[Spoiler] PB42: Rusten and mackoti play Krill playing Bismarck of Portugal

[Krill]

Quite a concern, isn't it? I think we have to hope that if it does fall, it falls before we even start researching Myst. As it is, we finish Pottery around T45 and can then save gold until T50, T51? We could easily get Sailing and AH in the same time frame as researching Myst, Medication and Priesthood, and get an island city down for the extra commerce. We would likely have to get Archery, but may be able to survive with out that if we have horse and copper. We don't need Myst though, the only city that needs to pop borders is city 6, which would likely be settled for dry corn, plains sheep and overlapping the plains forest deer at the copper city. We'd probably have to settle cities 6 and 7 right up for the furs, and I also think we would need to scout the island to the far north for whales and pray to go there was something up there.



We'll also have to divert significant resources to exploration so we could try and trade one of the furs away for something, and I would probably say we'd have to head for Currency and the cheap markets. With just furs it's not great, but we can always pray for whales and a tradeable ivory.

[Krill]

Turn 37

Let's see how lucky those fucking lions are, shall we?




I'll heal the scout for two turns then move it out to check the final two FoW tiles to the SE, then go searching for that panther.

[Krill]

That bastard Lion didn't attack. This is going to be a problem, as there are two lions and a panther around the area we want to settle city 3, and we are probably going to be delayed a turn simply because of how we need to position and road as we will not be able to safely let the workers out of the borders.

[Krill]

I think at this point it's worth discussing the decisions already made in this game, because there are some interesting points. I think the crux of the issue, is I don't think moving the capital was the best idea after all. The whole point of moving was to be able to grow the capital vertically onto cottages to power research, but it is patently obvious that we aren't going to be able to do this in a time frame that matters.

We now have a capital that we can't easily grow without teching to Pottery, or spending way too many turns growing to size 5 delaying horizontal expansion, whereas if we had settled in place we would have had enough food resources to ignore pottery, grow the capital to size 5 and then split off the pig to the copper city permanently.

As it is, I think we are going to get kneecapped by the happy cap limit whilst OH blows right past it, and this is why:




OH has just settled his third city and has Hinduism. I don't think we are getting Oracle, he could slow build it before we could one turn chop it. He has no interest in Colossus or Forges, he would take either HBR or Monarchy IMO. And if he fails to get Oracle, then it's only because someone spent way too much to get it, but that doesn't help us with out happy cap. I'm wondering if each player had a three food start (and we were knobbled by the third food resource being a plains hill sheep? Not sure. I'll forward to scouting the map out more).

(oh, and no seafood to the SE, it's bare coast and ocean all the way)





Our tech rate is really poor (or at best, average due to tech prerequisite bonus). We will be able to improve it a bit, but we are going to hit happy cap troubles when we start using cottages, and we don't have the ability to get more than a library or two anyway if we head to writing to sink food into beakers. We are going to give OH a window to rush us, which ever way we play this out either going for Oracle>Monarchy or not.





Sufficed to say, I think the plans we have for Oracle are the best we are going to make them. Priesthood eot59, Oracle eot60. If we did not research Pottery we might shave 2-3 turns off that at the cost of crippling the capital (no cottages and slow growth to size 5 and a very late copper city). I think we are going to have to explore the route we take if we don't go for the Oracle, and I think we have to get Sailing and AH (researched after saving gold, after Pottery is completed), then Writing>Alphabet and build research to Currency. We fit in Archery wherever we need, and after Currency we back track for all the happy techs we can grab. We will have to manage expansion to not go bankrupt, at least until Alphabet, but we will also have to expand north to the furs. We'll have to settle a conservative front city against OH and try to shut out any window of opportunity he has of rushing us. I think we can do that, but if he takes Oracle to Monarchy I don't think we are going to be able to not leave open a window between Alphabet and the happy techs: We may well have to grab HBR at an expensive time.

[Krill]

Looking back at the start, and the information we had, I think we underestimated the flexibility of not having to research to Pottery. The moment we moved the settler we locked ourselves in to Pottery after BW IMO, but if we had stayed in place we could have beelined religion if we had wanted. Or maybe I'm just delirious from a throat infection and pain meds, I dunno.

