[SPOILERS] scooter's Industrial Revolution

[Sullla]

Only suggestion for now is scout moves. How about NW-NW for the first scout, followed by NW-N the second turn to reveal the whole iron area. I'd go SW-W with the other and scope out the other city spot. A later Explorer can head off SE in a few turns.

[scooter]

I had a brief moment to login to verify settings/units/etc.



Since we won't be getting any new visibility this turn, the only noteworthy things are the land tiles and the mini-map. The scores on the left side suggest 1,132 land tiles (162/person) which is pretty in line with what Brick suggested they'd be. That's probably room for 9-12 cities per person.

We're also on the east side of the map, but again this is a Toroid, so directions are all relative. Also, yes those are whaling boats on that 1 tile lake 1W of the northern explorer. Not sure if that's intentional or not.

I'm going to hold off on playing the turn until I know what I'm going to do with those two workers. Everything else is pretty set in stone.

[Sullla]

OK, I have something I'm pretty happy with in the sandbox:



I have 8 workers out, all three cities connected by roads, all resources other than iron (to be connected next turn) and dyes improved, an explorer already finished in the capital, libraries about to complete everywhere, 12 total population, and cities growing like they're on steroids. Next step will be getting our worker swarm to throw down farms, watermills, and workshops everywhere as the cities grow upwards at light speed. I'll sit down and type this up tonight (hopefully) or tomorrow morning, and then you can test it out for yourself scooter. Let's definitely not play the turn until we have at least one full day to discuss our moves.

I told everyone the Industrial start moves really fast! You won't have 8 workers in the first 10 turns in your typical Ancient game. :

[scooter]

I figured you did a Slavery-to-Serfdom run, so I decided to go the other way and try Serfdom from the beginning. I used one rush-buy (around 60g), and all it did was get me a worker 1t quicker. No whipping. I think this can be optimized a notch or two more than I have already, but it's still a pretty good representation of what avoiding Slavery looks like.



Also 8 workers. Only a library in Berlin, though Munich would be pretty close if I diverted the chop that came in this turn into a library rather than a missionary. Nothing in Hamburg yet. It's hit the hardest by inability to whip. By the way, "3/4 wksp" in this shot indicates 3 turns are completed already (not sure if you prefer count-up or count-down).

Overall I think yours is still better. I think mine has a couple more worker turns put in, but on the flip side your whips allowed you to grow your cities far more quickly - Hamburg/Munich lag far behind in this run because they spent so much time building workers in my Serfdom run.

[Sullla]

Here's the link to my micro as typed up in Google docs. Let me know if it's still hidden and I have to fiddle with the permissions some more:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1...mU/pubhtml

* Turn 0 requires running 60% science to get +8 gold for an exact 108 gold worker purchase on Turn 1. This is one of the odder quirks of this start, but I think it turns out quite well.

* I started by having the two workers farm the floodplains tile on Turn 0 and Turn 1, which feels really weird. The more obvious play would be to have one of them chop that plains forest next to the capital, right? But every time I tried that, it threw off the timings in one way or another. If one worker goes to chop, then the chop doesn't finish until the end of T3, and that delays improving the best tile at the start: the 6 food grassland pigs. I want to have both starting workers pasturing that on Turn 2 and finishing it on Turn 3, so that the capital and the nearby city can both be working it every turn and passing it back and forth. But if a worker goes to chop a forest on Turn 0, that pasture can't get finished until at least one turn later, and more likely 2 turns later. It simply required too much in the way of inefficiencies for me to like it, so I have the workers doing the next best thing and knocking out most of the floodplains farm instead.

By the way... it's really a shame that we're not using the Culture bug in this game. I'd use it to pop the borders of the capital on the first turn, and then my starting worker micro would be completely different. There wouldn't even be a need to settle in the same spot to get the pigs in first ring radius right away with one of the extra starting settlers. Ah, if only...

* On Turn 4, two of the workers spend their turn roading the pigs tile. It's an inefficient play, but that road link is very useful and I didn't see a better task for them, since I wanted them around to go connect the deer on the following turn. This could arguably be better optimized.

* There's some very nice micro in here with regards to the capital. It buys a worker on Turn 1, builds a work boat on Turn 3, which connects the crabs just in time to grow on end of Turn 4, finished a chopped worker on Turn 5, uses overflow to finish a third explorer on Turn 6, then finished more chopped workers on Turn 7 and Turn 8. We end up with a lot of overflow from all that, and we can likely set it up so that we have Organized Religion in place from a missionary to further buff up that free production. It depends on where the religion appears, of course. Once we know that, I can do some corrections to the numbers.

