Dot mapping

[Gold Ergo Sum]

The main argument for the hill plant city on the lake 3E of that annoying Aztec city is to anchor the defense and secure our interior from possibly being boated later on. I see little to no economic value to a city there at this time, but I don't feel comfortable leaving BbB dangling isolated by itself across the lake. It would take a very good NAP agreement and built up diplomatic trust to make me feel confident about leaving BbB hanging by itself.

Agreed. We can still plant a clams city that purely serves as another front city.

[waterbat]

well, i logged into the game and wow - its much more apparent that we will lose the southern route to B&B unless we squeeze in a city there. 3E of white dot on the hill seems most reasonable, but that is going to start some tension with them. they would have at least 5 forests to chop, so we'd have to expect to lose a culture war there.

[Sian]

been thinking ... how about a city 1SW of clams? ... wouldn't be as much 'in the face' on Civplayers and it should still be able to keep a road clear, given roughly equal ammount of culture (which should be rather easy for us to do due to stonehenge and if need be a quick missionary to keep the gas on

[Sullla]

Let's move discussion of these upcoming city locations here from the Turn Discussion thread. I'll start with the southwest:



We wanted to plant a city on the tile south of the wines, but that is obviously no longer possible. Where do we plant our border city down here? We have a settler coming out of Gourmet Menu in just a few more turns to grab some kind of spot. I think that we need to get something over here, if only to lock down cultural control of the west side of our lake.

Unfortunately there are no good options here, only lesser degrees of badness. I do not think we should plant a city three tiles east of the CivPlayers location. That would be insanely aggressive, it would be very difficult to win cultural control, and the location would be almost impossible to defend. I believe that the tile east of that, southwest of the clams, is the best of a very bad lot. It can at least share the clams and work the two grassland river tiles to the south, while pushing out some culture in this region. This spot would also be tough to defend, but we would have some chance of pushing back their culture (second ring against second ring) if we really focused on this location. Being off a hill tile, and with a hill tile right next door, is obviously suboptimal from a defensive standpoint. Not sure what else we can do though.

I see all other options as being even worse. The southern plains hill tile picks up a lot of tundra and doesn't do much to push our culture in the disputed zone. Pretty much everywhere else has no food resources at all and are just as bad from a defensive standpoint. Is there anywhere else we can go other than southwest of the clams (?) We don't simply want to abandon this region without planting another city, right? Thoughts welcome here.



Here's a shot of the northwest. We still need to defog more tiles in this area badly. There's been some discussion of another city to the northwest of Brick By Brick, but that feels a bit premature to me at the moment. We need to explore more of the area before we can make any decisions up there.

The other discussion has involved the area to the north of Horse Feathers. I've suggested planting a city at the white spot, and we've had another suggestion (sorry but I forget from whom) to plant northwest of the peak, on the blue dot above. The white spot will lose the northern rice tile to a German team border expansion at Worms in a few more turns. I think we could still win that cultural fight, as it's their third ring against our second ring, but it would definitely take a while. The blue spot gives up the second rice to produce a safer location overall, and a better stepping stone further to the west. The downside is that it doesn't have the rice tile in first ring borders, however we'll get a third-ring border expansion from Tree Huggers in about ten turns, which will take care of that problem. Assuming that we're not planting here until about T102 (and I think that's true), it's a non-issue.

You could talk me into either spot here. I would be perfectly fine with both locations. Let's decide which one we want now so that we can move forward with long term planning. How to deal with the southwest is the bigger issue at present.

[NobleHelium]

I would just not bother planting in the area south of the wine. Planting southwest of the clams would be extremely hard to defend and I would probably just abandon the city quite easily. The only thing planting there gets us is stopping CivPlayers from planting a city on the shore of the sea, but I don't think that would be a big concern regardless. They won't be able to take the wine from us culturally due to how the cities are laid out right now.

