Microplan Potluck! Get feedback on your CIV early game.

[TheHumanHydra]

Your comments are very helpful.

[Jowy]

You were more respectful while criticizing than many users are in their normal posts

[TheHumanHydra]

^ +1. You even give compliments too!

[The Black Sword]

Alright, here's my plan, so I can finally read all of these spoilered comments.

It's such a nice map to roll btw, there seems to be so many options.

T0-1: Move + found on the banana for that 7t worker and all round excellent city location. Start researching Bronze Working.

T2-7: Building a worker, switch to the Ivory when the borders pop, finish worker EOT7.

T8: Start farming corn. Put 1t production into a Settler working the Ivory, 8/65.

T9-10: Set build to warrior(2/10), grow on FP(8/14)

T11: BW in, revolt to slavery.

T12-14: Move worker to GFH to chop. Grow on farmed corn+FP to size 3(1/17), hammers into warrior(5/10). Research The Wheel.

T15: Chop comes in, put it into the settler, work Ivory, Corn and silk forest for 41/65. Silk forest allows The Wheel to complete.



T16: 1-pop whip Settler, road the Corn. Research Hunting. Work Ivory+Corn for 83/65 at EOT and 12h overflow.

T17: Finish road, move settler 3W1S to riverside GH. Hammers into a worker, 22/40.

T18: Found city 2, work Corn, grow on warrior. Start farm on FP adjacent to city. Whip the worker in the capital(46/40).

T19: Capital starts a settler, working the Ivory, 20/65. Both workers farm.

T20: Capital takes back corn, growing on warrior. City 2 grows on the completed FP farm(2/16 size 2).



T21: Hunting complete, research Pottery. City 2 starts worker on farmed FP + FP (6/40). Capital grows(1/16) Move 1 worker to Ivory and start camping, the other to forest 1E of the capital and chop.

T22: Capital takes both farms(10/16). City 2 continues worker(11/20).

T23: Capital works FP farm+FP (16/16), warrior is at 9/10. City 2 starts warrior again, works corn and FP(9/16).

T24: Chop comes in, camp complete. Capital works Ivory, Silk forest and plains hill forest for 53/65. Second city grows (17/16).

T25: Capital works Ivory, silk, FP for 65/65 settler. Second city works 2 farms +FP for 21/40 worker. Pottery complete, start research on Animal Husbandry. Ivory worker puts a turn into a cottage on the FP SW of the capital, second worker starts road NE of capital.



T26: Complete road, settler moves to jungle W of Ivory. Other worker moves to forest 1NW of that position. Capital puts 1h into a Granary, grows on both farms + FP, 10/17. City 2 whips the worker, working FP + forest(46/40).

T27: City 3 founded, starts worker. New worker from city 2 moves toward dry corn and roads. Worker on forest roads also, last worker moves into city 3(wasted worker turn, but completing the copper mine 1t earlier, means the worker completes 1t earlier). Capital works both farms +Ivory, switches back to warrior (14/10h, 18/17f). City 2 works 2 FP, putting overflow into a worker(11/10).

T28: Workers: start corn farm, finish road, start copper mine. Capital works FP, Ivory, silk, PHF for 20/65 into settler. City 2 grows on corn+FP farm(9/16)

T29: Animal Husbandry finishes, start Writing. Both workers in the East complete the copper mine. Capital and City 2 exchange the FP farm for a FP. Capital settler 35/65, city 2 grows 16/16.

T30: Whip settler in capital, work Ivory, silk, phf. City works both farms+FP, 22/40 into worker to whip next turn. Workers on copper mine move to the roaded forest and chop. Note the worker in city 3 comes out next turn as the chop is completed.



My first instinct was to go pottery first, double worker and get the flood plains cottaged. That was ahead on gold and developed cottages, behind on hammers obviously. It doesn't seem easy to judge which is better but there are no really pressing techs next I think, so I think the extra development here wins out.

[SevenSpirits]

Sullla

Thanks, Sullla, for not only a highly readable writeup, but a video too!

Let me thank SevenSpirits for this idea, it was certainly a lot of fun to try.

Retep and I were apparently thinking along the same lines. We independently reached the same idea of moving the settler to found a capital on top of the bananas resource. The biggest advantage of doing this is that it gets the first worker out a turn faster (via working the 1/3 ivory tile over the 3/0 corn tile), speeding everything up very slightly. Start by researching Bronze Working, farm the corn, and then chop forests to speed up future workers/settlers.



