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

[MindyMcCready]

Another difficulty I hadn't really appreciated is that I don't know if we can or should actually improve the flood plain 2S1W of Barbiere without peace. The river isolates it from us and means retep can just move an axe and pillage it, and the only way we could defend it would be to leave an excessive force there. With the FP useless, it may mean I just made yet another wasted worker turn, sigh. I put one turn of road S of Barbiere with an eye to finishing the road and then starting to farm the fp next turn, guarded by an axe.

I'm not sure if I'd take a peace offer now, but I'm also really not sure that we don't gain more from peace at this moment than he does. The biggest advantage to war right now is that we're making it really hard for him to settle N of his capital.

I really don't see any compelling reason for peace. Preventing him from settling north is going to be a lot easier than conquoring him later - he is protective after all and there are a lot of hill top locations for him to settle on.

Another consideration is, since you're eyeing the short-term near-cap city rather than the silver, you're going to need 2 cities to effectively block him. 1S of the wheat would be a good city and a good blocking city.

Given that Retep razed a city from Bacchus he might not be feeling as boxed in so I suspect that we'll be in strictly cold-war in the near term. Just pretend that the flood plains is a free farm, it'll just waste worker turns and get pillaged.

[MindyMcCready]

We're going to have loads of fun when you learn I have my eye on the very short sighted spot 3W (or maybe 3W1N) of Turandot to claim the silver. And then to get the wheat with something else.

Not sure if this will make it more or less fun:

These are the results from my spreadsheet, cumulative hammer output at points in time. Depends on what you do with Turnadot's grass cow. Also not sure what the silver centre tile is worth 2F+2H? (I don't actually make a habit of building on valuable resources too often :LOL

In the most reasonable assumption of 'don't steal the grass cow' then the Silver city is considerably stronger and that gap would increase if I assumed in communist watermills, forges, Heroic Epic and things like that. Under the 'steals cow' assumption, then the 1N3W is pretty competitive and maybe better and 3W isn't too shabby either.

[WilliamLP]

Well don't fear, I don't want to do anything without reason, and I'm fully in favor of challenging all assumptions and decisions. I feel like it's too soon to get too invested in a dotmap, because it's strongly affected by, e.g. what Retep does in the near future.

Here are my intuitive principles that suggest (before analysis) that settling on silver is not a good play:

- Again, repeating myself as is often the case but the tile itself is just godly in Civ 4 terms. I'm a big believer in the primacy of GNP in a NTT game. The value of a high commerce tile in a high production city is not much, if any amount lower than it would be elsewhere. I value the 7 commerce really highly, as much as 3-4 hammers at least.

- The close sites are simply a non-issue defensively. A site like 3W wouldn't even need a dedicated defense at all, really, by the time anything could get there reinforcements could easily come from another city.

- I think our standing in this game is going to be determined by how much we can do right now, and how we can establish ourselves in the pecking order with land, tech, and defense. So on principle I'd pick a city that would be more productive over the next 50 turns over one that starts to be better 100 turns down the road. Especially this early in the game. So, e.g. in the long run the 1hpt from a plains hill settle is no big deal, but for how it affects where we could be by turn 100, it could actually matter.

- I fully concede that settling on the silver, and getting HE in there, would be a huge advantage if we could be competitive on turn 200. I'm just ignoring this, because I'm more focused on having a good position at that point in the first place. Besides that, we're going to be able to have a HE site that can 1-turn catapults and maybe knights for sure. Infantry and tanks, maybe not.

- At this part of the game, sharing lots of tiles with the capital is nearly all upside. It means, e.g. farms can work double duty for microing both cities, one grows while the other builds a worker / settler, etc. And cottages in the capital can be worked continually during micro shifts. It does become a disadvantage when city sizes get to the 10+ range, but again that won't be the next 50 turns and I'd rather prioritize a strong position between now and then.

I'm good with this. What's the focus for your gold-corn city?

Is it safe to assume that city #4 will also be a commerce city while gimping our production city?

I prefer the term "hybrid" over "gimp". And yeah, I see the site as being strong enough to have good GNP while also having pretty good production.

