Microplan Potluck! Get feedback on your CIV early game.

[retep]

Ok now I read all of yours micro plans here some comments.

My third city is not in a great place I did think settling south of the peak (like Sulla mentioned) that get the 2 sheep but in a realistics game I don't think I could go this far without units to defend or at least the ability to build then, this is why I settle to grab cooper and horses. The city could grow to size 3 with the help of the farm and then work horses, cooper and a grass hill.
My cities are very close despite being creative, because this way I save a lot of workers turns and I can get away with two workers instead of three also it help that I didn't have to chop.
I didn't chop because first, one of the bad thins of moving the settler was that I lost some forest, so I try to keep the ones I have for later.
I also wasn't sure if whipping the granary was the right call since the idea was to test to turn 30 I couldn't test further.

I like novice plan the most after mine of course
I think that the third city of Sulla looks bad, since it doesn't have any support from workers at all, I have only play four games on quick but every turn is more important than in normal speed, so losing so many turn just moving the workers seems pretty bad.
Hydra plan was kinda unrealistic.
Jowy post a picture of turn 31
Ichabod is lazy and didn't do his own

[Krill]

Reasoning behind choices is here. Basically, early BW doesn't help with worker micro, chopping is nerfed on quick speed so don't want to do much of it, better to improve tiles. hunting first so to improve the ivory, that is a 5 yield tile and over the course of the scenario will outperform a forest chop quite well. Settler on the banana as the growth boost is better than the hammer boost (and it opens up the ivory). Because of IMP, either want to settler 1 really quick second city, or to maximise for quick second and third cities. In this instance, can compete settlers on T21 and T22, second city settled T23, third city T24.

Tech Path Hunting>Wheel>BW>Pottery>AH

Capital: Worker eot T7>build worker until T10, warrior T11: grow to 2 eot T12: 3 eot T14>T15 swap to worker, finish worker2 eot T16>T17 build settler, T18 swap back to warrior, revolt slavery T19: grow to 4 eot T20. T21 swap to settler, double slave, finish settler eot T21. Build settler eot T22, finish settler eot T22. T23 build worker3, finish worker eot T25. Build granary T26, 1 pop whip T30, avoid growth enabled.
City 2: settled T23, work sheep, build whatever (makes no difference to sim). Corn hooked T29, work corn+sheep T29
City 3: Settled T24, work fp until corn hooked T27, the work corn.

Proper google docs rite up not happening.

Turn 15



Turn 20



Turn 25



Turn 30

[novice]

Good idea for the capital location, Retep, Sullla and Krill.

[SevenSpirits]

I'm amazed by the amount of participation here already. Thanks everyone!

My comments are still coming later (I said I would wait a few days, and it's only been one day!), but here is a plan I came up with after looking at some things other people did, in case anyone is interested.

It uses the same city placement as retep but settler schedule more like Krill’s, just using a single chop.

Settle on banana, tech hunting-wheel-BW-Pottery-AH.

Build a worker. Worker improves corn and ivory.

Grow to 4, working corn and floodplains, and work the ivory camp once completed to finish the warrior on the turn of growth to 4 (eot15), with a little overflow.





Worker A moves west and farms the FP, then moves north and builds a road to accelerate settler 1. Then it moves NE-SE and roads that tile to accelerate settler 2.

Meanwhile, the capital builds a 3t worker. Worker B, upon being born, moves W-NW to chop for the second settler.

Revolt to slavery once the worker is complete. Start a settler and whip it. Between overflow and the chop, finish another settler 2t later. First settler moves west. Second moves south. (Settlers are completed eot21 and eot23.)





Build a granary in Beijing. Get it to 20h and grow to size 3 over t24-26 by working ivory x3, farmed FP once, corn once, and forest silk once. Then whip the granary t27 and start growing.

Shanghai borrows Beijing’s corn for 2t, then completes growth with a FP on t25.

Worker A completes the road connection to Guangzhou and then moves to mine the copper. Worker B roads next to Shanghai and then moves to farm its corn.





Guangzhou grows to 2 on turns 25-29 by working FP farm twice, ivory twice, and then FP farm a final time.

After its own growth to 2, Shanghai builds a worker up to 20h, by working corn + FP, FP farm + FP, FP farm + FP. Then it whips the worker t29 and switches to working its own corn.

Beijing is regrowing post-granary. It will probably whip a worker->settler once whip anger runs out.

The two workers near Shanghai can now build a couple of cottages.




End (mid turn 30):
* Size 4 capital with a granary due to grow to 5 at eot, still with 3t of whip anger.
* Size 1 second city.
* Size 2 third city.
* Four improved resources (corn, corn, ivory, copper).
* One improved FP (farmed).
* 1t into the first cottage.
* Solid road network, albeit without road on the ivory. Road on copper will be started next turn.
* 3 workers
* 3 warriors, with one more due at eot.
* 1 lost forest (chopped)
* 9h of overflow for a worker or settler in Guanzhou after eot. 6h of overflow currently in Shanghai.

P.S. I ignored optimizing the slider in my play, as there were no timing issues on techs by the time the second city was founded.

[TheHumanHydra]

Thanks for the video ones, guys; they were very interesting, especially given the contrast.

[plako]

T0-1 Lots of potential settling positions. However settling on top of Bananas gives +1 food and brings forested ivory to BFC as well as 3 Flood plains that will eventually be very good for the capital so there I go.



