[SPOILERS] The Peaceful Centaur: a Study in Possibility

[Irgy]

We survived the wolf, was still only worth 2xp though. I took the gorrlia promotion, since it gives the biggest bonus, we're on a hill now, and there's a lot of hills around. The way I figure it, if we're attacked by something and we're not on a hill we're probably dead, combat 1 or not, so might as well give us a shot at surviving a griffon attack when we are on a hill. Feel free to disagree, but it's too late now anyway



Will be 2 turns to heal, which I thought was worth spending the time to do, especially since there's a lion in the way of where we want to go next anyway.

Not much other news that I can think of. Sciz finally grew, so my 2-tiles-away-wheat theory is holding up.

[Azoth]

No, apparently our screenshots haven't given the right sense of scale, they're well outside of range of each other. That said, the in-game mouseovers disagree with you - incense is base 1, +5 with plantation, while Gold is base 2 (+1 in this case for the river), + 6 with Mine, also +1 hammer with Mine. Gold also has the advantage of immediately, directly, providing happiness instead of requiring a temple be built. So the final product is a 0/2/9 tile for the mine vs 0/0/6 for an incense. Granted, more tiles can make up for a single good one.

Ah, my bad. I was comparing apples and oranges: an Incense Plantation gives +6 commerce overall, while a Gold Mine gives +6 commerce from the Mine and +2 commerce base. Now that I bother to check the minimap, I can also see that the Incense are nowhere near each other. (In fact, the scout is still technically west of the capital, if only by a few tiles.) And, of course, food resources should be given priority when settling, though the Incense look better in this regard, because they can be upgraded to 1/1/6 with Spring. And that should be possible before you have any Towns (or, indeed, Enclaves.) In FFH PBEM I, if I recall, the entire pangaea was settled, all the early wars fought, and the bulk of the centaur army built before any towns upgraded to enclaves. By the time you can get food from enclaves, your megacities will likely be fully grown.

I don't really know if it'll be worth a second revolt to pick up Apprenticeship, though, at least not that early in the game. Every lost turn is precious, and we don't intend to fight a war, especially if we can intimidate Sciz into going elsewhere. Kurios are one of the fastest civs out of the gate, due to the +3 happy and sprawling, but if we throw that away with excessive revolts, then all we become is a civ with a couple big targets on our back.

I don't know, I can see both angles here, maybe Irgy will have something else to add to the conversation.

On this point, I would have to disagree. The first promotion on newly built units is worth a lot, especially in FFH. Combat I turns battles in the field (Warriors v. Barbarian Warriors; Centaurs v. Bronze Warriors) from coinflips into 70%+ wins. (As a bonus, it brings Hunters closer to Subdue Animal.) Meanwhile, Mobility I gives a lot of flexibility on both offense and defense. Even if you don't plan to attack anyone, you'll need to deal with barbarians. With cottages everywhere, I expect you'll attack OUT of your cities rather than risk them being pillaged. Now, it's true you might not want to switch to Apprenticeship as soon as you get Education. Squeezing out a few more 0XP warriors is no bad thing. But as soon as you start building Centaurs, I think it makes sense to switch. +2XP on all your Centaurs is definitely worth sacrificing a turn of production, ie: ~15 hammers in the capital, or one-third a Centaur. The question is whether you can stay in Pacifism until then.

Waiting for Calendar and Agrarianism is another option. But I wonder: How much benefit does Agrarianism bring on this map? It will cost a lot of God-King hammers, turning 2/1/1 riverside plains farms into 3/0/1. And once you reach your happy cap and switch to cottages, Agrarianism is simply a Medium upkeep civic that provides no benefits. Sure, some 3 food plains farms will help cities two and three grow faster, but you'll need some irrigable land first (the gold site has only one freshwater plains tile in the second ring, and three more in the third) and you'd prefer to work food resources anyway. Maybe it would be best to skip Agrarianism and beeline Sanitation?

[Irgy]

In FFH PBEM I, if I recall, the entire pangaea was settled, all the early wars fought, and the bulk of the centaur army built before any towns upgraded to enclaves. By the time you can get food from enclaves, your megacities will likely be fully grown.

In FFH PBEM I though Pocketbeetle wasn't building cottages anywhere near as early as we're going to. In fact from what I can tell he never even built them in his original city. Not sure whether he moved the palace, but the cities with cottages were at least originally expansion cities. As I've said earlier, under our current plan we'll have enclaves as early as the T120-130 range. That's definately early enough to make a difference. We'll have certainly reached a cap of some sort by then, but it may well be a food cap. I expect we'll have a fair bit of growing still to do.

