[SPOILERS] Dazed and Whosit walk the line: Darius of Egypt

[dazedroyalty]

New thought, instead of going for CoL or Monarchy, we could just beeline calendar. It'd be great to hook up the calendar resources for happiness and we could make a shot at MoM. Plus, Silk (which is at Walk the Line) combined with Fur makes Market's a two-happy building, not to mention the economic benefit!

Also, TheHumanHydra, I did a rough sim pursuing monarchy first and it did take awhile longer and it requires a revolt which slows expansion and I'm not sure that is what we want to do given how tight this map is going to become quite quickly. Every turn matters. I'm still not deadset against it but I prefer IW for the gems at the moment. Whosit, what you think?

[TheHumanHydra]

Just a suggestion. Calendar is a fine idea, too.

[dazedroyalty]

I'm glad for suggestions! Makes us think through options. Keep em coming!

[Serdoa]

Option 1:

Settle the spot you marked with Moai, settle Stone, build Pyramids. Best city for that seems the city 1S of the wheat next to your cap. That can have 6 chops (with Maths and Stone thats 240 out of 335 hammers). Settle that first and grow it to 5 pop. Pre-build an Axe to 22h. One turn before you start Pyramids you 1pop whip it. 19 overflow. Work the two PH, two GH. Total of 15 hammers per turn with -4 food. Thats 30 with Stone. 2 turns (38 overflow, 60 production = 98 + 240 from chops is 338) and you have Pyramids. That helps with the happy-cap in a few cities and you have enough food that you can run in some cities 2 scientist together with the cottages.

If you lose Pyramids you still have settled 3 cities that are decent (the wheat-city is rather bad but at 6 pop it'll get 15 hpt, so 5 turn settlers). You do need quite a bit of workers though, 6 - or 3 with pre-chopped, pre-roaded tiles. I guess you should be able to get that done till T55.

Option 2:

Get Calendar and settle for Marble. Next two settlers go 2NW,1W of the cap and 3W of that spot. With border pop you have Marble. And 10 (!) forests to chop into MoM. Should be a cakewalk to get it. Not sure though if it really is worth it. I don't see all that many calendar-resources and only one that is currently in your borders. Not sure how long you need to get the Dyes in your borders though. The spices seem out of reach for some turns at least.

Anyhow, Option 2 really does not need much planning beyond getting those 2 cities up and a few War Chariots for defense imo.

Two points: Don't put too much emphasis on commerce. Sure you want to work cottages. But better you settle a few more cities and work with 6 pop each cottages that you can later on put together in that one city you'll get your academy in as well. Probably your cap. I think that can get 7 riverside cottages total + the silk and sheep + palace. Together with Bureau that can become a nice commerce-capital I think. Not absolutely great, but nice.

Anyhow, if you have worked all your cottages but have half the cities of your opponents, you might very well get rolled. This map is pretty small, so you should secure land now that you can. Decide on one direction and push your opponent there a little bit while you try to get your fair share in all other directions. Thats imo more important than cottage-growth. Not that you should ignore it. But you need some cities that can produce seriously.

Second point: I haven't looked closely at the micro but I think you should change the capital to build a settler. Build it 2 turns for 30 fh, double-pop whip it for 40 more hammers. +14 from natural production = 84 or 19 overflow. Together with the 6 hammers normal production (sheep, deer, cow, center) you'll finish the granary the turn after. Probably with avoid growth on as you'll get your food box to near full or full from the looks of your screenies. The turn after grow which will put the overflow doubled into your new food-box, getting you to approx. 16/18 at the start of the turn, so immediate growth back to 5. You should have till then the furs connected and not go into unhappiness. No direct micro as I miss the exact numbers but

T38: size 5, settler 15/65
T39: size 5, settler 30/65
T40: size 3, settler 84/65 - double-pop-whip
T41: size 3, granary 40/40 - avoid growth
T42: size 3, WC 6/20 - grow to 4 EOT
T43: size 4, WC 12/20 - grow to 5 EOT
T44: start worker 15/40
T45: double-pop-whip worker 70/40
T46: next worker 45/40
T47: WC 23/20 - grow to 4 (most likely, check numbers to be certain)

That produces another military unit, 2 workers, 1 settler and the granary in just 10 turns in that one city.

