Singaboy and Sullla's team thread

[Singaboy]

Turn 37:

Things go as planned. Research is swapped to writing, another slinger slotted into the production line at Hangzhou. The southern slinger moves as planned to reveal a little more land, but nothing to mention. The northern warrior rests until I swap policies in two turns. Speaking of getting PP in two turns, we might have been beaten to it, though this could also be mysticism but Mike has 6 civics!!! He has 6 techs as well (like myself) and Japper has 7 technologies now. They surely have a cultural and scientific city states among theirs.



While checking the pyramid production, I realize my own stupid miscalculations and this one is positive for us. I had foolishly assumed a plain production of 7 hammers toward pyramids. However, with two policies that each give +15% towards wonder production, it's in fact 9.1 hammers. That's why the threshold has been reached this turn (35.5 hammers were needed before 4 charges).
Since overflow of the builder charges go into the next production in a city upon completion of the wonder, it is in fact beneficial to keep producing for pyramids. This way, Quanzhou will make an extra 2.1 hammers a turn. I should have thought of that earlier on.
Since I will finish the wonder only on T41, I still can get an extra 8 hammers toward the Holy Site. I will calculate how this might affect the Holy Site finish turn and all other plans!

As for planting two new cities, I had planned exactly the way you described it, Sulla. The first city should be north of Hangzhou and the second at the lake in the west.

By the way, I was thinking of a way to quickly get to Petra, which involves getting mathematics as fast as possible. I am planning to research writing then currency and mathematics. However, I will not be able to get a trade route running so fast and hence, it would be great, if Rome could research currency after completing archery. I am now thinking of not going for another builder after Hangzhou has produced two settlers. Hangzhou will immediately produce the campus and then with a population of 7, go for a commercial hub to finish three different districts. This would open up Petra.
What do you think, Sulla?

[Singaboy]

By the way, the city planning looks really nice though we need to do a little more fog busting for the southwestern and eastern cities.

[Sullla]

I also noticed the fact that Mikeforall's Khmer finished Political Philosophy this turn, or at least picked up his sixth civic. I've been wondering how he managed to get so much culture on a civ that doesn't have any natural cultural output. A couple possibilities:

1) Cultural city state
2) Very early monument (?)
3) Oral Tradition pantheon with extra culture coming in from sugar/spice/citrus tiles

That last one seems very possible given that these starting positions are likely mirrored and his Khmer civ would have gotten a lot of faith to pick one of the first pantheons. I'm hoping that is the reason because there are few of those resources on the map outside of Hangzhou's immediate starting area. Anyway, we'll find out down the road what was the cause.

It's also important to keep early game tech and civic scoring with a serious grain of salt. It's quite common for players to be holding certain techs/civics one turn away from completion (like Singaboy is doing right now with Archery), and that can make the scores pretty deceptive. Or teams might research some techs with very different costs, like how Singaboy and I have both researched a third column tech (in Masonry and Bronze Working respectively). The techs scale up very quickly in cost, like how Currency costs 120 beakers while Archery only costs 50 beakers, and without knowing what other teams are researching it's hard to know how much science they're actually producing. Long story short, we'll have a better idea when we meet other teams and can see their beaker/turn rate.

Updated city micro at Quangzhou sounds good to me. With regards to upcoming research path, I think that I should be able to go Writing -> Currency to pass along the boost to you. I'd also love to get Wheel tech somewhere in there, but it sounds like you need Currency ASAP to avoid wasting production. My one question: do we need to get Petra out that quickly? There shouldn't be any competition for it from the other teams. I'm willing to follow that tech path, I just want to make sure it's worth emphasizing highly. I was thinking that Quangzhou already had a lot of strong tiles and didn't need to rush Petra in the near future. Couldn't you get a third district by also building a Theatre district, which would be on the path to Theology civic and could be constructed at the discounted rate as well? I think Hangzhou could get a ridiculous Theatre district adjacency bonus given all the world wonder we're going to put there. (Note that if you research Currency you will not be able to get a discounted district after finishing Drama and Poetry, which if you avoid it you can get a discounted Theatre as soon as the Campus completes.)

Obviously a Commercial district is more useful than a Theatre district, but the latter does seem to fit better with our upcoming research paths (both techs and civics) and it would be cheap to build since it would be discounted. What do you think?

[Singaboy]

Actually I think, you should go for the wheel first before currency. There is enough time for that. Alternatively, I could buy a trader as I will need a connection between Hangzhou and Quanzhou for builder transfer. It occurred to me that Mahabodi would only be delayed when producing the builder because it has to crawl from Quanzhou to Hangzhou.
Do you think, it is a good idea to buy a trader in Quanzhou?

As for districts, it might indeed be a good idea to get a discounted theater square in Hangzhou. Just have to look at the location, maybe the plain flatland E of the planned Mahabodi?
I can then delay currency, but I don't think, it is possible to delay BW/currency etc after that as I would have nothing to research. Discounts needs to be earned differently after that.