Anyway, this turn was pretty unremarkable. Rare shot of the NW:




A barb warrior appeared to the NW. I'm hoping it hits our slightly wounded axe on the hill to bring it to 2xp. Otherwise it looks like we're in cold war mode. Nothing too interesting is happening to the east right now, but Slowcheetah's warrior is checking us out and Bacchus's scout got down to 20hp.

I have a worker on the spice tile to chop it, since that forest is a defensive liability. We can do this now that Retep has kindly pillaged his own aggressive roads to that tile.






Retep is flat at 75k. The 5k disadvantage is about as much as I want to tolerate. I think we basically have to match him axe for axe if he starts going up again. Hopefully he'll stay flat as he builds workers and settlers.

I'm guessing his next city (when he finally plants one) will be for the horse somehow, maybe 1E of it. We'll have to look out for a more audacious plan than that.

[MindyMcCready]

Well don't fear, I don't want to do anything without reason, and I'm fully in favor of challenging all assumptions and decisions. I feel like it's too soon to get too invested in a dotmap, because it's strongly affected by, e.g. what Retep does in the near future.

True enough.

The value of a high commerce tile in a high production city is not much, if any amount lower than it would be elsewhere. I value the 7 commerce really highly, as much as 3-4 hammers at least.

Heh, not to make this hard but the trade-off is about 2C: 1H right there on your stated indifference curve. :LOL:

- The close sites are simply a non-issue defensively. A site like 3W wouldn't even need a dedicated defense at all, really, by the time anything could get there reinforcements could easily come from another city.

Agree with this. The only consideration is that we need to get 1 extra city before closing off the west to Retep.

- I think our standing in this game is going to be determined by how much we can do right now, and how we can establish ourselves in the pecking order with land, tech, and defense. So on principle I'd pick a city that would be more productive over the next 50 turns over one that starts to be better 100 turns down the road. Especially this early in the game. So, e.g. in the long run the 1hpt from a plains hill settle is no big deal, but for how it affects where we could be by turn 100, it could actually matter.

- I fully concede that settling on the silver, and getting HE in there, would be a huge advantage if we could be competitive on turn 200.

This is where I think that we have a difference in perception. From my spreadsheet, even if we start a 10T whipping cycle on T+20 (which seems to be optimal in virtually every case I investigated), Silver city will be at size=10 on T+34 provided a T+10 granary and that we can manage our culture. With no whips it'll be at size10 on T+29.

So this isn't so much a question of getting a decent T100 return; workers permitting. While all of these city site all have pretty decent food and become productive very, very quickly SilverCity does stand out with a very sizable T50 advantage + massive production later on. A T50 7hpt difference with a HE is darm close to an extra horse archer every 3T which saves having to dedicate an entire city to military.

- At this part of the game, sharing lots of tiles with the capital is nearly all upside. It means, e.g. farms can work double duty for microing both cities, one grows while the other builds a worker / settler, etc. And cottages in the capital can be worked continually during micro shifts. It does become a disadvantage when city sizes get to the 10+ range, but again that won't be the next 50 turns and I'd rather prioritize a strong position between now and then.

And yet this was my original reason for looking outside of the 3W plant. That capital is dry and those river tiles are probably going to have to be farms over cottages especially if you hand the grass cow over to the production city.

I acknowledge that tightly packing cities is a MP requirement for reasons of food sharing, military security, cottage rearing,...etc. But I don't think that it applies in this case: as you mentioned military security isn't such a big consideration with the combination of high production capital + Heroic Epic city +hills; food sharing with a food-poor, production high capital might not be optimal; cottage rearing should be very limited in our production city and probably isn't viable anyway once you share out the capital's limited food.

The other consideration is our happy cap. With +4 Monarchy +Gold + silver + furs we have a +7 happy as soon as we can get the cities planted. Add Spice and Silk at Calendar + 2 with a market (100% prod) + 2 with a forge and we have +13 happy without even getting to Monarchy. Our cities can be big and should be big. This is not far off planning like in many games but something that can be achieved much sooner.

