[SPOILERS] WillPlunder as Mehmed of Arabia: Noobs meet world

[WilliamLP]

I know, it's confusing when there is a rich world out there with complex things going on, and we only see one team.

I think Civ IV is balanced pretty well for early rushes in heavily favoring the defender. (Starting warrior finding an empty city notwithstanding...) Defenders get bonuses and the whip, while attackers have to commit many turns in advance. You have to catch someone with their pants down. The exception is a resource disadvantage, and yeah, that would be up to the mapmaker. Really we're betting on Kuro not being able to get to us with axes before the mid 50s, and nothing in their starting play (so far) seems to suggest they can.

If they did, I could make a case that it was my fault for not going Agri -> AH immediately after seeing we had copper.

[Plunder]

I want to change something in the micro. I don't think that cottaging the rice is very good idea. We won't be working that tile too often, and if we are working a cottaged tile we probably prefer the tile south. (I'm simming! )
Gotta work out the micro a bit more to give good alternative though.

[Plunder]

The idea:
worker 1: chop 2N (of cap) worker 2,3: build cottage (1S of cap)
worker 2: move to SW of Lasagne -> chop, Worker 2: 2E of the capital -> chop (chopping SW of lasagne, should nicely flow into our granary there)
worker 1: N2E-> chop
(work 1 turn warrior in the capital to let it grow),

move our new warrior (3rd) slowly into the direction of the gold city to protect our workers while they road.

I was able to found our gold city on turn 57, with a worker next to it.

[WilliamLP]

We won't be working that tile too often, and if we are working a cottaged tile we probably prefer the tile south. (I'm simming! )

It's good to be simming! On the contrary, I'm planning on working cottaged rice nearly every turn. And also working the river grass cottage nearly every turn as well.

Cottaged rice vs farmed dry rice is a discussion. The cottage is worse at first, and better eventually (and worse again after irrigation, probably). We don't need health at all with this situation, with the +2 in every city from the EXP bonus, and a variety of other bonuses around.

Cottaged rice vs cottaged river grass (when not financial) is not a discussion. 3F1C is much better than 2F2C.

If you want to convince me, show me what you've got on turn 58. Here's what I have:




AH completes on turn 52 (this is really important). Gold city is settled turn 57. Its monument was chopped immediately to completion, and will finish EOT 58. (This is the true bottleneck to getting gold online, not so much the settle date itself.) There will be a road connection to the capital in 1 turn. The next settler is out. Lasagne is working three improved tiles, and the capital has 5. The capital has a forest left to chop out either a lighthouse or madrassa. Show me your micro plan is better than this on T58 and I'm sold.

Here's a sandbox to turn 42. The old one was actually out of sync by 1 beaker compared to the real game, but I corrected it by adding a gems in world builder, and then taking them away after one turn.

[WilliamLP]

I'm getting a little addicted or obsessed with this game now.

The turn rolled. You have one turn to make a really compelling case, by beating what I can do in my screenshot above, or rice will start converting to a summer vacation destination starting next turn.

Two chops finished to get the third worker next turn. A work boat will be next.

I'm just itching to scout this tile, but didn't, to be conservative. We should have a warrior 3 turns away from the capital, in case Kuro's stray warrior shows up on the N border.




I will scout the arrow tile next turn, since the new warrior can build and return in time to defend after that.




The top power is rising. My suspicion is that it's Kurumi and Wetbandit after their 2 whips, hopefully far away from us.

KuroBaII built their second warrior last turn, going by the power graph. They also whipped their second city, possibly for a granary. Their food is rising fast:




I wonder if their second city claims the wet corn just across the mountain range from us.

I'm trying to decypher the knowledge out there on barb research, and when they get bronze units. From this fantastic thread with someone who's read the code: "So they merely receive the 1 free beaker everybody gets (BASE_RESEARCH_RATE) for their current research plus 3% (BARBARIAN_FREE_TECH_PERCENT) of the cost of a tech scaled by the percentage of players who know it for each technology each turn."

My best interpretation of that is that if all players got bronze at the same time, the barbs would get it 34 turns later (34 turns of 3% research takes them over 100%). And with fewer, it would take longer in proportion. So... assuming the average time to bronze working in this game was about turn 20, we're probably safe from barb spears and axes until at least the mid 50s or so. I'm even tempted to download the SDK and get into the code myself, but I don't think I'll go that far.

