[SPOILERS] scooter peruses RB's Greatest Hits

[Sullla]

The reversed land threw me off so badly that I re-read our discussion three times before moving the explorer, just to make sure it was going to the correct tile. Good thing there was a big iron resource on it to keep me on target.

Here's a quick sandbox of the starting terrain to test out opening moves. Hopefully we'll be able to get one with the proper map dimensions for maintenance purposes later on.

[Cheater Hater]

Again, as I mentioned earlier, we don't need to make the big decisions (capital location, revolting into Pacifism or not) until T1, right? The only big decision we have to make this turn is Serfdom or Slavery, right? (the idea being the second civics revolt will be HR/Slavery/Pacifism, and the initial revolt gives us five "free" turns of Serfdom) If so, our moves should probably be 1 LB SE, 1 LB SW, the second Settler S-S (as we probably aren't settling north, especially since it's our backline), and the Worker SW-SW (to set up chopping/connecting the iron).

[scooter]

First, sorry if it seems like I missed some of the last batch of lurker comments. I tuned out since my last comment when it became clear we were going to be waiting a bit for the game start. I'm mentally catching back up right now.

Again, as I mentioned earlier, we don't need to make the big decisions (capital location, revolting into Pacifism or not) until T1, right? The only big decision we have to make this turn is Serfdom or Slavery, right? (the idea being the second civics revolt will be HR/Slavery/Pacifism, and the initial revolt gives us five "free" turns of Serfdom) If so, our moves should probably be 1 LB SE, 1 LB SW, the second Settler S-S (as we probably aren't settling north, especially since it's our backline), and the Worker SW-SW (to set up chopping/connecting the iron).

Sort of, although it's not super clear what you're suggesting with the settler. I can't tell if your S-S comment is accounting for the fact that Sullla already did that or not.

Anyway, we do need to have a pretty good idea what to do with our settler that hasn't moved yet. We've considered 1N (jungle) as a possible planting location for example, and if we're going to do that, we need to know that this turn. My instincts still tell me it'll be SIP + 1S of pigs (capital pending), but I don't want to be too locked into that without taking another look at the options.

But yes, we definitely don't want to plant any cities this turn.

[BRickAstley]

Just turn your monitors upside down. Or move to Australia.

[Cheater Hater]

Again, as I mentioned earlier, we don't need to make the big decisions (capital location, revolting into Pacifism or not) until T1, right? The only big decision we have to make this turn is Serfdom or Slavery, right? (the idea being the second civics revolt will be HR/Slavery/Pacifism, and the initial revolt gives us five "free" turns of Serfdom) If so, our moves should probably be 1 LB SE, 1 LB SW, the second Settler S-S (as we probably aren't settling north, especially since it's our backline), and the Worker SW-SW (to set up chopping/connecting the iron).

Sort of, although it's not super clear what you're suggesting with the settler. I can't tell if your S-S comment is accounting for the fact that Sullla already did that or not.

Anyway, we do need to have a pretty good idea what to do with our settler that hasn't moved yet. We've considered 1N (jungle) as a possible planting location for example, and if we're going to do that, we need to know that this turn. My instincts still tell me it'll be SIP + 1S of pigs (capital pending), but I don't want to be too locked into that without taking another look at the options.

But yes, we definitely don't want to plant any cities this turn.

My plan was to have both settlers on the pigs at the end of T0 (T185), but I didn't realize SIP was still in play (or any northern locations for that matter). I'm still in favor of 1NE of the iron (the capital I originally suggested) and then a rice city, but my fog-fu seems to think there's something odd with the tile 1S of the rice (and 1SW of that)--is that tundra, coast, or my eyes playing tricks on me? If we're being pushed towards the southwest, how does that change our plans? I still like saving the jungle until later as our backline, which biased my city locations southward.

