Went ahead with crafting, no early calendar. As I said, that's the game I want to play here. There's time to decide on the details now (2nd worker yes/no/when, settler size 4 or 5)...
I also looked at how well both capitals perform as settler pumps; from size 5 on the calendar variant is just 1 foodhammer better - and then it can't work the metals, which it can't split off to the 2nd city either, so there's that. The tricky thing will just be to get the non agri capital to the happy cap.
If during the 40s I see everbody running away in the demos I'll know to blame myself. Instead I hope we'll get a spider by then.
For what it's worth, I think you 100% made the right move settling where you did, and I'm 90% sure going for mining ASAP is correct as well. The land to your East has high production thanks to all those forested grassland hills, and will work well for pumping Settlers, military, and Workers. It's a dead zone commercially though until you can start placing cottages, and those aren't going to be exactly impressive for a good while either.
So that I'm useful for something other than providing general knowledge about the Modmod and vague, heavily caveated economic advice, I'd like to think that I'm pretty good at dotmapping, so feel free to send me a save file once you think you've scouted enough of your immediate area and I'll be happy to take a stab at it.
Not sure why, but the game shows me 2 turn numbers top right, I took the left one which is -1 the right one
T11 finish worker -> Scout, Worker SW 1 turn farm Priver (4 to go)
T12 finish Crafting -> Mining, Worker S build farm GWheatRiver
T16 Cap grows to 2, GWheatFarm finishes, work PWheatFarm and Oasis
T17 Worker N 1 turn into farm PRiver (3 to go)
T18 Worker N build farm FP
T19 Cap grows to 3 work +FP, Scout finishes -> Settler (you can move one unit in direction of the starting location to get some protection for our city there)
T23 Worker finishes FPFarm
T24 Worker S 1 turn into farm Priver (2 to go)
T25 Worker SE-E onto GHGems
T26 finish Mining -> Calendar, Worker Mine GHGems
T29 Worker finishes GHGemsMine, work FPFarm, GWheatFarm, GHGemsMine
T30 Worker N
T31 Worker mines DHGold
T33 finish Settler Start Scout, move NE - NE, stop worker DHGoldMine (3 to go), Worker N
T34 finish Calendar, revolt Agrarianism, Settler NE onto PH, Worker N-NE on tile S of Corn
Deviation time:
Now you can either go AH or Mysticism next. AH brings you another strong tile for our cap Mysticism brings you closer to God King to leverage the capital.
Exploration would let us grow taller by connecting Gems anbd Gold, but I believe the right call now is to go Worker/Settler pumping
I went the AH route here
T35 Settle city#2, Worker N build GCornFarm, build Warrior@#2
T35 trade connection established
T37 @Cap Scout finishes, build (insert good choice here, I took deruptus) 1 turn to wait for growth
T38 @Cap switch to Worker (Cow, FPFarm, GWheatFarm, Oasis, GHGemsMine)
T39 @#2 finish GCornFarm
T40 @#2 Worker SE-E, growth to 2 (GCornFarm, GRice)
T41 @#2 Worker E build GRiceFarm
T42 @#2 growth to 3 (GconrFarm, Grice, PHF), @Cap finish Worker#2, start Settler, Worker#2 N-NW
T43 finish AH, start Exploration (as we are going to have some workers soon) @Cap Worker#2 start Cattle Pasture @#2 finish Warrior build (insert good choice here, I took Granary) 1 turn to wait for growth,
T44 @#2 switch Granary to Worker
T45 @#2 Worker#1 finishes GRiceFarm
Decision time for #2, every mine brings 2 hammers, every farm 2 food. We can now start improving the 2 GHills or the 2 G, all adjacent to river. The GRiverFarms will be quicker by a turn, but I think the mines are better as we are already at the happy cap, so we can build something else quicker late
T46 @Cap Worker#2 finishes Pasture @#2 Worker#1 N
T47 @Cap Worker#2 SE-S, @#2 Worker#1 mines GHRiver
T48 @Cap Worker#2 SE @#2 Worker#3 finishes start Worker#4, Worker#3 SW start road (Here I realized that City#2 was not working the PHF, maybe I could have shaved a turn from the worker)
T49 @Cap Worker#2 starts road on DHGold @#2 Worker#3 finishes road
T50 @Cap Worker#3 SW start road @#2 Worker#2 finishes GHMineRiver
From here on out
Settler in 1, settler has a bigger choice of settling thanks to gold road finishing this turn
Worker#4 in 2 and Worker#5 in 3 (Cap, alternatively next Settler)
Ancient chants in 1
Gold connected in 3
Gems connected in 6
Here is a T50 Screenshot
Total we are at
1 Settler (+1 Settler 142/145) = 287
3 Worker (+1 Worker 31/50) = 181
2 Scout = 32 (+1 starting Scout)
1 Warrior = 16 (+1 starting Warrior)
Sum = 516 food hammers
plus change in buildings, which might decay
Granary (5/67)
Deruptus (4/160)
Techwise we are at
Calendar 154
AH 173
Exploration 77
Crafting 77
Mining 192
Ancients Chants 73/77
Sum = 746 (not counting Agriculture)
For what its worth, I also think it was good to move, as the Oasis and 1 additional 3 food 1 commerce tiles make a big difference when starting.