[Plunder]

I don't have time to convince you :'( I worry we're overdoing the "crazy play", mining the pigs, settling on the bananas, cottaging the rice. I can't find a good argument not to cottage the rice, except that it's a "waste" of cottage-growth turns, but that discussion we had some time ago. O.o a 4 food tile is better to build settlers & workers?

I hope this is the proper save file: https://docs.google.com/file/d/0ByZ-SwEv...sp=sharing (probably not)

I do build one more warrior, I think I see only two in your sim? Also I forgot to whip the settler, so that way it could come out a bit earlier.

[teleh]

How come you're settling on Banana? Wouldn't the tile 1W achieve the same thing?

And also, I don't believe for a second, now that "he's" posted, that Lord Parkin is not your main. Busted!

[WilliamLP]

I don't have time to convince you :'( I worry we're overdoing the "crazy play", mining the pigs, settling on the bananas, cottaging the rice. I can't find a good argument not to cottage the rice, except that it's a "waste" of cottage-growth turns, but that discussion we had some time ago. O.o a 4 food tile is better to build settlers & workers?

I hope this is the proper save file: https://docs.google.com/file/d/0ByZ-SwEv...sp=sharing (probably not)

I do build one more warrior, I think I see only two in your sim? Also I forgot to whip the settler, so that way it could come out a bit earlier.

If you want to compare against my save from the same turn: it is here.

Compared to yours:
- We both have 4 warriors. You get one more next turn, ahead of me.
- You are up one road.
- You are down 25 beakers to me, and down 8 gold, so the cottage allowed me to get 33 commerce ahead.
- I prioritized getting two workers down to the gold, so my monument will complete on turn 59, several earlier than yours will. That is the bottleneck to getting the gold hooked up. The issue is that one chop isn't enough. Also my two workers over there will get the city productive very quickly, with the farm and a hill mine.
- I have a settler out next turn, yours can't be whipped this turn, and it can't be whipped next turn either, but only the turn after. Doing that will leave your capital at 2 pop, which isn't great since you're whipping off a clam.

I agree, the micro for farming the rice can be tuned a lot more. I've played it that way quite a lot. But I wasn't able to get as good a result with it, and especially, I think you're going to lose at least 1 turn off of AH doing so. And we're in a position where that one turn could literally mean losing the game.

That's where I'm coming from. It's not a theoretical decision, it's a close call where I tried microing both sides and seeing which one I could get more out of. I don't think it's crazy to not change my mind unless you can show me the result is better your way.

So we're going with teh loony plays, sorry.

[WilliamLP]

How come you're settling on Banana? Wouldn't the tile 1W achieve the same thing?

And also, I don't believe for a second, now that "he's" posted, that Lord Parkin is not your main. Busted!

1W would be down 1 food per turn for a long time. With this start we need "here and now", not "theoretically better 50 turns later". 1W could have gotten more consideration before the jungle grew onto the banana, because then we could cottage it and it would get the food back that way, though it would be down 1C per turn vs the banana city working a river cottage.

Btw, damn did you trace our IP addresses or something?! You can tell I'm not him because we haven't built Stonehenge, we haven't aggresively planted our second city to claim the wet corn across the mountain range, and we're not winning.

[WilliamLP]

Turn rolled. We're going with the rice-cottage plan. A point of it is that we can work it immediately upon growth to size 3. In the long term, after a lighthouse, the capital will have a lot of food, so the extra point isn't going to be as much an issue as building up more commerce. Especially after library + academy + bureaucracy... if we survive that long. Again, nobody would even blink at a cottage over a farm if it were a flood plain, and this isn't a very different decision, imo.

I took one turn to scout with the warrior:




Interesting, and not what I was expecting for a landform! Maybe the sea-water channel is actually a S-shaped lake. Maybe it's a map-maker addition to turn a big continent into something with choke points? The land itself is pretty awful. Outside of the cow there isn't any food in a considerable radius. Inside of the cow it's too dark to see the map.

I want to move 1S next turn, to reveal the single dark tile across the water.




These are dark times for demos, but they will get better.




What Kuro is up to. Hopefully there will be no sign of an axe there for a while. They just whipped their capital for 2 pop, probably that's a worker, or maybe another settler.