[SPOILERS]PB46: (In Search of) Fine Foreign Dining, by Hannibal of England

[Krill]

I never did a triple settler whip, but a double whip from 5->3. Also, it looks like my sim is up +4 food on T40 and an improvement (the grass river mine), plus has more hammers binned in the settler T41.

Ah, so on T38 hammers are placed into the settler to it reaches 50/100, and then whipped on T39?

In that case it's even further behind though? Warrior2 is at 8/15, right? And there are 12 overflow hammers(?) out of the settler on T40, with the food bar at 22/26? eot40 there is a work boat with 26 hammers in it with the worker whip micro, 17 of which could be in a settler. The settler can still be whipped T47 (Edit: whilst dumping all the overflow into a work boat which completes eot41) without using a forest chop (note: does drop to size 3 which is functionally equivalent to the forest chop in terms of food hammer unit production) with a work boat and warrior built in that growth period. [Edit: Basic micro is growth@4 eot40, work boat eot41, growth@5 eot42, growth@6 eot44, warrior3 eot44, Settler whipped T47 @115/100. And that's with the roads on the hills, if we instead roaded through the wheat and the wine then we have other options as well]

Regarding the plains cow: you get it hooked a few turns earlier than I do, but then your workers are out in neverland with nothing to do. Further, it is more than 1 turn slower; it is 1 turn slower in getting the granary installed, and that's super important considering how fucked we are for food! Stealing the wheat from the capital was more about getting that city up to size 3 faster, as that will enable a faster granary whip.

It takes 7 turns to grow city 2 working the wheat for 1 turn, and the cow for 6 turns (generates 26 hammers). The granary then completes after a further 3 turns with a single chop, working cow and wheat to push the food box to 15/24. Working the wheat grows city 2 in 6 turns, using the wheat for 4 turns and the cow for 2 turns, generating 16 hammers, and it takes a further 4 turns minimum to finishes the granary (cow and wheat for 2 turns for 10 hammers, cow and grass hill mine for 2 turns for 14 hammers), again with a chop and the food box at 14/24. The granaries finish at the same time, the difference is the wheat is worked more in the capital (specifically, the capital can use the wheat for T42 through T47 and then gives the wheat to the city 2) if we rush the cow pasture.

Essentially, the cow pasture is 4 worker turns for +3 yield. that compares to 9 worker turns for a hill mine and grass farm at the capital for the same +3 yield (trade route commerce and river commerce is about equal looking at it).

Regarding workers being out of position...no? We have to use one worker to chop the forest anyway, and then we want to move it over along the road and put worker turns into mines, or send that worker down to the clam city to chop a further forest for the third cities granary. We also get the second worker back onto the road network with a hill mine/cancel on T43 and then it is at the capital to mine or chop as we need. The only wasted worker turns are putting both workers onto the grass hill on T39.

Regarding the clams city: I think that settling on the PH 1N of the clams is a huge mistake. As you say, we are fucked for food. Our capital isn't great and our second city is filler quality. We can't afford to have our third city be filler-quality as well! A city 1N of the clams claims only 1 good new tile and 1 forest, and we can't really even afford it to steal the capital's rice, much less the wheat. Settling 1SW of the rice will still give the clam first-ring, as well as 2 additional forests, 2 3/0/3 lake tiles (with a granary), three wet grasslands to farm, and a 7/0/3 Fish tile, second ring. This city will be able to triple-whip settlers all the livelong day with fairly minimal investment. Settling 1SW of the clam also opens up a farmable grassland tile (once the forest is chopped) 1NE of the fish, which, as pathetic as it is to say, will be actually be really important for the development of our shitty second city.

It might surprise you, but I agree that the plains hill plant is dreadful in the long term. But a city 1SW of the rice doesn't get those tiles? Those are the tiles that a city 1SW of the clam claims? Right now I don't think it makes much difference where our third city is planted, if we are planting for that clam tile as the only food resource. If we are reliant on using city 4 as a desert junk city to open up a lake fish and not get any new food resource, we don't gain anything in the short to medium term for city 3: either City 3 is sound, and city 4 is worse than junk, or city 4 is OK and city 3 is "meh".

I see two points which add to the complexity: We can ignore Sailing and go for Writing after AH, and 1SW of the clam could double whip a library. This is slow to gain any advantage in terms of foodhammer output into settlers, but then again, it does not require city 4 be placed in the middle of a desert. And: We need 3 workers to chop a granary (which is doable) but realistically means granary at size 2.

By contrast, planting on the plains hill is faster to settle, and allows a city to be planted 1N of the peak to grab the fish and overlap the clam (and grab the lighthouse lakes). It's also going to give us the option to swap hill mines between all three cities as each city dumps hammers into settlers, so we can make use of 4 hammer tiles (which, frankly, we have a preponderance of). And we can get a size 1 granary in (we would have to adjust the worker micro, but rather than road the rice, which is a placeholder, we can instead road over the plains hill, wheat and grass hill and still get 3 worker turns into a plains hill mine). To link this in with the worker micro for city 2: city 2 is probably going to whip a worker at size 3, and the worker that chops the forest complete that task on T46. It will essentially either burn a worker turn, or move to mine a roaded hill, then spend a turn roading the wine, to end up chopping a forest on T52 at the latest. We can get the city settled T49, a granary chopped (40 hammers) and completed (work a grass hill mine T49-50, plains hill mine T51, clam T52 onwards) on T53, with growth to size 2 on T56 with the granary full.

