Micromanagement Sims/Planning

[NobleHelium]

We wouldn't lose any overflow if we finished the axe before the WC I believe (we'd get exactly 35h overflow), but the WC is more valuable so we should finish it first.

We need to finish the axe in HF on t95. There's no reason not to do that. We're not going to finish Moai Statues before those hammers would decay. After finishing the axe, we'd still have enough overflow to finish a WC quickly, if we want. Or I guess we can swap those and do the WC and then the axe, as in AO. But we definitely shouldn't be dumping all the overflow hammers into Moai only to have to swap back to the axeman later to slowly finish it.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

We wouldn't lose any overflow if we finished the axe before the WC I believe (we'd get exactly 35h overflow), but the WC is more valuable so we should finish it first.

We need to finish the axe in HF on t95. There's no reason not to do that. We're not going to finish Moai Statues before those hammers would decay. After finishing the axe, we'd still have enough overflow to finish a WC quickly, if we want. Or I guess we can swap those and do the WC and then the axe, as in AO. But we definitely shouldn't be dumping all the overflow hammers into Moai only to have to swap back to the axeman later to slowly finish it.

I agree with this, and that's sensible. We need the units now anyway to cover all these new cities.

Going back to my earlier thought about marble, I think it would be unlikely that anyone will have marble in time to change the outcome of the MoM race significantly. This is based on a few assumptions, which in turn are based on my faith in Plako as a fair and competent mapmaker:

My first assumption is that IF there is marble, it is in the tundra south, and from our exploration thus far it COULD be more than 4-5 turns outside of our current borders in any direction. IF that is the case, it would take a Herculean effort to settle that distance by now AND hook up roads OR defog an appropriate sea route to send marble back to the core cities. I'm doubtful this has happened yet for any team in this game. Second assumption: No one has expanded further away from their original starting tile at this point in the game than we have. If so, this city is not further than equivalent to the 4-5 tiles south of Seven Tribes that we have unfogged by now. This COULD have been done, but I don't know if it is the best gameplay. Considering that we've found two stone resources and the Pyramids (and Great Wall, for that matter) have not fallen yet, I'm doubting that anyone has pink dotted for marble just yet.

Certainly there are other possibly arid locations closer to our core that could have marble, so don't discount this possibility. More scouting is needed. But, even so, it appears that with us having defogged most of the tiles south of Focal Point, it would be difficult for anyone to have settled marble in that direction by now. I'm going off Sullla's most recent turn report pictures, here.

TL;DR version: I doubt anyone else has marble now, so maybe our "slow and steady" approach is about as well as anyone could manage by now. That's a lot of attempted analysis to come up with "well, I guess we're doing ok."

[Sullla]

As awesome as it would be to have Mausoleum, if some other team wants to do a crazy beeline for the wonder and devote their whole civ to landing it, I say let them have it. No single wonder is worth delaying our constant push for more workers, settlers, and tile improvements. That said, I still think we have extremely good odds to land Mausoleum given the apparent scarcity of marble and our Calendar beeline.

I'm not overly worried about another team getting aggressive against us either. We've got plenty of NAPs in place, CivFanatics has shown no intention of being unfriendly, and WPC/Germans have been tied up in their own war for ages. I would much rather expand as quickly as possible and lean on diplomacy than sit back and play more passively. Keep in mind that we also have the world's #2 Power rating, well above everyone other than the German team, and our awesome war chariot UU about to come online soon. Given that most early game armies are heavy on axes, I almost dare teams to come after us once we have horses. I simply don't think another team will be looking for a fight.

[SevenSpirits]

I just stepped through the save stack and checked things out. Plan looks good. I was checking tile choices in all cities each turn and couldn't find fault with them. Based solely on this, worker choices seemed to be good too.

I did notice one inefficiency, and it pertains to the current turn. Micro sheet has us working the new plains cottage at Gourmet Menu. Instead we should work the bare FP. As you can see in the spreadsheet, the city reaches 31/32 food on t89, just failing to grow. Also, you can see that no city works the plains cottage t90. If we do as I suggest, GM will grow, and add the plains cottage t90, for a net effect of +1 turn working a bare FP, which is worth approximately 1f.

There are two other things I am unhappy about, concerning builds. However, I haven't had the time to figure out if there is a good way to fix them. I will post them now anyway: Early on, we are overflowing hammers from a worker whip into mausoleum. These hammers sit there useless for a LONG time. And in the end they will be worth what, 2t of production towards mausoleum? If we could instead invest those hammers into something useful, like a worker, or whipping one less pop point so the city is bigger, it would surely pay back for itself by the time MoM needs to be done. Btw, if we could get some mines up at Focal Point sooner that would be pretty useful for building MoM. Unfortunately, we are obviously short on worker turns right now, with Calendar arriving. But I bet there's a way to improve Focal Point's hammer output earlier, and I think seeking that out would be valuable.