I like the PH 2W of the wheat because it's on a hill and shields ST. That's its only purpose. Southwest of the clam is not on a hill and is also just behind a hill. sunrise would tell you that that's a terrible spot for a front line city. And if we lose that city, that also lets CivPlayers get a city on the sea shore.

[zakalwe]

At any rate I'd say that S-SW of the clams is strictly better than SW of the clams.

In the northwest, I like 2NW of the silks.

[Fintourist]

I also think that we should not spend our next settlers for this area. None of the possible sites really support BbB if it is attacked.

What would we do if we were in Civplayers' position? Plant completely resourceless (they can't get clams), ineffective and more or less useless city far away from their core next to enemy borders? I would bet a lot that we are in no danger of losing that spot there in the near future.

Putting a city SW of clams immediately does have some strategic benefits, yes. Are they so important that we want to delay a site that actually contributes to out expansion?

[kjn]

I don't like any of the options for a city on the southwest lake shore, but I like the alternative of a CivPlayers city there even less. And the city 2W of the wheat by Seven Tribes doesn't block that.

It'd mean they could push directly against not only Seven Tribes but Gourmet Menu as well, and it'd make it possible for them to boat against Brick by Brick and Horse Feathers. Sure, we could easily win a naval buildup there (due to three cities vs their one, and two of them very high quality), but it'd be literally hammers in the sea - we'd never get any other use of such a navy. The 100H for a settler is peanuts compared to the cost of the galleys and triremes if we get a naval arms race.

Sullla pointed out the issues with a salient on the isthmus with CFC. A city controlled by CivPlayers on the southwest lake would be far worse, threatening four cities (two of them core) and several vital resources.

For that matter, I don't really care about them taking our city there. We can plan on it, so if they attack we can use our interior road network to destroy their attacking stack and then counterattack and raze their offending city in the southwest, opening up our preferred spot 1S of the wines. Or is that a too complex a plan?

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

I don't like any of the options for a city on the southwest lake shore, but I like the alternative of a CivPlayers city there even less. And the city 2W of the wheat by Seven Tribes doesn't block that.

It'd mean they could push directly against not only Seven Tribes but Gourmet Menu as well, and it'd make it possible for them to boat against Brick by Brick and Horse Feathers. Sure, we could easily win a naval buildup there (due to three cities vs their one, and two of them very high quality), but it'd be literally hammers in the sea - we'd never get any other use of such a navy. The 100H for a settler is peanuts compared to the cost of the galleys and triremes if we get a naval arms race.

Sullla pointed out the issues with a salient on the isthmus with CFC. A city controlled by CivPlayers on the southwest lake would be far worse, threatening four cities (two of them core) and several vital resources.

For that matter, I don't really care about them taking our city there. We can plan on it, so if they attack we can use our interior road network to destroy their attacking stack and then counterattack and raze their offending city in the southwest, opening up our preferred spot 1S of the wines. Or is that a too complex a plan?

Complex? Yes. Fiendish? Yes. Practical? Probably not.

I think a better option is a diplomatic solution. If we aren't in a rush to settle this SW area and expect that CivPlayers would (rightly) assume us to view them settling in this area as 1) defensively imprudent and 2) hostile toward us, I think we can reach a diplomatic agreement that both sides not settle the area. We will need to strongly garrison BbB in any event since it appears that it will be isolated for a while. We can use any units here as a counterweight to a settlement in force by moving against Tlaxcala if trouble arises. Too many hypothetical what ifs to go down this road now. Let's focus on this being in our mutual best interests not to settle that area for now. We don't have a good dot map and they wouldn't be able to hold an aggressive plant this far from their core. I don't think they're fools, so I don't think they'll do it. If they do, we wipe out the offending city and a border city to fix our dot map. It shouldn't come to this though.

[waterbat]

Agree with bgn. The only decent solution for the sw is a diplomatic one. Let's focus on defogging the NW and grabbing as much land as possible up that way.