[SPOILERS] scooter's Industrial Revolution

[scooter]

Hey, I would love to claim that forested hill by the fish if we have a chance to do so. That's a great spot and an excellent defensive location too. I just think it's unlikely that we'll be able to claim that location, as Donovan surely realizes that it's a great spot too. We can talk all we like about the spot being equidistant from our capitals, but that's all theoretical and doesn't mean much in practice. Donovan has borders only two tiles away, while our borders are five tiles away. He's probably going to claim this area first.

If we really want that land, we probably have to settle it immediately with the first settler. We certainly could do that if we wanted; we could put the machine gun and two rifles in there, and it's not falling for a very long time. Then we could backfill from that spot as desired. The downside is that it would be tricky to get that location started from a worker labor perspective due to the distance from our core. It would also escalate tensions with Donovan. That might be worth it though if we could found a city there and seal off our core from anyone else. But it would be an aggressive plant given the current situation, and we'd have to commit substantial resources to defending it.

I think the only settling decision we have to make at the moment is where we're sending the first settler. If we both like the red dot location, that's all we need for the moment. Conditions are going to change pretty frequently, and we'll be adjusting on the fly depending on what other teams do. So if we both like the red spot for our first city, and I think we do, that's good for the moment.

Looking forward to see our new Demos now that we're out of Nationhood.

Yeah, I think red dot is definitely first regardless, and that's all we need to determine right now. That said, if Donovan settles elsewhere with his first settler, and our second settler gets out... I think we should take a serious look at claiming that spot. I think our tentative plan for settlers is this:

*Capital settler sz10 (this one is locked in)
*Telegraph settler sz8/9-ish after Steam Power comes in (when it finishes Gren, it'll build research until SP, then settler). Building Research will let it store 56h of overflow, and that combined with a forest chop will speed that settler up pretty dramatically
*Capital settler sz12 after Levee finishes.

I haven't tested it yet, but I may have time today to get a feel for the exact timing. If not today, then very likely tomorrow. But I imagine settlers 2 and 3 will come out pretty close to each other, so that'll give us options.

So let's plan on red and keep our options open for settlers 2 and 3.

[Brian Shanahan]

Looking at your picture of the NE island the forested plains 2E of the sheep looks a nice spot. There are 7 levee qualifying tiles on that river, the spot will get all seven, plus two food and silks (albeit with all three resources at fat cross distance). It'll be a slow enough starter but a good production site later on.

Oh, I also find your Cotton Gin aqueduct amusing, apparently the workers can go across the bay to build it but not to plantaiton the dyes.

[Sullla]

Another fine turn report scooter. Let me add a few more thoughts:

* Yes, BGN used his Great Scientist for a Scientific Method lightbulb:



I'm much happier seeing a score increase from that than BGN getting another city. Working backwards on the lightbulb math, it also means that BGN had about the same amount of beakers discovered thus far as we do. The Great Scientist produces a little over 1500 beakers, and given the cost of Scientist Method tech, it means BGN had discovered about 500 beakers to date - pretty comparable to us. I'm also sure that he's planning on popping out a Great Artist for a Communism lightbulb, although the Great Artist is worth substantially less in terms of beakers (only 1000). I'm perfectly happy to see this. An ideal scenario for us would be lots of the other teams going Scientific Method first, allowing us to follow them on the tree and get the discounted research bonus afterwards. And this may even be a good call for BGN, who didn't settle on rivers and won't get much benefit from levees. As usual, interesting to watch.

* Dreylin finished two theaters in his two non-capital cities this turn. I continue to be mystified by his actions this game. It's clear that the plan is to save up money and cash-rush a settler (while likely lightbulbing for the first tech). OK, that's a novel idea, but the purchase price in Civ4 is 3 gold per shield, so settlers at 332 shields cost about 1000 gold. Even in a Golden Age, Dreylin is only getting about 85 gold/turn, so it's not like he can produce them quickly. The one nice benefit is that he can grow his cities while saving up money for a settler purchase, so there is some logic here.

However, he's not doing any research by investing all of the commerce into saving gold. It also makes no sense for Dreylin to be Universal Suffrage civic right now; why isn't he in Representation, and then switch back to UniSuff when it's time to do the purchase (?) Dreylin is Spiritual and he's running Mercantilism - he's losing 9 beakers for free every turn from the Mercantilism specialists alone, not to mention being denied the Representation happiness. I mean it's not like he has any towns to get the +1 production bonus yet! I dunno, neat idea but not executed that well unless I'm missing something here (which is very possible, heh).