I built a second worker at size 2, since the capital could reach exactly 10 foodhammers with the corn and ivory tiles together. This chop actually does nothing to speed along the second worker, but it gets funneled into a settler on the following turn with the Imperialistic bonus. Then 2 turns of working max food while growing to size 3 in the capital, followed back swapping back to the settler as the double worker chops come in:



I'm convinced that these first 19 turns can't be sped up any faster, not to get a size 3 capital along with two workers and a settler at the end of Turn 19. After that, I'm less confident that I made great moves. You guys will have to be the judges. Revolt to Slavery while moving the settler:



Retep and I also picked the same spot for the second city, on top of the invisible coal resource where Shanghai can share the wet corn and a whole bunch of floodplains tiles with Beijing. From here, I put the settler chop overflow into a third worker in the capital (still at size 3), while the existing two workers threw down some floodplains cottages for the cities to share:



At this point, two workers road over to the dry corn and farm it. They can build more grassland river cottages N-N and NE of Shanghai on their way back from the corn, but this is running over the 30 turn limit. (I'm making the moves assuming that the game will keep going forward normally, not artificially make Turn 30 look better.) The third worker threw down a single road to speed up the founding date of the third city, then went back and camped the ivory tile for the capital. I'm not at all sure that was the correct move, but I was starting to get tired of testing and simming. I think that area could be optimized better.



The plains hill with the pigs/sheep/oasis tiles goes as the third city. It's a great spot, but I'm not sure if this is where this city should be placed. It's better in the long run, weaker in the short run because it will take 2-3 turns to get workers up there for improvement. I might have done better to place this city on the plains hill south of the peak (two tiles south), while gets founded a turn sooner and could have the grassland sheep in the second ring up and running faster. I honestly don't know. That's what I would test if I were going further with this.

Beijing is over halfway finished with its granary at this point. I planned to have Beijing and Shanghai both double-whip something at size 4, either two workers or a worker and a settler. Then overflow into granaries in both cases. I have one warrior since this was a purely peaceful sandbox - I wouldn't run that thin in a real game.



Demos for the curious. This particular plan is a bit higher on commerce than many of the alternate routes, and that's both a strength and a potential criticism. Is it a good idea to throw down cottages this early? Or better to go strictly for food bonuses and worry about commerce later? I genuinely don't know.

Here's the micro text dump for the curious:

Techs: Bronze Working (eot 10) -> Wheel (eot 15) -> Pottery (eot 21) -> Hunting (eot 24) -> Animal Husbandry (eot 28) -> Writing

Builds:
Beijing: worker (eot 7) -> warrior (T8-T11) -> swap worker (eot 15) -> settler (T16) -> swap warrior (T17-18) -> settler (eot 19) -> worker (eot 23) -> granary (T24-T25) -> settler whip (eot 27) -> granary (T28-)

Shanghai: warrior (T21) -> granary (T22-)

Guangzhou: granary (T30-)

Beijing
Citizen 1: corn (T1-T2), ivory (T3-T7), corn (T8-T10), corn farm (T11-)
Citizen 2: ivory (T12-T16), FP (T17-T22), FP cottage (T23-)
Citizen 3: ivory (T19-T23), FP (T24-T26), ivory camp (T30-)
Citizen 4: ivory (T26)

Shanghai
Citizen 1: FP (T21-24), FP cottage (T25-)
Citizen 2: corn (T26-T27), corn farm (T28-)
Citizen 3: FP (T30-)

Guangzhou
Citizen 1: oasis (T30-)

Worker A
move W and farm corn (T8-T11), move E-E (T12), chop forest (T13-15), move W-NW (T16), chop forest (T17-19), move S and road (T20), move SW and road (T21), move SE and cottage (T22-23), move NW and cottage (T24-25), move W-NW and road (T26), move SW and farm (T27-T28), road (T29), move NE-NE and cottage (T30-31)

Worker B
move W-NE (T16), chop forest (T17-19), move SE and road (T20), move SW and road (T21), move SE and cottage (T22-23), move NW and cottage (T24-25), move W-NW and road (T26), move SW and farm (T27-T28), road (T29), move NE-NE and cottage (T30)

Worker C
move NE and road (T24-25), move SW-SW-SE (T26), camp ivory (T27-T29), move NW and cottage (T30)

Settler 1
move W-W-SW (T20), settle (T21)

Settler 2
move NE-N-N (T28), NW-NE (T29), settle (T30)

Revolt Slavery T20

This has also been turned into a video playthrough for YouTube, which is being uploaded as I type this. I'll post the link here once it's done. Thanks again, Seven.

EDIT: YouTube link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FID04O4ASLs

Strategy thoughts

Beijing’s location is excellent as mentioned before, and I like Shanghai as a second city spot for it. Guangzhou looks strong on paper, with plains hill plant, oasis, sheep and pigs, but I have several problems with it.

1) You found it with no worker labor nearby and none even on the way.

2) It’s far away and will be annoying to support with workers, roads, and defenders.

3) It doesn’t claim copper or horse.

