[LURKERS] Setting Up Tents for a Ren Faire

[GermanJoey]

Settling the capital for the iron/pig/corn with the Imp civs makes a lot of sense to me, but I don't understand why you delayed the second settlement by a turn in order to grab a new dry corn when your original wet corn will sit unworked for a good 20, 25 turns. If you're planning to keep the capital at a small size for awhile and work hammer tiles anyways, then why not share the food?

I didn't plan on leaving the capital small at all actually. Originally I wanted the pigs and corn hooked immediately but all the worker actions seem too damn efficient:

1. Connect horses - 2nd improved tile.
2. Chop a forest - This 1 turns a worker with some overflow for the settler.
3. Chop 2 forests - This completes a settler
4. Mine the iron - necessary to complete the settler a turn earlier and an improved tile to work.

3 worker turns(in serfdom) for 67h is just too nuts to delay IMO, it snowballs too hard to hold it back for later. The corn is only lying fallow for about 10t IIRC(it gets hooked next with the pig, screw the new city) and I don't see where I get the opportunity to hook it earlier, even if it were shared with the second city.

If you're just going to let the new city languish, then why rush it? If it's just sitting there throwing 2f and 3hpt into a worker, then it's like you're spending 250 hammers to improve a 5fh yield tile despite that there's two 6fh tiles right in front of you.

I guess I don't really have any feel for how a Ren era start plays out, so I'm just talking from my gut here. (I really should swing a sim myself) I guess what I'm truly bewildered by, both in your sim and others I've seen, is that my gut tells me that because you start with a free granary, then growing and whipping should be vastly stronger than simply working hammer tiles. Likewise, I always regret chopping without a clear goal in mind that's not just "speed up my current build, whatever it happens to be, because snowball." It just feels off to.... my gut!

[The Black Sword]

Looking at the map TBS, where does the third city go? For the ivory?

I hadn't looked at the rest of the map yet, since the players wouldn't know when simming. Ideally the new city should steal one of the iron or horse from the cap and pick up some new resources. Ivory/Rice/share horse is one option. Looking at the map I think there is a double deer in the fog that can share the iron too.

If you're just going to let the new city languish, then why rush it? If it's just sitting there throwing 2f and 3hpt into a worker, then it's like you're spending 250 hammers to improve a 5fh yield tile despite that there's two 6fh tiles right in front of you.

That's a decent point, but we start off with so much free stuff and when I tried things the other way I felt the workers had the time to chop. I mean suppose we just work a grass forest and plains hill forest, and we get a plains hill plant with the new city. With the forge and free engineer that's already 10hpt. And I think that's a pessimistic scenario, we're only talking a 3-4t delay in the worker support and we might be able to steal one of the capital's hammer tiles.

This play wasn't my gut instinct either btw. The first sim I ran, I went with Slavery, immediately whipped workers, tried to get the food improved and grow. But that first regrowth is so slow because of the empty food box and I had to spend time putting hammers into workers and not growing the city. The powerful chops were awkward because what do I do with the overflow? In the end I felt I'd be better staying at size 2 working hammer tiles until I had both food resources improved to grow on and I ended up with this.

I'm not saying this is definitely the best start of course, but I do like it a lot.

[The Black Sword]

Looking at Sullla's sim btw, I think his worker count is too high. 6 workers before the first settler seems inefficient to me. Which city locations is better is not clear though, I think his setup would start off faster, certainly his 2nd city can fend for itself a lot better. But my setup is better long term, with more resources and a better capital location.

[Krill]

6 workers but no Serfdom. Dumping those 2 pop points into early workers will speed things up, but if each city is settled for double food, isn't the limit on growth filling hte food box with only one imprioved tile? So over that longer time frame of the full 20 turn start, not slaving may be quicker because you end up working more food tiles over those 20 turns, right? I can easily buy that not slaving is best, especially if you can get a third city down for a further 2 food tiles, and still get them improved within 5 turns of settling.

I still think best capital location long term for Aztecs is 1NW, not 1SW though, and throw down second city at 1S of the pig (1N in the original screenshot). Gotta say though, shoving early production from iron and horse through bureau/IMP capital is going to be hard to beat.

[GermanJoey]

Looking at Sullla's sim btw, I think his worker count is too high. 6 workers before the first settler seems inefficient to me. Which city locations is better is not clear though, I think his setup would start off faster, certainly his 2nd city can fend for itself a lot better. But my setup is better long term, with more resources and a better capital location.

I tried a few sims and I gotta agree, I really like your capital location. I totally didn't even think about the fact that first-ring forest iron totally compensates for the lack of a plains hill!

I tried a whip-based approach for them using your spot up to EOT T30:




I ended up producing: (including stuff completing at turn end):

2 longbows
3 warriors
6 cities / 17 pop / 5 sac altars / IIRC 18 pop whipped total?
10 workers / 17 improved land tiles / 12 complete roads / 3 forests chopped
1 settler
1 workboat -> improved whales

I don't think my sim is completely optimized but I do think it's pretty decent, at least for the whip-heavy perspective I was trying out.