* On Turn 5, it's very important to REVOLT TO SERFDOM (and Organized Religion) AT THE START OF THE TURN. I keep forgetting this and having to reload. It does actually matter for the workers, hehe.

* I have the two non-capital cities Build Culture on Turn 5. This seems odd, but the rationale is twofold: so we can delay the whip overflow until we can put it into a missionary in whatever becomes the Holy City, and so that we can pop borders quickly in whatever city doesn't land the free religion. Build Culture is really useful for popping those borders, and the extra visibility is worth it for safety alone, not to mention getting more tiles into workable range.

* I think 8 workers feels about right for the starting moves with our cities. More than that and I think we'd be starting to run out of things for them to work on. I placed a priority on connecting our cities in Turns 9-10 of this plan, in part for the small trade route income bonus, but more so because it lets us move the workers around much more easily and share the resources. We're going to need the health and happiness quickly, especially because I think we should pop into Nationhood civic for 5 turns and draft out a round of rifles as soon as the three cities are all size 6. Hurts to give up Bureaucracy for 5 turns, but rifles cost 88 production and that's too much to build in the early game. In a worst case scenario, roads also help us defend more easily against attack.

* My one regret with this micro plan is that the iron city is slower to develop. It's just hard to get worker labor up there in an effective way, and so most of the early turns were spent on the other two cities. Fortunately, by Turn 10 we'll have a road up there and then it will take off in a big way, with 5 workers available for labor. I didn't see a way around this, short of being really inefficient with the workers.

Anyway, I think that's all I had to say for the moment, other than using Build Research on the last turn to inflate the beaker count is unfair scooter. I have the exact same 69 beakers/turn in my capital if I use the same option, and that's without a library in place! Let me know your thoughts on this whole setup.

[scooter]

The link is all good - I can see it.

* On Turn 5, it's very important to REVOLT TO SERFDOM (and Organized Religion) AT THE START OF THE TURN. I keep forgetting this and having to reload. It does actually matter for the workers, hehe.

I managed to forget twice in a row once - reloaded for this exact reason and 30 seconds later I forgot to cancel the worker actions in time yet again. So trust me, I sympathize . In pitboss at least there's plenty of time to remember to cancel your worker actions to ensure you get the Serfdom bonus for the whole turn.

Overall this looks really good. I tried probably a half dozen variations of Serfdom-only, and a couple of them are pretty decent, but I think this Slavery opening of yours is still definitely better. So I'm definitely sold on Slavery first. I'll play your micro out myself real quick.

[scooter]

Played it. This is really great stuff.

Leaving the FP farm at 4/5 completed for so long before finishing it just feels weird, but I don't see a way to complete it sooner without throwing off the timings here. The +1f pales in comparison to the food brought in from improving the pigs and deer, so delaying like you did is definitely the right choice. I'll take another look tomorrow to see if there's any tweaks worth considering.

[Sullla]

Thanks! I'm glad that you were experimenting with the Serfdom first option. My gut feeling was that Slavery -> Serfdom would come out ahead, but it's always a good idea to check. I made a slight refinement to the setup this morning to get the farm finished on the floodplains faster, and it comes out a tiny bit ahead of the other plan. Let me walk through what this looks like for the readers; I'm hoping that this game will be well-documented from all of the participants because it's unexplored territory for Realms Beyond. (I love the Ancient starts, but we've all seen a million normal openings by now.)



Here we are on Turn 250, the starting turn (Turn 0). The workers team up to farm the floodplains tile, since none of the capital's resources (other than clams) are in the immediate border range. Settlers are heading to their destinations. By the way, I was tired of having the Celtic flags and colors so I changed our sandbox to its proper Teutonic gray with Iron Cross. (Yes, I micro ALL the details.)

We revolt into UniSuffrage, Bureaucracy, Slavery, Mercantilism, and Free Religion on this first turn. Science is set at 60% to store up exactly 108 gold.



Workers continue farming the floodplains, settlers move to their final locations. The interesting thing this turn is in the capital, where we use the 108g we saved up last turn to cash-rush a worker to completion. This essentially allows us to get a "free" use of Slavery, using production hurrying without costing us population. Generally speaking, you prefer to avoid whipping Bureaucracy capitals because every point of population is so useful with the +50% bonus to production and commerce. That's the idea here, as we get a worker out on the fastest possible turn (end of Turn 251) without delaying or setting back our capital.