Having said that I'm warning up a little to the 1N3W plant. But if the silver means a 2F+2H plant the difference is pretty huge. I'm probably understating the difference once watermills come online.

I have a worker on the spice tile to chop it, since that forest is a defensive liability. We can do this now that Retep has kindly pillaged his own aggressive roads to that tile.

Heh, good that he spent the turns and is also signalling his new defensive mentality. I think that our PFH stationed troops have also swayed him in the other direction.

Retep is flat at 75k. The 5k disadvantage is about as much as I want to tolerate. I think we basically have to match him axe for axe if he starts going up again. Hopefully he'll stay flat as he builds workers and settlers.

The risk isn't so much his absolute power, but more if he'll be able to concentrate it. He'll have to spread out his power for his new cities. Have to watch for opportunities while protecting our own vulnerablities. We should have the 2 axes fork defending our 2 southern cities rather than fortifying in Barbiere.

[WilliamLP]

Having said that I'm warning up a little to the 1N3W plant. But if the silver means a 2F+2H plant the difference is pretty huge. I'm probably understating the difference once watermills come online.

At least I can answer this one: the silver plant would be a 2/1/2 city tile. Apparently you take the food / hammer / commerce of the unimproved tile, and if any of those exceed 2/1/1, the city tile gets it. (So planting on plains hill marble or stone gives you a 3 hammer capital tile). But the silver is just 1H unimproved. However on a river it would get the extra commerce point, for what that's worth.

[WilliamLP]

Having said that I'm warning up a little to the 1N3W plant. But if the silver means a 2F+2H plant the difference is pretty huge. I'm probably understating the difference once watermills come online.

I can get behind 1N3W.

The risk isn't so much his absolute power, but more if he'll be able to concentrate it. He'll have to spread out his power for his new cities. Have to watch for opportunities while protecting our own vulnerablities. We should have the 2 axes fork defending our 2 southern cities rather than fortifying in Barbiere.

I don't think I can agree with you on this! We have a guy with paper thin military to the east, and a desperate player who wants to go all in for anything he can find to the west. I think the chances of seeing 5 axes + a few archers on the tile SW of Barbiere on any given turn are much higher than seeing a threat we can't handle in the east very soon. Also axes in Barbiere can block an invasion to the west if he sets it up, by guarding those forest entry points.

[MindyMcCready]

Having said that I'm warning up a little to the 1N3W plant. But if the silver means a 2F+2H plant the difference is pretty huge. I'm probably understating the difference once watermills come online.

At least I can answer this one: the silver plant would be a 2/1/2 city tile. Apparently you take the food / hammer / commerce of the unimproved tile, and if any of those exceed 2/1/1, the city tile gets it. (So planting on plains hill marble or stone gives you a 3 hammer capital tile). But the silver is just 1H unimproved. However on a river it would get the extra commerce point, for what that's worth.

Well that makes it easier. I can live with 1N3W, hopefully that works for you.

No comment on the spreadsheet? I'm finding it pretty useful as an armchair player (like all gamers aren't the armchair type). I'm also pretty curious how well the dynamically created addresses carry over to Google docs. I'm shopping for options now that Microsoft's started asking $100 every year for its Office subscription.

I built in the RBMod modifier and 2-pop and 3-pop whips. I also briefly tested it and it appears to be working correctly. I was a little surprised at the city size growth rates, but it appears to be calculating correctly.

So its becoming pretty useful for:
-city location evaluator
-determining when its optimal to whip. I will admit that there are few, but some, instances where whipping doesn't outperform strict growth. It would be pretty Blue-moonish to find an instance when strict growth could outperform enough to compensate from the earlier hammers that whipping provides. Not exactly a news flash around here. :LOL:
-Determining if/when you would want to whip out a granary - it might save you a sim or two.

I'd be surprised in somebody in RB hasn't done something like this already. Maybe nobody needed to because everyone just follows those really effective rules of thumb. :LOL:

[WilliamLP]

The first question about a simulation is always "how well does it track reality", isn't it? Honestly I'm not sure how well the actual growth and production of a city would actually match, and there's a danger of picking something that optimizes an idealized model (and not necessarily value in game), because of how we chose that model.

