[SPOILERS] Small Wunders and Izzy of Inca: The fat lady sings

[MindyMcCready]

Here's the calculator I've been using.

http://realmsbeyond.net/forums/showthread.php?tid=4212

[WilliamLP]

I won't play the turn for at least several hours, so feel free to chime in with thoughts as always.




All he did was move 3 axes to the road, where they arguably should have been all along.

My plan is to road the forest ph, move the N axes 1N to guard the strategic hill (xp from the barb warrior is a bonus), and move a couple of archers down to guard the settler coming out next.

Note the ph south of his warrior is available to us if we want to be a real nuisance.




There is the power drop we observed. Rival power is back to 70k now.

[WilliamLP]

Moves:




I put 2 axes on the N hill. I decided to put one thorny axe on the hill N-NE of his capital to look for strategic possibilities. If he wants to throw units at it to kill it with +75%, I'd be more than fine with that.

Ichabod planted his fourth city last turn. This game is so shot. We should have planted our third at least ten turns ago, if we were blessed with a neighbour who wouldn't throw his game away to spite us. Ok, I'll try and limit my whining.

[WilliamLP]

Retep took a shot at the axe on the hill:




He lost at 3%, but got us down to 25 hp and cleaned up the next fight with no damage, so it was a 1-1 trade, and he only got 1 xp for the second kill.

This was actually a really unlucky result:




We had about 88% to do better than this. But it's fine - a 1-1 trade helps the economy a bit (and his too, of course).




Nothing interesting is happening with military. Retep pillaged the road with the warrior which is actually nice.

I made a really bad worker mistake: I intended to move 2 workers from the "2T Farm" tile over toward the cow, and get in a couple of turns on the "2T cottage" tile. That would be S-SW-SE, then cottage. But I stupidly clicked the tile, and the AI did SW-S-SE, burning up the whole turn because of the river! Well I learned something I should have already known because all the veteran players say it - never ever ever trust the AI pathfinding in a PB game.

My worker management deserves about a D in this game. The 1 Turn on a mine was a miscalculation. We have too many roads... I started building them as economic roads for a fast expansion but I should have been thinking of doing that while also covering interior defense. The roads W and SE of Turandot are pointless. The road on "2T Farm" should have been on the corn. My intent was to connect the gold, but the gold is auto-connected on the river without a road! Using 2 workers to road the hill 2W of Barbiere was a mistake. 1 would have been fine since the road that turn was only useful if Retep were stupid. So in total I see at least 8 wasted worker turns which is pretty huge.




The W2 quechua is finally back in play after some lion chases and beating a wounded one (who might have taken out Ichabod's scout). There's yet another quite good and contested potential city location down there, from the looks of it.

[WilliamLP]

Our W2 quechua caught Retep's scout in 2-move range. The good is is we killed his scout at 95% odds, the bad is he now knows we have a W2 unit. (And he also gets +1 GPT).

We settle next turn.




The drop is where we traded axes, and he had a small increase to make his power drop less than ours.

[MindyMcCready]

Just a couple of comments while I have a couple of minutes,...

That 8XP WII is very valuable now. That's our Heroic Epic unit if we can keep it alive. Keep him on forests if at all possible (although, I completely agree with the scout kill).

The Barracks in Barbiere: I think that we could hold off on that in favour of workers/settlers? Retep looks to have gone into builder mode and he's got both us and Bacchus hostile on both sides so our military needs are not so immediate. I'm sure that I suggested a barracks so if you're building it for me, thanks,...but I don't mind waiting.

Turandot is very impressive in putting out workers.

[WilliamLP]

One of the best known French operas, Carmen is a story of seduction, betrayal and tragedy, known for its emotion and melodies. It wasn't very successful in its first run, and Georges Bizet died soon after, never knowing its eventual success and popularity. This scene is one of the most famous in opera. (Warning: somewhat NSFW, though apparently suitable for Covent Garden!)

(End blurb for the lurkers.)




Retep's warrior is busy pillaging the roads that he made. He has a single axe guarding a worker in the south.

His power graph isn't interesting this turn, but he did build an axe this turn, shown by a 6k power rise in the "leader" column.

I wanted Barbiere to grow, and so it needed something to put hammers into before Masonry finished, and we don't really need another axe or archer right now, a barracks seemed the logical place to put them, though it won't finish soon. I think the walls are really important. A few fully fortified archers behind 50% should be a disincentive to anything he could throw at us, and can free a couple of axes to look southeast.

Turandot is borrowing cow for 1 turn to grow to size 5, and my plan is to build another settler there next.