New world map, and we can probably plan our first dozen cities (minus the island city for trade routes, that probably goes on the northern tundra island for sheep, corn, and god I hope a happy resource).

[Rusten]

IDK, it's hard to predict this few happy resources, and the 1 available being so far away. The area is pretty rich in food, but severely lacking in happy.
Hindsight is 20/20, I still think moving on T0 was the correct decision with the information available. But I don't think we were locked into pottery, we have river mines. You're the one who was obsessing about the granary....

[Krill]

Yeah, hindsight is 20/20. I don't think moving was wrong, I'm more interested in the reasoning we have used to justify previous moves, and the decisions we take when we have a lack of information are one subset that I particularly enjoy working on. How to play starts and value different options with and without information is something we will never solve in CIV, IMO.

On this map, we're pretty much settling cities for one food resource max spacing, later filler cities are going to get dropped down in a few places for no food resources.

The problem with the river mines is we only have three, and we need to use both food resources to feed them (OK, we don't need the 3/2 plains hill sheep). Then there is the knock on problem with the copper which IMO makes it a 100% necessity: That copper city is not even close to viable without stealing the pig and having a granary. What we did with the whip from 4>3 is what enabled us to get a joint third fastest second city out and to get the food resources hooked, and that still only places us middle of the pack for crop yield. If we had grown the capital to size 5, not whipped at all, and found the extra 13 worker turns for the mines then the capital would be making an extra 2 commerce and 4 hammers per turn but the third city would be founded about when we found the fourth city with the whip micro, and that city would be so much slower on development, that it couldn't provide the workers to help chop Oracle (which is actually the only value of settling city 3 where it is, to aid the snowball). And we couldn't settle city 3 without teching Agriculture anyway, and without Wheel we can't hook it to trade network and lose the trade network: Pottery is only 5 turns of tech, it's the other costs of Agriculture and Wheel that take most of the turns.

Actually, if I look and try to find a third city that has either a pasture or seafood resource, the closest one is the plains cow to the SW 6 tiles away, then the grass forest to the east 7 tiles away and the crab to the west 7 tiles away. So maybe picking a Fishing civ wasn't the right move, because anyone playing this start has to research Agriculture.

(Also, having played the sim to T60 for Oracle, if we actually don't go for Oracle for whatever reason, it frees up a lot of the micro and we could feasibly settle the Furs around T65-ish, with the capital and Copper city working a bunch of cottages so we don't go broke. Then we could chop a work boat and galley up there for the island city. I wonder if it's worth exploring how feasible this is).

[Rusten]

If you want some more regular input/discussion I can make an effort to log in every now and then to stay better up to date.
T60 is a very respectable Oracle date, but yeah, missing it would suck big time. Depends on how risky you want to play.

Heading off for the night shortly, so just immediate thoughts for now -- I'll read it again tomorrow:
Pottery is fairly quick to finish yes, but in hindsight maybe we could've done without the wheel (and then pottery too). I'm often happy to stick to the trade routes that form through natural means, especially if a connection is already made between city #1 and city #2. That connection is the most important as it gives +2, not +1, and is a bigger % of overall output (less tiles worked). Roading to city #3 is nice if you have the worker turns and the technology already, but it's often not worth getting the technology and the worker turns for this reason, if that makes sense. I make as few roads as possible in the early game. There are other ways to get commerce (on this map lakes are big).

There was no way around agriculture, I agree. Not having the wheel would mean no copper, but we don't have that any time soon anyway.

[Rusten]

Do you have an updated sandbox available for upload? Or is it all spreadsheets?

If Team OH can beat us to the Oracle at will then looking for alternatives seems right. I'm interested in the furs --> settle island plan.

[Krill]

The sim is here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/oen6uyb3s9jll1...1.zip?dl=0

The spreadsheet linked in the second post was only accurate for the worker moves, but it's not even accurate for that now that the barb lions and panther are forcing more conservative worker movement to get the third city settled without risking attack.