[SPOILERS] The Wild Card

[The Black Sword]

Our warrior did fare a bit better than the scout:


Of course, he did have 97% odds.
There's no real rush for the warrior I think, so I let him heal.

Our GNP looks even better now that we're researching a pre-req. I'll take another juicy demo shot next turn when the pigs are enabled.

[Jowy]

He should be okay if moving just on the forests. Healing is fine though if we can fight our sense curiosity for a few more turns.

Lurkers love early game demos and graphs. Still haven't figured out why

[The Black Sword]

Our scout was really unlucky you know ...


Do you know the odds of barbarian spawning? I'd hate to have to build a few more units so early. On the other hand, it should be pretty easy for our warrior to block dtay, or anyone else, from stealing the hut from us and we could switch one of the warrior builds to a scout. I'm not sure.

The promised demos:

Just have to take the pictures at the right times.

I've been writing out the full plan I had worked up for red dot recently. Here it is, if you want to try improve it anywhere.

Worker 1
T32: Road 1E of Jetboy
T33-34: Road Marble hill
T35-38: Mine Marble hill
T39-42: Mine plains river hill
T43: move 1N of Jetboy, pre-chop(1/3)

Workers 1+2
T44: move 1W of Jetboy, road
T45-46: mine ph, 2W of Jetboy
T47: pre-chop, 1W of Jetboy(2/3)
T48: pre-chop, 1E of Jetboy(2/3)
T49-50: marble quarry
T51: Chop 1W, 1N of Jetboy(3/3 each)

Worker 3
T47re-chop 1N of Jetboy(2/3)
T48-49: marble quarry
T50: pre-chop 1W of Dr Tachyon(1/3)
T51: Chop 1E of Jetboy(3/3)


Jetboy - Size 3, 1/26f, Always working 2 fish + pigs
T32-35: Settler, 13hpt, 9 overflow
T36-38: 12fpt, 1hpt into warrior(12/15), Grow(11/28)
T39: Grass forest, warrior(14/15), 23/28f
T40: Plains forest, warrior(17/15), 34/28f
T41: plains hill forest, plains forest, worker(19/60), 6/30f
T42-43: Marble mine, ph mine, worker(61/60)
T44-46: As above, worker(63/60)
T47: switch ph mines, warrior(12/15), 14/30f
T48-49: 2 ph mines, settler(34/100)
T50: warrior(21/15), 22/30f
T51: Oracle(150/150), 30/30f


Dr Tachyon:
T36: settler move
T37: Found, work clams(2/22f), workboat(1/30h)
T38-41: Marble Mine(8hpt), workboat(33/30h),2/22f
T42: Netted clams, new workboat(4/30), 6/22f
T43-46: Clams, WB(8/30), 22/22f
T47: add ph mine, WB(14/30),2/22f
T48-49: change ph mine to marble mine, WB(30/30), 6/22f
T50-51: now marble quarry, Granary(10/60), 10/22f


Tech: BW(T39),Pottery(T44), Masonry(T48), Priesthood(T51), Monotheism?

I'm not really sure about the builds in Dr Tachyon after the WB, another worker also seems like a good option. If we got enough food, we could work 2 ph mines for 12 expansive hammers per turn into it. It needs a few farms and a granary to grow properly. The plan is also likely to change a bit when BW comes in. We have to two tiles, where all eligible surrounding tiles are covered in forest:


Seems pretty good odds copper will fall in one of them.

[The Black Sword]

I looked up the odds:

warrior(rougly)
30% barb chance
12% tech chance
30% gold chance
rest: map/scout/xp

scout(roughly)
17% tech chance
42% gold chance
rest: map/scout/xp

Thinking about it, there's not much advantage from popping it earlier. If we got a scout, then earlier would be better, but that has the lowest odds. The only early tech that might change our plan is Animal Husbandry for revealing horses I think. Otherwise, we'd probably leave any benefits until after the oracle run.

So, I'd be in favour of waiting.

We could change the next warrior to a scout, coming out T40. We'd need to send the warrior back to the capital for the happiness so there'd be a brief period where the way would be clear for a dtay scout to slip in, but I think we'd be reasonably safe at that stage. Alternatively, the T50 warrior would be safer but we lose 10 scouting turns.

In any case, might as well finish healing the warrior this turn, if we are going to pop with him, then we don't want a chance of healing, lowering the odds of something more useful.

[The Black Sword]

No resources so far, but there does seem to be another island up north. Makes me even more curious.

As you can see, dtay also revolted into slavery. Does that mean his first settler is out I wonder? If I get some time I might try work it out from his graphs.

[Jowy]

I would imagine most people are settling soon. We know Dtay didn't revolt immediately. The power spike in the power graph from earlier is him getting BW. I don't think that knowing when he has the second settler out helps us in any way, but you are free to dig around We'll know when he settles it. As for the hut, I'm kind of tempted to pop it now. A tech could speed up our Oracle, even if by a few turns. A barbarian pop however could be disastrous.. but we shouldn't get that. Not if we trust the Civ4 Wikia anyway. Check out this passage:

barbs are not valid if:

the game option No Barbarians is on
the hut was popped by culture
it was popped by a Scout/Explorer
no cities exist yet, or if there is exactly 1 city located at a plotDistance < 8

Our capital is 7 tiles away, if moving diagonally counts as one. I don't know if it works exactly like that, and a Google search didn't give any good results. Maybe one of the lurkers know more about this mechanic?

EDIT: This unrelated but dealing with distances post seems to suggest it's 1.5 for moving diagonally.

[spacetyrantxenu]

You could sim it and see what happens regarding the mechanics question about if barbs can pop at that distance. You guys already have a sandbox right? New random seed on reload and run it a bunch of times. If you don't see barbs then you're mechanics assessment is likely correct.

Edit: typing is hrd on a tablet.

[The Black Sword]

I ran the test, seems barb outcomes are still possible.

We already have all 3 chops coming into the oracle on the turn Priesthood completes, and only 1 spare worker turn. We might be able to speed it up by a turn, by not building the road 1W of Jetboy and having our mine ready 2t later. Though actually, we might not be improving that mine if we find copper, so speeding up by a turn is quite possible. However, there's only a 12% chance of getting a tech, and then we have to roll one of those on our tech path.

On the other hand, the worst barbarian spawn at this stage would be 2 warriors, since there's only 2 tiles to spawn on right? Our guy could probably take that on a forested hill.

I still like waiting though, the chance of getting something that would affect the next 10 turns seems low and due to the mountain in our territory we get a lot of notice on any enemy scouts.

EDIT: Oh, and for the curious, the first result I got in the sim was 5xp .

[Jowy]

Let's wait then. Not too long though. Here's a list of techs you can pop from a hut in RB mod:
Fishing, Sailing, Wheel, Pottery, Agriculture, Animal Husbandry, Hunting, Archery, Mysticism, Masonry, Priesthood, Mining, Bronze Working, Writing.

[The Black Sword]

Ok then, I didn't pop the hut and we can change the next build to a scout. The warrior needs to go straight back now I think, to get to Jetboy by the time it grows to size 5.

After the hut the scout can then head down the southern coast? I wouldn't mind finding how close dtay is to that cows+gold spot either, but I guess that's lower priority.