There are lots of complications, and I'm not convinced they don't matter, even a lot:

- Which tiles to work is not a static decision. To stick with one tile set isn't just sub-optimal, it is really poor play that makes a big difference.
- Related, whether to share the grass cow from the capital is not a yes / no decision. In a turn when the capital is building a setter or a worker and can't grow, it doesn't need any food surplus at all! +0 is fine and hammers are more valuable than food for workers. And so the cow is absolutely more valuable to use for growth elsewhere in these times. This is an advantage for a city sharing it, and not a small one.
- How many worker turns are needed at any given time to make a plan work matters, and would be very hard to model.
- It's highly likely that any city is going to spend some turns on workers or settlers, and not grow those turns.
- Whether to whip is never going to be as cut and dried as doing it every 10 turns.
- Hammer output vs time is not the only objective function.

So I don't know if in practice it can be done better than just going through each turn and considering each separately! I love the idea though as a tool in the kit, but I am skeptical about leaning on such a thing for winning Civ decisions.

[MindyMcCready]

I can get behind 1N3W.

Excellent. We are in agreement.

I don't think I can agree with you on this! We have a guy with paper thin military to the east, and a desperate player who wants to go all in for anything he can find to the west. I think the chances of seeing 5 axes + a few archers on the tile SW of Barbiere on any given turn are much higher than seeing a threat we can't handle in the east very soon. Also axes in Barbiere can block an invasion to the west if he sets it up, by guarding those forest entry points.

I think that you need to fork defend.

If Retep uses the staging tile, the fork-defend axes can still get back in time and have 73% odds with the culture.

If Retep comes from the West the fork-defend axes can move quickly enough to be part of any battle that takes place. Archers take to the pfh to buy us some time or cost Retep some units. At a glance I'm not sure how Retep could approach us by surprise from the West so long as we occupy the PFH outside of our borders. The only real weakspot is if he sits on the corn then we'll have a tough decision to make. That can be remedied with a road on the plains-hill 2E of the corn, however and it also means that we'd have an extra turn to react. So the west shouldn't be a concern.

The ever-present risk of Retep showing up SW of Barbiere probably means that you're right about getting walls up there soon would be the smart thing to do. 2 archers are probably just as good or better in a battle but the walls are unit maintenance free and probably better psychologically. Depends on our unit maintenace, really.

Turandot's safe; Barbiere's high risk but we have the culture advantage + fortify on our archers. 76% chance our archers kill off an axe and 73% chance that the fork-defend axes will win even without fortify. So unless Retep can show up with 2X the units that we (can) have in Barbiere it should be safe for at least the first turn. Whipped archers would have odds on anything even with no fortify so the biggest risk is that he takes us in the first round.

Our real weakness is Carmen of course with no borders + no culture. Fork defending allows you to react in our South-East without compromising much, if anything in our West. So I do think that we should fork defend it with our axes while fortifying our archers in Barbiere.

Having said that, you haven't posted the unit positioning in awhile so these are just my rules of thumb. Maybe post and we can discuss more if you think that we're too weak in Barbiere or if you think that there are vunerablilites in our West.

That PFH is a bit of a liability to us with those roads gone. SilverCity was one of the key reasons to control that tile so that's dropped a bit in priority now that we're in agreement for 1N3W of capital. I'm glad that we held it and think that we should continue to do so if possible (natural follow up to 1N3W city might be 2W of Silver PFH?). As we expand cities we might have to pull a unit off of the defense of that tile if we can't or decide not to keep up with Retep's power.

Hmmmm, looking again that PFH is occupying 3 units for the next 4 turns or so. I get why you're a little concerned about Barbiere.

One option: is to not worry about getting an archer onto that hill. Once the axe has full fortify, it'll have 75% odds against an attacking Chariot. Unless he shows up with 4 chariots we should be safe there with 2 axes. I hadn't realized that our defensive odds were quite that high.

[WilliamLP]

I guess I'm just not worried about the east at all right now! We can get units to Carmen from Barbiere in 2 turns if need be, and there are a couple of archers down in that area. The forking tile also costs unit supply since it's not in borders.