As for There You Go I would change it to a worker next turn. Work the cottage + horse + pig. That should finish the worker in 4 turns. You do not have any good tiles to work other than those, so growing it now while building the Granary doesn't strike me as optimal as you'll put the additional pop onto at best 3fh tiles. Better to build the worker from T38 till EOT 41. While that happens the workers do

T38: Road Horses
T39: worker 1 roads 1SW of horses, 2 goes into the forest 2S of horses
T40: W1 finishes road, W2 starts road
T41: W2 finishes road, W3 moves onto sheep, starts pasture
T42: W2 and W1 finish pasture together

On T42 you'll put your 3 citizens on horse, pig, sheep. Growth in either 2 or 3 turns (depends if you had this turn 1 food overflow or not). I assume 2 for now, so EOT43 growth to 4. At that point you will have 15 hammers in the Granary and 5 in a WC (T42 produce Granary, T43 WC). T44 double whip Granary. Should get you to around 9/16 food and finished Granary. Overflow into the WC to finish it as well on T45 while you grow back to 3. T46 should maybe get you to size 4 already. Not certain, depends on the exact food-numbers which I do not have. T47 you can start a settler and get 13fh per turn (pig, sheep, horse, cottage). 3 turns into settler, so on T50 you double-pop whip it, which yields a total of 39 + 40 + 13 = 92fh into the settler. Thats 27 overflow, so on T51 you finish another worker as well. After that regrow.

As always, please check if you want to follow this if I didn't do anything wrong Also keep in mind I don't know the exact state of the game, so this play might not be viable. Also I saw that you got 2 more cities by T50 in your sandbox but I don't know from where and if you chopped them or not. My plan wouldn't need chops, but if you one or two you'll probably can get easily another settler in Queens Ballad.

[dazedroyalty]

Serdoa, I'm super impressed you did that all in your head. The only thing that you were off on is that There You Go is one food short of regrowing to size 4 on T46. But still impressive!!! I compared what you did to our current micro plan and note that your plan gets city 4 up faster by a couple of turns, but we would work less cottages, it would delay city 5 by about 1 turn, and Walk the Line is 2 pop smaller. (I'm using T47 as comparison sicne that's when you seemed to have gone through with the capital.) Maybe I'm missing something though because i'm far from an expert. If you have time, would appreciate you looking at the micro plan we had before your suggestion but updated from the previous ones.

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/10326940/RB%20P...%20v3.xlsx

[dazedroyalty]

Looking at it closer, I think your plan is an improvement in more ways than I realized. For the sake of comparison, I'm only looking at how we manage Walk the Line and There You Go because I think Queen's Ballad will be essentially the same either way.

Here they are side by side:



Your plan gets us 12 cottage turns, 3 new workers, and we'll have 7 or 8 pop depending on what we do with TYG on turn 46/47. We're just shy of growing so we can either build another WC to grow or go straight into another settler/worker.

The old plan had 18 cottage turns, only 1 new worker and 8 pop points.

Both plans get about 2 war chariots. The old plan got the first one sooner but the second one later.

Serdoa's plan gets settler for city four 4 turns sooner but delays the next settler 3 turns.

My conclusion:
City 4 faster and city 5 slower is a better trade. War chariots are a wash basically. But 2 more workers is a pretty big improvement that I didn't count properly when I simmed it out over my lunch break (thank you, head cold!).

[Serdoa]

I'm not sure, but I think we do have like 3 or 4 workers right now right? 2 down at Queens Ballad, two at TYG. That doesn't seem enough for expanding out to two more cities. But I am not sure, it really depends what all your workers are actually doing. I guess the two at QB will stay there till EOT44 at least (then pigs and furs should be improved) so lets forget them. The other two workers are doing something till EOT42. You could move them T43 into the two forests east of TYG and chop T44-T46.