[Sullla]

Wheel before Currency is fine with me. We have a tight balancing act as far as getting discounted districts for China, but I think it lines up correctly to pull it off. We need to finish the Holy Site district at Quangzhou before placing the Campus district at Hangzhou, and also make sure to place the Campus before finishing research on Drama and Poetry civic. Then after finishing the Campus, we could get a discount on a Theatre so long as we don't place any more districts on the map or finish researching Currency. (We don't need to finish the Theatre to get the discount, just put it on the map before Currency research completes.) After that, so long as cities are building an undiscounted Holy Site first, pretty much all of the following districts can get the reduced cost. Does that make sense? Agreed that we should not delay Currency or Bronze Working after placing a Theatre at the Chinese capital.

Let me think about city planning for Hangzhou a bit more. There's a ton of good tiles there and a lot of flexibility about where to place districts and wonders. With regards to the trader, I agree that cash-rushing one would make a lot of sense. Traders are just about the only thing that doesn't get a production discount in the early game. Builders get the 30% Ilkum boost, settlers get the 50% Colonization boost, and military units get Agoge's 50% bonus. About the only other thing that doesn't get a production card is district, and they can't be cash-rushed at all. So a trader makes a lot of sense, and we could certainly use better road coverage between China's cities. I wouldn't pencil that in as certain yet but I do think it's a good idea. The other best use of gold would be to cash-rush another builder in a new city, and that might also be a good use of money. We'll have to think about it.

Anyway, this was a quiet turn for me:



There's a little bit more scouting information over here in the far east. I should definitely be able to get two cities on this freshwater lake now, and it looks like the true sea coast is just to the east. I will have to curtail exploration for now since the slingers need to prepare to attack the Industrial city state while the eastern warrior will be going to escort the settler out of the capital. I'm not willing to send a settler off into the east with zero covering units and have a bad barbarian appearance wreck my game.

Speaking of barbarians, there's another scout in the south which must mean another camp off there in the southeast somewhere. Fortunately this barb scout is barking up the wrong tree at Ostia, where slingers are currently assembling for action. I ended my movement in this spot:



If this unit tries to scout Ostia's city tile, I should be able to hit it with multiple slinger shots. I can also have the eastern slinger move in behind it and cut off retreat via zone of control. Hopefully this little sideshow will be over before I order the attack against Buenos Aires. I can have the upgraded archers clear the camp after I have control over the city state. (Seriously, sooooo many barbarians this game.)

As a note for Singaboy, I'm going to purchase the 1/3 forested plains hill tile south of Ostia shortly so that the city can work it at size 3 while building a settler. It's a great production tile and the city picker won't grab it for a long time. The rice tile will be picked up by the city in two turns via natural cultural expansion, and that will allow me to upgrade slingers into archers on both of those tiles. Hopefully it won't take too long to position everything for the attack after upgrading.

Mikeforall's Khmer dropped a population point this turn which likely means another settler. That would make him the first to three cities if he can get it planted soon. Otherwise nothing significant to report on the score tracking front.

[Sullla]

OK, what about this for tile planning at Hangzhou:



The picture is from a couple turns ago with my notes added in. I think the best spot for a Theatre district is on the tile directly east of the city center. That gets +1 culture from the Campus and the city center (each worth half of an adjacency bonus) and we could put three more wonders around it for another +3 culture. The Great Library has to go on flat ground next to a Campus district with a library and the spot indicated is the best for that. The Oracle must go on a hill so I put it nearby, and then the Hanging Gardens also slots in nicely. If you want to go crazy with wonders, we can also put Apadana on the tile southwest of the capital although I'm not sure that's worth it even with China's ability.

I did put the Mahabodi on the forest tile west of the city, which blocks the possibility of building Great Zimbabwe later on. My rationale is that I don't like giving up the forested plains hill tile along the eastern river, which I think is too good of a tile to waste for the small possibility of a wonder down the road. I don't think we'll ever want to invest 900 production into that wonder, especially since we have excellent gold generating abilities regardless.

I sketched out some potential districts for the northern city (Chinese city #3) as well. Ideally we'll harvest the wheat tile after Hangzhou gets finished with its discounted districts, then build a Holy Site there with +3 faith adjacency bonus from the city center and five surrounding forest tiles. I think the Campus and Commercial districts after that can likely be discounted as well if we do the Holy Site first. There's room for a Feudalism farming triangle to the east of the river using that wheat resource and some of those plains tiles.

Obviously this is only one way to set things up. Let me know what you're thinking over here.

[Singaboy]

Turn 38:

A turn before some real action. Everything is set up for the change in government, the wonder charge and attack on the barbarian camp in the north. The only thing I do this round is to move two slingers which each spot a barbarian scout. Boy, as Sulla said, why so many barbarians? The  barbarian in the north resurfaces. However, the southwestern slinger spots yet another scout besides more stone.

I looked up the current cost for purchasing different units. The trader would be 200g, currently a builder (62 hammers) would be 245g. The settler, which is bound to go up in cost rapidly would be 440g. I guess besides builders, the trader, maybe a monument or shrine would be worth the cost. In fact, the early purchase of a monument has real ripple effects. It might be worth the investment.