Cities #2 and #3 get planted together. (Your call on the names, scooter!) Workers A and B move to the best tile in the starting area, the 6 food pigs, and begin pasturing it immediately. Worker C moves to the forested incense tile in preparation for a forest chop. By the way, we probably need a naming scheme for the workers too, right? I do think we want to keep the letters though to avoid confusion (something starting with A, something starting with B, etc.) Overflow in the capital goes into a work boat, with some tile manipulation to get it done in 2 turns. The two new cities begin workers in preparation to whip them out ASAP.



Workers finish the pigs pasture, while the other worker starts chopping. I think that end of Turn 253 is the fastest that you can get the pigs pastured, unless you're willing to move the starting settler into a position with pigs in first ring, which would be really unwise since it would mean giving up the crabs. The second and third cities are both at 9/48 production on their workers, which is just barely short of enough production to 1 pop whip them. This is one place where Expansive trait would genuinely help out, since the Expansive bonus would be enough for whips 1 turn sooner. As for us, there's no way to speed them up sooner, we come up just a little bit short. So the whips have to wait another turn.



Here's where I made the worker edit from last night. One of the workers now finishes the floodplains farm, while the other one slides over to pre-road a tile in preparation for moving to the deer next turn. Those workers were only roading the pigs tile in the previous plan, which didn't do that much for us. I realized today that the key tile to road is not the pigs, but the floodplains tile, since the floodplains are on a river and will provide a coastal connection between the capital and third city once roaded. This provides a very small advantage of 1 or 2 food over the old plan.

The two non-capital cities get whipped for their workers this turn, while the capital uses its work boat to connect the crabs and grow to size 4 at end of turn. Explorer is queued up to go check out the southeast (this can be changed if desired).



Busy turn. We revolt at the START OF THE TURN ( ) into Serfdom, Representation, and Organized Religion. This juices up the workers and makes a huge difference in completing tile improvements. Again, this is the true benefit of Spiritual trait; other leaders could start with Serfdom for faster workers, or they could start with Slavery to whip workers out more quickly. By no one else can get both advantages together, and it's hard to overstate how powerful that can be. (We also get the UniSuffrage into Representation play that lets us cash-rush the first worker, not to mention a free revolt into our religion when it pops at end of Turn 255. Spiritual is pretty awesome.)

We finish a forest chop on the incense, which gets turned into another worker at the capital after a production swap. This was one of the fun aspects of starting with a Bureaucracy capital, as every forest chop = 1 worker. I expect a lot of the teams will move the capital a tile south onto the plains hill, as plains hill plants are normally the way to go, and the non-Spiritual teams will be losing that turn to Anarchy. It's an obvious move to make. However, by doing that move they lose the ability to work the incense tile (which is strong in its own right at 1/1/6 after improvement) and they also lose 2 forests that can be chopped, AND they also give up the ability to construct a levee. I think it's a weaker move when adding all those factors up.

Elsewhere, we set up another forest chop at the capital on a future turn, start farming the wheat tile at the second city, and knock out most of the deer camp for the third city. We actually could finish the deer camp this turn (with 3 workers), but when I tested it, the city still took 3 turns to grow either way, so there was no real need to get it done this turn. By waiting another turn, it allowed for better forest chop micro at the capital. The second and third cities are on Build Culture this turn at 5 production each; one of them will become the Holy City at end of turn, and the other one can get the remaining 5 culture needed to pop borders on the following turn. Going Build Culture here also allows them to save their whip overflow until after we get the Holy City pop, letting us turn it into a OR missionary there. I think it's a good move all around.



The main action this turn is to finish the deer camp, a very solid 4/1 tile. Because we only need 3 turns to build a camp in Serfdom civic, that lets the other worker slide over to prepare for a forest chop at the capital. The new worker out of the capital moves to the gold tile in preparation for mining. Overflow from the worker build finishes an explorer in the capital.

We'll have to go back and lock down our city micro once we know where the Holy City pops. In this run, it went into the second city, but I've had it pop up in the third city just as often. Scooter, I don't think it makes sense to try and force the religion into one city or the other here; I think we live with the 50/50 dice roll. The second city is better, but it's OK either way. We want missionaries out of the Holy City to spread religion to the other two, then I think we pop into Pacifism as soon as that's completed.