Ichabod has 5 cities now! He's Rex-ing like a boss, which is how you win these games.

I do realize the importance of the 8xp quechua! It's going to heal up now, and it would be ideal if we could get it to defend against a couple of barb warriors in forests for a HE unit.

[MindyMcCready]

Retep's warrior is busy pillaging the roads that he made.

Unfortunately, that strands our 2 axes. Nobody on the plains-forest-hill? Are you baiting his warrior?

Given the units supporting Carmen + 2 axes on the p-f-h we're once again a little vunerable to a sudden movement out of his staging tile. He's less likely to make any sudden moves given that he appears to have switched back to builder mode.

I can't tell from the pic if those are axes moving to the defensive fork location?

I think the walls are really important. A few fully fortified archers behind 50% should be a disincentive to anything he could throw at us, and can free a couple of axes to look southeast.

I agree that the walls are a big psychological advantage but I think that we could take a chance and postpone this since we have culture and Retep has no cats. If a 2:1 axe to archer happens, the archer isn't likely to win against the second axe regardless of the walls.

The real value is that defensive forking archers would have very good odds but we'd probably use our axes for that.

Ichabod has 5 cities now! He's Rex-ing like a boss, which is how you win these games.

Wow, that's fast.

Turandot is borrowing cow for 1 turn to grow to size 5, and my plan is to build another settler there next.

When you say 'next' you mean after the granary? Do we need to beat Ichabod to that gold site? My unscientific sense is that we'd get a better return from an earlier gold-corn site than the granary. Especially since Turandot isn't likely to be growing too fast with our high worker-settler needs and we won't be whipping as much with the RB-nerf. Thoughts?

[WilliamLP]

Unfortunately, that strands our 2 axes. Nobody on the plains-forest-hill? Are you baiting his warrior?

Now that he cut off the road, he can't move onto that hill in 1 turn anymore, so I don't see much point in parking extra axes there. If he moves the warrior there it dies, obviously. I also don't think it's safe to attack the warrior in the open.

Given the units supporting Carmen + 2 axes on the p-f-h we're once again a little vunerable to a sudden movement out of his staging tile. He's less likely to make any sudden moves given that he appears to have switched back to builder mode.

I can't tell from the pic if those are axes moving to the defensive fork location?

They're just back in Barbiere.

I agree that the walls are a big psychological advantage but I think that we could take a chance and postpone this since we have culture and Retep has no cats. If a 2:1 axe to archer happens, the archer isn't likely to win against the second axe regardless of the walls.

The real value is that defensive forking archers would have very good odds but we'd probably use our axes for that.

I think 50 hammers for walls compares very well to, say 35 hammers for an axe, given that the second one has a permanent per-turn cost and the first doesn't. Going from 20%-50% culture may not make a 2-for-1 favourable but it would sure help the odds a lot in a 3 for 2, or insulate from bad die rolls. And a psychological advantage is real if it causes him not to attack!

Turandot is borrowing cow for 1 turn to grow to size 5, and my plan is to build another settler there next.

When you say 'next' you mean after the granary?

I actually mean starting the settler next turn! It just doesn't make much sense to invest a few turns in a settler when 1 turn can take us to size 5 first, and we can soon work an improved tile with the 5th pop point.

Do we need to beat Ichabod to that gold site? My unscientific sense is that we'd get a better return from an earlier gold-corn site than the granary. Especially since Turandot isn't likely to be growing too fast with our high worker-settler needs and we won't be whipping as much with the RB-nerf. Thoughts?

Probably N/A, given the above.

However, if you're not using the whip at all in Civ 4, even RBMod, it's just throwing many hammers away. It still makes food more valuable than hammers by about a 2-1 ratio, even if you only do it 1 pop every 10 turns or so.

[MindyMcCready]

Alright! Watch out! Hit Girl's on the warpath!

I've never bought into this 'whipping is always superior' because the opportunity cost of not growing compounds. The RB mantra was pretty much 'whip-whip-whip' but T-Hawk's advice to Sunrise in PB7 was 'don't whip off productive tiles' and then there was Krill's PB5 dominance without slavery.

Anyway, I put together a spreadsheet to try to help answer this question. Shaded blue = equations, don't touch. Shaded Orange is for input. See what you think.

Scenario: Wet corn + farm + farm + (many) grass-hill-mines:
No Granary: No Whipping = Whipping by T30 and exceeds if afterwards.
With Granary arbitrarily at size 3: T54 whipping/no whipping becomes pretty neutral. No whip outperforms after that.

I'm not *aware* of any mistakes. :LOL: It only handles 1-pop whips right now.

Excel.xlsx