Rome needs gold to upgrade 4 slingers (4*45g = 180g) and then gold to purchase a water mill, which I estimate to cost 300g. That's a lot more gold in total. I have only 137g but will add 50g from the camp next turn, which gets me 200g total.

I would actually propose to purchase a trader next turn and then save the gold for Rome to buy the water mill once the wheel has been researched. I would add the trade route from Quanzhou to Hangzhou to enable units to move quickly from one city to another. Currently, the trade route would add more food into Quanzhou.

[Singaboy]

@Sulla
I was in a rush and didn't even notice your city planning update. It looks wonder crazy and quite good. This surely requires some builders to rush all those wonders but why not. Hangzhou is food heavy enough to let it grow to pop 10 to have 4 districts. Ideally, the Great Library should be done as soon as possible to reap some leftover benefits for technologies. However, it requires Recorded History, which in turn requires 2 campuses. That's a tall order this early in the game. Maybe a way out of this dilemma would be to chop the forest of the next city in the north into some cheap production that benefits from it and results in a big overflow right into the campus?

According to the discount formula, we would be at
C = 3 (2 Holy Sites, 1 campus)
P = 1 (1 campus at Hangzhou)
A = 3 (holy site, campus, theater)

and hence not work
1) C>=A
2) C/A > P

Ok, slotting it in after the first theater has been built would get C=4 and hence, give a discount for the campus. Am I getting this right? This is some serious micromanagement stuff...

I also prefer to keep that forest hill which will make 5 hammers with a lumber mill.

[Sullla]

Let me summarize a few of the thoughts bouncing around in this thread. First, the issue of gold... I need 180 gold to upgrade the four slingers to archers and then about 60 gold to purchase the forested plains hill tile at my second city to speed up the settler that it will be popping out next. That should still leave me with about 60 leftover gold right now; did you need me to send your civ any? I agree that a cash-rushed trader is a pretty solid use of money, I'm just wondering if a builder wouldn't be an even better choice. Remember, we can basically turn 1 builder into 1 wonder right now for China. What if we used slightly more gold to cash-rush a builder and turn it into, say, the Hanging Gardens at the capital? That's worth +2 housing, +4 faith/turn with your Follower belief, and +15% growth in all Chinese cities forever. Hangzhou wouldn't even need to change its build queue, since it could swap to the wonder, burn a builder charge, and then swap back to whatever it's building normally. I feel like that's a better way to spend excess gold than getting a trader, since you should be able to pick up the Currency boost via Rome finishing the tech. Or am I missing something here? China's unique ability just makes builders so incredibly good to have in the early game, and even more so with the religious beliefs that we ended up landing.

Great Library is not coming any time soon so I wouldn't worry about it right now. The next wonders are likely Mahabodi and Jebel Barkal to ensure our faith dominance, with maybe the cash-rushed builder that I mentioned above tossing another wonder into the queue somewhere. Oracle will also be nice for the Great Person point bonus; a Theatre district at the capital would be putting out 3 Writer/Artist/Musician points per turn with the Oracle and actually give Russia some competition for them.

The district planning is... complicated. Right now China's situation is this:

C = 1 (1 Holy Site)
P = 2 (1 Holy Site done, 1 on the map)
A = 1 (Holy Site)

A goes up to 2 as soon as Writing tech is finished. That allows us to discount a Campus at the capital when the Holy Site at Quangzhou finishes:

C = 2 (2 Holy Sites)
P = 0 (no Campuses placed yet)
A = 2 (Holy Site, Campus)

Fulfilling both:

1) C>=A
2) C/A > P

If we finish the Campus without researching Currency or Bronze Working techs, we could then discount a Theatre district as well:

C = 3 (2 Holy Sites, 1 Campus)
P = 0 (no Theatres placed yet)
A = 3 (Holy Site, Campus, Theatre)

And at that point we would likely have to build some undiscounted districts as A goes up to 5 with the unlocking of Bronze Working and Currency. If we keep building Holy Sites first at the initial cities, that should be enough to discount a lot of Campuses and Commercial districts, plus random extra districts like the Entertainment district that will have to go at city #4 to set up the Colosseum. Poor Rome isn't going to be able to get discounted districts for a while; I'm going to try and concentrate on getting some Campuses up first to discount later Commercial and Industrial districts. Rome's main problem is going to be the "A" part of the formula, too many districts available and still zero districts completed to date.

By the way, if Cornflakes is reading this please feel free to correct my misunderstanding of the formula if I have it wrong.

[Singaboy]

I am very flexible and you are right, 4 faith a turn and a 15% growth bonus might not be a bad idea. It would also lift the growth penalty Hangzhou currently suffers.

I will have 200 gold next turn, hence I would need you to send 45 gold to me this turn preferably.

I do understand the district discount mechanism the same way you did. I think, going for a discounted campus then theatre would be well possible in the realms of this game It would also not over complicate things with regards to my research path.


By the way, something occurred to me when thinking about the map. Do you remember that the map setting did not exclude narrow land bridges between continents. It could well be that those lake infested parts of the map SW and SE are in fact tiny land bridges to other continents. Maybe I am dead wrong, but one never knows.