[SPOILERS] Small Wunders and Izzy of Inca: The fat lady sings

[WilliamLP]

That's a lot of points to think about, thanks. Our intuitions for how this game is going to play out are very different, which a good thing! I'm imagining a much more peaceful builder game, at least for the first 60 turns or so. I just checked in the game - there are 3674 land tiles on this huge map, which is 204 per person - easily enough for 10-12 cities each. But I'm very convinced that a lot of wars are just pre-destined by geography, especially in a no-diplo game. A lot will depend on who our neighbors turn out to be and how far they are. If we're right beside Commodore or something... man oh man.

[WilliamLP]

Some theory on when to build the first settler:



My logic is probably wrong somewhere and Civ has many more variables than this but...

Assumptions:
- We always get the capital to size 4 after the settler is out, and no further (i.e. it's building a second worker or settler).
- We're settling the PH spot to the west as our second city, to simplify analysis.
- I'm ruling out a settler at size 5, because the capital doesn't seem to get much out of that fifth pop point.

I'm trying to compare the total gain and loss of building a settler at size 3, and size 4, using size 2 as a baseline.

Size 2:
- A problem with this is (aside from early defense), from turn 27-29 we have an improved cow we're not working.

Size 3:
- From turn 21-26 we can work the silk forest, for a net gain of +1 hammer / +1 commerce each turn over size 2.
- From turn 27-29 we can work the improved cow, for net gain of +4 food-hammers per turn.
- In total we are up 19 food hammers and 7 commerce.
- But we lose 2 turns on the new city.
- But... the sheep can't be up before turn 34 anyway, so the 2 turns are probably worth only 3 food-hammers or so each.

Size 4:
- From turn 21-23 we can work the silk forest at size 3
- From turn 24-26 we can work the silk forest and another 2/1/0 tile at size 4 for a net gain of +2 food-hammers and 1 commerce per turn.
- From turn 27-29 we can work the improved cow, and the silk forest, for a net gain of 5 food-hammers and 1 commerce.
- In total we are up 27 food-hammers and 12 commerce.
- This is 8 food-hammers and 5 commerce over the size 3 start.
- But we lose 4 turns on the new city, (2 turns compared to the size 3 start).
- We delay the sheep improvement (3/2/1 tile) by 2 turns.

Conclusion

For me, a settler either at size 3 and 4 (after this analysis) are clearly better than at size 2. Between 3 and 4, I think it's pretty much a wash, and I'd probably lean to the size 3 settler, just to get the second city snowballing slightly faster, and because delaying the sheep by 2 turns when the worker doesn't have much else productive to do doesn't seem like a good idea.

[Plunder]

I asked to change the name of the Will Blunder thread, I clicked it now too often. I really don't want to unintentionally spoil myself when I am tired and browsing this forum :S
And I guess William is prone to the same mistake.

[WilliamLP]

Yeah, I've been close to clicking it before; the name is really similar to our PB11 thread.

I haven't been reporting every scout move that's boring, but we had a really nice turn 6:






Even better would be Wheel or Mining instead of a tech we have half finished, but still! We're going to take a stab at Meditation now. 5 other people have hut techs. It's possible that Plako or Suttree are going for the religion and will get it first but if so we should find out soon and not waste too many turns.

Gold is revealed! This land is good. I think the leading candidate for a second city is now a site with gold and sharing corn, e.g. 4S of the capital.

[WilliamLP]

I'd definately for for BW before Pottery. Landing, or not landing metal could easily determine our game. Especially if we're not going to research AH for the horses. We have no way to defend against any type of unit other than an archer (quecha advantage). A spear, axe, chariot shows up and we can't whip and we can't produce anything that can stand up to these units.

I'm on board with this. I'm not expecting fast chariots in this game - I think in BtS chariot rushes tend to be opportunistic. AH is researched to hook up other animals, then you see horses, and build some early chariots if they're convenient. In the mod, I expect most other people to delay AH, like we will, in favour of early econ. Still... one axe destroys us without copper, no question. Even if we react with archers in time they can only really defend citites while axes can choke and pillage away. So I'm with you that BW is absolutely crucial ASAP.

This is a tough question. Normall, since we have Agriculture, I'd say that we'd have to wait for Mining, BW, wheel at a minimum. Then if we had no metal, AH. But in this case since Hunting gives us such very high productivity I think that we could get Meditation/Poly as the next tech. If nothing else we should be able to produce a steady stream of warriors to fend off a lone chariot strike.