I’m unsure to what extent you and others misunderstood this versus just wanting to see how much you can optimize economically regardless, but the goal as I envisioned it is to come up with a plan in the sandbox that would be appropriate for a real game against humans. Building zero warriors (and not settling any strategic resources) is probably a bad idea here.

It’s true that you can always modify the plan in-game when a threat appears, and in many cases you can avoid being in any existential danger. But in my experience, it works better to build in a bit more defense so you have a plan that probably won’t get screwed up. In other words, building warriors is less of a pain if you planned for it in advance.

I’ve said this in an earlier response already, but I feel dubious about using chops so extensively, given that it’s quick speed. It might not be wrong, but I’d really want to look into other options for comparison.

I do like the focus on cottages. While this start doesn’t have too much trouble getting the essential ancient techs, it looks like it’s going to hit a serious happiness wall pretty soon, and certain classical techs will become very desirable. Meanwhile, it’s a prince toroid, which seems gentle enough at first but really starts to wreck you in city maintenance pretty soon. Plus, we have two traits that enable fast expansion: it's important to support them with economy so we don't run ourselves into the ground. We shouldn't only focus on our strengths.

Micro thoughts

The way that the 2nd and 3rd chops line up to finish the settler is nice, and being able to build the appropriate road the turn after delights me.

The first chop though seems pretty lame. It has no effect on the worker’s finishing time, nor the settler’s! (Without that first chop and leaving everything else being equal, you’d be 2h short. But not having to dump overflow hammers means you can grow immediately after finishing the worker, and therefore get one extra turn at size 3. That extra pop point nets you back your 2 hammers.) So I’d try to work on that part of the plan, and see if there’s something useful the worker could do then instead which will have greater long-term benefits.

It’s quite possible to finish the warrior while growing to size 3, so I’d probably do that even though it does mean less food for growth to 4. (Maybe an even earlier warrior is called for; I guess it depends on the exact conditions of the game. But certainly, finishing this one warrior is a good thing.)

Once Shanghai is founded, it only works a FP for the first 5 turns, while the corn is being used for hammers into a worker. It seems like using the corn for growth in Shanghai would be more valuable. Looking into options here might yield some nice results.

The two workers who are soon sent over to farm Shanghai’s corn run into some inefficiencies: they have to road the corn afterwards and head back via the tile 2N of Shanghai - a non-shared river grassland which is pretty good but not ideal. If just a single worker went to farm that corn, it could return very easily simply by finishing the road NW of Shanghai, which would only be half-done as only one worker had to pass over it already. Depending on the exact changes, this wouldn’t even necessarily delay the corn farm, and could accelerate it. The earliest that a single worker could complete the farm is t27, and your plan completes it t28.

t27 you can swap the FP cottage from Beijing over to Shanghai (replacing working the bare corn), and have Beijing work the ivory, which is a strict upgrade of +2 overflow hammers from the settler build.

Regarding your comment at the end that you plan to whip both Beijing and Shanghai from 4 to 2: it seems unfortunate to be whipping them both at about the same time. Not only will they not be able to work all your good tiles immediately after doing so, but their whip cycles will be synced up in the future, assuming you do indeed continue whipping them at every opportunity, and the problem will repeat.

Overall, a very nice start with two quick cities, and nice subsequent focus on throwing down cottages. But the efficiency of the plan slipped after you achieved your first goal of getting a second city down with two workers for support.

[retep]

Comments on the comments of seven

But growing the second city faster won't help as will grow into non improved tiles, that is why I didn't give him the corn, by working the farm in the 4 turns necessary to finish the cottage.
I guess I didn't explain things well I did quite a bit of tile swapping

I know that I didn't make roads but you see, I have to improve tiles doing the roads will indeed make the settlers to reach destination faster but won't let me to improve the tiles fast enough.
Part of making the cottages early is because the cost in maintenance will be high(in the future) as I settle more cities, also my plan is the one that get more techs than the others I guess I'm the only one that get AH for the horses. I also didn't chop anything saving forest is crucial especially since the capital doesn't have many.

Anyway this were some of my thoughts at the moment definitely there is room for improvement, the part for the warrior is something I over look.

Krill I think is because that way you can borrow the corn, FP farm from the capital.

[SevenSpirits]

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

My comments:

I’m glad to see another video, and I appreciated the in-depth explanation of your reasoning behind every choice.

Strategic thoughts

Another SoB story. Good choice! Settling on banana is very strong.

Tech path is good - I like that you build a few improvements first, and chop only right when it’s needed.

The lack of settling for copper/horses, and lack of building any warriors, is questionable.