On this point, I would have to disagree. The first promotion on newly built units is worth a lot, especially in FFH. Combat I turns battles in the field (Warriors v. Barbarian Warriors; Centaurs v. Bronze Warriors) from coinflips into 70%+ wins. (As a bonus, it brings Hunters closer to Subdue Animal.) Meanwhile, Mobility I gives a lot of flexibility on both offense and defense. Even if you don't plan to attack anyone, you'll need to deal with barbarians. With cottages everywhere, I expect you'll attack OUT of your cities rather than risk them being pillaged. Now, it's true you might not want to switch to Apprenticeship as soon as you get Education. Squeezing out a few more 0XP warriors is no bad thing. But as soon as you start building Centaurs, I think it makes sense to switch. +2XP on all your Centaurs is definitely worth sacrificing a turn of production, ie: ~15 hammers in the capital, or one-third a Centaur. The question is whether you can stay in Pacifism until then.

Promotions are good, but I think you over-rate them a little. Between defense bonuses, other promitions and strength differences you very rarely actually want to fight anything on even-strength terms. Against barbarians you can almost always defend on a terrain bonus location. Most of the units they send after you have strength 3, so less than centaurs. And all the lair-spawns can't pillage either. Once you beat a few barbs you start to get promotions anyway, and the 2 extra xp makes less and less difference. I'm not saying it's not good, just not quite as good as you seem to think. It's partly an opinion thing anyway.

And the cost of a revolt is a lot more than just a warrior's worth of hammers. There's lost commerce, lost growth and lost cottage development (if it's later than just after Education) as well.

Waiting for Calendar and Agrarianism is another option. But I wonder: How much benefit does Agrarianism bring on this map? It will cost a lot of God-King hammers, turning 2/1/1 riverside plains farms into 3/0/1. And once you reach your happy cap and switch to cottages, Agrarianism is simply a Medium upkeep civic that provides no benefits. Sure, some 3 food plains farms will help cities two and three grow faster, but you'll need some irrigable land first (the gold site has only one freshwater plains tile in the second ring, and three more in the third) and you'd prefer to work food resources anyway. Maybe it would be best to skip Agrarianism and beeline Sanitation?

Or better yet, not skip Agrarianism, and still beeline Sanitation. The combination of the two together is more than the sum of the parts. I've been considering whether we should go for Sanitation as a fairly high priority anyway, i.e. before rather than after Order and Fanaticism. It's expensive and out of the way, but the benefits are huge, especially on this map.

Agrarianism is beneficial, even just to work a few more cottages in the capital. The food is definately more valuable than the hammer, because we can turn 2 food into 4 hammers any time you like by working a plains hill. Three farms at 2/1/1 are strictly worse than two farms at 3/0/1 and a plains hill at 0/4/1. And the plains hill is a bad choice of tile to work anyway, better to work two plains cottages.

However, it's not a huge benefit. You're also right that if our second city has food resources, and non-farm ones at that, we don't get any use out of it there. So it's less valuable than a library for example. Which is why we don't prioritise it all that highly. It's still worth getting though, and we'll want to be able to improve the plantation resources soon enough as well.

[Mardoc]

But your main point about food, as I understand it, is that we shouldn't worry too much about what commerce tiles are available, especially since we can run cottages for commerce anyway. We should instead worry about how much food we can pack into the one even-bigger-fat-cross. In that regard, "c???" is fairly decent, though we've got time to look for better.

Yes, precisely. Our cities can get to ridiculous sizes, massive amounts of production and commerce, but only if they have the food. A normal civ is only going to be size 4 or 5 in a city anyway, it might make sense to sacrifice some of that for 2 good commerce tiles; assume the city will never grow, but can contribute a lot right away. Kurio cities don't have that luxury, if we place a city for 2 good commerce tiles, we've thrown away a lot more than someone who just has to build another settler. I do acknowledge that it's often worth trading a bigger long term benefit for something right now, I just don't think that's true in this case.

Onto the civics questions - I agree that promotions are big in FFH, and even that first one makes a unit much more likely to survive to take its second. The trouble is that, especially with our initial units, we really don't intend to do much fighting with them anyway, especially not fair fights - scout until they get eaten by a spider, or fight barbs from good terrain or while fortified in a city, etc. Ideally our outcome against Sciz is that we demonstrate we'd be a tough target, so he picks someone else to horseman rush - which doesn't require promotions, just a demonstration that we're capable of defending ourselves and some diplo. Power graph would help here, which is solely tied to number of units and not to their promotions.

