Dot mapping

[mostly_harmless]

After our further exploration, what do people think about settling our stone city 1SW of the stone instead of on it? Downside is needing worker turns to hook up the stone, delaying getting horses, and slightly harder to defend in the long run (can't move a boat into the city and unload in one turn), but upside is having a floodplain in the first ring which we could farm and a much stronger city site long term.

I don't like the idea. Reasons: All the downsides you mentioned. I don't think we need to take these hits for a slightly better commerce output.

mh

[Shoot the Moon]

After our further exploration, what do people think about settling our stone city 1SW of the stone instead of on it? Downside is needing worker turns to hook up the stone, delaying getting horses, and slightly harder to defend in the long run (can't move a boat into the city and unload in one turn), but upside is having a floodplain in the first ring which we could farm and a much stronger city site long term.

I don't like the idea. Reasons: All the downsides you mentioned. I don't think we need to take these hits for a slightly better commerce output.

mh

It's not just better commerce, it's also significantly better food. The city we are currently planning is actually rather food poor, whereas 1SW is not nearly so bad on the food front.

After our further exploration, what do people think about settling our stone city 1SW of the stone instead of on it? Downside is needing worker turns to hook up the stone, delaying getting horses, and slightly harder to defend in the long run (can't move a boat into the city and unload in one turn), but upside is having a floodplain in the first ring which we could farm and a much stronger city site long term.

My immediate thought is that I don't want to do anything that will delay getting War Chariots into the field. I don't see this location as a commerce site, but rather a hammer city. I'd rather get the horses up sooner by settling on the stone with horses first ring and then build a couple WCs that can reinforce our claim for a secondary city on the river, perhaps on the grassland SW of the wines resource. That city will be a good commerce city, supported by the hammers coming in from Brick by Brick.

Why exactly do we need war chariots so badly? We have NAPs with all of our neighbors and haven't lost a barb battle since our first exploring warrior got eaten. If it's because of Civ Players, well they won't be able to organize and execute an attack in 9t anyhow.

(Note, I'd like to hear from the diplo team how likely they think a war with civ players over the spot is. The real downside I see to the spot is the galley movement issue, but of course that's only an issue if civ players is not friendly with us. I'm at least partly playing devil's advocate here as I think the galley issue could be important, but I'd like to hear from diplo people regarding that)

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

CivPlayers may end up being one of the stronger teams in the game. They are not going to willingly cede territory to the game leader. War Chariots serve as a deterrent, or at least give us options in holding our claim. They eliminate axes from threatening our city, forcing spears, which won't hurt our axes playing defense. More importantly, we need to scout. Lots of questions remain about where other opponents are, where we can find marble, etc. The Welcome Wagon will either crawl across the map one tile at a time or will eventually get chewed up by a barb.

As for the diplo with Civ Players, I think they'll be friendly until they sense weakness or an opportunity. Don't provide them one. We should bring our best negotiator to the table. To me, that's the War Chariot.

[Sullla]

These discussions always make more sense with pictures to follow. I'll illustrate the western area under debate:



This is the spot proposed by Shoot the Moon, southwest of the stone. I'll be honest: I don't care for this location either. This location isn't on the coast and therefore wastes four water tiles which can never be lighthoused. In addition, this placement also rules out any further cities on the western side of the lake. I guess we could plant a city two west of the clams, but that's about the only location possible for a coastal city. We would pretty much be wasting the entire western half of our little lake for no reason. That can sometimes be worthwhile for an awesome city plant, but this spot isn't that significant of an upgrade to me. It also rules out our planned location for an upcoming city, which is supposed to go on the tile south of the wines. The current plan calls for the stone city to be planted T91 and the other western city to be founded on T97. Here is what that city plan looks like:



These cities are designed to be somewhat defensive in nature, using the western river as a natural boundary between our territory and CivPlayers. The two cities are slow-starting, but not as food poor as they might look initially. The wheat tile is worth 4 food initially, 5 food in the post-Civil Service era. I've drawn in the irrigation chain to demonstrate which tiles should be farmed. The northern stone city would ignore commerce and become a military pump, a nice use for a border city protecting important resources. An irrigated wheat and a farm on the northernmost floodplains would give this city +7 food, enough to work the horses and three plains hill tiles... which is exactly what the city happens to have. That's roughly 20 base production/turn at size 6, along with 5-8 extra lake tiles that can be added as the city continues to grow. Not a great city, but pretty solid in its own right.

