Micromanagement Sims/Planning

[SevenSpirits]

And of course more golden ages?

Actually, no. I don't think that will be an efficient use of great people until later.

[Sullla]

I agree with the general thoughts in this thread. This is a very good discussion to be having now. We should be thinking about these ideas and setting the stage for the next two dozen turns. If we want to farm all of the tiles at the wines city and turn it into a Great Person farm (with National Epic later? I like the suggestion), we do need to have that in mind now. Despite what you might think, I do enjoy having these conversations. We should be concentrating discussion on this, not trivial issues like which tile our scouting unit moves onto each turn.

My main criticism from yesterday was the immediate rush to Philosophy tech path, which I thought was a poor choice. Seven wrote at one point that teching Monarchy would delay other things by 4t, but I can turn that around and point out that teching Philosophy would delay everythig else by the 12-15 turns needed to research it, and Pacifism isn't particularly strong in and of itself. It's only strong when combined with a Golden Age for free civic swaps and mass Caste System specialist use. I'm fine with us researching Philosophy tech, I simply think that the order should be different. In particular, I would prefer to grab Civil Service first, so that would could revolt into Bureaucracy on the very first turn of a Golden Age. And you'll have a hard time convincing me that the very cheap Monarch tech (about 3.5t worth of beakers right now for universal +2 happiness) isn't worth grabbing immediately. We also had the example of growing one city to size 12-14 and then starving it down with mass specialists during a Golden Age, but how could we even grow it that high without having Hereditary Rule civic in place beforehand?

My disagreement stemmed from the suggestion to avoid teching Monarchy until we had researched Philosophy and were already in a Golden Age, which I do not think is the best use of our research. I also dislike that whole Organized Religion only civics swap. I like this proposal much, much more:

* We tech Monarchy before revolting, and revolt to both OR and HR.
* We trade away our copper so we can build some warrior military police.
* We tech meditation and build a monastery in AO.
* Then we get Code of Laws and Civil Service
* We start the golden age and revolt to bureaucracy.
* In the first 5 turns of the golden age, we tech philosophy.
* On the 6th turn, we revolt to caste system and pacifism, and stay in those civics for 6t.
* On the final turn of the GA, we switch back to slavery/OR.

This feels like a good plan to me. I can be talked out of early Metal Casting as long as we have the happiness base to support our cities, which we'll need Monarchy and Hereditary Rule to support. Side question here: what do we do if we can't trade our copper away? Can we pillage our own resource to disconnect it? I need to look again at those mechanics. If we can't or don't want to do this, we could always tech Archery to build cheapish archers (25 production) for military police.

Here's what I think becomes a very important question: how exactly do we produce that first Great Person for the Golden Age? I'm assuming that Mansa's Muse is the city we're looking at from the free Great Prophet points. Yes, we mentioned building the Great Wall, and that's a good idea, but we can't count on that. I've been expecting that wonder to fall any turn now for quite some time. I'm pretty amazed that it hasn't been taking by someone to this point. How do we get a Great Person out of Mansa's Muse circa T120 if we don't land Great Wall? We need about 180 Great Person points from that city over the next 30 turns. Stonehenge/Shrine is 3 per turn for 90 GPP. If we don't get Great Wall, we'll need about another 90 points or 30 specialist turns. What's our plan for this city?

It would also be useful to lock down more specifically how many Great People and what types we're looking to produce in the first Golden Age. This discussion is already underway, of course, but we could use more consensus. We want one Great Scientist for an Academy in the capital, and then after that...? I'm not sure if an Academy in Gourmet Menu would be better than simply holding a Great Scientist for an Education lightbulb (which would likely win us the Liberalism race). We'll also need to find another city to use as a specialist farm beyond the proposed West City (and mostly_harmless has correctly pointed out that we're not guaranteed even to settle in that spot yet). Maybe Eastern Dealers? It has two food bonuses and could starve off a bunch of mediocre lake tiles.

Finally, the current micro plan under use is always edited into the very first post of this thread. The better documentation that a plan has, the easier it is for me to follow. Turn by turn pictures are the best, followed by a written out spreadsheet, followed by a save stack (which is not preferred). If we can produce something that incorporates the current discussion, without the T96 revolt to Organized Religion alone, I'll put it in the first page of the thread.

If you guys want to do a shared sim/planning session, I can set up a private Livestreaming session where we can hash things out together as a group, where I can put the proposals on the screen for everyone to watch and discuss in real time. Let me know if there is any interest in that.

[NobleHelium]

Yeah sure, we could pillage our own copper. But uh, we're trying to build MoM in that city so we probably wouldn't do that. I don't think it's a big deal either way.

MM will produce the first GP by working 3-4 specialists at size 7. If we land Great Wall we could work 3. If we don't, we could work all 4. The exact amount depends on how soon we want the Golden Age. With a GW attempt failure, the earliest we can get the GP with this plan would be eot113 or so.