I don’t like the location of Guangzhou compared to where a few other people placed a city, on the grass river hill. While the latter location doesn’t have first ring corn, the fact that it can share the improved food tiles of Beijing tends to make up for this IMO. It doesn’t require the extra road you built to hook up the trade route, it gets the freshwater health bonus later, and it’s easier to defend. In addition, its position ensures that you can always be working the 3 FPs despite Beijing whipping away pop every 6 turns.

It does make some sense for your micro plan in particular - a very nice one - to have one of the two new cities have a resource that’s immediately improvable. However, I think some other pair of city positions (probably with one of them claiming copper) would be superior and the micro plan could be adjusted around the new positions.

Micro thoughts

This is one of the few cases where building the worker at size 1 before growing once the farm is done seems to help noticeably. I don’t think that worker gets done on the same turn if you grow first, due to how neatly the improved city food output provides 2 growths in 4t and the fact that there’s a 4-yield hammer-focused tile to work at size 1. However, it does come at the expense of not finishing the warrior, which dampens the victory a little bit.

Opening up with farm-camp-road seems like a very solid start to me. I’ve already talked a lot about the benefits of roads the speed up settlers a lot.

The way the workers coordinate to set up the double settler play, with each of the 2 new cities having appropriate worker support, is masterful.

It would be nice to have at least one of the second/third cities be able to work a good food tile a bit sooner. Some potential ways to accomplish this include:
1) Settling to share existing food.
2) Settling to claim food that’s already in culture (not really possible with this capital).
3) Settling with 2 workers for immediate support.
4) Settling a resource like pig rather than dry corn, since it’s both faster to improve and worth more.
I don’t see any good simple changes that would allow any of these options, and it’s not that big of a deal, but I think this plan does suffer a bit due to these cities having to work lame tiles 3-6 turns.

I think in your video you lamented the fact that Shanghai wouldn’t get a trade route until the turn after the road was finished. I believe that this could be rectified by building the road before settling Guangzhou that same turn, as settling a new city will recalculate trade connections.

Overall, very well-thought-out micro. I think the city placement could be better, and you know that you need to actually build military units and stuff. Very nice sim and I encourage everyone to watch the video!

[TheHumanHydra]

Seven, regarding your comments about military, I know I for some reason thought we were kinda supposed to ignore that. Oops ...

[SevenSpirits]

Seven, regarding your comments about military, I know I for some reason thought we were kinda supposed to ignore that. Oops ...

Based on the number of people who assumed otherwise, it definitely seems like I wasn't clear about that, even though I thought it was obvious. My fault.

[SevenSpirits]

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.

My comments:

Strategic thoughts

Banana is ideal as we know by now.

I like the Shanghai location. Wouldn’t have thought of that since I was ogling those plains hills, but this has a distinct advantage in claiming both the nearby sheep as well as the great pig. And it resolves some of the logistical problems of that area by destroying the forest on its tile. It also lets you hook up sheep for Guangzhou before the city is even settled, which is great.

I like how many workers you have, and with most of their time being spent building improvements. This seems to be a strength of your sim compared to others I’ve seen which had barely enough workers to not be dumb (not that that is not a valid strategy too).

One thing I see less than I’d like, though, is cottages. It seems one detrimental effect of settling north towards the great AH food tiles is that the flood plains are out of the way and never got improved. This combined with the fairly high maintenance cost of Shanghai, and going Hunting only after AH, and of course the general high maintenance setup of the start and fast expansion bias of catherine, all contribute to your first classical tech (e.g. math) being quite a long way out. Hopefully it can be compensated for soon with the relatively large number of workers. (Yeah it's just 4 workers for 3 cities, but if you check other plans the workers are almost never getting to improve something that's not a resource or FP. Here they have time for that and are still ahead of growth in the northern cities.)

One major issue left is of course getting some strategic resource. It’s not great that you don’t have one of the coppers settled yet, and in fact there’s an addition problem (perhaps a small one) due to the placement of Shanghai. It claims the only food resource that’s available to a nearby copper city. It’s true you can still settle e.g. on the jungle and get copper and share sheep, but this does retroactively lessen the value of that initial Shanghai placement. There is also the option of a farther-out city claiming a strategic resource but this is maybe too risky. Finally, the south copper spot which several people settled is still available, but that looks like it would take a while.

And I will just briefly mention this time: more warriors sooner.

Micro thoughts

I like building the mine second thing. As I mentioned previously, it’s easy to forget mines are an option. Growing to size 3 quickly made good use of this mine.

The worker micro to chop and then pasture the sheep is pretty clever.

The fact that there’s a river connection to Shanghai is nice.

It seems the north is being improved a tiny bit ahead of schedule while the capital (FPs + ivory) are not getting anything at all. Furthermore you’ll want to get 1-2 cities in that direction pretty soon and it would be easier if there were some worker presence there for a while beforehand. This is something I’d try to find a way to tweak.