(also, as a clarification, did the minimal mod (removing a religion, turning off global warming) ever get posted? I can't find it in the setup thread (which was renamed the tech thread for some reason), and want to know if the game's using it)

[Sullla]

Here's what I have so far. 6 workers, 1 explorer, 1 longbow, first settler finishing eot 199. Can probably be improved upon with more tweaking:



I will post more of an explanation of what's going on later, I have to run right now. Link to Google Docs with the micro: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1...2A/pubhtml

[Sullla]

OK, expanding on the post I made a few hours ago:

* I've mostly been playing around with the capital located south of the pigs and the second city located on the starting tile. That pairing just seems to work really well; putting the second city even one tile north, not on the plains hill, turns out to slow down some timings there and generally mucks things up. The overlap isn't too bad despite them being only three tiles apart, and we grab virtually every resource in the immediate starting area. We're only missing the marble and the bananas, and the bananas are simply too difficult to hook up in any kind of quick fashion. Scooter was right on this. Marble is in the third ring, and will be grabbed in 25 turns after the Holy City hits 100 culture, so that should be fine too.

It also works out really well to have the capital getting all those forests for early chopping. I'm clear cutting all of them in the first 14 turns, turning them into 2 workers and 1 settler. It does wonders for our growth curve to funnel all of them into the Bureaucracy / Imperialistic bonuses. Our Imperialistic trait also synergizes very nicely with the iron resource (1/5) and the horses resource (1/4) and even the pigs resource (5/1), since we want to be working resources that give us bonus production. The only real concern is that the capital is a little low on food, so we'll probably need a grassland farm to be able to run +8 food by dropping the horses tile... which can then be shared by the other city, and which we'll be building anyway to chain irrigation to the rice tile.

The second city gets the wet corn, and can add the whales and oasis tiles for +8 food at size 3. I envision us running a size 5 -> size 3 -> size 5 double whip cycle there. It takes about 24 food to grow from size 3 to size 5 with a granary in place, so we can whip about every 3 turns if we do it correctly (every 4 turns if we pause growth for one turn to build a worker). I think the second city will whip units and workers for a long time and make use of our Sacrificial Altar to stay happy. While playing this out, everything just came together much better with the cities on these two tiles.

* I played around a little bit with putting the capital city SW of the starting tile as Cheater Hater suggested. I found the same thing that scooter did last week: we get a great capital this way, but there's nowhere to put the second city. Going north to the bananas and the other corn resource is a disaster. A city up there takes absolutely forever to get going - it's not going to work. The alternative is wandering blindly further south, hoping to find something to pair with the dry rice. I think that's a bad idea, and I don't like moving away from such a lush starting area in the hopes of getting lucky in the fog. We have plenty to worth with right here. If we wander and find nothing, we can lose the game in the first few turns, which wouldn't be much fun to play out in the following months.

* Explanation of what I'm doing in this particular micro plan... Unfortunately there is no opportunity to move the starting worker to a forest at the capital and start chopping immediately, so I move the worker to the pigs tile instead and begin the pasture. That lets the capital regrow much faster from its immediate worker whip, although it's still painfully slow growing from size 1 back to size 2. This is the weakest part of this setup, and I couldn't see a way around it. Waiting to build the first worker came out even worse - we really need worker labor ASAP and can't afford to waste any turns. Perhaps if we chop first... but then we have no improved food tiles, and it takes even longer to regrow. Might take some more testing here.

Anyway, it works out well to whip a worker immediately, and then send that new guy over to the iron tile to chop the forest. The chop completes right as borders pop, then that worker is in position to mine the iron resource. Ultimately, this plan has us whipping a worker out of the capital and chopping out two more; the second city whips a worker and then chops out another. That gets us 6 total workers in the first 10 turns... and it's still not enough, but it will have to do for the initial turns. Growth is slow in our two cities for those first 10 turns, but that's because they are popping out workers left and right. Afterwards, we surge upwards and grow 5 pop points in 5 turns, all of it onto improved tiles. And we also have the first settler appearing at the start of Turn 200 (using Build Research to preserve forest chops while growing), with an early explorer for more map vision and another longbow squeezed into the queue. Overall, I'm pretty happy with this setup, and the pieces fit together quite nicely.