I really don't think that Pottery should be in the mix until we can defend ourselves.

Yeah, that's fair. With the remainder of hunting popped from the hut, I think slotting in Meditation now is a decent play and doesn't set us too far back. Although... there is no question that for the first 60 turns going straight to BW then Pottery right now would be a stronger economic play. I think the religion will shine after that if we get it.

Another variable is that we now know we have luxuries, at least gold and silver and 2 calendar resources. But as Sullla says you can't have too much happiness in this game.

Option 2: Religion; then push for metal
Mediatation (80B -20%) >> Mining (50H) >> BW (120B -20%) >> Wheel (60B) >> Pottery (80H -40%)
-310B until we can begin to get copper to defend ourselves. 250B if we're currently sitting on copper.
-Pottery after 450B

The gold necessitates mining early now, so this seems the logical choice. Pottery doesn't get the 40% bonus until we have Fishing. Would you put Fishing before Pottery since we need it anyway? Normally it would be an easy choice but on this map we easily have 3-4 extremely strong cities while still saving the coast for later, so I'm not as sure. The argument against is that accelerating Terraces and cottages a little is worth wasting some beakers by getting the techs out of order.

Is a dash for Oracle completely crazy? I'm talking about settling a fast third city right on the marble and just going for it, chopping it out.

I'd say its pretty crazy. Its a nice to have and if the 3rd city goes there anyway great. But I'm thinking that civs will be pretty close together with this many players on the map. With all these productive tiles, the opportunity cost is really high to make a dash for something like that.

If we don't prioritize the military techs and claim our share of the land we could be choked out or settled up on aggressively and then just outproduced. Landing a religions + pushing for Monotheism play to our strengths. The Oracle only for the GP. Nice, but with cheap temples we can get the GP pretty easily anyway.

Also, strategically, if we find ourselves to be very close to our neighbours we should try to punish anyone playing a farmer's gambit. That means AH + Chariots.

You make very good points. The opportunity cost of Oracle is 75 hammers (most of a settler), plus we have to veer to masonry and priesthood which we don't need otherwise. But... the fail gold is a 4 for 1 hammer to beaker trade, which is pretty fantastic. And getting it is a big economic edge - we could take something like Monarchy or CoL or Iron or even just Math with it.

Still... I think there's a good argument that we have room for only one loony early play that slows us down, and we're making it already with Meditation.

[WilliamLP]

Scout move:




That's the coast, so all that land west of Turandot appears to be ours. It's not too shabby either!

Plako finished a fast tech, so he didn't go religion first. It would have been a surprise if he did. The remaining person who could beat us is Suttree as Spain with fishing and a hut tech. We'll find out in about three turns if so. I'm doubting it though: he's Huayna and is probably thinking hard about Stonehenge.

Demos with everyone's borders popped:




The average capital has 5.5 water tiles. Someone has a 10 water tile city. Someone also has 6 prod at size 1. How do you even get that? Settling on a stone or marble plains hill, and working a plains hill forest would do it. Combined with Exp, that would be +2 hammers in this mod. Now _that_ would be a hell of a start and could get a worker in 8 turns.

[WilliamLP]

The risk depends on whether someone has discovered our capital with a scount.

By the way I'm going to guess you do database programming and have "count" thoroughly in your muscle memory. Because I make that typo a lot too before correcting it.

[MindyMcCready]

By the way I'm going to guess you do database programming and have "count" thoroughly in your muscle memory. Because I make that typo a lot too before correcting it.

Well I do a bit of it,...but it's pretty forced. I'm definately not a natural at this kind of stuff but it comes in pretty useful for the things that I do do which is forecasting and modelling. It's my damn co-workers who turn stuff around so quickly with their VB & C# apps that force me to do this kind of stuff. If it was up to me I'd happily be a Luddite. (Hi Luddite )

Option 2: Religion; then push for metal
Mediatation (80B -20%) >> Mining (50H) >> BW (120B -20%) >> Wheel (60B) >> Pottery (80H -40%)
-310B until we can begin to get copper to defend ourselves. 250B if we're currently sitting on copper.
-Pottery after 450B

The gold necessitates mining early now, so this seems the logical choice.

