Dot mapping

[Nicolae Carpathia]

Since we're effectively treating BbB as an island city, it'll be important to crank out a second galley there, and keep some sentries in the area to spot for build-ups. Let's try to get 5xp on a WC and give him Flanking/Sentry (though that could take ages ).

I also feel that if we are going to get into a conflict with CPers, then we should have as defensive city as possible. I still like the plains hill, we should explain it as a defensive spot. They should understand that it's for our own security. I know it's incredibly vulnerable to 2-movers, but the way the hills are laid out, we should have vision of any tiles they can stage a stack of HAs from.

Besides, if anything, they'd be more worried about conflict now. We have WCs, they have Jags. So easily on our side. Their one advantage is alot of production from Sac altar-boosted whips, but we have more population and happy cap in the first place. So I also think they want to delay aggression until the age of maces or even HAs.

...how does this crazy aggressive logic work?

[SevenSpirits]

I don't want to settle a city in the southwest that claims zero resources. That doesn't seem worth it, even if it does prevent civplayers from founding a really dumb city next to our borders. Honestly if they are going to do that, we're better off letting them settle there and then capturing it later.

Big question for me is whether we should be reworking the micro to not triple-whip a settler from GM in howevermany turns, or instead just figure out another good place we can settle.

[NobleHelium]

I don't want to settle a city in the southwest that claims zero resources. That doesn't seem worth it, even if it does prevent civplayers from founding a really dumb city next to our borders. Honestly if they are going to do that, we're better off letting them settle there and then capturing it later.

+1

[fluffyflyingpig]

Why would either team plant terrible resourceless cities in this area?

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

Sullla's Horse Feathers sim:

This looks good, but it feels like a waste of 21 raw commerce from the lake/coast because we'll never get commerce multiplier buildings if we use HE efficiently. But, the mines come up a long time before workshops are really useful, so in that analysis I think this location comes out ahead for the Heroic Epic for getting out units when we need them most and snowballing purposes. But, I disagree on one tile micro issue, that being the farm 1N of corn that I think would be better served as a cottage for AO, even if that means not working either the desert mine or, when it comes heavy Hammer Time, the spice plantation. This would mean capping growth at 15/16 in HF.

Adventure One, all grown up and handsome (max commerce through Astronomy):

Edit: fixed lack of printing press and remembered we'll be in Bureaucracy.
Once we get all the multipliers in AO, the extra cottage will be worth much more there than allowing HF to work the plantation (6c + 125% = 13.5c from the town) in AO with multipliers vs. 5c in HF without), especially since we are unlikely to put any multipliers in HF if it is our HE city. I know the actual value of the cottage over the course of the game is much lower due to growth, but we can start growing it soon so that by the time AO needs it, it has already gone through the negative value (cottage, no FIN bonus) phase.

Other possible HE sites:

Focal Point, as T-Hawk suggested:

State Property. I don't think there's quite enough food here for the endgame uber HE city with workshops across the board. But, for a short term fix, it would be able to support -6f with just the pig. PH mine, 2 grass mines, plains copper and... that's it, +1 food left for whatever. Not the best, but could be workable. All darkened tiles are shared away in this picture.

Seven Tribes:

You'll notice I've chained in irrigation from another presumed location, which could end up pure fiction. Who knows at this point. Anyway, workshops and watermills in State Property. Short to medium term, very few hammer options with just the cow and two PH mines. I was curious, and I'm satisfied this is not the solution.

[fluffyflyingpig]

Farm needed for irrigation chain

[NobleHelium]

Yes, the farm is for irrigation. We could alternately get that from TH's river.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

Yes, the farm is for irrigation. We could alternately get that from TH's river.

That would be my preference, although it would cut a swath across Tree Huggers. All in all, I think I prefer doing that over cutting the single cottage away from AO. This leaves plenty of tiles to cottage here, or we can run a nice food surplus for some whip/GPP generation flexibility. This may actually help us get the army of workers we'll need to hack through the jungle through faster whipping/regrowth.



This setup still allows for Sullla's HF setup below, just minus the easternmost farmed grass. I'm using the city as part of the chain, going around the river to the other side to be closer to the rice tile E/NE in a future city. The tile 1S of banana is not on the river.

[Lewwyn]

That really does not seem worth it IMO.

[Sullla]

We're going to remove three different cottages from Tree Huggers (one of them riverside) for the purpose of getting one more non-riverside cottage at the capital? Is getting cottage #13 at the capital instead of having 12 cottages worth farming a swath across the top side of the map? I really do not think that's a worthwhile trade either.

Any comparison of potential Heroic Epic cities shouldn't even be bothering with State Property in my opinion. It comes way too late in the game. As I said before, the value of an earlier Heroic Epic enormously outshadows a more perfect spot built 70-100 turns later. Showing a bunch of extreme lategame cities running State Property workshops (with Caste System no less! not sure we'd want to give up Slavery even if we did research that far ahead) is not really a useful comparison. We should be looking at the more realistic 25-30t time frame here.

I'll restate my thoughts on the southwest area again: we don't have the ability to pick between a good spot and a bad spot. We're picking between a bad spot and no spot at all. I don't think we should simply give up on the area and make no attempt to control the area at all. Everything is set up to whip a settler from Gourmet Menu and settle some kind of claim in the area in a couple of turns. Yes, the spot near the clams sucks, but it still gives us another 10-12 tiles under our control and forces CivPlayers to go through the city if they want to attack. We're never getting those tiles back if we simply give up and cede the area to CivPlayers. I'm honestly surprised that this team seems to want to give up and make no attempt to settle anything in this region.

Isn't having an extra city to protect our border, weak though it may be, always going to be better than not having a city there at all?