Mikehendi Pitboss 16 Thread

[yuris125]

The main problem with the sandbox is that it's.. well.. sandbox. It doesn't take into account what other players are doing. And rest assured, they're expanding towards you. I accept that you don't like food sharing between capital and second city, but you need to take land grabbing into consideration. Rice spot will always be there; the north won't. I would've been ok with it if the rice spot was an amazing location.. but it's not. Its main purpose would be to work cottages for the capital, and that only helps research - it doesn't help production, doesn't help military, doesn't help any early priorities

I agree that the pig spot is not viable as the second city, but strongly believe that the sheep spot is the best option

Considering BW is coming in way earlier than the Settler, I would wait for copper to be visible before making any plans. Its location may change all settling priorities

[Mikehendi]

Catching up on the last two turns.



The lion moved away in the north so our scout was able to move onto the hill tile. There's another banana up here in the jungle on the other side of the lake. Worker finished the grassland hill mine and the capital grew to size 3 at the end of turn.

All of the teams picked up lots of points this turn, I'm guessing from land because it's Turn 20.



Scout moved to the coast this turn and spotted two more clams tiles. We will probably be in competition with Goreripper's civ across the water for the western one though. This map seems to have food everywhere. The one thing missing is happiness luxuries, we've seen only the wines in the far east and whales in the water. This scout is going to move further south and meet Goreripper when his borders expand across the water on Turn 25. Then we'll try to find Bantams somewhere in the north. The Bantams scout hasn't found our capital yet, apparently went off to the east without ever spotting us.



The capital grew to size 3 and works our three improved tiles. Top Five Cities list says that we are the first ones with a size 3 capital. We'll build another worker and then use Bronze Working tech to turn these forests into a quick settler with chops. Settler finishes at the end of Turn 31 and second city founded Turn 33 in the current plan. As best I can tell, two workers + work boat + settler in the first 31 turns is pretty good.



Demographics look good of course because we are first to size 3. It is still a good feeling to be first in GNP, Production, and Food, even if just for one turn.

Yuris, I enjoyed hearing your thoughts on civ planning, and I think you make some good points. But in the end, I'm the one playing this game, and I have to go with what I think is the best decision. Having tested all this stuff in the sandbox, we truly do end up coming out the best when we put that second city down by the southern rice. I can't put the second city in a known weaker spot if I've tested a better location that comes out ahead. I am going to try to attach the sandbox save and my Excel micro sheet to this post. Please feel free to try your best shot at this position. I'm quite happy with the way the plan worked out though. The whip and chop timings took some effort to line up correctly. I think it will take some work to do better.

[Mikehendi]

From the lack of responses to the last post, I think we're going with my micro plans.



These last few turns were very slow, almost nothing happening. The scout moved along the coast, the worker moved into this forest tile to start roading it. (We road the tile so that the second worker can immediately move onto the forest and chop when it comes out, finishing the chop a turn faster. It's not like there's much else to do while waiting for Bronze Working research to complete.)



This turn was slightly more interesting since the barbarian lion showed up. I was hoping that it wouldn't move north so that we could move our scout onto the forested hill tile next turn. When this turn started, we could see that the lion did move down to the south, because it was not visible on any of the current tiles at beginning of turn. So we had two choices: move SE and stay there, hoping that the lion would move further south and avoid combat altogether, or move SE-SE onto the forested hill, and force a battle with the big defensive bonus. I went with the latter choice, since there was too much possibility of the lion moving somewhere awkward. Better to force the battle on very strong defensive terrain and get the barb animal off the board.



There's the current situation. We will win the battle 100% because we get a free win against barbs here on Prince, but being on defensive terrain might mean the difference between surviving with 0.9 health and surviving with 0.1 health. The less time spent healing, the better.

Next turn (Turn 25) will be a big one. We'll move the scout onto the pigs tile and meet Goreripper, then head off to try and find Bantams. Bronze Working research will finish, and the worker can start chopping. We will also be able to see copper locations, and that may force a completely new planning strategy. I am crossing my fingers for copper on one of the plains tiles to the south of the capital, right where we are intending to put the second city. There are relatively few tiles where copper can appear naturally near this start, so down in the south is as likely as any other place.

Bantams has yet to find our capital with his scout, and we've seen no one else yet.

[Mikehendi]

I was thinking yesterday about the different places where copper might appear after finishing Bronze Working research.



This wasn't one of them.

Yes, as it turns out there's a copper resource on the one tile that we already mined. No, we are not hacking the game here. I wonder if the lurkers already knew this and were having a good laugh in their thread. Now our capital is even better than we thought before, and there's basically no chance any anyone can rush us or kill us. We'll always be able to slave out an axe or a spear if a random enemy unit comes wandering by. There is one downside, however: we'll lose the ability to produce warriors when we research Hunting tech, and we do want Hunting tech to connect our ivory. I'll have to experiment with the sandbox again and see what I can figure out.

The scout also won against the lion with 0.8 health remaining. We'll move and meet Goreripper across the water when I end turn.



Three pop in capital, three improved resource tiles. 15 total foodhammers, we can build (non-Expansive) workers in just 4 turns. It's pretty absurd.