But ideally, all the units we train in the early turns either get used for MP, or they eventually get deleted. Apprenticeship makes sense to run when you know that you'll have to fight with the units you train, but not so much otherwise.

I think all in all, that's why I'm going to come down on the side of Nationalism/wait for Apprenticeship - because we don't want to fight, just to intimidate. And an extra 30% worth of units will do that a lot better than an Academy and the knowledge that our units have Combat I too. It's not worth it for just one turn of an Academy.

And that's why I'm against the extra revolt just yet, as well - Civ is a snowball game. If you get out ahead, you usually not only stay ahead, but your margins grow. We just can't afford the lost research, lost production, lost cottages, etc, when that's the case. Once we can combine Apprenticeship with another revolt, it may well be worth the trouble.

Ultimately, what I'm afraid of is Superiority

[Irgy]

When I opened the save, it already said "press enter to end turn". And I did.

Ichabod has 4 pop somehow and is blitzing the scoreboard. I suspect he's got that refugees event that would give him a free population. At least he didn't have 100 gold for a free settler.

[Mardoc]

Ichabod has 4 pop somehow

Not according to the Top 5 Cities screen, he doesn't. And the demographics support that, no one has more population than we do. I suspect it's another tech, plus the various fractions of a point finally added up to a bonus point for him.

It looks like Dantski and Jkaen have grown, and Selrahc got his first tech (anyone want to bet against Fishing?). Dantski is a God King now, as well - yep, he went Mysticism first.

[Irgy]

Not according to the Top 5 Cities screen, he doesn't. And the demographics support that, no one has more population than we do. I suspect it's another tech, plus the various fractions of a point finally added up to a bonus point for him.

Nevermind, I know what it is. It's turn 20, and he settled first turn. It's just his land points coming in then. Looks like land is worth 12 points for 9 tiles then.

It looks like Dantski and Jkaen have grown, and Selrahc got his first tech (anyone want to bet against Fishing?). Dantski is a God King now, as well - yep, he went Mysticism first.

In other news, Mardoc has been observed to pay a lot more attention to what's going on than Irgy. Looks like you as the eyes and me as the body pushing it along would have fitted better then.

[Mardoc]

Though Mardoc can likely pick up the slack anyway.

Yes, I suppose I can. Starting now, starting Saturday? Especially if making this one run smoothly helps ensure I get my turns in PBEM3

Nevermind, I know what it is. It's turn 20, and he settled first turn. It's just his land points coming in then. Looks like land is worth 12 points for 9 tiles then.

Oh, that makes a lot of sense! Checking in game - 1391 tiles, makes it 1.44 pts/tile or 12.94 for 9. As long as separate categories aren't added together, that's got to be the explanation. I wonder if that explains Dantski and Jkaen, too...checking back, they both founded turn 0 as well, although they might not get their points until they actually play - I suppose if there's a 12 point gain for both of them next turn then we'll know. For the time being I'm keeping them at population growth.

In other news, Mardoc has been observed to pay a lot more attention to what's going on than Irgy. Looks like you as the eyes and me as the body pushing it along would have fitted better then.

Who? What? Where? I don't see it...

Seriously, this is why two heads are better than one - I may have seen the score increases, but I wouldn't have attached the right explanation to them all. Plus there's that whole thing about our overall plans and aspirations. I wouldn't be surprised if you change your mind again on this subject

[Irgy]

Yes, I suppose I can. Starting now, starting Saturday? Especially if making this one run smoothly helps ensure I get my turns in PBEM3

Hmm, well, as you might see in the PBEM3 thread, it turns out I'm actually going to be completely out of action. I'm away from effectively now (just on the net at work at the moment, no civ, and leaving straight from here) until Wednesday night (Wednesday morning for you). Sorry to dump it all on you at such short notice. There's not that much to do though anyway.

[Mardoc]

Alright, can do. ~7 turns ought not to be enough to get into serious trouble anyway, and I think we're mostly on the same page regarding plans, so it'll be a piece of cake . About the only thing I'm debating is when it makes sense to start on our first settler, and where to send him, but I'm thinking 'probably not in the next 7 turns' and 'we'll have more information by then, I hope' .

Maybe you could advertise in the Civ General Forum for a temp sub for PBEM3?