I am not so blinkered as to think a city on that plains hill north of the clam is good, in an absolute sense. What I am wondering is if it is better than the other options in terms of speeding up settling contestable lands. I am not sure how settling wider compares.

[GermanJoey]

On phone. I meant 1SW of the clam, not the rice. Will respond to the rest later.

[GermanJoey]

Whew, what an exhausting day I had. Slow-moving trainwreck of watching other parents induce (easily-avoidable) tantrums in their kids, which then wrecks the whole day for everyone. Sigh.

Re: micro. I think I can see what you mean here... I'm not 100% fully convinced, but I think I already used up basically all the spare time/energy I had on micro. Sorry. At any rate, I think you've put more thought/effort into this than me, so I'm just going to trust you.

Re: scouting. This is exactly why I wanted to avoid scouting so far south! We really need to know what's west in order to plan out 3rd/4th cities!

Re: 1N of the clam city. Like, I can see what you mean. A 2h plant, insta-netted clams, and quick granary = instantly productive city. It could produce some stuff in the near-term for us... probably a few workers. However. We're at 200+ tiles/player, right? With like, long snaky continents and lots of islands? That means we're want to produce pumping somewhere on the order of 17 settlers and 17 workers over the next 100 turns or so. I think that's about what I had in PB22. We also know that our capital and our second city are not exactly productive monsters - they ain't gonna get us there. Thus, IMHO, it is absolutely critical we get a city that is... or at least something that's capable of producing a good bulk of it. 1SW of the clam can get up to +12fpt with a monument, lighthouse, granary, and 2 work boats; if I got my math right, that means it can pump out a settler every 5-6 turns or so! 1N of the peak is a similar city, true, but a.) it doesn't have the 3 first-ring trees, b.) would be settled much later, and thus comes online much later. My gut feeling is that it'll come online too late to help us pump workers and settlers.

[Krill]

Re: micro: I think the easiest explanation, in one sentence is this: we can complete a work boat on T41 or we can whip it after a settler is built t47 and be down a forest. That's what it boils down to.

We should see copper this afternoon though, 6 other players and I think only 2 are American?

Re: scouting. I moved onto the sheep. Next turn we should move onto the plains hill South of the silver and revie, so no worries there.

Re: city 3, come back to this once copper is known.

---

Family do or something? I hope you had a good.time with your kids.

[Krill]

Turn 13

Fun times. We got lucky




The lion should gives us W2 or G2 promotion. On T14, if the lion is not visible, we can move NW (look over the lake), and then move the scout where ever we need to, to get the lion to attack it eot14. There are hill tiles 3N1E, £n2E and 2N3E of the scout that it could move onto on T15 regardless of where we have to place the scout on T14 to get the last wanted barb fight. We should also promote next turn (being higher health at the start of the fight means less likely to lose HP. Looking at Cyneheards combat calculator, promoting before the fight gives us more HP on average after taking the second promotion).

So there is a discussion point around whether W2 or G2 is going to be more useful in this temperate landscape.





Last chance for lurkers and players to play copper roulette: which tile will it reveal on? Keep in mind the the map generator for this map was required to place one copy of each strategic resource "In the player zone" IF it was not already present, but on a map this size this does not mean it would be accessible or balanced (if that land to the east are islands only we have access to, then the game would likely consider the islands to be "In the player zone". Therefore, there is the possibility that the game placed it adjacent to a resource randomly, or TBS placed it somewhere (and map makers don't have to follow resource spawn rules...)

My guess would be 2S1W of the southern clams tile, which settles our third city location discussion, or under the capital if TBS wanted to be annoying (because of warrior obsoletion we would then have to change tech path significantly and finish Hunting eot40).

I will produce an updated world map after copper spawns.

[Krill]

You know, Joey, we could get a library or granary chopped out eot45 at the 1SW of clam location, and have all the roads down for settling...and have the clam hooked on T45 from that capital work boat that completes eot41.

EDIT: bastard mobile phones deleting edits and posting when they shouldn't do.

Here is a truncated version: Granary first, size 4 library whip.