Borders pop in the second and third cities. Forest chop completes in the capital (after only 2 turns of chopping; what sorcery is this?!) and turns into another worker. Wheat farm is finished at the second city, which is coming along more slowly due to lack of worker labor. The worker that finished the deer camp will be heading up there shortly to help out, but there's just not an efficient way to get worker labor into that area until a few more turns. The capital and third city are swapping tiles like crazy to grow any non-worker building city as fast as possible.



Another forest chop completes in the capital for worker #8 at end of turn. The incense plantation completes as well and becomes the aforementioned 1/1/6 tile. Will the other teams realize how powerful that tile is? It's just slightly weaker than the gold resource (which is 0/3/7) and is even less of a negative food hit. The natural instinct is to think "incense resource = crap" but this isn't a normal game, and the incense is on a non-natural plains tile to boot. (Incense naturally appears only in desert.) Elsewhere, a lot of road prep work is taking place to have all the cities connected in short order, which is good for internal trade, safety, and efficient movement of workers.



The gold mine completes; notice how our research rate has gone up by about 70% in the last two turns from gold + incense finishing in the Burea-capital. The road on the floodplains tile connects the capital with the third city. Other roads are about to connect the second city, which finishes its sheep pasture (and sits 1 food away from size 3, argh! I have tried and there's simply no way to get it to grow faster without wrecking other parts of the micro plan. Hmpf. )



Road finishes to the second city and the forest on the grassland hill is chopped to completion. Iron will be connected next turn. A missionary spreads religion in the capital; we'll have to discuss if we want to use Build Research/Wealth to delay the production overflow from those worker builds for a turn or two until we can get the OR bonus on it. We can revisit in a few turns once we know where the actual religion is going to pop up. Workers are free at this point to start laying down farms, watermills, and workshops as desired. Break-even beaker rate is 55/turn at 90% science.

I'll add a link to the sandbox save on Turn 250 (Turn 0) if anyone wants to play out this moves and see what they look like. This was a lot of fun!

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/19563179/PB33/pb33-sandbox-T250.CivBeyondSwordSave

[scooter]

Beautiful. The only part that felt a little off was the floodplains farm + pigs roading, and before I could find a way to improve those you already got it covered . I don't have a whole lot to add to the actual plan. I'm going to play through the updated plan once tonight just to see it once first-hand, and then barring any surprises I'll play the turn tonight starting on this plan. A few random comments on the less-consquential things.

Cities #2 and #3 get planted together. (Your call on the names, scooter!) Workers A and B move to the best tile in the starting area, the 6 food pigs, and begin pasturing it immediately. Worker C moves to the forested incense tile in preparation for a forest chop. By the way, we probably need a naming scheme for the workers too, right? I do think we want to keep the letters though to avoid confusion (something starting with A, something starting with B, etc.)

For cities, I think I'll go with my plan of naming them after noteworthy inventions of the time period. Steam Engine, Telegraph, Cotton Gin, etc. For workers, how about naming them after famous inventors? Should be enough of them to go alphabetically. If you've got some favorites let me know.

We'll have to go back and lock down our city micro once we know where the Holy City pops. In this run, it went into the second city, but I've had it pop up in the third city just as often. Scooter, I don't think it makes sense to try and force the religion into one city or the other here; I think we live with the 50/50 dice roll. The second city is better, but it's OK either way. We want missionaries out of the Holy City to spread religion to the other two, then I think we pop into Pacifism as soon as that's completed.

Yeah I'm good with this. I don't think it's worth playing non-optimally. I don't think the actual holy city location really matters that much in the long run. Caring about where it landed was probably Ancient Start mode flicking on in my head.

The incense plantation completes as well and becomes the aforementioned 1/1/6 tile. Will the other teams realize how powerful that tile is? It's just slightly weaker than the gold resource (which is 0/3/7) and is even less of a negative food hit. The natural instinct is to think "incense resource = crap" but this isn't a normal game, and the incense is on a non-natural plains tile to boot.

Confession: in my first several runs I totally ignored the incense tile for this exact reason. It took me a long time to remember it doesn't naturally occur on plains and that it's very good here.

[Sullla]

Yeah, this is the alternate reality where incense is a resource that doesn't appear on the game's worst terrain type (desert) and where it doesn't get connected at a later tech (Calendar). It's actually not that bad!

Sounds good.