The second thing is the library in Forbidden Fruit. Specifically, again, the overflow from the worker whip into the library. Again, that's quite a few hammers that are just going to sit there for a long time doing nothing. They are wasted! And a library isn't even that important there.

[kjn]

I did notice one inefficiency, and it pertains to the current turn. Micro sheet has us working the new plains cottage t Gourmet Menu. Instead we should work the bare FP. As you can see in the spreadsheet, the city reaches 31/32 food on t89, just failing to grow. Also, you can see that no city works the plains cottage t90. If we do as I suggest, GM will grow, and add the plains cottage t90, for a net effect of +1 turn working a bare FP, which is worth approximately 1f.

Thanks for pointing this out, Seven. I had looked at that 31/32 without finding a way to grow both HF and GM the same turn. And it will be efficient from a beaker standpoint too, we lose 2b this turn (142*1.2 - 140*1.2) that will be overflow rounded anyway, but gain 3b on T90 (164*1.2 instead of 161*1.2).

And then the extra +1F in the box from post-T90.

[kjn]

Tried the sim up to T92, with Seven's proposed change.

We will be down to 4g on T92, but the extra 1b means we can go as low as 40% science (with a good gold surplus) and still get Currency at the end of turn.

[NobleHelium]

Yeah the FP change is a no-brainer. Not sure about the overflow.

Is anyone willing to go through the save stack and double check that the micro sheet is correct?

[kjn]

I have entered the change for this turn in the micro spread sheet, but will wait to do the rest of the turns until Sullla has confirmed the change.

One idea in Focal Point is to overflow to a another worker, so we can get the mines up around FP quicker, and then chop for the MoM. Seven is correct in that FP can get quite a bit of raw production with all those hills, 16hpt when I counted.

For Forbidden Fruit I think the library build will be quite worthwhile. We can put in another worker whip within a few turns and chop one of the forests (2 available) in its BFC.

[SevenSpirits]

I talked with NH and kjn but we were unable to come up with anything yet. Some ideas I had that we didn't fully get to:

1. What to do with the FFruit overflow? (I did suggest overflowing into and completing another worker, but this was rightly shot down as it would take 4 turns of stagnation.)
a) FFruit can build wealth after whipping the worker (since we just got currency!), wasting 1hpt by turning it into gold, but preserving the overflow. This could go into a worker once it's grown back a bit. I'd consider this an improvement over continuing the library, at the very least.
b) Worker L, born in MMuse on t88, could move onto the plains forest hill by FFruit, rather than going south to road towards Oasis. Then chop x3 and this coincides perfectly with the overflow from the worker whip, allowing a second worker to be built in 1t.
b+) b actually allows some worker redistribution which could be good short-term, though amusingly move even more workers away from FPoint where we want to build mines and chop. After our four workers finish the banana plant for FFruit, we could detach three of them towards roading and pasturing the pigs, and only 1 to cottage the FP. The FP cottage would then be completed by L, after L finished its chop, and would be in time for growth by FFruit - it's not necessary on the turn when we are 1t-ing the second worker. Hurrying another worker over to Alemanni could be useful.

2. What do in FPoint?
a) Don't whip the worker, slow-build it. Seems inferior to 1-whipping it after 2t of production, I think.
b) 1-whip the worker.
c) 2-whip the worker as written in the plan, but overflow into another 2t worker. I am wondering if this is realistically the best option overall. It pretty much means we don't have to steal any workers from elsewhere. It gives a slower MoM than what I was hoping for but at least it does it well - by working mines rather than whipping to a low size and then having to work cottages to grow back.

My current inclination is 1a and 2c. I will investigate further. I think we have the next couple of turns set already.

In all cases I think building the plains cottage SE of MMuse is a waste of time and we should do other things with those worker actions where possible. I believe "where possible" means L if we can find a good plan for roading to the oasis that does not involve L's first turns of life.

[kjn]

I just tried out Seven's idea for using the Focal Point whip overflow for another worker, and I think it will work fine.

Savestack.

(I messed up the worker turns around Alemanni in the savestack, I realise now.)

I opted to put a few more hammers into the workers in Mansa and Focal by doing some tile toggling, which sped up the war chariot out of Mansa with 1t. Also to get a War Chariot out of Forbidden Fruit with the worker overflow (first preserving it by building wealth).

Tentative ideas are that P (the T95 worker out of Adventure One) is to finish the PH mine NE of Gourmet, and then continue southward towards Seven Tribes, Q (the worker out of Mansa) can join the workers clearing jungle and plantationing around Forbidden Fruit and Alemanni, and R (the worker from Horse Feathers) will go to Tree Huggers (by way of putting a turn into the mine and one into a cottage SW of TH).