[Shoot the Moon]

War Chariots wouldn't be a terrible HR unit to build either (much better than archers I'd say). They only cost 5 hammers more than archers, but are obviously more useful militarily and also have the added bonus of being two movers, which for HR units can actually be nice if we want to shuffle around happiness based on whip cycles and the like. I'd say for HR units warriors>WCs>archers.

[waterbat]

another item in favor of building chariots - the higher score provided to our power demographic might deter would-be attackers <shrug>

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

We can run 3 priests, and/or 2 scientists in MM. This would just require the corn to stay food neutral at 3 specialists.

Food cities:

Western flood plains city - Wheat, 4 farmed flood plains, 3 farmed river grass at size 8: +15f. After Bureaucracy, size 12 +19f at max growth. Ridiculous.



Pink Dot - 2 6f tiles (wet corn, fish + LH), Oasis, 2 grassland to farm (1 after Bureaucracy) - total + 12f @ size 4, +13 @ size 5. At size 10 that's six scientists in caste. Using the chops for a granary, WB, and LH, this would be pretty quick to set up, given sufficient worker support.



Either of Eastern Dealers or Forbidden Fruit will have a massive food surplus, if we need to make those a GP city, obviously FF is better suited for river commerce, so Eastern Dealers (Pig, Clams + LH, farmed FP) would do just fine. There are 2 grasslands on the river that can be farmed now, and an extra after Bureaucracy.

Eastern Dealer: Granary (chop), WB (whip), LH (whip), size 5: LH Clams, Pigs, farmed FP + 2 river grass: +13f. After Bureaucracy, +14 at size 6.



If we can settle the Western Floodplains, that's a great food city, even sharing a farmed FP and the wheat with Brick by Brick, as it will need to do to maximize production with all the hills we'll mine there. I'm not sure what the long term plan for Pink Dot is, but we can get it up to a size large enough to be useful during our GA, and it's a city I wouldn't mind terribly having to starve for great people as we'll have very little commerce here. I think Eastern Dealers is a very nice GP pump, and I would be happy with the National Epic there. Despite having much more food at Western Floodplains, that location does not feel very secure to me. And, it makes my soul cry to give up that many financial floodplain cottages, but Seven is right that those would be the first thing to go in an invasion, making them less useful than they otherwise would be if we could assume a safe trajectory for growth, which we cannot.

Thoughts?

[kjn]

Doing a livestream or similar interactive planning session sounds like a good idea, especially if we have a few people who have prepared some planning beforehand. But I think everyone involved need to be quite disciplined, otherwise it might descend into chaos (on the other hand, too much discipline turns into a straitjacket). It would also be a useful practice run for future war turns.

Good to have your preference clearly stated on how you want your micro plans, Sullla.

Mansa's Muse can run up to five priests, so if we ever manage to grow the city (post-worker-whip in AO) we should be able to get another prophet there rather easily. That said, we should probably look at making this city grow too - it has taken several hits for the greater good already.

If we plan to do Bureaucracy first on the golden age, and tech to and adopt Pacifism during it, then we can't use AO as one of the GP generating cities. Mansa's Muse will have a mixed pool. Forbidden Fruit or Eastern Dealers should probably be one of the cities. But I think we should use Horse Feathers for the first GS. It has enough concentrated food surplus and we get the academy in Adventure One the same turn as the GS.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

Doing a livestream or similar interactive planning session sounds like a good idea, especially if we have a few people who have prepared some planning beforehand. But I think everyone involved need to be quite disciplined, otherwise it might descend into chaos (on the other hand, too much discipline turns into a straitjacket). It would also be a useful practice run for future war turns.

Good to have your preference clearly stated on how you want your micro plans, Sullla.

Mansa's Muse can run up to five priests, so if we ever manage to grow the city (post-worker-whip in AO) we should be able to get another prophet there rather easily. That said, we should probably look at making this city grow too - it has taken several hits for the greater good already.

If we plan to do Bureaucracy first on the golden age, and tech to and adopt Pacifism during it, then we can't use AO as one of the GP generating cities. Mansa's Muse will have a mixed pool. Forbidden Fruit or Eastern Dealers should probably be one of the cities. But I think we should use Horse Feathers for the first GS. It has enough concentrated food surplus and we get the academy in Adventure One the same turn as the GS.

If we're going to build Moai in Horse Feathers, we should let it grow. Also, I wouldn't consider AO as a GP city. We have an ever-expanding happy cap, and HR on the way. AO needs to grow, grow, grow onto cottages and get them mature. This also is another strike against Horse Feathers, as the two will need to compete for the corn to grow.

[novice]

Nice work, BGN. I think aiming for those three cities you highlighted to produce GPs during the Golden Age makes sense.

Speaking of micro plans - any interest in building the HG in Seven Tribes?

[NobleHelium]

Yeah, I'm interested in that, but I don't think we should bother with it until we get OR in ST to whip the aqueduct.