[SPOILERS] Woden and ljubljana like boats

[ljubljana]

Started a spreadsheet - let me know what you think about formatting and such.

[ljubljana]

Turn 1

Here we go again. Here's my start:



and here's yours:



Only really one place to send my warrior, IMO, that being 2SW. SIP also seems obvious here, as the only spot to get both 4-yield tiles in play immediately, as well as giving the Sailing eureka to influence our early research direction and a nice +4 Cothon spot as well. We can then add a +3 campus on the woods 1W of the capital or somewhere in the SE, if there proves to be a good Government Plaza location down there. Here's what the new city looks like:



There's no obvious reason not to do warrior-first this time, thank goodness, as everything else makes me nervous even on this archipelago map. In contrast to PBEM19, though, I think there's an argument for builder before settler here, since we'll have three strong improvable tiles immediately in the sheep, marble, and rice, the city will grow very slowly even at small sizes without some extra source of food, and we'll get critical early Eurekas to give us a better sense of the shape of the tech tree. I'm not completely sure about this, though - let me know what you think!

Here's a shot of the civics tree post-shuffling:



That's the other reason I'm leaning towards builder-first - that second-tier tech could be Craftsmanship, and, if so, a warrior-settler opening would probably commit us to missing that inspiration. After that, though, we'll have all five second-tier civics enabled - I imagine I'll want to go for State Workforce ASAP to enable the GP (extra important with Phoenicia's bonus trade routes) and initial Pingala promotions, then whichever civic turns out to be the PoliPhil prerequisite. Getting the SW boost early will be tricky, though, as there's no obvious first district to build, and the tech tree looks like this:



Is AH first the right choice? I put a turn into that, but I'm very unsure, as a fast GP would require us to absolutely race for Writing to boost SW, which is off the AH path. AH seems like the best tech for builder-first, since there's probably horses at the otherwise very food-poor capital, and the sheep will be the strongest tile here once improved. Maybe I'll go AH - Pottery first, and we can then decide on the builder's final task according to whatever is required to eureka the writing prereq. I'll want Sailing fairly quickly too, though, because...here's what the Classical era tree looks like:



Each tech has its own unique ancient age prereq, other than the last one. I need to figure out which of those is Celestial Navigation pretty much ASAP, since once I have a campus up, the rest of my ancient age researches should probably be geared towards acquiring that tech as quickly as possible. That means two early builders, I imagine - one from the capital either before or after the first settler to improve the initial set of tiles, and another shortly thereafter for the CN eureka. This arrangement is relatively lucky from my perspective, IMO, though, as at least CN shouldn't be too far off unless we're very unlucky, in contrast to many of my practice games in which it was gated behind so many Classical techs as to make Cothons almost useless from an expansion perspective.

[Woden]

I think we both should go for Sailing as soon as possible, you get a couple of fishing boats to boost Cartography and find out where it is located and me to get a couple of boat out as fast as possible and start looking for city states. You can also get a boat out for the era points. I think builder before settler will work as long as you head for Sailing and hook up those water resources. No need for a large army. Not sure if we are on the same landmass of different ones. I will have my warrior head towards you since he is on the west side anyways.

No real telling where any tech/civic is located, so we will have to try our best to hit the boosts. It looks like you can get Cartography, Horseback Riding, and Irrigation. I can get Irrigation and Shipbuilding fairly easily. If I were you, I would focus on the boosts for Cartography and Horseback Riding (2 fishing boats and a pasture) to start. I should be able to grab the rice tile by the time I have a builder.

[ljubljana]

I think we both should go for Sailing as soon as possible, you get a couple of fishing boats to boost Cartography and find out where it is located and me to get a couple of boat out as fast as possible and start looking for city states. You can also get a boat out for the era points. I think builder before settler will work as long as you head for Sailing and hook up those water resources. No need for a large army. Not sure if we are on the same landmass of different ones. I will have my warrior head towards you since he is on the west side anyways.

No real telling where any tech/civic is located, so we will have to try our best to hit the boosts. It looks like you can get Cartography, Horseback Riding, and Irrigation. I can get Irrigation and Shipbuilding fairly easily. If I were you, I would focus on the boosts for Cartography and Horseback Riding (2 fishing boats and a pasture) to start. I should be able to grab the rice tile by the time I have a builder.

I agree about finding city-states ASAP - maybe we should even both build early boats with this in mind, especially since we both get bonus production towards them. I suppose, depending on the city-state distribution, doing so could potentially make up for the slow campuses and GPs that this would imply, though I'm a bit nervous that we might end up like PBEM19 and have no scientific CS on the map, since the community seems to consider them somewhat OP.

I'm not sure we really need the Celestial Navigation boost quite that quickly though, especially since the second fishing boat would boost an unworkably bad tile and might require a tile purchase too. Do you think I should be going for Cothons before the first campus? I'm nervous about this, since the tech's way out in the Classical era and, without campuses, I'd probably lack the research power to get there quickly...but maybe that's not actually grounded in reality, since campuses only become absolutely critical to research prowess in the Classical era. If I do a campus before the first Cothons, I'd probably have time to get a second builder out before we need to know where CN is, though, which would free up the first one to improve three actually useful tiles. Honestly, to some degree, this probably depends on the luck of the tile picker...if I have to buy both fishing boats tiles to boost CN early, that seems a bit too wasteful to be a good idea, but hopefully that won't be the case.

[Woden]

Your bonus to ships comes from the Cothon, not a leader/civ bonus, so need to build those first. And yes, you want to find the boost as fast as possible to take advantage of the classical era/golden age slingshot. What is that you ask, well let me explain.

