[SPOILERS] Rusten prepares to face the music

[Rusten]

We've got 10+ food surplus in Mecca before sharing. Even growing to size 6 won't take more than 3 turns (worth considering?). Maybe grow 5-6 after the first settler while he's moving to city #2 spot.
Once we've grown to size 6 a riverside mine is a 4.5* yield, close to most resources we'll find. And in some cases (settler production) even stronger. Having a city like this with a lot of natural hammers will jump-start our earlygame. There's great synergy between growing to 5 or 6 and then giving away the corn in favour of working mines. The food is no longer valuable (settler/worker production).

By not hurting our expansion to 4-5-6 I mean that the delay is coming from later chopping, but these hammers will be regained a few turns later. Of course you always want these things as early as possible, but on the flipside we've generated more natural hammers from better tiles.

Odds of losing buddhism: Will assess this once all the leaders/civs are public.
Mecca holy city with connection to city #2 will almost surely pop our city borders in that city too. A lot of end turn in the early game which increases chance to spread naturally.

*arbitrarily gave 1 commerce half a point

[vandale]

Just noticed one thing : 11 turns worker (working ivory) delays Buddhism by 1 turn.
You can go :
- t11 worker + buddhism or ;
- t10 budd + t12 worker.
Maybe once the rival civs will be revealed you'll be more and more inclined to gun for a t10 religion. Just safety.


Testing, step by step :

Run 1. Meditation first :
With delayed BW, I don't see the appeal of going double worker much.
If Mecca grows to 4, it can produce 2 warriors before starting on a settler. Works out okay.
Why grow to size 5 ?
Size 4 : settler, worker, settler gives :
I find it kinda messy.

Run 2 : Fit in a second worker at size 3. Then grow to 4. Improve both mines before starting on a first settler.
Makes a better use of IMP overall :
1st settler out t34 (against t31, iirc), but 3rd settler out sooner :

[corn not worked after city 2 is planted 3S ; I think that last pic illustrates how growing to 5 is unnecessary : cap shares 1 tile and still has 4 strong tiles to work.]
This is more tidy than the first opening.
A thing that bugs me a little with those runs :
The workers spend some time mining, alright, then they chop some and this is still fine
BUT they have a hard time following the settlers. They're late on that. So the development of cities 2 & 3 will suffer, by lack of worker turns.

And it's even worse if you don't share the corn or the rice. Maybe the assumption that a food resource will be shared is too strong.
In contrast, the double chopping workers deplete the stock of forests extra fast but they can improve cities 2&3 straight away, no problems.
Note I still chopped 4 forests in that last pic. Without knowing the lay of the land, it seems fine but... can't really count on that. 3rd worker is a valid build instead of the 3rd settler.

[Rusten]

"[corn not worked after city 2 is planted 3S ; I think that last pic illustrates how growing to 5 is unnecessary : cap shares 1 tile and still has 4 strong tiles to work.]"
But a size 5 city would bring in 3 hammers, 1 commerce (and -1 food) per turn. It doesn't take many turns for that to catch up with an extra chop, and then we still have the chop for later. Point being that it potentially has more than 4 strong tiles to work.

Accidentally opened the [no players] thread. Didn't see anything.

[vandale]

"We've got 10+ food surplus in Mecca before sharing. Even growing to size 6 won't take more than 3 turns (worth considering?). Maybe grow 5-6 after the first settler while he's moving to city #2 spot.
Once we've grown to size 6 a riverside mine is a 4.5* yield, close to most resources we'll find. And in some cases (settler production) even stronger. Having a city like this with a lot of natural hammers will jump-start our earlygame. There's great synergy between growing to 5 or 6 and then giving away the corn in favour of working mines. The food is no longer valuable (settler/worker production).

By not hurting our expansion to 4-5-6 I mean that the delay is coming from later chopping, but these hammers will be regained a few turns later. Of course you always want these things as early as possible, but on the flipside we've generated more natural hammers from better tiles."