* I have yet to test the alternative civics route. My gut feeling is that this is not the best choice for our particular traits. We have enough happiness with the triple luxuries (whales, fur, ivory) that we probably don't need Hereditary Rule in the early game. Three luxuries get us to size 8 in the capital, size 7 in the other cities, and I don't see us going above that in the first 25-30 turns. I can't see us spending a turn of Anarchy just for Hereditary Rule. That leaves the Serfdom/Slavery swap, and the civics in the Religious column. That latter group requires two turns of Anarchy since we have to do the religious swap as well, which makes me skeptical of wanting to flip the switch. I also don't think we have a great need for early Pacifism here; if we do nothing, we get a Great Person about 30 turns into the game. With Pacifism, that shrinks to 15 turns... which is how many turns we played here. What would we do with a Great Engineer this early anyway? It's too soon for a Golden Age. Great Engineers lightbulb Gunpowder tech, which is not useful for us. Trying to get an early Great Scientist or Great Artist forces us to build an early library (which is not the best use of early production) or build an early theatre (worse) or run Caste System civic (not an option). Again, all of this works for a Spiritual or Philosophical team, but it doesn't feel like a fit for our gameplan. I think our setup works better to just take the free Great Person that comes along after 30 turns, and use that for a Golden Age since that's about when we'll want to switch civics anyway.

For me, that leaves only the Serfdom vs Slavery issue. I will have to test and see what we can get out of Serfdom. I'm skeptical that it's worth a turn of Anarchy, especially because it would rule out the immediate slaving that I have in this micro plan. Still... need to test this to see how it works.

* I realize that I didn't share the Google docs file linked in the previous post. It should be accessible now. Sorry about that.

[scooter]

Phone post, so plan specifics from me will have to wait awhile. I can talk generally though.

Sullla, I tried out your plan and a similar variation or two. I do like it and think it could definitely work. My main concern is that I'm really not convinced we can make this work for 30+ turns without HR. That capital is about to explode in pop, but it'll quickly lack the happy to support it. Also unfortunately we lack a metal happy to get the forge bonus, so that solo furs doesn't do that much for us. It feels wrong in that it sets us up with tons of improved tiles which is great and all, but it'll be hard to get the happy to grow onto it. It also felt like we sunk a lot of hammers into extra things like an explorer and longbows which won't do us much good, which made me wonder if pushing harder for a quicker settler is worthwhile.

What I'm wondering now is if it's worthwhile to start in Serfdom, and then 10-15T down the line (when settler is moving probably) swap into HR and Slavery. This would ignore Pacifism and religion (until golden age) leaving us with 2T of revolt rather than 3.

Doing this would allow us to skimp a little more on workers early because we would be more concerned with chopping out some quick settlers at low population (lessening the need for tile improvements) rather than growing up to whip off population. Plus of course Serfdom needs fewer workers. I dunno, it's a tight balancing act. I've just tried this briefly on the plane. It definitely gets a settler out quicker. We could then get into slavery and whip those next 2-3 workers in a flash.

Basically it's a question of how much of a sacrifice is worthwhile for a quicker settler. One of the things I learned in 33 was how much quicker a city pays for itself when it's got extra pop, granary, and a forge already.

Anyway, those are my stray thoughts right now. The microplan itself can be decided on the following turn, but I'm wondering now if the faster settler Serfdom can get is worth the second anarchy turn. I'll try again sometime today or tomorrow.

[Tohron]

Is there any concern about getting rushed by 5-6 Cataphracts before T205?

[Sullla]

Some point by point thoughts in response...

