[Mjmd #56 no players] One ring to find them

[Miguelito]

I hope I'm following you here:
You want to go for writing over sailing to build a few libraries, then bulb maths? I don't think that's profitable as long as we can't count on getting foreign trade routes, and before sailing the candidates are only vanrober and Cairo where we'd have to build a road first. I can't imagine that that's better than a quick island city (with silver!). Although I do support the maths bulb, just later.
Can we really not get silverfish before t71? Seems rather important if we're squeezed economically.

Re: worker/settler first - my gut instinct is to say settler, and I don't think the 23 gold justify delaying a good (excellent) city for so many turns. But how many worker turns do we gain that way, and where else are workers planned? I guess we should try to get some cottages up if we are feeling bad about the economy, and also with so many peaceful plants on plan. So that may sway me, although the difference probably will be no more than 1.5 cottages or so?

[Mjmd]

Libraries would also be just a modifier for my very broke economy. I'll double check maintenance between my sim and actual before I make my decision.

I mean we gain 10 worker turns. I either go worker settler there or settler worker. Notably we get 1 settler turn back because the forest is chopped. Also going worker first helps raise the happy cap because I'm hoking up ivory (which was hooked up about T73 in the settler first sim). Because Atrium is on pure settler duty for a bit that worker can chop out Atrium's granary eventually and start cottaging that earlier.

My preferred trading partner is Ruff; I'll have that defogged soonish, but I would need both techs or he would need writing which seems unlikely. I think I'm ok trading with Cairo and all he has to do is settle on the river, but again tech requirements. I do take your point though that it isn't guaranteed.

I'll run the worker opening through 1 more time before I play. I don't think I'll be holding up the turn and as I once advised Amica, sometimes you gotta take your time on these important decisions. Again I was super inefficient before. Also, with both happiness resources and an earlier granary I could possible whip the capital not on a 10 turn whip cycle to get the silver fish island sooner (2 pop whip galley from capital and 2 pop whip settler from Atrium instead of a worker I think I whipped in my sim). I would also need a worker to improve the silver at some point, but that can probably be the worker improving 4 corners. Hopefully culture will work way I want, but if testing is any indication it won't and I'll probably end up settling 1 city on that island vs two.

[Mjmd]

Ok, so worker first best I could do was get island settled T68, which isn't even that much faster and I'm not sure is worth the extra capital unhappiness. It is possible I can figure out some overflow to get galley without whipping. Especially if I get sailing sooner than I have been giving to myself in sim (I was giving to myself T61, which I think I should get T60, but maybe 59, which actually does matter for hammers overflowing. For some reason I kept settling Detassling T59 instead of 58, but figure that out later.. I did get to 199 gold paying a little more attention, which is a 50g difference vs settler first.

The good news is that my maintenance is my sim is WAY off. I'm still going to do worker first though. Reasons:
1) main is actually capital working its good tiles more, which because one of them is the copper offsets a lot hammer wise. This helps get some military out not whipping.
2) more raw gold short term, but also long term starts growing cottages. Hoping I can also get sailing earlier as mentioned above. I think expansion is going to be more limited by econ than lack of explosiveness.
3) I probably would settle 2 more cities somewhere in the 70s range. One for stone and then maybe all the way at 'reach for corn'. Need to be able to afford.
4) higher happy cap helps with my lack of units as well as a few extra overflow hammers.
5) Helps improve Antium faster.
6) as mentioned I get 1 of the settler turns back, but I also grow to size 3 & 4 a turn faster thanks to worker from Cumae that can come over to help improve corn. Who can also help chop a granary.

Met Noble this turn somewhere. Ruff got a color change (WOOOOOO!!!!!!). I have no idea where Vanrobers 4th city is, which is all for the good.

[Miguelito]

Well when break even is down the modifier from libraries isn't doing all that much for us is it? Certainly not as much as 2c trade routes.
Does double whipping the cap prevent it from working food or copper? Otherwise I'd def think getting the island city earlier is worth it. Prob even if it leaves the copper unworked a few turns.
And yeah you have good arguments for worker first.
Whom else does Noble know?

[Mjmd]

See this  is why I like having a ded lurker. Asking good questions. Noble looks like he is south. I may have also not been paying attention to espionage as much....... sooo good catch.



I'm pretty sure sailing will be T58 or T59 which since it is earlier than I was giving to myself I should be able to naturally build a galley to take Antium settler and settle T68 vs T71 as previously stated. Part of the granary first is just getting to work that power copper tile more! So now limited by when Antium can whip out its 3rd settler in a row! (whipped out Neapolis, will whip out corn detassllng and then will whip out silver fish. It basically has just enough food to keep doing this on perfect 10 turn cycles with no granary.

Most of demo's are meh, but I'm 3rd in food! I doubt that will change any time soon. Larger overview next turn and map thoughts as SD requested. BTW looking at shape (you can kind of see in mini map) I'm back to thinking donut.

[Miguelito]

Had a look inside. Noble's scout was coming from the south and is on our borders there.
The capital can support working 2 food resources, the copper, the elephant, and 2 red faces, plus one cottage after connecting the fur (if you don't want to work that), so I don't quite see why we would hesitate to add a second whip unhappy?