I'm not sold on this. It would be unfair to call it "tunnel vision" but I think you underestimate how cities 2&3 can contribute to expansion, in their own right.
We're just testing the capital's development, here. Of course it will generate more output if we grow Mecca as high as possible asap.
Going 2x worker into Granary first, maybe it can be size 10 by 2000 BC. This is a far out exaggeration but you see my point, please indulge me.

Fact : religion first hurts expansion and exponential development overall (commerce, too).

Question : How difficult would it be to capture a holy city if you don't found Budd/Poly youseflf ?
My guess : pretty hard. Odds are high that a holy city would be faraway and the other humans are not noobs.

Question : Would you be willing to invest in missionaries, so as to make your religion the world's dominant one ?
Then you need a quickish Alphabet, so as to open borders. Missionaries are kinda expensive items. Alpha is... is it a good tech ? I don't know, it seems weak compared with, say, Maths or HBR.

Question : Madrasa. The 1st or, more likely, the 2nd GP could bulb into a religion. Most likely Christianity. Then you need another GP to shrine. Ugh...
A late religion like that would have a more difficult time becoming dominant (although OBs with Alpha are late, too),
Burning 2 GPs on this plan seems awfully expensive,
That would come at a time when investing into missionaries is a lot more affordable.


Earlier in this thread, you mentioned a shrine possibly yielding 100gpt. I can totally see this working and me being the one undervaluing the religion, here.
You also mentioned that owning a holy city would make you a target more than anything else for the other players.

Trade-offs. Religion or not is a flavour/strategic choice. Depends on how you wanna play it.
It's a long-term investment. It sure would help sustain an army to have a shrine. Alphabet in the tech path... cannot come too early (defence).
So, the pay-off is late medieval Era. Just about the time you go to war.

Question :
How about a Code of Laws "beeline". Entering the Classical Era with CoL could be fine.
You'd have Archers, Spears and Axes for defence and wouldn't burn a GP on the religion.
Downside : more players interesting in the tech ? Not necessarily... Everybody goes Maths first, right ? ^^
Upside : the opportunity cost is largely reduced.

[Rusten]

I'm not sold on this. It would be unfair to call it "tunnel vision" but I think you underestimate how cities 2&3 can contribute to expansion, in their own right.
We're just testing the capital's development, here. Of course it will generate more output if we grow Mecca as high as possible asap.
Going 2x worker into Granary first, maybe it can be size 10 by 2000 BC. This is a far out exaggeration but you see my point, please indulge me.

I am with you, but I still think it's strong. Part of why I like the heavy hammer approach is the IMP trait, it has to be taken into account. A size 6 Mecca with 4x mines, ivory and rice will have a settler yield of 16 hammers and 1 food hammer per turn = 25 hammers with IMP. That means that we 4-turn settlers, before chops!

How can our secondary cities compete with this?! I'd much rather get a granary up and running (or workers). Mecca should do the settler duty (with hammers) and secondary cities can get the workers/granary (whipping).

Note that this point goes beyond religion or not. Just as a base development plan for any opening.

Question : How difficult would it be to capture a holy city if you don't found Budd/Poly youseflf ?

A dominant one? Almost impossible.
Confu/Christianity/etc? Unreliable/very difficult.

Question : Would you be willing to invest in missionaries, so as to make your religion the world's dominant one ?

Can be used to pop borders (in non-madrassa cities). Other than that I'd rely on natural spread.

Question :
How about a Code of Laws "beeline". Entering the Classical Era with CoL could be fine.

Maybe. But this is around the time where I'd like to go to war with CHM. I'd rather be focussing on a machinery bulb or colosseums.

[vandale]

A shower, some more thoughts :
I agree that Buddhism is the best religion to found, if any.

Mostly : because it comes so soon, it gives the best flexibility to adapt the tech path to the religious choice.
One way you lose this game is under Catapult pressure and, possibly, a dogpile.
Buddhism also has the most upside with spread.