Ok, that is now probably heresy for you guys but consider the following:

Move Things Happen 1S. You can take the Deer from the capital and just grow this city to work cottages. Nothing else, no whips, just cottages. Give Deer back when it is size 6 (well, maybe whip a Granary in at size 3, have not thought about that in detail). Due to this the 2nd worker in the capital comes one turn later, as does the WC. Imo thats fine, because you can now build another city at the spot 2N of where you intended to settle TH. That spot gets Cow and 2x Clams immediately at settling. At size 6 it can 2-turn workers and nearly 3-turn settlers (just 5 hammers short). Without IMP or EXP thats extremely strong.

Now, due to doing this, this new city doesn't need any worker-attention for some time (and you don't have any workers to speak of to give it to that city anyway). The worker on EOT41 from TYG moves onto the forest 1W,1NW of it on T42, chops T43-T45. With this you get 3 chops in, one T45, two T46. TYG overflow on T45 into a settler (instead of the WC) putting it at 45/65. Next turn the other two chops + normal production raise that to 95/65 finishing another settler on EOT46. And T47 you overflow those 30 hammers into a worker, finishing it EOT47.

The worker NW of TYG moves T46 to the hill 2N. Road on T47+T48. The two chopping workers and the settler move T47 onto the hill 2N,1W of TYG. T48 all workers build roads, settler moves onto forest 2N of your original spot for TH. The worker from the cap (finished T45) and the one from TYG (finished T47) move also up there and should be able to move onto the same tile as the settler on T48. On T49 settler settles, three workers can move to the cow and pasture it, 2 move onto a forest west of the city (same forest for both). City works improved cow. T50, the forest workers make a road, the other 3 move in and chop -> WB finishes. T51, city works imp. clams (13/14 food). 3 workers move into next forest.

T52: 18/14 -> grow to 2; workers chop (2nd wb finishes)
T53: 12/16 (city works two imp. clams)
T54: 20/16 -> grow to 3; workers have improved sheep (3 necessary)
T55: 15/17 (city works two imp. clams, sheep)
T56: 26/17 -> grow to 4
T57: 22/18 (city works two clams, sheep, pig) -> grow to 5
T58: 15/20
T59: 26/20 -> grow to 6

You can certainly improve on that to work the cow more often for more hammers. Put them into a Granary. You can chop one more forest, probably good to do so and one-pop-whip the Granary to completion as early as possible. I think you should be able to grow to size 6 even sooner if done right, but not sure.

Anyhow, that city can than pump settlers and workers, get whipped, regrow on War Chariots, whip again. Not sure that is the best though, maybe just build settlers and workers without whipping. That can get later on your NE- and Globe-city.

[mackoti]

Man, this is a relaxed game? I never done in my entire civ carrier such analizes.

[Whosit]

Hey, some of us find this relaxing. :P

Or maybe we are just a bit obsessive. Anyway, Serdoa, your plan sounds good, but despite my best efforts I haven't had a chance to play through it myself yet, so I am only sorta able to follow what's going on. I like your point about moving Things Happen south, but you say that a city north of that will have 2 clams? Is there a clams I missed? Or are the screenshots we post too disjointed to not be confusing?

[Serdoa]

@mackoti

I would love to play like you do mackoti, but I don't understand how you do it tbh. You seem to always have the workers where you need them, have the cities settled exactly when you need to, have the army in place even before your opponent knows that he will settle a spot - I can't do that. I really would love to, because it would make this much less of a time commitment, but I am unable. It seems it is natural to you to play like that, but it isn't for me. Maybe you can explain a little bit about what you actually do when you play a turn? What are your thoughts? Like are you planning into the next ten turns when you do something or do you have a complete game-plan when you start the game and just follow it. How do you decide if you tech up the Music-line, the CS-line or the Guilds-line?

You know, all that micro-stuff is fine in the first 30-40 turns. You can eek out a few extra hammers, food and beakers and that might (or might not) help at the start. But after T50 latest it is much more important to go onto the right tech-path and to build the right things. I always screw up that part (well, or screw up the inevitable war, like in PBEM46).

@Whosit

This screenshot from Dazed seems to indicate it. It is from the sandbox I presume, but I assumed that the tiles shown are those that you have knowledge about from the actual game. If not, then of course my plan might need to be revised.

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