Demographics are in very good shape. So far, so good.

[BRickAstley]

That is an awesomely lucky copper placement.

[Mikehendi]

Met Goreripper with our scout on the pigs tile last turn. According to espionage point spending, he has met someone else. Hopefully we can get some of the water resources in the sea between us, it will be a little harder against a Creative civ. We shall see.

Second worker finished in the capital this turn. He moved on the road into the forest and finished a chop along with the first worker. Chop and overflow from worker went into our first settler:



44/100 is not bad. We will finish the settler at the end of Turn 30 with a double forest chop and more production overflow. As everyone probably guessed, the copper resource is simply amazing. It makes everything faster at the capital. We get our first and second settlers out a turn sooner, plus we get a granary in the capital done about four turns sooner. +2 production on every turn adds up fast. The one weird thing is that we have to research Animal Husbandry before Hunting tech so that we can keep building warriors. It's not a bad tradeoff at all, we have a lot of commerce going forward. I think we'll have decent odds to get a religion too if other teams don't head down that path. We can found Buddhism at end of Turn 48 or Hinduism at end of Turn 49 if they're still there, for example. (That's after getting all of Bronze Working, Animal Husbandry, and Pottery.)

Our Demographics look about the same. We will have bar graphs with Bantams next turn.

[yuris125]

Is this a random map, or hand-made? if it's hand-made, this means that everyone has copper in the BFC of the starting position
Looks good
Lol @ Brick

[Mikehendi]

Really slow turn for us. Scout is healing, workers moved to two separate forests to chop them. However, we got the Demographics bar graphs with Bantams this turn:



Our capital is getting much more food, and much more production too:



We are getting 15 combined food and production this turn. Bantams is only getting about 5 or 6 combined food and production right now. I don't know what he's doing, but it looks like a slow start for Bantams. I think he went for a warrior before a worker, since his capital grew to size 2 really early on. In any case, we are very far ahead of Bantams already, and only going to get further ahead as time passes. Hopefully it's a weak neighbor we can exploit later on.

[Mikehendi]

Updates:



Scout still healing, workers begin chopping forests.



Scout moving north, still chopping forests. Warrior build is sitting at 14/15 production.



Forest chops finally finish on the current turn. Warrior build finishes, putting the production overflow into the settler as the chops finish:



15 base production + 40 chopping + 6 overflow = 61 hammers. We had 44 hammers from an earlier turn, which finishes the settler. We spent exactly two turns actually building the settler. Next turn revolt to Slavery as the settler moves, we found the second city on Turn 32 as the capital grows to size 4.



Demographics are middling, they should improve once the second city goes down. Bantams has finally grown his capital to size 3, and doesn't appear to be close to finishing a settler. He still has only 1 warrior according to Power graphs. His opening looks to be pretty bad from what I can tell, we should be able to get way ahead down the road. Maybe make a future play with knights or musketeers someday. Dhalphir's team planted a second city last turn, the first second city of the game. I'm not convinced it was a good idea though, since they built it at size 2 and it looks like it took about eight or nine turns to build. Sevenspirits team double-whipped something in the capital, probably a worker or settler (or in a crazy world, an impi if they have copper connected).

We appear to be in good shape. Pottery tech done next turn, Slavery revolt next turn, second city about to be planted.

[Mikehendi]

Pottery tech and settler both finished this turn. Revolted to Slavery. Second city is going on Yuris' hated southern spot next turn. Our sole warrior is guarding the settler and a worker, good thing there are no barbs in the area. Could we be the second team to a second city?

Check this out:



I take a picture of the Demographics screen every turn. I noticed this turn that the team with highest power was down from last turn. There's a picture in the post right above this one, down from 22k to 21k. That's very strange, teams should not be dropping in power on Turn 30. It has to be someone whipping their capital, and the only candidate is the Sevenspirits team. That means that they are the highest in power, it can't be anyone else (unless someone grows their capital and loses a warrior on the same turn, which seems unlikely).

I wanted to know where that number was coming from, so I looked it up on CivFanatics. Sevenspirits team should have a size 1 capital since they whipped it twice in the last few turns. That's no points there. They started with Agriculture (0k) and Hunting (2k) techs, and they must have Mining (2k) and Bronze Working (8k) techs if they are whipping. They researched one other team, which is probably Animal Husbandry (2k) since they had both Agriculture and Hunting. That's 14k points, leaving another 7k points left to go. The only thing that fits is an ikhanda (3k) and an impi (4k). They must already have an impi on the field, and they whipped another impi this turn. We'll see if they have 25k power next turn.

So their team is almost certainly rushing someone, which is what I thought they were doing from their leader and civ picks. This also explains why they picked Zulus before their leader. We have to hope that we are not the target, 1 in 11 odds I guess. We haven't met their team of course, but in a worst case scenario they could have seen our borders with their scout and movd away without making contact. Low odds, but possible. I think we can avoid dying to an impi rush because we already have copper connected. It would wreck our game though. Basically one team will randomly have their game ruined, I hope whoever is the target researches Bronze Working tech ASAP and gets some axes up. Please go destroy someone else OK?

I'm playing our turns after Sevenspirits team for the immediate future just to be safe.