Ok, that seems good. Risk-wise we're only slotting in 1 optional tech before making a beeline to BW so that's good. Let's see if we can have a settler ready the turn we land BW. We should commit ourselves to landing that metal as soon as we can.

Pottery doesn't get the 40% bonus until we have Fishing. Would you put Fishing before Pottery since we need it anyway? Normally it would be an easy choice but on this map we easily have 3-4 extremely strong cities while still saving the coast for later, so I'm not as sure. The argument against is that accelerating Terraces and cottages a little is worth wasting some beakers by getting the techs out of order.

Looks like we have 3 extremely strong cities without fishing. 4S of Capital, 3W of capital and 8W-3N (massive stretch - but maybe nobody's in the area?) so I think that I'd wait. I also see a Maoi city 10W of capital.

Please be careful with that scount! Times up on the freebies and I'm dying to see the land 6W-3S of capital. If we can lock down that area we have a decent chunk of very good land. I suspect that that move away from the coast is going to benefit us more than we could have guessed at the time.

Another variable is that we now know we have luxuries, at least gold and silver and 2 calendar resources. But as Sullla says you can't have too much happiness in this game.

That is awesome. Maybe we need to Oracle Metal Casting after all. Let's just wait and see if it falls before we naturally hook up our marble.

[WilliamLP]

Well this got awkward really quickly:




Our capitals are 7 tiles away! I don't know how to match color schemes to know who it is, it might be Serdoa.

Advice? Presumably we don't make contact now, because we know where they are and they don't know where we are. I'm thinking E-E next turn to stay out of vision while still scouting around our capital?

I really don't want to abort Meditation now but a case could be made for it. Also there is a case for building 2 quechuas and hoping to catch that city unguarded.

The crazy play would be to stop the worker right now and quechua rush immediately.

[MindyMcCready]

Well this got awkward really quickly:

Our capitals are 7 tiles away! I don't know how to match color schemes to know who it is, it might be Serdoa.

Serdoa is Mansa Musa (Financial, Spiritual) of America (Agriculture + Fishing) (Minuteman/Musket + Mall/Grocer)
-so the king of slow starts.

So its nerfed Financial vs mid-game Expansive.
Financial: +1 commerce on all non-river tiles that have 2+ commerce. +100% production of Bank.
Expansive: +2 health per city. +35% production of Worker, Work Boat. +100% production of Market, Aqueduct, Grocer, Harbor.

All else equal, I like our chances here especially with the faster worker + faster workboat + culture building. Our movment off the coast is a bit of a double-edged sword now: we'll be able to claim more land but Serdoa is going to be a little boxed in. Every city we plant is going to feel like an aggressive plant to him. So we're going to have to be defensively minded. Or offensively minded.

Has our espionage been allocated? Or is espionage even in this game? Do you know if Serdoa could tell that we've met in anyway? Do we have graphs?

Options:
Option1: Scout choke. Sit on his best resource to deny him growth and force him to build a warrior to deal with it.
-This is a fairly significant setback as we can deny a worker improvement to a 'best' tile.

Option2: Single warrior attack. It looks like we can see the top 3 of the BFC so we know the ideal attack angle. Warrior by T12 and attack by T19?
-Plains Hill: 2H + 3F for 5FH/turn = T12 worker + 5T for warrior
-Normal tile: 1H + 3F for 4FH/turn = T15 worker + 5T for warrior

So a normal tile is doable!!!! And if it fails we can still choke. But we've created a life long enemy and we've slowed down our workers. Can we determine what his mfg/food is? Graphs will make all the difference in the world here. If he's not on a plains hill/resource there's probably no way for him to defend. This the best play if we can actually determine his output. Double check if the city would have grown in the 5T for his warrior build.

Option3: Archer rush. Rush to Blue Dot. Crank out an Archer assult.
-Not sure what turn we could come up with something like that. The cows-cows-sheep will be very good for getting archers out quickly.
-With our quicker start + Hunting pop this is very viable. Its likely that we could get this before he could land BW.
-Worked on Scooter & Pindicator!

Option4: Double warrior attack.
-Warrior on T12 and second warrior on T16? Assult on T23? Full fortify (25%) + 20% culture gives us 11% odds with the first warrior.
-By no means a guaranteed thing.

Option5: Develop in peace:
-Risky if Serdoa doesn't feel the same way.
-Allows the religion grab + work great tiles.

Favour option 2 if we can see his graphs. Revealing the scout is worth it if it gets us graphs.