* Gaspar/Noble had 170 production in their capital's box according to C&D build tracking. They triple whipped their capital this turn to finish what is clearly a settler build, and are now sitting at 327 foodhammers. Why it's not 332 foodhammers, the actual cost of the settler, I have no idea; something wonky with the math I guess. Anyway, they'll definitely have their settler out next turn, and I'll be curious where they decide to settle.

On the face of it, that looks like a great play. Their settler is done before our settler is even started. But our settler finishes in 8 more turns, and we don't need to regrow our capital from size 3 (!) in the process. Again, not to repeat myself too much, but I don't think that whipping for settlers is the way to go. Maybe if you're Imperialistic; otherwise, they're simply too expensive. Better to grow to a larger size and build them in roughly 5 turn cycles, while working lots of strong tiles, as opposed to whipping and regrowing.

* Another related point: how much does it help to whip out fast settlers if you don't have the worker infrastructure to support them? Even if we did get a setter done sooner, we can't afford to split off workers right now to improve it. Despite our 8 Serfdom-boosted workers, we're still behind in tile improvements at our three cities, and that's with some substantial overlap. I'm sure that many of the other teams are hurting worse than we are. And I'm not talking just about farms and workshops and the like - roads to speed along the settlers to their destinations are crucial too. REM whipped out the first settler four turns ago, and it still hasn't settled a new city yet. He's probably moving it through wilderness with no roads and it's taking a while to reach its destination. We'll be able to get our settler done eot 274, move it on Turn 275, and settle Turn 276, with workers ready to improve the resources immediately. It's not just about when the settlers are done, it's also about how quickly they can get to their destination.



* In this picture, we could get visibility on pindicator's city by moving to the forested plains hill northwest of the wheat. I don't know if it's worth moving back down there though, and I'd also be wary of ending our turn on that tile, as I think pindicator absolutely would declare war and kill the scout with one of his rifles. Your call on whether going back for vision is worth it. Agree on not trading maps with pindicator at this point.

* The barb city defended by a single warrior... Do we want to say something about this in the Tech Thread? Everything about this game has been so awesome in the setup, I hate to see this game get derailed by the random presence of barbarian cities. It's such a joke that someone will get a city for free in a game where settlers cost 332 production. Argh. I wonder if we could get the players to sign off on a house rule to raze all barb cities? Unlikely but the free city defended by a single warrior is so unbelievably stupid. A great game shouldn't be getting swung off of the luck of those city spawns.

* I think the Demos look OK for us. Don't forget that Dreylin is in a Golden Age and that's skewing things a bit. The only concern is whoever is pulling down 78 food right now. Like holy crap, that's a lot of food. Maybe REM settled his city after all right at the turn roll and disguised it on CivStats that way. It's the only explanation that makes sense to me. I don't see how anyone could be that far ahead of us otherwise in that stat. We'll be able to check when we meet him shortly, so that's my best guess there.

We should be right in the middle of the pack next turn on Demos, with the exception of military where we'll be strong for the immediate future. Also, it looks like Dreylin is playing his turn now, so we should definitely get another turn in today. I need to go back and continue work on the sandbox and micro plan if I get the time...

[scooter]

Turn 267



Sigh. So Donovan's about to get this. I'm not going to complain in the tech thread - it's too late for that. We all saw barbarians on pregame, and none of us mentioned it then either. Such is life. Hopefully we'll get lucky too sometime soon. We can also hope it'll create tensions with Dreylin because that's very close to his border.



I think our Galleon should just patrol around and look for barbarian cities at this point. I'll go up by the deer to the northwest to see if any spawned up here. If not, I'll head down to the isthmus between us and pindicator and check there. Might be worth boarding up a spare rifle to help with this? We do have an extra right now.



I decided not to get city visibility. It would have been nice, but I don't want to risk losing the Explorer, and I'd rather get to meeting REM. We can always come back by this later.



Settler is in progress! Swapped into a hammer config.



Telegraph is coming along very nicely now. We'll have a spare 56h while we sit on build research for the next few turns, and that overflow will be useful for a settler.