A few observations:

1.) My first slower was quite a bit slower than yours, coming at T198 (T13) via a double whip + single chop (from the iron). I think I might have caught up after that though?

2.) The Sac altar was even better than I expected here. Contrary to my expectations, we're not actually swimming in happiness at T0, like the Industrial-era PB33, as the happy resources we have access to right away have poor yield and thus they're likely to be backburned for awhile in favor of more foodhammer-heavy tiles. On top of that, there's no convenient happy-doublers (e.g. free markets or precious metals for your free forges). So I found that I actually had to be pretty careful managing happycap. The Aztecs might actually be the single best civ for this map!

3.) Also, I totally didn't realize that food box size is reduced for a Ren-era start by 3 per level! (although it's really like 2-per-level because of rounding) Thus, whipping is even more efficient than normal!

4.) Settling a city without a capital connection (for awhile, at least) is a pretty damn good idea because it lets you squeeze out cheap garrison warriors for 13h a pop, far cheaper than the 45h longbow alternative that you'll be forced to use once your iron auto-hooks from the river.

5.) I'm not entirely sure about that banana city... I liked that it could share the corn with the capital, which was especially effective when I whipped settlers and the capital worked just the iron/horses, but then improving the jungle banana ends up taking twice as long as an ordinary tile, which kinda negates some of the benefit of sharing tiles to begin with. Oh well.

[GermanJoey]

One other thing tat I was a bit perplexed about was how to deal with the plethora of Mercantalism engineers polluting your GPP pools for the non-Spi civs. (as Spi would have caste) One or two GEs might be fine... one for a GA, another for Oxford or maybe a wonder or whatever, but, as the Phi and Spi civs are gonna gobble up all the good wonders pretty quickly, I think you'd really rather have GSes for bulbing into Education, Chemistry, or especially Astro. An academy would probably be pretty swell too. Unfortunately, all of your cities will be horribly polluted with GE GPP, making even later GSes (or whatever other kind of great person you'd want) more difficult to generate! I wonder if its actually worth it to keep one or two cities to ordinary citizens instead of the engineers in order to keep their GPP pools clean?

[The Black Sword]

1.) My first slower was quite a bit slower than yours, coming at T198 (T13) via a double whip + single chop (from the iron). I think I might have caught up after that though?

I guess I'll have to sim a bit further and find out.

5.) I'm not entirely sure about that banana city... I liked that it could share the corn with the capital, which was especially effective when I whipped settlers and the capital worked just the iron/horses, but then improving the jungle banana ends up taking twice as long as an ordinary tile, which kinda negates some of the benefit of sharing tiles to begin with. Oh well.

Yeah, the problem with this capital location is where to put the 2nd city. I'm not really happy with my location either. The knowledge of that wheat in the fog makes your option more tempting I think. I was also considering between the whales and corn , so that it would be immediately irrigated.

The great people is another issue I stumbled across but didn't think about a solution too much. I don't like an early golden age, it must be about time for a GP in your screenshot and that's definitely too little pop for me. I wondered about slotting in a Library somewhere.

[GermanJoey]

Yup, the first GE was about to getting ready to pop when my sim ended. And yeah, it's a really weird issue that does not come up at all in ancient-era starts. Normally speaking, generating a great person and then banking them for a few dozen turns be a huge waste and indicate poor planning. But here, it might just be ok, I think? Or at least, you've gotta be really careful planning around the problem, threading the line between wasting hammers/GPP and getting a library up

Between whales and corn for the second city is a pretty good idea, IMHO. That spot also eventually lets you settle a city on the marble, which is the only hill in the entire region of the entire northwest region! I struggled with that fact when trying to dotmap the area around this capital location... it'd be ideal to have something to anchor your capital's flank in case the enemy tries to jump you by surprise from the ice tunnel, but then a marble city would block a city on the only spot that could still hook the whales. And gotta have dem whales...

[Zalson]

Any thoughts on Alhazard's plan(s)? To me, they seem far too slow. I think they're hit too excited by synergy (must generate 4 great people to bulb!) City 3 on t209? That's 8-10 turns after RMoG and scooter. Don't think that it's going to work out well for that team.

[The Black Sword]

I haven't followed the details of their plan(too much text) but the broad idea sounds good to me. You need 3 GPs to get liberalism(which pretty much guarantees Communism and the Kremlin later); 2GS and GP. You only need to build 1 temple to unlock the priest, for the scientists you can either use a caste spurt or a library. There is a fair bit of free hammers floating around when you're growing so that doesn't sound too expensive. The free Merc specialists should get you most of the gpp, you shouldn't need to devote much population to the job. Sacrificing the Engineer for Citizens in the early turns will hurt a bit though.

It sounds like it shoudn't affect their growth rate too much, but T209 does seem pretty late for the third city(GJ has twice that number just 6t later!)