Unfinished business - SG for improving at Civ 4 (sic)

[Zalson]

Let’s see what we’ve got. Note to self: report more than one turn at a time.

Well, my quibbles aren’t too severe. There’s the aformentioned yellow dot tragedy. And we’re spending time farming a floodplain that should probably be a cottage instead of chopping out the worker.

Here’s the turnset plan:

1. +2 workers
2. +1 settler
3. Pottery

T35

Switch to slavery. It’ll give me a chance to get the worker in position to chop the grassland forest.

Realize I should have waited until we finished stupid The Wheel.

T36

Switch to a warrior and then think better of it. Yes, we’ll need another one sooner or later and I’d rather grow onto the worker and just chop it out. But I need the chop to finish the worker. Another few turns will do that.

I see that we’re spending espionage efficiently across all our opponents. We can see Mansa’s graphs though. Nicely, we’re #1 in GNP, #3 in production, and #4 in crop yield. I have a feeling we’ll have trouble with the crop yield number which is always tough.





T37
Our scout, Father Merrin, takes 1 hit killing a wolf to promote to woody 1. Venkman, enjoying himself in Yaqob Marley, looks on as Worker A (we need a worker naming scheme, I think) stars chopping.

GREAT SCREENSHOT BRO

T38
Horse in fog.



T39
Ethiopian scientists, plagued by bad dreams, decide that a smoothed pentagon is a better shape for cart wheels. Inspired by this turn of events, they devote their scientific methods to playing with mud.

Or

Wheel in. Start Pottery (due in 5).

Chop comes in at YM. Worker next turn.

T40
Overflow the chop into a settler. I’ll grow to size 4 and then get the settler finished.
Workers will finish the mine SW of YM and then a road. Then it’s over to the horses!

T41
Mine in. Switched YM over to a warrior. Scratch the road: we’ll move onto the oasis and then to the horses so we can get those improved with the minimal level of effort.

T42

Apparently, nothing happened in this turn.

T43
Misclick at Bean a Sidhe means … gah. well, the stupid horses won’t be finished next turn. So a warrior, then, and onto a granary!


Warriors 3 and 4 move out. One to investigate purple dot, the other to give someone the opportunity to snipe a worker from Mali.

T44
I shall respect the will of the thread and will go for writing/math. Drop science to 0% for 1 turn. Drop the gold for a turn to get to size 4.

T45
Even though I had just said I would like a granary in Bean a Sidhe, I had forgotten to queue it up. Settler in YM.



Well there’s not much I could do there. I don’t think the extra health is going to help.

Another error: I naturally moved worker B off the horses before I could get a road down.

T46
Father Merrin dies an ignoble death — taken from us with just three hits.

T47
2x whip the settler out of Yaqob.

T48
YM starts the granary. Workers start farming the FP for Bean a Sidhe. Then the workers should probably come back to improve the wheat at Pink Dot.

T49
Some promising land to the south. Well, not promising but better.



T50
Micro Bean a Sidhe to grow to size 3 in 1T. Settler is in place at New Pink Dot. It’ll be up to you to put it somewhere, shallow_thought.

Overall, a mediocre turns: Only 2 goals accomplished. A couple of unforced errors and some small minded play. while we definitely need Agriculture, I realize now that roads for the extra trade route to Bean a Sidhe would have been a better choice. Alls well in retrospect.



10 turns from here on out? I can’t believe I thought I’d be able to chop out the Oracle.

Demos at the end of the turn. :’( The gold is that important.





It should probably be working the gold but, gosh, I’d rather get regrown. Feel free to veto.



Lo verily. This shall be an okay city. We’ll need three farms to get it growing. Put them on flat surfaces (cottages on corners) so we can replace them with watermills in SP.

shallow_thought UP
Brian Shanahan ON DECK
Zalson zzzz

[Zalson]

And here's the save.

[taotao]

The good:

- Enthusiasm. Being engaged and eager to play is a good thing. Use that energy.

- You seem to have a lot of land to yourself. Getting down the minimum of six cities (for national wonders) shouldn't be a problem.

- Abundance of metal happiness (and commerce from there) and you also should be able to get strategics in the form of horses and copper.


The bad:

- Planning. 
E.g. there were several sites for second city discussed, but in the end you got one on a whim that won't reach its stride until the industrial era or something. 
There are also things like the second city still not being connected to your trade network and what I believe to be your third city facing a similar destiny.

- Worker support. You NEED more workers. Yesterday! Also, from the 4 improved tiles you do have, on his last turn Zalson worked 1. ... You're on a somewhat tricky map with generally few high yield food/foodhammer tiles, but you got to make the map work for you. Be that perhaps slowbuilding workers with hammertiles and chops instead of whipping. Or delaying non-critical expansion to grow slightly larger, but first and foremost, get some workers.

[shallow_thought]

Got it.

Brian and shallow_thought, you're UK/east coast US? It might not be worth it to for me to wait. I'm not too concerned with the turnset but I'll let you know my plan after I look around.