(February 1st, 2021, 22:45)Bobchillingworth Wrote: ...,and I'm 90% sure going for mining ASAP is correct as well. The land to your East has high production thanks to all those forested grassland hills, and will work well for pumping Settlers, military, and Workers. It's a dead zone commercially though until you can start placing cottages, and those aren't going to be exactly impressive for a good while either.
Hate me, but I've come to the conclusion that it was like 60% the wrong decision . We can still reverse course t5 (due), and I will. It's a bit worse, losing some yield because we revolt the turn that the wheat farm finishes, but the settler eta and everything else still works out.
Reasoning - we talk here over and over how it's a snowball game, and what gets that ball rolling is foodhammers. So if I wrote in the last post that the agri start already has >10%, that can't be ignored. That gap is going to widen, with the second city being so much more explosive. Our first settler comes pretty late either way, so we need to catch up. Workers are going to come flooding, to make up for the delay in mining. I would have loved to have AH by turn 40, but with the precious metal coming online that can also be achieved pretty fast (~7 turns at turn 41 rates). Splitting off the wheat to a third city in the south hurts a lot less when the cap has 2 additional 5 food tiles (instead of 4 on the FP/cow). If we need to produce scouts during the thirties, that can still be achieved on bare FPH if necessary, and after that we're mining them either way, so both variants end up with similar hammers. In the end what I think what tipped me over was my talk of going for a joint GK/agri revolt. If we need agri, how can I justify losing out on all those early foodhammers?
Kaiser, what we should end up with is pretty similar to yours, with the following differences:
cow likely still farmed on t50. 5/0/1 is not that much worse than 4/2/1, if at all.
mine FPH (forested plains hills) over unforested ones. Do it the elven way
I'd expect both gems and gold to be mined and roaded, to get the capital to size 7. Roads also are good for a third city in the south (faster settler movement and trade route)
4 workers, if not five
The grassland that is shared between cap and 2nd city gets farmed the turn the 2nd city is founded, giving it a fast start while the corn is being farmed.
A wiser man has said it before me (different context though): Granaries suck!
This is the plan on the sheet "agr no wor2 set sz 5" in the Google doc. Seems like it has a few more improvements going out. I suspect this is due to the early food boost resulting in earlier workers hammers. Turns of completion are 33 for the settler, 11, 36, 39, 42 for the workers. That is assuming we need no emergency military. Mind the map is quite spacey at 200 tiles per player, so an early conflict seems unlikely - although on Totestra half that land could well be an empty continent. We should know in time. The sandbox is set up without barbs fwiw, maybe I should start a variant with them as well just to get a feeling for how many will be incoming.
Btw if you guys want, I can ask Auror to forward the regular saves to you as well. That is, if you don't mind the spam
Great! We really can use this because CoSTs aRe BRuTaL!
I played out the spreadsheet plan in the sandbox, thankfully it all works like it should. Then followed through with a few variants until turn 50. Paying 7 gold per turn, at 2 cities on sizes 6/5 still
This is the variant I liked the best:
One of the workers is from the 2nd city. I initially had planned for one more from the cap, but that slows down the settler 2 turns and is not ultra necessary. With the road being built, we could found S of gems t51. Feels slow, but the first two cities are awesome. Also with those costs the enthusiasm on expansion may need some revision.
I'm saving gold here, which we can pretend is for an event fund, but in reality I just forgot to turn research on after a turn of saving. Saving makes a lot more sense with godking.
Researched techs are Calendar->Crafting->
Big question is AH vs mysticism after exploration.
On the one hand, I really want to capture animals
otoh GK might be crucial to pay for research with a growing empire, until cottages come online (which will be very much needed)
otoh the third city most likely will have a nonriver cow (the one at the cap is farmed and that's ok)
otoh is a single good tile really worth a whole tech at this point in the game?
otoh, maybe just straight to city states, as GK will not be sustainable long term (mind the early costs is much more number of cities than distance)?
otoh, GK also helps with Deruptus, which is huge with +30% commerce on that gold/gems.
otoh did I mention that I really want to capture myself some animals ?
Your capital is loaded with hammers and gold, so GK seems kind of obvious tbh.
Oh, I should mention, try to keep a stockpile of at least 50 gold around once you can afford it; there's an event which usually crops up at least once per game which gives you a Great Prophet for that much.
There's also another event which grants a Great Engineer for around 85 gold.
Beyond that, if you see an event your aren't familiar with which gives you multiple options, I recommend looking it up online before selecting one; some events can lead to pretty amazing outcomes via guaranteeing other events down the line, and it's often not obvious which choices will result in the best outcomes.
So the spreadsheet works out until T41, are we going to speed up the Settling spree? From your last in-game picture it looks like the E are backlines, so SW-S-SE claims land most likely. (Or at least supports further claims in that direction.
The Pig city will also want fishing, maybe we can settling it with the finish of AH and Fishing should come not much later either to connect 2nd and pig city and be prepared to take the backlines in the E.
All in all I feel we have to decently flexible cities for early game both with strong food and decent commerce potential (the cap might be actually good outside of someone having all grassland river tiles). So the next city should maybe be a bit more on the production site and optimally claim some land?
Is there a plains cow and a floodplains in the SW?
Do you expect the other players to be far away?
Is it beneficial to build Cottages on GFRiver to not loose the hammer due to Agrarianism?
![[Image: sSkyuK6.png]](https://i.imgur.com/sSkyuK6.png)
. We can still reverse course t5 (due), and I will. It's a bit worse, losing some yield because we revolt the turn that the wheat farm finishes, but the settler eta and everything else still works out. 
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