Micromanagement Sims/Planning

[SevenSpirits]

I suspect banana is best but let's still try other options.

Here's the best I could do with settle in place, which I consider to be playing for the fast second city at deer/cow although it also gives a very nice capital in the medium-term.

Went worker - granary (worked heavy hammers to finish it at size 2) - warrior - settler. Tech was obviously Pottery - Mining - BW - Hunting with AH next. There is 8h overflow from the settler.

[Lewwyn]

I'm in favor of settling the banana and teching pottery first.

[nabaxo]

Are those two peaks to the south? How would that effect city sites down south?

[SleepingMoogle]

I'm not lamenting the loss of a levee, it's just something to consider when deciding whether or not to settle next to a river. The Banana start seems where it's at so far at least.

[Lord Parkin]

I suspect banana is best but let's still try other options.

Here's the best I could do with settle in place, which I consider to be playing for the fast second city at deer/cow although it also gives a very nice capital in the medium-term.

Went worker - granary (worked heavy hammers to finish it at size 2) - warrior - settler. Tech was obviously Pottery - Mining - BW - Hunting with AH next. There is 8h overflow from the settler.

Heh, about to be eaten by a wolf.

Looks pretty good otherwise though. I take it you got your Settler out T37 (one turn after I would have)? Did you only have one Worker?

I'm really not sure that this is a start where we want to whip a lot. Tech costs are immense and maintenance isn't going to be cheap, at least beyond city 2. Add to that, we don't have any happiness resources immediately visible, and settling Copper may well be at odds with settling a happiness resource (assuming Plako's designed the nearby area to contain similarly tricky decisions as the start).

Limiting ourselves to size 4 for 10 turns costs us at least 30 commerce working a river cottage (more after growth), corresponding to 36 beakers on most early techs. So ballpark figure, every whip costs us in the vicinity of 40 beakers with this start (until we get a happiness resource, which may not be for a while)... and that's assuming only one whip per 10 turns. Seems awfully high to me.

Are those two peaks to the south? How would that effect city sites down south?

I may have been mistaken about the left peak (might be just a hill). In that case it might be just a single random peak, so it wouldn't affect city sites down there at all. Indeed, with the extra flood plains it might work out quite well down there. Seems there might be a choice between going south along the river for commerce, or north along the river for hammers.

[Lord Parkin]

You know, Agri/Wheel were probably THE best techs for this particular start. If we go Pottery first (and the evidence at this point strongly suggests that we should), we're going to get a massive tech jump on all the other teams - possibly bar Apolyton (only if they also go Pottery first).

Compare being able to improve Corn and research Pottery right out of the gate, with a Mysticism/Hunting start (CivPlayers, UCiv). Erm... yeah.

We were definitely right picking starting techs above anything else.

[SevenSpirits]

Looks pretty good otherwise though. I take it you got your Settler out T37 (one turn after I would have)? Did you only have one Worker?

Settler born eot36, moves t37 (and revolts t37). Only one worker right now. Probably the best continuation here is to put overflow in the capital into a worker, grow to 6 in 1t, 2whip worker to 4, finish another worker with overflow, and finish the fourth FP cottage while the whip anger wears off. Then don't ever whip any of those 5 tiles off again.

And yeah, Agri/Wheel is the way to go.

[Nicolae Carpathia]

Not building a super early cheap EXP Granary (especially with Pottery first) feels like a waste to me. Personally, once we have Pottery, Mining and Bronze Working, I don't really care about technologies. Hunting and Animal Husbandry are cheap. All I care about are getting a ton of citizens onto the field, and getting a ton of workers to build FIN cottages. We have the ability to defend ourselves with axes, we will very quickly have spears and war chariots, and we can easily recover from crashing our economy. So let's whip like crazy and go max food.

I guess there is merit to going 2nd worker before slow-building a settler, but I still advocate for going heavy on the whip.

[uberfish]

Pottery first really looks like the way forward, got to exploit starting tech + financial + FP.

Obviously if you compare the rate that you get to 2 workers 1 settler, settling banana can't be beaten, but that's an arbitrary stopping point.

Settle in place, 4x FP cottages, 2nd city to PH deer cow, gives an optimal distribution of bonus tiles, the best commerce, some security factor from having both cities on hills, and doesn't waste worker-turns building capital improvements which aren't FP cottages. IMO after the cottages are up and 2nd city is settled this should pay off.

The more I think about it the more SIP and locking the capital into 4 FP cottages ASAP, on a map where we're concerned about maintenance costs and have to research all ancient techs, seems correct.

[Selrahc]

The more I think about it the more SIP and locking the capital into 4 FP cottages ASAP, on a map where we're concerned about maintenance costs and have to research all ancient techs, seems correct.

I would agree with this.
This isn't a map situation that is about grinding out settlers as fast as possible to claim land. We need to be thinking more about optimal use of the tiles that we have.