GMT's my time zone; I think Brian is the same but probably doesn't want to be described as "UK"...

Wow; I set a trend when I jumped in and played the turns rather than waiting for the next day when (as it turns out) I had more time - as Taotao said, the enthusiasm is good, but we can afford to take a breath.

So, this is _not_ a got it (wrong computer). I'll pick it up tonight and announce, but will definitely pause, print some thoughts and look at the dot map. Will not be able to play until Sat as am out Fri eve. This is probably a good thing as eveyone should get a chance to comment before I play.

I  am a big fan of the current beeline straight to Currency and then CoL. I think our expansion is limited until we can get those in.

[Brian Shanahan]

Got it.

Brian and shallow_thought, you're UK/east coast US? It might not be worth it to for me to wait. I'm not too concerned with the turnset but I'll let you know my plan after I look around.

Ireland for me. Don't rush the set. You've 72 hours (or more in cases like a work related engagement) to play from when the previous person posts under convention.

[taotao]

Ok, I just had a quick look at the save.

At t50 you've got:
2 cities (+1 settled next turn).
4 warriors.
0 buildings.
and
2 workers. (who are both on the furthermost edge of your empire to the SE).

You need workers.
And I don't mean it in the sense "sometime in your next turnset you should probably think about building an extra worker"
I mean in the sense "ABSOLUTELY NOTHING else matters until you've gotten at least 4 new workers" .

So, what to do?

My suggestion:

Bean a Sidhe: 

The city is one turn from growing. Let it grow to sz3 (on granary), then switch to (at least) two workers.
I wouldn't cry if the city is whipped down from 3->2 in order to finish a worker a couple of turns sooner.

Workers:
The current workers would finish the farm they're building (3 worker turns left).
The first worker to finish then move N-NW and chops a forest into the BaS worker. (later probably move 2W and repeat the chopping into worker thing)
The second worker will then head straight 4N3W (wasting a turn in movement). There it'll chop one forest into a worker in the third city (which I assume will go on the eastern spice so as not to waste the gold). Afterwards it's a question of either farming the wheat or mining the gold (probably the former).
First worker from Bean and first from Yakoub probably will be used to connect the cities with each other.

Third city:
As I said, I believe this should be placed on the eastern spices. It's not an amazing site, but I really don't want to orphan the gold and wheat still is the best food anywhere available. Though it's far from optimal normally, I think this city should start a worker already at size 1. Give it a chop and it won't take that long to finish (and anyway you don't have any improved tiles to grow onto).

Yakoub Marley:

Probably the hardest city to decide what to do with. It shouldn't have been whipped for that third city settler to begin with, but now there's the question of whether to regrow or stagnate on pigs and gold while cranking out workers? I'd lean to keeping the configuration as Zalson left it and grow to size 3 in two turns. Then switch to slowbuilding workers until you've been able to chop in a granary.

[Zalson]

Sorry for saying you were in the UK, Brian.

Sorry I played through so quickly. You are all collectively correct: we've got 3 players and we're all pretty active. There's no point in rushing through the turns.

To address some points:

1. definitely shouldn't have whipped the settler when I did at YM. I thought about it and it should have started a granary just to fill up the foodbox some more before whipping out the settler. Also, probably should have chopped out another worker.
2. definitely should have developed a worker plan at the beginning of my turnset. I was planning on doing that and just hit enter and then, would you know it, 15 turns had passed.

I should mention that I was working improved tiles for most of my turnset: I specifically changed out of working them for better growth in both cities. Really, we need cottages on the FP at YM but didn't have pottery etc etc, but no one wants to hear excuses.

So, teammates, sorry for blitzing the turns. Fortunately, it is only T50. I think we're going to be okay, especially with someone like taotao looking over our shoulder screaming at us that we need more workers.

Since the point of this exercise is to improve at the game, the only value you'll get is if you carefully post all your decisions in public. So, here's my criticism of our play so far:

1. probably should have started a second worker straight off the bat at Yellow dot, specifically since we moved in further south. We'd have 3 workers on T40ish.
2. we should have gone wheel > ag > pottery instead of the other way around. Then we could have roaded to Bean a Sidhe. We also wouldn't have wasted the worker turns on the farm that will never be completed.
3. we've probably built too many warriors, in general. more workers would be useful for me, definitely.
4. for me: play a little civ before jumping into the tuns. it makes me less reactive and less la la la.
5. All of us: follow Brian's lead and stop before making large decisions. That was a great move, Brian, and it should be recognized.
6. Continue to report the way we've been doing. #goodjob

taotao: thanks for the critiques.

[shallow_thought]

Ireland for me. Don't rush the set. You've 72 hours (or more in cases like a work related engagement) to play from when the previous person posts under convention.

I may have given the wrong impression with my first turnset; I played it rather than waiting because I really wanted to play those turns (and see the map). Now that the initial excitement has led to calmer reflection, I'm quite happy for us to take as long as we need to discuss and decide. For any SG there'll be a balance between group and individual decisions (which will change throughout the game) - we'll find ours.