T34: Worker1 completes chop 2N of capital, worker2 farming rice.
T35: Worker1 moves 2S
T36: Worker1 moves SW - S road, worker2 finish farm.
T37: Worker1 road/fin, worker 2 moves SW - SW.
T38: Worker1 moves SW road, Worker2 road
T39: Settler complete eot39. Workers1 and 2 complete roads
T40: Move SW - S - SW - SW (all roads completed by T39, T40 both workers on roaded grass forest, chop * 2/cancel. Settle city 2. Work grass forest.
T41: Settle city 2. chop 1 complete, worker 1 moves SE - SW onto plains forest. Build granary. Work grass forest. capital work boat complete.
T42: Worker 1 chop, worker 2 moves W. Work boat E - SE.
T43: chop *2. Work boat S - SW.
T44: plains forest chopped. Work boat SW - W.
T45: net clam, swap labourer. Grass forest chopped. Worker 1 moves NE - N farm. Granary 69/60, food box 12/22.
T46: Worker2 moves E, farm. Build whatever (could dump overflow into library if Writing rushed, but don't see the point. Might be able to get Sailing>Writing>Hunting though, due to trade route and work boat commerce and not needing Hunting until eot48)
T47: farm complete. Settler2 complete at capital.
T48: city2 growth@2, 13/26 (growth@3 eot51, growth@4 eot54), workers 1 and 2, move N - NW road/fin. Settler2 moves SW - S - SW.
T49: Settle city 3, workers move NW - SW pasture cow. City3 works wheat from capital
T50: cow pastured, city3 swap labourer onto cow.
T51: Worker1 N, Worker2 NE - NW

FWIW, city2 generates 18 hammers by growth to size4, but only needs to work the unimproved plains hill that is provided by capital culture for a single turn to make 3 base hammers (5 adjusted hammers) on T54 to grow with the food box at 28/28 to enable a perfect double whip with no overflow on T55. It makes 5 food per turn with two tiles (same as cow city), but actually makes commerce as well. And the capital keeps the wheat for a little bit longer. We can have the fish worked in a granary city by T61 for a one pop whip (who cares, we have the happiness). That's got to be faster than the cow city, right? Then just double whip a lighthouse T62 and regrowth@size 3 and we would have a size 3 city with a granary making 11fpt carrying 3 whip unhappy (so maybe...don't bother with the lighthouse whip, just grow dump overflow to complete it and focus on the extra happy resources?)

EDIT: Actually, the tech timings are trivial. We can go Hunting eot32>AH eot40>Writing eot48>Sailing eot54 or eot55. Financial seafood FTW. The only thing missing is Archery, and we can fit that in whenever we want without breaking anything.

The downside is we can't send the work boat exploring, and we are going to have to bring that scout back to cover the workers as they road forward around T36 (but we would be using a scout and warrior pair, which is much safer for us that a warrior pair). But this seems smarter.

[Krill]

TBS, you going to be kind and tell me where copper is? Or do I get to spend the day cursing players for having real lives to contend with?

[Krill]

Actually, library border pop allows wide spacing for the silver: there looks like there is almost no food in that area. Which means we might have to split off the fish mid game permanently and we would be fucked if we settled on the plains hill.

Settling 1S of the silver seems decent for city 4 actually. It might be a naff early city but we would need the happy, can manage the excess food situation at the clam city with two plains hill mines and that lighthouse, and would fit in with the plains ivory city and an island city by around t70? We would have good commerce output as we slowly got those few cottages online as well. And that dot map covers almost all the land we can see, so it must grab copper or horse. If it didn't, then we don't have those resources and there's not much we can do anyway except fogbust and spam archers.

[Krill]

Motherfucker.

[Krill]

Well, fuck this delay, but I still have player picks to post. I'd rather know where that damned copper is, if we even have any.

Borsche: Suryavarman [EXP/CRE](30th pick) of Persia (3rd pick)

I have no idea why Persia is third pick. I imagine that Borsche thought it was a safe pick and there would be EXP leaders spare on the return. He was right, he had a choice of 3 (Sury, Washington or Peter for CRE, CHM or PHI). Maybe Peter would have been a better pick, but Persia wants to go wide. The UU is a bit better at managing barbs compared the the base chariot, and theoretically you could rush with it. Problem is, even if you got lucky, hit a slower starter and cut copper on T1 of the war, Persia is not going to break archers in a capital. And we are playing on a huge map (the precise size could not be known at the time of the pick, but there is no way to fit 16 players on a large size map). So rushing with chariots seems foolish.

Maybe he wanted the start techs: Zulu have the same start techs and work with any leader, even if it hurts AGG to lose half price barracks until you reach IW, as do Native America in game (Elkad picked NA later on and started with Fishing/Agri, but whatever, that was a map maker mistake, they happen). The Impi just scales so much better than a march chariot.

That said, I feel like the leader pick was just a choice to make the best of a bad situation. Borsche has to rush to Currency now, and then use 75 hammer markets to manage city maintenance and gold generation. He has slightly cheaper libraries, but he will not use them for border pops, and after that it's just the cheap harbours for naval XP, aqueducts for late game and eventually grocers, when he should already have cities at -75% city maintenance. Slightly cheaper observatories as well? I dunno. Just feels weak, and he has to force a war in the Classical era after he accomplishes the currency rush.

I think he should have picked Zulu, and then he would have been able to do anything. Gandhi, Napoleon, anything.