The southern city would be one of our standard cottage cheese fests working the grassland wines and a bunch of floodplains. We could use the wheat tile to get it past the early weak sizes, and afterwards it works triple floodplains cottages for +5 food and then add 5 more grassland cottages and 3 lake tiles. Tons of commerce, not much production. Another solid contributor.

There is one alteration I could see us making here. It's not moving the stone city to the southwest, however, but moving it a tile west:



This is very similar to the previous picture, only with less overlap and more tiles grabbed along the western river. The city would still be founded on the same turn (T91), the tradeoff is that it would take longer to ferry the workers over here afterwards, since the galley has to move another tile in each direction. The northern city would still be production-focused and the southern city commerce-focused under this arrangement. I could be persuaded to adopt this or the older plan. I think both work pretty well.

To answer some of the other questions in this thread, I do think that CivPlayers is one of our biggest competitors. I also don't think they are likely to attack us at all. We will probably sign an NAP shortly after meeting them, since that's what nearly everyone does in these games. That said, we do want war chariots very badly. Deliberately placing a western city one tile off the lake, making it much harder to connect horses and stone, that's a bit of a silly move in my eyes. We've been playing with one hand behind our back thus far, not being able to build our unique unit all through the early game. We'll be significantly safer with horses connected, and we do want to get a few war chariots out on scouting duty ASAP (especially in the deep south). It never hurts to be careful.

Long story short, I believe the debate should be between settling on the stone or on the plains hill to the west. I don't view the tile to the southwest of the stone as a very good choice.

[Merovech]

Not sure if it's important or just a typo, but you mentioned grassland wines. Those wines are on a plains tile.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

I ran back to the sandbox. Here's what both cities would look like at size 8:

Original site (Brick by Brick/BbB):

Forests available to chop: 3

1W of proposed original site. Let's call this Plan B for now:

Forests available to chop: 5

This actually doesn't turn out how I at first assumed that it would. Initial growth is actually faster at the 1W site, but at the expense of being many turns later on building the quarry.

BbB - growth to size 3 EoT 106. Not possible to do faster. FP, Wheat farmed + road, 2 chops into forest next to wheat.

1W (Plan B) - start pasture 1T slower. Growth to size 3 EoT 104. Pasture/road horse, farm/road fp (just to fill time for 1 extra turn) FP, farm 2nd fp. Growth with 3 extra food. Quarry done T110, growth to 5 EoT 110. Longterm this is a better spot because we get the river commerce. I doubt we build any cities further west than this, so that extra row of tiles is good. Do we have any need for the stone immediately, before T110 or so? If not, this is worth consideration and a more thorough examination than my hurried effort here.

[novice]

I think plan B has merit. But if we do that we should develop the city by working the FP immediately and chopping the plains hill forest into a granary and farming the FP. So we would need to be willing to delay both horse and stone by quite a few turns. BbB gives us both resources for just 6 worker turns. So I dunno.

[mostly_harmless]

The wheat tile is worth 4 food initially, 5 food in the post-Civil Service era. I've drawn in the irrigation chain to demonstrate which tiles should be farmed.

There is also the option to have the irrigation chain go through the "Other Western City" or White Dot in Sullla's picture. Would need one less tile to farm overall and frees the flood plains at Brick by Brick for a cottage.
On the other hand Brick by Brick probably won't need a cottage and might never see any gold or beaker modifiers. Make it a pure hammer city like in Boldly's screenshot.

mh

[dazedroyalty]

Are we concerned at all that the Orange and White dots can be forked fairly easily by two movers? From a purely defensive perspective, that seems worse than being one move further away by galley or other concerns.

Aside from that, I prefer settling BbB on the stone.

[kalin]

I prefer BdB on the stone as initially planned. I feel that having the horse/stone faster and making use the wheat faster is worth.
Kalin