Anyway, got it (despite some weird muttering from 7-zip about encrypted Mac-OS folders).

You need workers.
And I don't mean it in the sense "sometime in your next turnset you should probably think about building an extra worker"
I mean in the sense "ABSOLUTELY NOTHING else matters until you've gotten at least 4 new workers" .

So, what to do?

My first thought after Zalson posted the save was: quiet turnset for me - just build workers! It's going to be really useful to have taotao's detailed suggestions as to how to do this quickly; I tend to be far too reluctant to chop. Agreed that four is the minimum. We may want even more before the next settler.

Question: do I need to worry about hammer decay on the granaries?  I will try to look this up, but it may be inevitable given the need for more workers.

Third city:
As I said, I believe this should be placed on the eastern spices. It's not an amazing site, but I really don't want to orphan the gold and wheat still is the best food anywhere available. Though it's far from optimal normally, I think this city should start a worker already at size 1. Give it a chop and it won't take that long to finish (and anyway you don't have any improved tiles to grow onto).

This ("New Pink Dot", I think) would be my preferred site, as stated a few posts ago. Any objections? I'm kind of assuming that the settler is on that tile for a reason . I'll post my suggested dotmap later, but that will all be for a future player. We have horses, so can build something better than warriors if we need to, and without IW the jungle is useless.

2. definitely should have developed a worker plan at the beginning of my turnset. I was planning on doing that and just hit enter and then, would you know it, 15 turns had passed.

This is the single most important change I'm still struggling to make to my play. I'm having to unlearn  a decade of only ever responding to pop-ups and requests for orders and then hitting enter.

Since the point of this exercise is to improve at the game, the only value you'll get is if you carefully post all your decisions in public. So, here's my criticism of our play so far:

1. probably should have started a second worker straight off the bat at Yellow dot, specifically since we moved in further south. We'd have 3 workers on T40ish.
2. we should have gone wheel > ag > pottery instead of the other way around. Then we could have roaded to Bean a Sidhe. We also wouldn't have wasted the worker turns on the farm that will never be completed.
3. we've probably built too many warriors, in general. more workers would be useful for me, definitely.
4. for me: play a little civ before jumping into the tuns. it makes me less reactive and less la la la.
5. All of us: follow Brian's lead and stop before making large decisions. That was a great move, Brian, and it should be recognized.
6. Continue to report the way we've been doing. #goodjob

taotao: thanks for the critiques.

You're dead right about the need to think about mistakes. In this case, though, you're also right that it's not a disaster. I don't think anyone is jumping up and down saying we've missed an obviously better city site. The combination of plains hill plant, oasis and horses at BS what I would have gone for; I'd have struggled to evaluate which PH was actually optimal, but there's no doubt the chosen one is the best long term pick. And, as said, I like new pink dot the best of all remaining sites.
I'm not sure we'll never complete that farm. We're short enough on food that farming a few makes sense to me.
The worker / warrior balance is definitely where we're most skewed, but even then it's not a huge amount of hammers. If I can get more workers out ASAP we won't have bled too many worker turns. It's very natural to want to grow and build granaries! Another habit to unlearn, perhaps?

The reporting has been great for these last two turnsets - I have quite a lot to re-read before even considering playing.

[shallow_thought]

Dotmap thoughts - the North.

Solid pink dot is the "new" site; as said, I reckon we settle right there next turn (if there isn't a two move animal in the fog on wheat that eats the settler in between turns ).

Copperish dot is Brian's copper site; it's good in itself given IW and lots of workers. Do we want to move it to the west to avoid too much overlap with pink dot.

I guess a dot near the plains cow would be an idea? I think that's well down the line though. And, while you can't see it in my carelessly cropped picture, if there's fish in that fog out west it's  too far offshore to actually use. Odd that the game suggested settling there.



BTW - @Zalson; you just missed out on naming a city. You got anything you particularly want?

I'm going to have to go back and check who initially named our warriors and scout (poor, appropriately named scout ), but it's exactly the scheme I was thinking of suggesting. I'll try and come up with something sensible for our workers this turnset (as we should have more than two by the end!).

[shallow_thought]

Dotmap thoughts - the south.

Rather more to see here. Generally, hollow rings are the initial suggestions, solid dots are adjustments (mine or earlier). Orange dot moving to get coast and crabs seems sensible (as marked already in game), which I think means we want to move purple south onto the unforested plains hill (rather than forested grassland). We lose desert (hah) and some overlap with BS in exchange for tundra. So yeah, it's all about 1 extra forest and a plains hill plant.

I took the original screenshot badly (prior to editing in paint), but my suggested "new blue dot" gets the dry rice, plains hill sheep and marble all second ring. Given that we're CRE, I think this makes sense. Need to scout the SW though - I will probably make that a priority this turnset. I guess I can move the warrior out of the capital to get started on that if I'm feeling brave.

Lime dot is the original space filler and probably comes last in any sequence. Other than that, I haven't thought too much about it because I'm not building settlers.