In PBEM18, I was behind in science with both Ichabod and Kaiser having near double my science output most of the ancient era. By the time the classical era changed, I had 5 techs to Kaiser's 10. I then proceeded to finish 12 techs (maybe 13) in like 15 turns, but could have 1-turned all of the remaining ancient techs and all the classical techs if I didn't want to overflow into Apprenticeship. I think I ended up with a 4 or so tech advantage. And this was before I built a single Campus 

How the slingshot works is you need to get a Golden Age and take Free Inquiry but you also only want to finish any techs you don't directly need to about 70%. When the Era changes, techs are discounted by 20%. Free Inquiry gives you an extra 10% to boosts. Combined, you don't need to research that last 30%. The plan will be to find Cartography and Shipbuilding and beeline them; you to Cartography and me to Shipbuilding. Then dump any extra science into techs but only to 70%. Don't finish anything that is not a direct route to either tech. Hopefully, we can get a couple of classical age techs that we can dump science into. We also want to make sure we can get as many boosts that we can. That extra 10% really does help and we will both want to do this.

The only issue with this strategy is we are not sure where things land and if Cartography or Shipbuilding is deep Classical Era. You will want Cartography as soon as you can get it. 50% bonus for building settlers and boats for a half price district. Other than a government plaza, you shouldn't build any districts until you can get a few Cothons down. You can build the Government Plaza first though, the city with it gets 50% to districts.

As for having to buy a tile, you have 1 land resource and 3 sea resources and the tile picker picks resources over everything. You will have 2 by the time you can use your builder.

Edit: And looking at the tree, Writing is not a necessary tech to the classical age, so no campuses I am wrong, you might have to unless Cartography is the last Classical Age tech. Looking at the tree, it is imperative to locate Cartography and Shipbuilding ASAP so we know what route to take.
Edit2: If you build a bunch of Cothons before unlocking a bunch of districts, you can activate the district discount and not build any districts at full price.

[Woden]

By the way, I tried accessing your spreadsheet but was denied access, so couldn't look.

[ljubljana]

Right, that's a great point. I guess as Phoenicia there's no reason to ever have trouble with a GA thanks to the ancient age UU and (if we can get a Cothon by t61) UB as well. We might be in trouble if Cothons are on a different branch of the tree from both Sailing and Writing, though, since we might not be able to reach the tech in time (if I only manage to discover 5 techs in the ancient age) and would then run a serious risk of missing the GA as well, especially if we don't get a +3 campus in the first age and don't manage to find enough continents/other players/CS with our boats in time. That said, yeah, finding out whether that's the case seems important enough to provide a compelling reason for Sailing first, so I'll plan to do that.

Also, I edited the sheet, so you should have access now - sorry about that! I plan to fill in all of the blank, odd-numbered columns the sheet contains now will be filled in with deltas from the previous turn, once we've had more than one of those.

[Woden]

Looking over the starts again, it might be beneficial for you to go double builder after your initial warrior., Also, what tile are you working? The 3 food is probably better than the sheep to start, you grow faster. Production is good but growing faster lets you work a second tile and gives you more science and culture.

Ideally, your first builder would hook up the marble, turtles, and fish but you would need both Sailing and Mining and I don't think you can get both by the time you need them. If you hook up the sheep and sea resources, then a second builder can get the rice and marble. Also, with 3 sea resources, you might want to consider the pantheon that gives +1 to boats.

[ljubljana]

I am, indeed, working the sheep right now. Working the rice instead would speed growth by 3 turns, giving up 10 hammers over the next 5 turns while we wait for the city to grow, but then making up 6 of those hammers by working a second tile earlier. That's a net loss, but we'd also get 1.5 beakers and 0.9 clefs by being a size larger a few turns earlier. Still, I'm not sure it's a trade worth making, especially since we don't want the city to get too large too quickly or we'll have to pay a big food cost for the initial settler. Well, although, I guess working the rice would be a net gain of hammers if we switched over to max production at size 2, since we'd then make 12 hammers from spending 3 more turns at size 2, so maybe it is worth doing following that logic. Having put a turn into the sheep already kinda messes with that line of reasoning, though, since we're now at 2/15 food and the rice will only speed growth by 2 turns... Maybe I'll wait until 6/15 and then switch to the rice, at which point it'll still speed growth by 2 turns but will make up 4 more hammers over turns 2 and 3.

I'm skeptical of doing double builder before the settler - that'd push the second city's founding way out into the mid to late t30s, which is a very slow expansion pace, and would only net us probably one extra yield at the city in the meantime, since it won't be large enough to work all the improved tiles for quite a while. I do think a second builder should be the first post-settler build for sure, though. It might even be worth it to use its last charge to have it double as a pseudo-boat for a while to go find some city states, unless there do turn out to be horses at the capital in need of improvement.

I'll definitely consider the +1 hammer to boats pantheon if we can get it...though I imagine it'll go pretty quickly on this map, if some of the other starts out there turn out to resemble mine.

[Woden]

IMO, I would switch to the rice, grow 2 turns early, then work the sheep and rice until you hit size 3. Then work the turtles, marble, and sheep. That will give you an extra 2 gold, 2 culture, and 2 science for having hit 3-pop sooner, plus whatever you get from the 2 turns of population growth at size 2 and size 3.

I don't pay much attention to the growth versus food cost for settlers. Only when you can time it so you regrow immediately. With Phoenicia, you will have a slow start because you don't really what to push expansion until you get some Cothons up and can get the Ancestral Hall. Then build them at 150% production. Depending on where Cartography is located, you might want to hold off on your 3rd city until you can get a Cothon built. If it is deep in the tree, then you probably will want to a 3rd city before a Cothon.