[PB56] NobleHelium Tells It Like It Is

[NobleHelium]

ORLY?



Buddhism was founded by Ruff (Wang Kon of Spain) as his first tech.

It is currently turn 26. The declaration was last turn. And no, the corn has not been farmed.

[superdeath]

[NobleHelium]

So novice, I tried your whip settler into worker idea and it seems...to work?



The third city is delayed by one turn but it gives us the leeway to chop the city tile. The worker under the settler finishes the road before the city is founded, and the other worker is already on the fur.

It is now turn 27. We have to swap to Slavery this turn if we are to implement this plan. Note that I'm not actually whipping the settler right at the end here - it's being whipped as soon as it's whippable (i.e. next turn after the anarchy) which means it comes out on the same turn. The overflowed worker ends up completing two turns earlier on t31 instead of t33 previously. It shows up as a 3t worker compared to 4t, but we've already eaten the anarchy so it ends up being 2t faster.

[NobleHelium]

Tried the more overflow into 1t worker bit and oof...



Painful. So yeah I think we whip immediately so as to not delay the city.

[Serdoa]

You really aren't very good at this... you have to get 60 hammers to finish it in 1t, duh!

[NobleHelium]

We can also stick with the normal settler build plan and still chop the third city tile while settling on t42 rather than t43.



Note that in all these sims I'm deprioritizing the trade route between Brainstorm and Thoughtseize and it's getting completed a bit later so that the worker turns line up a bit better. Notice in the original sim we had extra roads because of less efficient worker transitions.

[NobleHelium]

I refined both sims and they end up very similarly.




WHIP LINE BENEFITS
1) We get to choose whether we want to build an axeman or a spearman in Brainstorm. (Note that this benefit no longer applies if we do a work boat instead of a unit.)
2) 21 hammers into the spearman in Thoughtseize instead of 12.
3) Cow pasture completes next turn (t44) instead of t45. This makes up 1f of the difference in Thoughtseize and adds another 2h to the spearman difference. It also means we start the horse pasture sooner etc.

NORMAL LINE BENEFITS
1) 17 food in Brainstorm which lets us grow to 3 in one turn, instead of 11.
2) 11 food in Thoughtseize instead of 8. This means Thoughtseize grows to size 3 on t46 instead of t47 even though the cow pasture is completed a turn later.
3) 18 hammers into the spearman in Brainstorm instead of 17 hammers into the axeman.
4) Third warrior finishes t36 instead of t37.
5) 5g in the bank instead of 2g.

[novice]

The normal line seems better, then?

Is it really worth the worker turns to chop the city tile forest? How many hammers does that yield?

[NobleHelium]

10 hammers but more importantly it means we can delay the third road to the city since it serves the same purpose of speeding up the settler. The worker is on the tile NE of Brainstorm before moving to the forest and there's no good transition to the northeast that I can see. We can either build the third road sooner and then end up with nothing to do but not wanting to move away from the future city, or we can chop the forest instead.



There is one other benefit to the whip line - we get the second warrior on t33 rather than t34.

[Fintourist]

WHIP LINE BENEFITS
1) We get to choose whether we want to build an axeman or a spearman in Brainstorm. (Note that this benefit no longer applies if we do a work boat instead of a unit.)
2) 21 hammers into the spearman in Thoughtseize instead of 12.
3) Cow pasture completes next turn (t44) instead of t45.  This makes up 1f of the difference in Thoughtseize and adds another 2h to the spearman difference.  It also means we start the horse pasture sooner etc.

NORMAL LINE BENEFITS
1) 17 food in Brainstorm which lets us grow to 3 in one turn, instead of 11.
2) 11 food in Thoughtseize instead of 8.  This means Thoughtseize grows to size 3 on t46 instead of t47 even though the cow pasture is completed a turn later.
3) 18 hammers into the spearman in Brainstorm instead of 17 hammers into the axeman.
4) Third warrior finishes t36 instead of t37.
5) 5g in the bank instead of 2g.

I always like these comparisons when thinking about even openings. So am I reading correctly the benefits:

Whip line: 9 hammers (TH) + 1 worker turn
Normal line: 6 food (B) + 3 food (TH) + 1 hammer (B) + 3 gold

And if we assume the following...

• Food has same value as hammers (sometimes this is the case, sometimes food is way more valuable)
  
• Worker turn value is 5 hammers (I typically use this as a proxy as you need 4 worker turns to chop a 20-hammer forest)
  
• Gold has less value than foodhammers during the early turns, say 3 gold equals 1 hammer here (conversion rate based on mostly nothing)
  

... this all simplifies to:

Whip line 9 + 5 = 14 foodhammers
Normal line: 6 + 3 + 1 + 1 = 11 foodhammers

So if I would do this analysis I would conclude that the whip line provides more raw output, but by a very small margin. Which means that you have to take a closer look at the assumptions:

• Does the extra food have more snowball value than the extra hammers
  
• How valuable worker turns do you have incoming (how hard does the additional worker turn snowball)
  
• Does the extra gold provide something tangible (like an earlier tech)
  

***

I did not even look at the screenshots so I'll leave conclusions to you, but I thought this might be of interest.