Micromanagement Sims/Planning

[kjn]

No reason to be sorry about that, I often try to find out ways to accomplish something, even if they're not really workable in practice. And the grass plan is weaker than the others in raw commerce, no question about it.

The lakes plan is the only real alternative, but even there we're trading off two cottage-turns for one copper turn. Probably simpler to just work the copper instead of the cottage on T79.

[novice]

Updated sandbox to T73:
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/15215428/ISDG1/...dSwordSave
EDIT: Updated to include the scout build in MM.

Sullla has already ended our turn 73, but we probably still have at least 48 hours to do adjustments.

[kjn]

I'm currently outlining/documenting another plan, very much based on Sullla's (favouring expansion) but with more growth in our cities.

Both MM and FP are size 6 on T78, and both AO and HF grow back from their whps in 1t (in the case of HF, it manages the trick of growing the same turn it whips a worker).

The cost of this all comes out of lower amounts of overflow, especially in AO but also in FP and HF. But we are ahead in cottage-turns and commerce.

I think we have leeway to stack whip unhappiness in HF to finish off the galley instead of putting a chop into it, if we want to.

T78 savegame

[kjn]

Updated T74 sandbox

[kjn]

T75 sandbox

I've started to play around a bit, and I think the whip timings of settlers and workers in HF, AO, and FP will be the most important thing to iron out and decide on. Basically, do we want to whip AO on T77 and HF on T78, or the other way around? Or is there an even better way?

Draft micro plan

I've made the spread sheet editable for everyone, so we won't have to go around over several documents. Please make a new sheet if you want to make anything other than error corrections/clarifications.

[Sullla]

I worked on the planning this morning, and after a couple of hours, I have something I'm happy with: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?...UhOeUFuNVE

Savefile: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/19563179/ISDG/IS...dSwordSave

Summary:

* Double whipped settler in Adventure One on T78. Capital regrows to size 6 the next turn. Southwest city planted T81 on the yellow dot.

* Triple whipped settler in Focal Point on T80. Focal Point regrows to size 4 in two turns. Eastern bananas/spices city planted T83 on the desert hill.

* Double whip worker overflow in Horse Feathers used to complete a lighthouse as soon as Sailing research completes. (Lighthouse is very strong in HF, used on both fish tile and for 3 food lake tile.)

* Calendar tech due eot 88, after 9 turns of total research. We will have enough beakers to dial down research on T88 if needed, plus we should more commerce than in this simulation due to foreign trade routes in actual game.

I can talk more about any specific situation as desired. Generally speaking, we are working just about every cottage tile on every turn. I do believe that it's worthwhile to triple whip Focal Point for the spices location settler; we were running short of improved tiles over there if I didn't whip, and getting that city up and going early will help out a lot. Spices city is similar to Tree Huggers and Gourmet Menu in that they all start out slow, then become monsters with more time and sizes. Better to get started sooner.

Some people were worried about expanding too fast, but that wasn't an issue at all in my tests. Even after expanding to eight cities, we were still making +3 gold/turn at 50% science. Not exactly a crashed economy. (Again, this doesn't include the foreign income we'll have in practice either.) Let me post the Demographics from T84 in this sim:



We currently make 68 Food and have a GNP of 83. In nine turns, this plan would have both values increasing by just under 50% as we expand out to eight cities. We'll also be in position to expand further to the stone location and/or the wet corn in the southeast. I think that we can easily have 10 cities up by Turn 100, while also using our increased happy cap to further grow our core cities. We have the economic base to keep expanding, we may as well do so. I want us to have the most cities at all times for the rest of the game.

Let me know your thoughts.

[novice]

Great work, Sullla. Thanks for taking the time to sim that out and type it up.

I'll try to play through it later, but a quick question from looking at the spreadsheet: Can we grow AO on t76 instead of t77? Is there any reason for waiting?

[kjn]

It pretty much follows the thoughts I've had on our development, though I didn't have the fortitude to take it until T83.

Some possibilities for improvements:

On T76 HF can work fish, corn, grass, silk. That way it will have 24/24F after it whips the worker T78 and will be size 3 on T79.

On T77 AO grows, while HF puts a turn in a worker. Maybe AO should grab the corn from HF that turn, instead of the lake?

I'm going to explore those two tonight, and look over the worker actions as well.

[kalin]

Thanks for your work Sullla.
Kalin

[mostly_harmless]

Good stuff.
A couple of comments after looking at the save file. Nothing major. And probably only affect turns planned after T84.
Forbidden Fruit's border pop not before T93 (bringing in the remaining two spices and the banana). And Calendar is not in until T88 (enabling plantation). I guess the plan is the three workers next to FF can busy themselves with cottaging and forest chopping until then? Maybe two workers are enough?
Related to that, the silk tile north of HF could do with a road before Calendar comes in and maybe even a chop.

A general comment: The worker movements are hard to follow for me, as they are given always relative to the last location and I am not re-playing these sandboxes turn by turn. Any of you guys, who do this on a regular basis ever considered a more explicit expression of the worker position and movement?
I am thinking chess board or x-y coordinates. AO could be our datum and for example Mansa's Muse position would be 4E-2N and Gourmet Menu's position 3W-3S. Worker and unit movement can then be expressed in terms of relative position to datum=AO. For example "Worker A goes from 3E-2N to 4E-1N" (i.e. SE).

I am happy to help with a proper annotated map.

mh