We do have the only size 10 city now. I thought that was fun.



Hammer mode: on. Hammers went from 37 -> 61 in one turn. That 71f is pretty impressive, and I think it may be Dreylin.



His 23 population is the best as far as I can tell. I think he could rope together 71f out of that.

[Sullla]

Yeah, given that Donovan has rifles right on top of that barb city, there's nothing we could post at this point without looking like bad sports. It's very unfortunate that none of us managed to catch the implications of turning on barbarians before the start. It's the first time we've used these settings, and something no one thought about isn't surprising. Brick has done a fantastic job overall with the setup.

In the short run though, this is going to make Donovan the clear leader; he's been doing a great job thus far even before landing the luck of a free city. It could end up helping us, as scooter said, if it can draw Donovan and Dreylin into tensions with one another. Their cities are going to be touching one another at a very early date, and I think that's Dreylin's Holy City right there. Maybe they'll focus on expanding towards each other and not towards us. I hope so.

I agree with Brian Shanahan that we should think about putting a city down on the island at the location north of where our explorer is standing. That spot would grab most of the resources, it would essentially rule out a Noble/Gaspar city on the northern coast, and we could later backfill two more cities on the island, one on top of the western silks and another down at the southern tip. I don't think we would want to go there for the first city (where we've agreed on the red dot), but it's well worth considering for the second, as it would give us effective control over this body of water. Hopefully this island is not where Noble/Gaspar are sending their new settler...

On that note, do we want to try and conceal the presence of our explorer on the island from Noble/Gaspar? Seems like it's worth doing so that they don't rush to colonize it. After we defog the remaining tiles, I think we could camp out on the forested tundra hill and have vision on anyone who lands without being seen from the northern shore.

The Demos have largely recovered too, and I like the way they look. We have 112 foodhammers, and the Rival Best in both categories is only 126 (very likely two different people). GNP is decent enough, slightly below average, and we're tops in military by a mile. Two more turns to our Great Engineer, 7 turns to our first settler, 9 turns until our city is planted. I'm reasonably happy with our position right now.

[scooter]

Phone post - will reply to other comments later.

I think we have a typo in the micro plan? I was looking at Steam Engine on I think T268 (could be T269), and it mentions that it should be working 2 grass workshops. Is that supposed to be 1 grass workshop and 1 PH mine? This is shortly after the first workshop completed, and there isn't a second workshop at this point (the rest are all water mills). Is this a typo?

[scooter]

I agree on hiding the explorer on the island too. I don't see any need to draw attention to Gaspar that we're interested in that island.

I'm still surprised that those warriors never upgraded. In my test game the Warriors upgraded within 5T or so.

[Sullla]

Scooter, I checked the micro plan and you're correct. The capital is working a mined plains hill starting turn Turn 269, not two grassland workshops. I corrected it in the micro plan, as well as extending the plan out to Turn 275. That's a natural stopping point, since we get the second Great Person coinflip on the next turn, as well as founding our fourth city and finishing Steam Power tech. I was actually wrong on the finishing dates: we finish the settler at eot 273 and settle our red dot city on Turn 275. One turn faster than I thought for both.

I also added a lot more terrain to the sandbox and updated it to reflect the current turn. Here's a link to the micro plan, and here's a link to the sandbox updated for the current turn.

Think that covers everything for today. Hope everyone is having a nice weekend.

[Sullla]

A couple things to report from this morning:

* Donovan captured the barbarian city as expected.



* We also met REM in the same spot. That completes our full collection of contacts; most of the other teams have also met everyone or very close to it. REM is running the standard civics: Representation, Bureaucracy, Mercantilism plus Slavery and Paganism; he has not adopted a state religion.

* Meeting REM confirms that he has 4 cities currently. It looks like he planted that settler that was whipped four or five turns ago on this turn current turn. REM and Donovan are the only ones with 4 cities at present.

* Dreylin spent most of his accumulated treasury this turn on what is assuredly a settler. He purchased it in his third city, the one that has the Taj Mahal and the religion's Holy City, and it looks like Dreylin chopped three or four forests to reduce the purchase cost. So Dreylin and Gaspar/Noble will also have their fourth city soon.

Turn should roll over in a few hours.

[Dp101]

How can you tell which city he bought the settler in?