[Spoilers] Shallow Thought and Hitru's series of (unfortunate?) events

[shallow_thought]

Don't go OH! It's good to see me dragging a vet down to a level of igorance appropriate to the thread . 

Thanks for the correction on the mechanics Rusten.

so, by pure accident my suggested first city site would get me happy after a border pop - and I have cheap barracks. Better to be lucky than good?

[shallow_thought]

All my beautiful micro planning, ruined*! On the other hand, that is because we found food. Grassland cows, NNE of the potential crab city. Also, silver, to the NNE of the scout. And a lion - I wasn't expected that until T10 for some reason, but I finished the move on a forested hill, so at least don't look like a total idiot if a panther comes out of the fog. Next scout move is probably 1SE and hope that hill lets use see down to the coast, followed by heading up to check out the land around the silver.

* The beauty is questionable, but I had just spent half-an-hour comparing two different chop-mine sequences before deciding to log in and actually play.




Definitely time to re-dotmap - note that the tile S of the cows is fresh water.

Also time to let the lurkers laugh at my attempts at C&D.

So, we and Superdeath got a tech last turn - Mining for both I suspect. Magicscience got one this turn, which is confusing, as he should have got Mining the previous turn or Hunting next turn. Hmm. Maybe the starts are not as similar as I thought, or maybe he did something odd. Or maybe I don't know what I'm doing.

Demos do suggest a slight imbalance - two water tiles in BFC for some. Also, doesn't look like Rome went workboat first, as I'd expect them to have grown a pop. We'll see.

[shallow_thought]

Well, we all have one tech. Magic Science's delay was because he's EXP and working the forested hill (or equivalent), which is fair enough and obvious from the demos when I think about it. Rome didn't grow a pop, so looks like they've gone with a worker.

Not too much more to see here, other than that the lion has a buddy.




The positioning of this shot is odd because it's cropped from one of a set of four I took showing everything I have uncovered so far, and I've not (yet) bothered to stitch them together. Time to update the sandbox and look to rework the dotmap. Question will be how quickly I can deploy worker labour to cows area. The other question is where to put a city. Could keep "crabs city" for later and go NW of cows, or could go SW of cows (lions permitting) to get crabs in BFC. NW site gets a jungled banana (just at end of screenshot), some chops and a load of dry grass. It shares only a hill with cap. SW site shares a dry grassland, but is coastal, with all that implies.

I think I'm going to have to bring my scout further south (carefully) before sending him back up to check out the silver (if he lives ).

[shallow_thought]

(This post is not directly related to the game).

I should be simming and dotmapping more, but it's just too damn hot. And not due to get any cooler. 30oC is nothing in many parts of the world, but I sunburn in Wales in September. So this is ridiculous. The nice thing is that all the work I've done digging manure into the heavy clay of my garden over the last few years appears to have had some effect. It's still possible to tell that it's soil, not just a bunch of fly-tipped, broken tiles out there. I need to get out there and spend yet another chunk of my life watering it (with a can - the pressure from the hose is a joke, no bans needed).

I'm actually bored of BBQing, which is a terrifying thing for a meat-loving Brit to say.

[shallow_thought]

Anyway, back to game. With our worker about to pop next turn, our scout finds more food! Fish, this time, out in the ocean.




It's a shame that I've left that annoying blank, inverted 'L' of unscouted tiles. They're clearly water and unlikely to hold much of interest, but it would be good to check whether there is something SE of the crabs before settling SW of the cows (if that's what we do). It would be silly to orphan a fish or whale.

Even if turn rolls soon, I'll be holding off playing until tomorrow. Last chance to consider pasturing pigs first! Another interesting question is whether to go for the signed "crab city" plant and try to support it with a quick workboat, waiting for a border pop to get the cows. I still think this position needs two workers before settler, but I need to check how fast I could get a boat there.

Initial micro thoughts are shown below. Build plan is Worker->Warrior -> Worker -> Warrior (+) -> Settler -> Warrior.  First worker (red) farms wheat, pastures pigs, mines hill, probably starts farming sugar. Second worker (orange) chops a forest into the settler. Cap grows to size 2 on the first warrior, and to size 3 on the second plus one turn into a third before starting the settler. Roading the forested plains hill makes all movement between east and west faster, which will probably include the first settler (yellow - exact route, and target, TBC). That puts at least one worker well placed to move to cows area.