Going after CoL is awfully risky.

The Great Wall. Is this a contested wonder ? If there's stone, it's a 1-turn build with a whip and 3 chops. Espionage mission is relevant ; extra GG points can be, too.
Feudalism. Just a keyword planted there.

I wanna make another double worker run to t38, now.


sneak-edit : yes, I agree that IMP mines are close to power tiles. Functionally, they are.
They're also good to build the granary. Not so much afterwards.

However : if Mecca can build a settler in 6 turns, I don't think growing compares very favourably.
Both options come out pretty even. New city is 2 tiles. Mecca growth takes 3 turns.


re-edit : @ missionaries :
I meant : how willing would you be to send missionaries accross foreign borders ? So as to make that 100gpt shrine a reality, that is.


not-so-sneaky now :
10 turns religion + 12 turns worker is a must if we go down that route, right ?
I'll start using "we" as a pronoum, although I'd rather not touch the official save.

[Rusten]

I see 2 good (non-religious) paths. This post is for size 5 version, I'll put the other in a second post to avoid clutter.

Growing from 4 to 5 takes only 2 turns in our double worker mining-BW opening. There's a lot of overflow food from 3 to 4 and almost perfect growth from 4 to 5 --> must be worth it? Size 6 probably not.

If we get our settler on size 5 instead of size 3 it's out on turn 33 as opposed to T29, but we get 2 mines ready and have several turns of higher population.

1st worker mines forested hill after farming rice. 2nd worker mines hill and then chops a forest.
From the standard opening with worker on size 2.

The T29 settler (your sims) will have very marginal tiles if our 2nd city shares corn (likely). Feels wrong to keep a size 3 Mecca for so long with powerful river tiles available.

Preview:

2nd settler will be out turn 36 if capital keeps corn until T36 (which is the turn the 3rd mine is completed). Corn city can do 1-2 turns of flood plains. [edit: Mecca only needs Corn until T35]

That's with 1 settler chopping and second moving to mine.

3rd settler is out T40 (if that's our build).

Chopping settler chopped 1 more time. Mining settler was free to roam (I just kept him fortified on hill).

[Rusten]

Second variation (based on size 2 worker)

Follows the original plan of chop+chop T29 settler. Assumes corn city is settled T30 (could be 31 -- this depends on flatland or not).
--> Mecca grows to size 4 in 3 turns after settler. 1T corn + 2 turns flood plains (grows as fast to size 4 as 3x corn, but new city has been settled to grab corn.
Would end up like this:

Mecca would then go on to get settlers/workers with 2x mine, rice and ivory.
2nd city is super fast. Bit of a gap until 3rd and 4th.

[Rusten]

re-edit : @ missionaries :
I meant : how willing would you be to send missionaries accross foreign borders ? So as to make that 100gpt shrine a reality, that is.

Not willing.
100 gpt is a stretch, but 50 is doable by the early ADs if fortune favours. This is a huge map and a lot of players will have between 20-35 cities.

10 turns religion + 12 turns worker is a must if we go down that route, right ?
I'll start using "we" as a pronoum, although I'd rather not touch the official save.

Yeah that tile swap is probably worth it. I haven't done it in my simulations, but if we DO commit to mediation then there's no way around it.
That's fine. I only ask of you to play turns that I'm unable to play for whatever reason.

[Rusten]

2nd settler will be out turn 36 if capital keeps corn until T36 (which is the turn the 3rd mine is completed). Corn city can do 1-2 turns of flood plains.

Think I found a way (forcing the overflow) for the settler to be completed T36 and the capital only needs to keep the corn until T35 (which is either the same turn or the turn after 2nd city is settled).

edit: I just realized I pre-chopped and then fully mined with the 1st worker (wasting 2 turns) in my test run. Not optimal. And it's awkward to find an alternate action. Annoying.