[SPOILER] - Suboptimal finds trees, still seeks forest

[suboptimal]

The race we have with our neighbors is walls - we'd need to get there before they can get walls up, or catch them unawares enough to take a city before they can rush-build them. Right now our biggest problem (and defensive asset) is the terrain heading south. It's 10 turns of movement with 3MP to get to the GFH outside Nazca from Mashed, through the desert and with no camp. It's 11 turns via City #2. Add another 3-4 turns on either route for warriors. Based on our current builds we'd have 2 archers and a warrior at Nazca around Turn 42. That could be sped up to around T38 by going archer -> builder -> archer at City #2 rather than builder -> archer -> archer at a cost of delaying culture. City #3 definitely needs to get a trader out for road building.

I'll double check the effects of putting an archer or two before a warrior at Mashed to see if that time can be brought down a bit. Regardless we are trying to balance out competing interests and that's the trick.

[suboptimal]

Turn 18

Open the save to a notification that the volcano next to the barbarian camp (Mount Semeru) is now active. If I get lucky it’ll blow its top and make clearing that camp a bit easier. The barbarian warrior has moved east towards my slinger, with the barbarian slinger on flat terrain to the west. Slinger and settler cross the river. The slinger will likely get attacked but not killed during the interturn and should be able to shelter in (and attack from) City #2 next turn.

Warrior moves to salt. Finds….




not much because you can’t see over hills from flat ground. The hill to the SW and the sheep hill are both not adjacent to any water. I’ll summit the middle hill next turn to look around.

Internationally there’s been some population growth and it looks like Archduke may have gotten a settler out. We’re last in the numerical score for the time being and now second to Archduke in religious ranking. We’ll have a pantheon in four turns so we may beat him out. Even if we don’t I think he’d be more likely to take the free builder than anything else. We shall see.

I didn’t have time to look at revised micro tonight. I’ll get to that in the morning. Before hitting end turn I switch techs to Pottery.

Ran the micro for changing build orders. All turn numbers indicate the end of the turn that the build completes and Colonization is not considered available.

Mashed, current: Builder (22) -> Warrior (27) -> Archer (31) -> Archer (34) -> Warrior (36) [ or Settler (43) ] -> Settler (45) [or Warrior (46)]
Mashed, archers before warriors: Builder (22) -> Archer (28) -> Archer (31) -> Warrior (34) -> Warrior (36) [ or Settler (42) ] -> Settler (45) [or Warrior (44)]
Mashed, interleaved: Builder (22) -> Archer (28) -> Warrior (31) -> Archer (34) -> Warrior (37) [or Settler (43)] -> Settler (45) [or Warrior (45)]

City #2, current: Builder (30) -> Archer (33) -> Archer (38) -> Archer (41) -> Settler (53)
City #2, archer first: Archer (29) -> Builder (36) -> Archer (40) -> Archer (43) -> Settler (55)
City #2, alternative: Builder (30) -> Archer (33) -> Archer (38) -> Settler (51) -> Archer (54)

I think it's to our advantage to remain builder first at City #2 since the alternative builds are slower and generates less culture. At Mashed it winds up the same in the end though the warriors are still trudging along. I think that we should consider the interleaved approach - the first archer plus the two from City #2 can deal with Nazca while the next two archers from City #2 and the archer/warrior from Mashed catch up. We could go settler before warrior to gain us a few turns; that gets the southern lake location settled around T53 and City #2's settler can go to either the western edge of the desert or south for that possible Campus location.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Could you show the scoreboard on your next post? I like to dig around it.

[suboptimal]

Don't need to wait -- here's what I have for score tracking as of our T18:




Archduke completed a Lavra on Turn 16 - his empire score jumped from 9 to 13. He dropped back down to 12 this past turn. And yes, TBS has yet to complete a tech.

I can post score histories for each player if you'd like those as well.

[suboptimal]

Turn 19

As expected the barbarian warrior attacked across the river. The slinger has sustained 45 damage but the barbarian has taken somewhere between 20 and 30 in return. Slinger and settler move one tile SE and…




Looks like the city is two tiles off the coast. Not a bad spot. I immediately buy the second ring bananas tile for 50:gold. We’ll have enough gold in 4 turns for the slinger upgrade and then it’s just a matter of completing the tech for it. Hopefully the barbarians cooperate and move closer to the city next turn. The city works the inner ring bananas and starts a builder. It shows 17 turns but the micro works out to 11 turns (EoT 30). Based on empire scores we are the first to found a second city.

In the south the warrior summits the central desert hill.:




That’s a pretty good Campus location but it’s a bit far away this early in the game. Settlervision indicates no cities nearby. The southern geothermal vent and the hill between the sheep (2SE of the warrior) are adjacent to a volcano. Given the vents and volcano down here there’s an outside chance that we may find a continental boundary down here. I think I’m going to move to the wheat next turn as that will reveal the most territory, then decide which way to head. We just need to keep in mind that the warrior needs to be near Nazca by Turn 40, if not a little earlier.

Mashed will regain its third population next turn, at which point it will work the GFH to the southwest. We’ve culturally acquired the pearls and the city is 21 turns from claiming the stone.

[Banzailizard]

Not sure I would have agreed with the tile buy. You don't need it for 8 turns and there is value in the flexibility of holding onto the gold. Not a major problem but I think you overbought tiles last game too and I would be careful since you said gold was a crunch in your test games.

[suboptimal]

We will actually work the tile in 5 turns so that the city can work both bananas for slightly faster growth. Based on my experience with the tile picker it would be taking both diamonds before the bananas since it seems to prefer luxury resources over bonus resources (IIRC), so I'd rather let the picker do its thing while I work the bananas. The only potential tile buy I see at this point is the plains hill two east of Mashed in order to place an Encampment for the State Workforce inspiration and we don't need to do that for at least 20-25 turns. City #3 won't need a tile buy in its present location and if we moved it west I don't know that we'd need to buy anything there, either.

My test game cash crunches usually occurred when there were no commercial city-states, no plantation resources and/or no mineable resources to generate gold with. It was also more of a cash flow issue until Conscription was available as with no income except the palace I could only support 5 archers. There was usually enough gold on hand from the palace to upgrade two slingers to archers. Here we'll be getting four generating improvements up and running by Turn 40 and making 13 per turn before unit maintenance.

[CFCJesterFool]

Silly question, but what is a "Dauphinoise" ?

[Rowain]

Silly question, but what is a "Dauphinoise" ?

Potato dauphinoise is a meal from the region Dauphine in france. Dauphinoise is also the name of the people from that region and of the dialect spoken there.

Edit: Gratin dauphinoise

[suboptimal]

Silly question, but what is a "Dauphinoise" ?

Rowain covered all the bases.  For our immediate purposes, though, it's all about the potatoes.  I figured that the presence of wine at the city cite dictated a French preparation.  I was remiss and didn't post a recipe (figured I didn't need to put one up for Mashed).

500mL Double Cream (heavy cream for us Americans)
500mL Whole Milke
8 large potatotes (Maris Piper, Russets or something similar), sliced finely (3-4mm thick)
100g grated Grueyere Cheese

Preheat oven to 190C/Gas 5/375F.  Combine milk, cream and garlic in a saucepan and bring to a simmer.  Add potatoes and simmer gently for 3 minutes or so, stirring gently to prevent them from sticking to the bottom of the pot.  Remove potatoes using a slotted spoon and place into a baking dish (probably want to grease that with butter).  Pour the cream mixture over the potatoes (discard the garlic cloves) until the potatoes are just covered.  Top with Gruyere and bake uncovered for 30 minutes or until the potatoes are soft and the top is golden, brown and delicious.