Hah - that's pretty much the experience I had while writing the post, too. It's the best thing about RB-style reports, you have to analyze rather than just rely on a rule of thumb.
I agree that we don't want to delay Exploration much. It's cheap, we're going to have a bored worker, and we definitely need roads at some point. Both for economic and military reasons. Probably still going to do Mysticism first, but I don't think we delay roads any more than that. Even that much I'm doubting - looks like the capital will be on settler production by the time Myst can complete. EC is nice - but would we really pause a settler to knock out an EC? Meanwhile we'll have this worker with nothing to do; Exp first saves ~10-15 worker turns. We may not benefit immediately from roads, but we can save worker turns later. We'll be very short of workers right after Mining comes in, for instance; it'd be nice to have our road net done by then.
Sadly, no morning turn today, so there's nothing to report.
Your points about reinforcing the cities - I think you're envisioning a very different barbarian defense style than I am. Sharing military between cities would let us get away with fewer warriors, total, and more expansion - but it also cuts our XP gain way down. Defense is already half XP, and defending a hill city will tend to put our odds up in the 90's or above.
I was instead planning to get out pairs or triplets of warriors, and station them near the borders, where they can attack onto flatland. With enchanted blade, we should be able to attack barbs at 73%, which is a very nice spot in the curve - tend to gain 5+ XP while still usually winning. The 2nd/3rd warrior would be there to clean up any barbs that win their 27% battle, and to take turns while healing.
This approach is more costly to set up than a couple warriors guarding the cities, true. It's also more costly to maintain - we'll need to replace a warrior for every ~4 barbs instead of every ~10-15. But it should save on worker turns by keeping barbs out of our culture, and more importantly, it should give us level 5 units a lot faster than defending at high odds. Four-five victorious barb battles should be enough XP for a Wane. Granted, we probably need to start two warriors for each that makes it to lvl 5. However - a) we'd have to do that anyway, to some extent. 15 battles at 95% still is a large chance of a lost warrior. b) Better to economize on barbs than hammers. 8 barbs per Wanable instead of 15+ is worth spending the extra hammers up front. c) it's also fewer turns to the first wane. A wane would be a lot more valuable at T50 than T100. Much more snowball effect.
inner monologue Wrote:Ok, obviously I want to go for the gold first, but I should explain why it's best for completeness' sake. So what else might I do. North is bad, because it only...um, well, actually I guess I can make something decent there. East is bad because...well, tech, but it's a beautiful city if we had the tech. South is great because...um. Well, resources? Plains wheat and unimprovable gold and a bunch of plains tiles? Maybe I need to rewrite my post!
I agree that we don't want to delay Exploration much. It's cheap, we're going to have a bored worker, and we definitely need roads at some point. Both for economic and military reasons. Probably still going to do Mysticism first, but I don't think we delay roads any more than that. Even that much I'm doubting - looks like the capital will be on settler production by the time Myst can complete. EC is nice - but would we really pause a settler to knock out an EC? Meanwhile we'll have this worker with nothing to do; Exp first saves ~10-15 worker turns. We may not benefit immediately from roads, but we can save worker turns later. We'll be very short of workers right after Mining comes in, for instance; it'd be nice to have our road net done by then.
Sadly, no morning turn today, so there's nothing to report.
Your points about reinforcing the cities - I think you're envisioning a very different barbarian defense style than I am. Sharing military between cities would let us get away with fewer warriors, total, and more expansion - but it also cuts our XP gain way down. Defense is already half XP, and defending a hill city will tend to put our odds up in the 90's or above.
I was instead planning to get out pairs or triplets of warriors, and station them near the borders, where they can attack onto flatland. With enchanted blade, we should be able to attack barbs at 73%, which is a very nice spot in the curve - tend to gain 5+ XP while still usually winning. The 2nd/3rd warrior would be there to clean up any barbs that win their 27% battle, and to take turns while healing.
This approach is more costly to set up than a couple warriors guarding the cities, true. It's also more costly to maintain - we'll need to replace a warrior for every ~4 barbs instead of every ~10-15. But it should save on worker turns by keeping barbs out of our culture, and more importantly, it should give us level 5 units a lot faster than defending at high odds. Four-five victorious barb battles should be enough XP for a Wane. Granted, we probably need to start two warriors for each that makes it to lvl 5. However - a) we'd have to do that anyway, to some extent. 15 battles at 95% still is a large chance of a lost warrior. b) Better to economize on barbs than hammers. 8 barbs per Wanable instead of 15+ is worth spending the extra hammers up front. c) it's also fewer turns to the first wane. A wane would be a lot more valuable at T50 than T100. Much more snowball effect.
EitB 25 - Perpentach
Occasional mapmaker
Occasional mapmaker
) then...then I debate whether to finish off one more warrior, or just go straight for a settler. Currently we could build a settler in 10 turns, and that should shrink a little with more pop. I think I will probably just go for the settler; barbs are still sadly sparse, while warrior building should be faster with two cities than one whenever the barbs do decide to show up.
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