The first warrior does need to check out the immediate west of the pigs in case there's another food out there, but he has time to do so while the worker is built and can then come to help escort settlers and maybe workers.

Tech path is BW, then probably wheel->pottery, although I'm going to give fishing another look. Wheel->Fish->Pottery is actually possible...

[shallow_thought]

We have a worker! He moves to the wheat. Hitru has had a chance to look at micro and has pointed out several possible improvements. In particular, I've had trouble shifting my thoughts east fast enough - the sugar does nothing for a while, and it's better to move the second worker straight to the forested plains hill, and chop that before roading. The first worker then gets to chop the northern hill and the extra chop speeds things up; even if the settler isn't much faster (I'd have to check) the overflow gets things moving.

I decide to scout the "missing" tiles near crab city. Nothing good, but I am now next to a lion. Oh well, the risk was there if I'd gone straight north instead. Should have odds, but this could delay checking out the silver.

[shallow_thought]

As an aside while the game is going on, we will have a short series called "Shallow Thought's Rules of Thumb"; here I will explain my understanding of civ mechanics, and hope for correction from passing lurkers and/or Hitru, if he has time. Alternatively, people can just laugh . Let's start with an easy one: overflow.

ST's rule: when you complete a build, the maximum overflow that can be carried over into the next build is the hammer value of the completed build; alternatively, avoid putting more than double the required total hammers into a build.

I'm actually pretty confident about this one. Where I'm uncertain is the impact of multipliers on this. As far as I understand production, you get "base" production from the hammers you're working (and specialists etc.) which is then affected by multipliers. So, for a city producing 8h and working on a barracks with an AGG leader and a forge, you get 8 * (1 +(100% + 25%)) = 18h. Chops and whips count as "base" hammers (putting aside the dry and wonder whip penalties). So, if you take a barracks at 40/60h and do a 20h chop, you will have 40 + 28*2.25 = 103 hammers. So you get 43 overflow.

My understanding is that the multipliers apply in reverse to this overflow, and the result is added to the "base" production for next turn. So here, the overflow is 19.1, which I believe gets rounded down to 19. So next turn's production (say an unmultiplied unit) is 27*1.25 = 33[.75]. My question is what happens if the unit is a 15h warrior? If there were no forge, the remaining overflow is 12, which is not greater than 15, so nothing is lost. With the forge, apparent overflow is 18, divided down to 14[.4].

So, now that I've thought this through, the question is simple: does the overflow limit apply to the base hammers, hammers before division, or hammers after multiplication? I'm guessing it's base.

I suspect the pattern shown here will be a common one - writing out my understanding will either give me the answer or provide a simple experiment I can do myself (and the answer is probably out there on the Internet). But it's somehow easier to work things through if I pretend I'm writing for an audience, and once I've done that, I might as well post it!

[naufragar]

Huh. That's a head-scratcher. I've got no help on the order of operations for dividing overflow, but I do think there's a tweak to your rule of thumb. If memory serves, max overflow is the greater of either hammer value of the build or base hammers per turn of a city. So, if a city with 20hpt overflows 16 from a warrior build, nothing is lost.

Take with a grain of salt. Looking forward to your rules of thumb.

[DaveV]

I think the overflow limit applies to base hammers, but I don't have absolute proof. One nitpick with your math: when the multiplier is removed, the inverse of the original multiplier is used. So, the multiplier for the overflow hammers in your example is not 1 - .25 = .75, but 1/1.25 = .8.

[shallow_thought]

I think the overflow limit applies to base hammers, but I don't have absolute proof. One nitpick with your math: when the multiplier is removed, the inverse of the original multiplier is used. So, the multiplier for the overflow hammers in your example is not 1 - .25 = .75, but 1/1.25 = .8.

I thought's what I'd done: 18/1.75 =14.4. Which you will notice uses the wrong value* for the multiplier . Garbage in, garbage out.

*My original example was an IMP settler rather than a barracks, before I realised that meant tackling food as well. I suspect this value snuck in from the original calculations.