* I'm not that worried about a low happy cap. The non-capital cities are very unlikely need to more than 7 happiness in the first 30 turns. I simmed out the first 15 turns here and we're clearly a long way away from needing to go above size 7. Yes, I know that overall civ growth is exponential in this game, not linear, but it still seems like we won't be in that much of a happiness crunch in the average city. For the capital, I was envisioning us running a a double or triple whip settler cycle in the early turns, and only looking to grow tall afterwards. After being run through the Imperialistic/Bureaucracy multipliers, a triple settler whip in the capital produces about 245 production, almost exactly enough for a settler. I was picturing us running size 6 -> size 3 -> size 6 whip cycles for a little while, which we should have enough food to pull off roughly every 5 turns. In the micro plan that I typed out above, the capital has chopped out its first settler, and now is about to grow to size 6 to whip out a second one, which should be ready before Turn 200.

Anyway, the point is that I didn't envision us trying to grow to a larger size until we do a few of those settler whip cycles and we have enough other cities to carry the settler training load. Could be wrong, but that's how I was seeing it. Even leaving that aside, there's two other factors to consider about happiness:

1) There's a very good chance our early settlers will grab additional happiness resources in the fog.
2) In a worst case scenario, we have furs and ivory and whales. They are all resources that double with a marketplace. We could build a market and that carries the capital to size 11. Again, not ideal but it is an option.

* The point about sinking production into an early explorer and longbow is also worth a brief mention. In short, we have to put production into something other than workers and settlers in order to grow. These are some tricky early turns juggling which turns to pause growth on foodhammer builds and which turns not to. I can spend more turns putting those foodhammers into settlers, but then we're only sitting at size 1 or size 2, and it only delays our opportunity to triple whip at size 6. I had another earlier version of this micro setup where we used much more Build Research to preserve whip/chop overflow while still growing. Ultimately I thought it made more sense to get out another fast exploration unit, and a defender so we don't have the "2 defenders for 3 cities" scenario. Feel free to suggest other builds - my impression was simply that this stuff was more useful than a library or whatever. Basically, we need to be building SOMETHING while growing our capital, and these seemed like the most useful choices.

* On the big point about Slavery versus Serfdom... I spent a half hour this morning testing out Serfdom openings. I couldn't find anything that I liked that much. I kept getting stuck in awkward timings and things that didn't seem to line up. If the starting worker went for an early chop at the capital, then there was no food to grow (which was the whole point of not whipping immediately). If the starting worker improved the pigs first, then it took forever to build the first worker. The second city was even worse off, with no ability to whip an immediate worker to start improving tiles.

I think I'd summarize the problem like this: by swapping into Slavery immediately, we get more workers out faster by opening up immediate worker whips in both cities. This cancels out most of the benefit that we'd otherwise gain from being in Serfdom. I'm open to being proven wrong on this, but so far I haven't been able to make Serfdom work. Please do try to show me how I'm doing it wrong.

* Last point for the moment. I've been watching how REM played the Industrial start with our same leader (Imp/Org) in the Pitboss 33 game. That was a winning performance and was likely the "correct" way to play a lategame start with our leader.

REM never touched Serfdom or Pacifism and slaved very heavily in the early game. Two workers slaved in the first 3 turns:




Two more workers slaved in the next 2 turns, for a total of 6 workers, with another being chopped. Populations of size 2, size 2, and size 1:




Serfdom simply can't make up for the ability to slave out workers ASAP. Our game is different here since Industrial starts have more starting settlers (3 to 2), larger initial populations (3 to 2), and an additional starting worker (2 to 1). However, I think the overall principle is the same.

REM's first settler came from regrowing his capital to size 6 and triple whipping it:




That's the closest image I can find in the spoiler thread. First new city planted 17 turns into the game... just about the same as we would be doing in our game:




By the way, what did REM's capital look like 30 turns into the game?




It's, uh, size 3. All the other cities appear to be small in size as well. I'm not seeing an urgent need for Hereditary Rule happiness here.

REM's Pitboss 33 game certainly isn't the only way to do things, of course. I'm simply trying to use it as a model of sorts, and it suggests that Slavery is the way to go. Maybe we should try to push out a settler faster that I'm doing above - I have no idea. Would love to see what everyone else can come up with in the sandbox.