[Mjmd]

Mainly because I think with updated sailing timing (T58) the impediment isn't at the capital it is getting a settler. Antium just can't produce settlers any quicker. It is possible I could produce in Cumae, but in my long term sims Cumae has been doing worker duty. I'll relook at micro and see if there is any way to both get a galley and then a settler out of capital faster. My immediate thought is to put a chop meant for Antium granary into the project. Speaking of Cumae I currently have an axe slated to be 1 pop whipped for pre-emptive protection / denial factor for the NE area. I could instead grow to 4 and produce something economy focused, but I like the idea of an axe on that hill near wet corn. I'm also insanely curious if Van is going to be hooking up his  3rd ring copper next turn or if he settled for it elsewhere.

Anyways T50 empire below. You can see I just finished a chop into Rome's granary shaving 5 turns off of it which gets it in before next growth and also allows me to produce a work boat after. Will check the island to make sure I'm not missing anything.


As stated it is great that Van and ruff are fighting and that even though Van got off to the fastest start this has been a distraction and he has settled all 3 of his cities not towards me!!!!
My other neighbor Cairo is the 2nd lowest in score and is still at 2 cities. I'm hoping he settles towards civac slowing him down.

Now map thoughts per SD request:
-Lets start with Mr Cairo. He got SCREWED on food towards me. All the food in between us is on my side of the river save a banana. The dry corn between him and Van he basically can't settle for due to Cumae's presence which I think will ensure I can settle the stone city. It also means he has incentive to settle towards Civac, which again is all for the good. Cairo likes to complain about maps (which who doesn't), but I think he has legit beef on this one.
-I think it is a donut and I think I have an idea on how players are laid out, but I want to do some confirmation before I express thoughts on that.
-I know SD said this is how the land was in the script, but man is this flat and green. It is actually super unfortunate my capital is probably my highest production city. I would rather capital be commerce focused and 2nd or 3rd city be production. The stone city is probably the actual best bet for Heroic epic. The obvious effect is that whipping is going to be main form of production, which because everyone can see (man do I  love no score mod), means attackers are disadvantaged even more. Luckily it looks like I'll just have enough cities to bury people in queue number superiority.
-

Final thought is obviously I've been handed a beautiful hand where one neighbor is incentivized by the land to expand away from me while the other is choosing to expand away from me and is at war with my other kind of neighbor. Lets be clear there is no way I should be able to settle any city NE of Neapolis and even if I don't get my preferred 'corn detassling' spot (labelled alt) I can still go with the original and possible even get the 'reach for corn' spot which clearly should have been Ruffs. I'll probably end up settling for the boring clam spot south of me due to Cairo, but I hopefully will come out of the land grab phase in a great position. I will then obviously blow it somehow

[Miguelito]

- probably a donut, yes, with players starting in a zig zag between inner and outer edge
- if we get alt corn detassling, how about delaying the border pop in Neapolis, settle NE of the horse, and get the cow (and crab) into culture from there?
- lots of food, few hills -> sounds like we should aim for a workshop heavy economy later on (maybe from Guilds on, so def after the Praet push)?
- I can see Neapolis as an HE city, with lots of food for workshop support, and the plains cows are also nice for that

[Mjmd]

2 posts. Going to do some more map analysis now that Mig has also come up with my same theory.

-My gut is that any city settled well before guilds it is ok to cottage. Anything conquered with no significant developed cottage presence should probably be work-shopped. I'll admit I'm very unsure about this. My instinct is to cottage everything in sight lol. 
-That being said Neapolis would make a good HE site. The problem of course is what do I do with it before then? It was obviously mainly planted for its food and as a bridge to other territory. I was going to slow grow cottages, but I could give the other plains cow to 'detassling' and just use it as a whipping post. The nice thing if I did build a monument / library there is I could get 1 more hill and grassland cow in. Yes 1 more hill is a big deal on this map

-My main problem with NE of horse is partly that it would have to pop borders to get stuff (if I haven't already gotten from Neapolis). Mind I already plan on delaying culture quite a bit because that grassland cow is literally the only improvement tile outside 1st ring I plan on settling for a while.
There is another reason I like the clam site especially if I go HG and here is where I'm thankful you're my ded lurker and assumingly read Plemo's PB51 report in German. 12 cities T86 hanging gardens HOW just HOW. I have a theory and you can tell me if I'm right. The obvious problem is how did he have worker support for that many cities. The answer of course is he didn't. The hint is that even when I scouted him ages later that a lot of his coastal cities didn't have roads to them..... My theory being that he settled a whole bunch of coastal cities preferable with 1st ring sea food resources and he 1 pop whipped out work boats in all of them and then built workers with the sea food hooked up. HG is a very tricky wonder. It is one of the very few you just don't want to pure race to as you need a descent chunk of cities to be worth the effort, but it is hard to support a lot of cities that early.

[Mjmd]

- probably a donut,  yes,  with players starting in a zig zag between inner and outer edge

Ok so this is what I thought, and while I think it probably sounded fine, there is an issue with angles. Anyone on the inner portion part of the ring is at a disadvantage. I was going to do a paint thing, but with 11 I was a little confused how he did the spacing as with 5 people on the inside there are 5 'gaps' that someone could go in between those on the outside. I assume there are two people bordering closely on the outside somewhere.
-Anyways angles. Lets say each person settles a city 4 tiles from their capital at a direct line towards the center. The amount of tiles that are then filler behind the outside player city is greater than the person on the inside.

Also, because of width cities that are settled forward make it hard for other cities possibly. See Cumae and the dry corn between Cairo and Vanrober. I could potentially settle that stone city 5 tiles from Cairo's capital because of how Cumae is placed, which is only 6 tiles away from me BUT it is in the 'gap' between them.