and you practically always want to improve and work your best tile first (especially as in this case when it costs fewer worker turns to do it). With gold right at the capital, this start can only possibly be research-limited at the very beginning.

I think even if teching Agri first and improving the FPs, it's better to move to the Plains Hill unless it delays Agriculture past EOT14, and even if founding in place, it's probably better to improve the pigs first unless AH wouldn't come in by EOT16, but if you can move to the Plains Hill and get AH in time to improve the pigs when the worker arrives (and then you'll surely have mining in time to improve the gold if research would otherwise be a limiting factor) I don't think there's any doubt that it's the correct move.

(Brian's argument that the plains hill brings in a bunch of plains is perfectly reasonable; the plains hilll would probably be a weaker capital long-term if it just brings in dry plains; I just think that's a small consideration in comparison to getting the snowball started faster, which the plains hill and pigs both will do.)

[shallow_thought]

Not sure of the tech costs here, but this is normal speed, right?  If it's possible to get AH in 13 turns or less after planting on the plains hill (while working the best food-hammer tiles available, making sure to use an FP when the borders pop three turns in) then I think moving to the plains hill and going AH first is the best move.  You practically always want a 2H plant (unless giving up an important resource) since it speeds everything up significantly, and you practically always want to improve and work your best tile first (especially as in this case when it costs fewer worker turns to do it).  With gold right at the capital, this start can only possibly be research-limited at the very beginning.

I think even if teching Agri first and improving the FPs, it's better to move to the Plains Hill unless it delays Agriculture past EOT14, and even if founding in place, it's probably better to improve the pigs first unless AH wouldn't come in by EOT16, but if you can move to the Plains Hill and get AH in time to improve the pigs when the worker arrives (and then you'll surely have mining in time to improve the gold if research would otherwise be a limiting factor) I don't think there's any doubt that it's the correct move.

(Brian's argument that the plains hill brings in a bunch of plains is perfectly reasonable; the plains hilll would probably be a weaker capital long-term if it just brings in dry plains; I just think that's a small consideration in comparison to getting the snowball started faster, which the plains hill and pigs both will do.)

It's normal; if we go straight to AH it pops out in time for the worker to improve the pigs without wasting a worker turn, whether we SIP or go 1NW.

Tried three sims for comparison, running through to turn 40. In all cases:
tech: AGG/AH -> AH/AGG -> Wheel -> Pot -> BW; this is indicative for the third tech on. I suspect that BW before Pot may be better in the actual game (but that will be a decision for the 2nd player...)
prod: worker->warrior->settler->worker->warrior; this is highly speculative after the settler.

For the purposes of this model, I'm assuming that we want an early settler and plant 2N of the pigs and grabs the pigs when founded (cap works floodplains); this is again speculative.

There are other civs running around making contact; it's possible that known tech boni have an impact. They'll be different civs in the game.

Results:

SIP, AH first, turn 40
------------------------
Cap: size 2
2nd city: size 1
3 improved tiles + Oasis (pigs, gold, floodplain farm)
1 worker, 1 warrior, 1 scout
BW due in 7 turns

SIP, Agg first, turn 40
--------------------------
Cap: size 3
2nd city: 0, Settler just popped
4 improved tiles + Oasis (additional floodplain farm)
1 worker, 1 warrior, 1 scout, 1 settler
BW due in 2 turns

1NW, AH first, turn 40
---------------------------
Cap: size 2
2nd city: size 2 (working an unimproved tile!)
4 improved tiles (oasis not workable)
2 workers, 2 warriors, 1 scout

BW due in 8 turns


This basically boils down to "what RefSteel said" - the extra few foodhammers from the plains hill and the earlier worker snowball. Even the extra foodhammer from pigs first is noticeable (partly because farming floodplains is slow). Also, going 1NW means less wandering around from the worker, which has a small effect.

One other thing I've looked at is:

1 NW, double worker (worker-worker-warrior-settler), turn 40
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Cap: size 2
2nd city: size 1
4 improved tiles, but a road from gold, through cap and pigs to new city - trade route on founding, and about 4 worker turns available to build something else around new city turns 38, 39
2 workers, 1 warrior, 1 scout
BW due in 12 turns


This should avoid any unimproved tiles being worked at the second city (wherever it ends up!). But we would be behind in other ways.

Longer term, Brian has some good points. I was thinking we'd cottage at least one floodplain, but we don't need commerce anything like as much as we need food, and I hadn't counted up the total food in the area. In the game, BW before wheel may make sense, particularly if don't go double-worker (anarchy while moving the settler?). And yep, we need scouting units. Some FFH-style paranoia may be appropriate. We have barb archers outside our borders by turn 40, and my (unescorted) settler was one turn short of being eaten by a wolf in one case...

[Brian Shanahan]

Longer term, Brian has some good points. I was thinking we'd cottage at least one floodplain, but we don't need commerce anything like as much as we need food, and I hadn't counted up the total food in the area. In the game, BW before wheel may make sense, particularly if don't go double-worker (anarchy while moving the settler?). And yep, we need scouting units. Some FFH-style paranoia may be appropriate. We have barb archers outside our borders by turn 40, and my (unescorted) settler was one turn short of being eaten by a wolf in one case...

The capital is in no way a commerce site. In fact, there could be an argument to move the palace down the road if we find ourselves a strong commerce site, at Civil Service.

Are you playing trial turns off the base map? For me that's a no-no, as it becomes less of an exercise in sharpening your play and more of endlessly reloading turns.