I see 2 potential openings. straight to Pottery and 2 workers oprning to maximise commerce with cottaged floodplains. I did go that through, but eventually thought that it is better to focus on Hammers and go BW 1st and fast expansion route.

1st worker - then settler - utilise ivory when it comes in. After Corn was improved Grow to 3 via building warrior.

T8: Worker improve corn then goes to mine. After BW I did choose AH.


T13-T17: Then Worker goes to chop. Strange tile to do that, but it is only one where I can start improving Sheep after 2nd city is settled. After Settler Capital starts Worker




T19 Chop is finished and revolt to Slavery. That is not immediately useful, but it won't take long after T30 when it will be.

T20 - 2nd city settled and start worker until Sheep is improved and then grow to 2 to building warrior.



Tech Wheel after AH and then Pottery and Hunting after that (won't get finished).

T22 1st worker finishes pasture and will move towards Pigs and improve it and 2nd worker moves to forest to chop. Starting 3rd worker in the capital.


T24


T25 2nd and 3rd worker will road towards 3rd city spot. Capital starts settler. 2nd city switches back to Worker


...Pictures tell it all






In the end 3 cities of sizes 4-2-1 and 4 workers. Running slavery. 1 warrior . Yeah that warrior in the capital's queue needs to be finished earlier (Warrior starts to decay in the capital so it would be better to finish it earlier). But didn't have patience to go further from here.

[plako]

After looking at the other candidates mine might be a bit too much on the farmers's gambit and going for Copper/Horse might be indeed nescessary.

[novice]

Obviously settling on the banana is so strong that all other plans are irrelevant. From the banana starts, I like Retep's dotmap best. The copper/horse city doesn't claim any food but it does claim two strong resource tiles.

[Krill]

Yeah, that copper/horse spot is just too strong to ignore. Yes it costs 1 irrigated flood plain to fund it, but that city has no need of a granary so just grow it to size 5 and bring in an unholy 1fpt/17hpt using 1 grass hill, copper, horse and ivory. Synergizes perfectly with the capital getting a granary and working all cottages and the corn. Find another happiness somewhere to grow onto that last grass hill and it's golden. I'd likely amend the micro to try and get 1 grass farm done to grow a bit faster to size 5 but that's me.

What I don't get is planting a city on the coal.

[TheHumanHydra]

Okay, so after looking at everyone else's plans I had another go at mine. I like this one much, much better.

So I kept the principle of the plan because I'm a Tier 6 player but modified it to incorporate the banana start, the western corn location, and the need for more workers. I'll walk you through it again:

So I settled on the bananas t1 and started a settler:




Bronze Working first again (-> Wheel -> Fishing -> Pottery -> Writing).

The combination of bananas and ivory allowed me to found the second city one turn earlier than in my previous plan, t11:




Both cities started on a worker, Shanghai getting the ivory to cut two turns off the build-time.

Beijing's worker went here, which is important; I had to preserve that forested plains hill tile to work later, and I couldn't do the micro from the eastern grassland forest:




Note the grassland hill tile 1N of Beijing had a forest-growth in my run-through; I avoided chopping it because that growth wouldn't be replicable in other people's sims.

A turn later, Shanghai's worker went here; in this case it didn't matter too much which forest it went to. Both cities started on another worker:




At this point I gave Beijing back the ivory; Shanghai had used it to get its worker in eight turns - eot18 - with exact hammers; now Beijing would use it - with a chop - to get a third worker eot21 with exact hammers, then Shanghai would get it back to get out a fourth worker - with a chop - eot24 with exact hammers!

Beijing's workers had moved like so while the city started on another settler (this is where I worked the forested plains hill briefly):




Meanwhile Shanghai's workers moved to continue their anti-environmental mission while the city started on ... another settler:




As a side-note, I had settled Shanghai for the monster copper tile, but after repeated run-throughs found it was far more efficient not to improve it till after the sim. However, I couldn't find another second-city site that allowed me to reach the same benchmarks in the same time-frame. Shanghai basically became a chop-funnel; down the road it would have to become a production city due to its low food-potential.

Anyway, as you can see, the workers at Beijing finished the corn-farm and forest-chop the same turn; this may seem odd but allowed both cities to have the highest-yield tiles possible available at all times.

The rest is explicable in pictures; from here the worker-micro could actually differ if you had different goals in mind: one run-through had the copper improved and hooked but the fourth city settled t31, for instance. I opted to cram everything into the t30 window and cottage it up; from here on out no city worked an unimproved flood-plain, while roads sped the settlers' movement to their assigned locations:







Beijing squeaked out its settler with exact hammers, and Shanghai one to spare.




Here I was able to group all the workers together for fun and profit:




Actually, I spot a mistake: I should have cottaged the more southerly flood-plain last, so I could move a worker or two to cottage the roaded flood-plain 1SW of Shanghai the turn after. Oh well.













From here all the cities build granaries (Nanjing nets its crabs first), Beijing continues on its seemingly-infinite two-turn growth curve, Shanghai hooks its copper and becomes a production-city as I said, etc. Workers disperse to improve all the cities.

Eot30 I have four cities, four workers, four improved tiles plus two roads, five total population, and the techs you saw above. Much improved over my last run! Thank-you very much for the settle-on-bananas idea, all those who posted it, and for the settling-west and skipping-Animal-Husbandry pointers; I incorporated them all. And thanks again to Seven for the challenge; I've now had two afternoons of enjoyment out of it!