Miguelito gets tricked by magicians, but Bob isn't fooled. Kaiser rules from behind.

[Miguelito]

I had held off on updating waiting to finish scouting the south, and also expecting the turnpace to be a bit faster (we are at 1 per day, which feels slow when all there is to do is to move the scout. Anyways, we are at turn 9 and the south is scouted now, but first let me respond to your last comments:

Your capital is loaded with hammers and gold, so GK seems kind of obvious tbh. 

Yessir! Worth noting, in the screenshot I posted break-even is around 70% already, so the gold bonus from GK will come into play soon enough. The question is should we wait for apprenticeship (actually, in that case tech AC-Edu-Myst)... but I have strong doubts. We can take it together with foreign trade, and we should really find a way to do this in a GA (although I've taken note of your academy suggestion which makes a lot of sense as well).

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. 

That was what I meant with the even fund I was talking about in my last post. I seem to remember that some players (Dave) used to keep it as high as 130, but from your post I get that 90-100 would be fine, and ~60 still at least something?



The question is of course when we can "afford it". Right now Calendar finishes with 2 overflow and Mining with 6, and both are needed right away (which is why this event was great for us, because for Mining we're already burning some gold). Exploration finishes exactly at 77/77 beakers, but 1 turn before we actually need it. After that we could make a pause to fill the coffers, but we'd be losing out on GK income. So, after GK? Well that delays cottages and AH, but I guess at some point you have to make a cut?

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.

Do you have a reliable source for that info? I seem to remember that I saw an event list in some PBEM thread here years ago. Have the events changed from base FFH, or would that list also be valid if I found it somewhere?




Before answering Kaiser's post, let me give you a look at what the scout has found first:





City 2 is set, pretty much.



For city 3, I'm debating between A1 and B.

• A1 gets founded a turn earlier, is easier to defend while we still have only like 5 units (otoh B has the hill), needs less immediate worker help, will cost less, has the wine, and can work the gems/gold while the cap goes full foodhammers on settlers/workers/Deruptus
  
• B has lots of forest, claims more land, and in a strategic direction, gets the new gems (but it's jungled, so we'll need bronze working first), plains hill city tile,
  

I think A1 wins pretty clearly, but I want at least 2 options. B will be great, but at a later date with AH/BW and lots of workers. Could be city 4 or 5. We don't know yet what is to the west of course. Pigs are of course very good, but again, AH, and the case for going GK first is strong. A1 otoh can go for a while without the cow, between wheat, wine, and the commerce tiles.

If we decide for B, A2 makes some sense.

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 sim I posted had the third settler finishing T50. It can be achieved slightly faster by building less workers, but I think this is rather optimal, else we delay the gold/gems/FPH mine a lot (my initial attempt had another worker from the cap, but that seemed overkill). I'll try to mathc the spreadsheet with that plan during the next days.



I am also trying to be careful with settling sprees, as immortail costs have spooked me a bit. Sure we have gems+gold and should not go broke easily, but before education our other cities don't really have commerce. Of course, must not fall behind in cities either.

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.

Yes, 2 fishes now in the immediate north, more seafood in the south... we can't delay that forever, but I am leaning to settle the first few cities inland to reduce the research pressure at least on one front. Imo we have the following tech goals that around turn 50 we'll want asap:

• AC -> Mysticism for Godking
  
• AH for cows and capturing animals (btw the scout found the first elephant in the south)
  
• Edu for cottages
  
• Hunting for military
  
• BW for that gems, the resource, and the warrior bonus
  
• The mentioned event fund
  

So it is good to not have to worry about fishing on top of that, erstwhile. Therefore if we can settle B for fourth or a good inland pigs city I'd likely go for that over C

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?

Hm, that would be B, but as I said I have my doubts...

Is there a plains cow and a floodplains in the SW?

should be clear now from the pic above, but yes

Do you expect the other players to be far away?

So the map has 200 tiles per player, which is a lot. PB 46 I believe had only 150 and people were not bordering before guilds. It makes some sense for EitB, as the barb aspect of the game is a lot more relevant and fleshed out.

