[90 Spoilers] Saxony's splendour and Miguelusten's glory

[Miguelito]

I had one last significant improvement in mind: build the fur road, to have it done before we can start chopping (or ferrying the worker away). That however delays city two by a turn (because the city tile doesn't get pre-roaded in time). To my great disappointment, I end up with one of the cities lacking one crucial hammer. Now there is a high chance that one of the cities has copper, in which case we could probably find that hammer, but do we want to gamble on this? (losing the gamble would delay city 3 by a turn).
An alternative would be to move city 1W. in that case we can road so fast that city 2 is not delayed. It also saves a forest, but orphans two coast tiles and invalidates the third city spot on the island (the miserably foodless fishing village in the west). Is that worth it?
So, options are:

1. don't road fur, finish all builds securely
   
2. road fur, gamble on copper in one of the two cities' BFCs
   
3. road fur, move city 2 1W
   

Anyways, I'm pretty happy with the micro, so here it is (the original version without the fur road):


All the essential builds finishing with the last hammer, ideal use of the granary, workers and techs in great harmony with the builds.

[Miguelito]

not sure if anybody is still following my descent into this rabbit hole, but:
Turns out that option 3 from the last post is not actually viable. By founding on one of the 2 places for early riverside cottages we delay Sailing by at least a turn, besides the other stated downsides of the spot - and even if we deem that acceptable, it also means that the worker is jobless for four more turns even. So it leaves us with option 1 (do as planned, don't road fur) or 2 (road fur, gamble for favourable copper).

For a closer look at option 2, there are 11 tiles on the island where copper could be. Of those, 8 would salvage the t50 galley + settler. I made a mistake yesterday - copper at the cap only helps if it's on the city tile itself or on the grassforest (which is also shared with city 2).
If copper is under a city, on a grassforest, or on a cottage we're good (of course woudn't love the cottage, but anyways). If it's on a plains forest we get into serious tech trouble (because we have to leave a cottage unattended in order to work it), but it is possible to eke out Sailing in time, as I have tested in th sandbox.

So, 8 out of 11 tiles are a win, although and the reward is considerable (3 worker turns saved when we can really use them, for after BW - mind we'll still have just that one worker). A loss would be appreciable but not devastating - 1 turn delay for city 3. It also has fixed costs of 4h less into the terrace plus likely a suboptimal tign assignment on t50. Yeah I guess I'll take the gamble.

[Kaiser]

Nice, I am following and was hoping you go for it, I like a good gamble

[Miguelito]

not sure if anybody is still following my descent into this rabbit hole, but:
Turns out that option 3 from the last post is not actually viable. By founding on one of the 2 places for early riverside cottages we delay Sailing by at least a turn, besides the other stated downsides of the spot - and even if we deem that acceptable, it also means that the worker is jobless for four more turns even. So it leaves us with option 1 (do as planned, don't road fur) or 2 (road fur, gamble for favourable copper).

For a closer look at option 2, there are 11 tiles on the island where copper could be. Of those, 8 would salvage the t50 galley + settler. I made a mistake yesterday - copper at the cap only helps if it's on the city tile itself or on the grassforest (which is also shared with city 2).
If copper is under a city, on a grassforest, or on a cottage we're good (of course woudn't love the cottage, but anyways). If it's on a plains forest we get into serious tech trouble (because we have to leave a cottage unattended in order to work it), but it is possible to eke out Sailing in time, as I have tested in th sandbox.

So, 8 out of 11 tiles are a win, although and the reward is considerable (3 worker turns saved when we can really use them, for after BW - mind we'll still have just that one worker). A loss would be appreciable but not devastating - 1 turn delay for city 3. It also has fixed costs of 4h less into the terrace plus likely a suboptimal tign assignment on t50. Yeah I guess I'll take the gamble.

Nice, I am following and was hoping you go for it, I like a good gamble

who doesn't. The torture here is that we will know the result only in 18 more turns, that might be a month's time....
I managed to lower the stakes a bit though, as I found a way to get the missing hammer even without favourable copper:




If this is obscure, the settler gets 2pop whipped from 40h in it, the galley gets built on whip overflow and a chop by working 2 plains forests in the 2pop second city, and Sailing finishes on the point without overflow.
So the finale is quite ugly, and having copper at city 2 would improve it a lot (not so much if it's under the cap, actually). I may still be convinced that without it the required sacrifices are too much.

I have mentioned before that I consider this a variant opening that might be inferior to the straightforward BW beeline (which also would have been interesting no doubt, what with founding city 2 and 3 overseas and on different landmasses). But the early granary is still awesome, and I've been enjoying these puzzles.



Other people are connecting their second food resources and growing to size 3 (we will not until t47 and t42, respectively. And the latter is actually city #2 growing ). Fwiw with BW after Hunting we would now have an idling worker for four turns and with fur camp first would just have grown to size 2.

[Rusten]

I've successfully logged in for the first time!  

Opening looks alright at first glance. Delaying the forested corn is ... interesting, but I'll trust your (hours upon hours of ) simming.
Can't vouch for the details, but big picture it all makes sense. I should be able to follow the finer details from here on.

I'm glad you've come around to the early granary and it working out. It was my first thought upon seeing the starting area. And plains river cottages are awesome with vanilla FIN.

[Miguelito]

Glad to have you back
Your opinionon riverside plains vs dry grassland for the third cottage? We have to decide this turn on which to put the next road.  I was tending towards grassland because we want to max expansion after Sailing.

[Rusten]

Grassland. The earlier commerce matters less at that stage.

[Miguelito]

Nothing left do to for a month probably, until we see copper. Meanwhile I get gratuitous anxiety:


Everybody has grown to size 3 and works 2 food resources (again, even rushing BW we couldn't). Looks like at least one other person is also working a commerce tile. As of the current turn actually we finished Pottery and started Mining, so we lost the shared GNP lead as well because no more arrow bonus. Still doing great on approval rating though!
We'll start using Pottery in 5 turns with the first cottage and the turn after we queue terraces in both cities. The capital has to finish the quechua it started during growth to size 2 first though. That one hammer that I have worked so desperately to extract, and finally found it? It's necessary because we lose a single hammer to decay, as the settler takes 12 turns.

[Miguelito]

We're on turn 30, where so many things happen!



The settler is out!
We start the first cottage!



I have to set a terrible tile assignment, as otherwise we will lack one hammer to finish the terrace on turn 43 (unless copper changes that balance, but we can't bank on it)!



We're last in CY, average in MfG (thanks to working the cornforest) and above average in GNP again, with the arrow bonus for BW! Somebody is at size 5, and GT/Empirate (GK) whipped their cap to size 1 on turn 27 and have not grown back yet.
Still rocking approval rate (no idea what #1 is doing)!

Back to boring until t39 when BW finishes, but at least I have to make sure to set the slider correctly.

[Rusten]

What (when) is the next decision to be made? I'll be travelling from saturday to next sunday so don't expect as much input during that time. Will be able to check the thread on my phone, but probably no game access.