Otoh naufragar also revealed that he used the Totestra map script. That usually produces several continents. That could mean several things:

• He may have connected the continents manually. The suspected landbridge in the SE could be such a case
  
• We may be on different continents. I would not be happy about that, since with 5 players that would mean at least one duel island (or several lonely ones), but it's possible
  
• A good share of the land might be empty continents which can only be reached by boat or even galleons. That would mean that players start a lot closer.
  

Is it beneficial to build Cottages on GFRiver to not loose the hammer due to Agrarianism?

It is, in general, beneficial to build cottages, and in forest they are even more lovely (although it loses the river commerce ).
But we can't without education, so probably until something like turn 60+. Now an agri GF farm is nearly as good as a bare grassland farm (it does lose the coin though), just more expensive. And once we switch out of agri, which I am planning for rather early - as soon as it can be replaced with foreign trade, we will of course be glad to have them.

[Bobchillingworth]

I had thought there was a list of events posted to the "Strategy Articles" post in the EitB subforum here, but apparently not. You can find them all at Assets\XML\Events\CIV4EventInfos.xml, or on the wikia, which I suppose is probably safe now that it's part of the Fandom network.


In general, I think 100 gold is the most you'll need on hand to be able to take advantage of any of the worthwhile event options, with that figure specifically being used for a free Settler.

[Miguelito]

 

 

 

Somehow the save came back with Ancient Chants selected instead of Calendar, and 11 beakers sunk into it. Been playing fast turns while homeofficing, so that slipped by. Well, we want AC eventually, and looking at the spreadsheet I *think* it should not effect anything. Will have to readjust it tonight.

Upside we found a plains sheep in the SW for a third or fourth ring city.

[Kaiser]

Here are updated sandboxes for T3 like before and T41 (with a deviation in not finishing Exploration by being 5 beakers short, probably because I did not add the gold (but had to add a pop as my sandbox had a different event loosing us one pop in the cap)

I think we are aligned that the Pig and NE are to be settled later due to the demand of Fishing and AH as well as them likely being relatively safe backline locations (granted the pig could actually be contested and the NE could hide a very narrow landbridge to a potential neighbor as well).
I do not find the Totestra map script in my world generation options, so I cannot test it to see what type of worlds it creates. What is its difference to a continents map script?

With 200 tiles per player, that would mean roughly 14-15 tile squares and thus distances to the next neighbor. Obviously the land is not shaped in squares and the capital locations are not centered in their respective land area, but we probably should assume 14 tiles as a worst case scenario for the next neighbor and them being on a different continent (or 20+ tiles) as a best case scenario.
In any case, we very likely moved straight 3 tiles into the direction of our next neighbour, if there is one on our landmass. So something like 11 - 17+ tiles?
In that case, the river encircled forest tile we can barely view might already be a contested region, I am not sure how likely it is to assume that the gems were placed by hand in a contested region (something I have read about in BTS games)

The fleshed out barbs will stop any neighbors from claiming land to quickly as well, so if we think B might be to dangerous because of barbs, then we should delay it and settle it later. Remember I am CIV4 noob, how do you approach city overlap here as A1 and B would have quite a lot (not even talking about the overlap betwen the Capital and A1)? Is it similarily beneficial than in BTS or are there reasons to try to share only key resources and spread out a bit more?

I actually like your argument about using A1 to work the commerce, while the capital pumps Settlers and Workers. If my understanding is correct, our two main challenges are:
- handling barbs
- cost increase by growth

While the first can be answered with units and maybe your animal strategy, the later requires technological development and infrastructure. Do you think cottages will be enough to make cities profitable and counter the curve?
Are there other techs we need to be able to settle more?
Should we aim for a limited amount of cities or aim to get as many cities as possible and get them to become net income contributors?
Are coastel cities more likely to become net income contributors?

Wow, a lot of text, feel free to tell me it is too much hassle to answer everything.

I have other questions about city spot evaluation, but that can wait for some later. Naturally I am very open to learn and discuss A and B very detailed as this might help the decision and will help me getting better at it.

TL;DR
A1 over B seems fine to me, especially considering that it might mean we can get Settler#4 out quicker to settle B.
I believe B is the right strategical direction to push to next as it is a good production city and a stepping stone to the W and SW areas, which currently look most likely directions to find neighbors.

[Kaiser]

Should be fine, if memory serves the plan delays revolting into Agri until the first farm finishes. That being said, which turn is it now and when did you start Calendar?

[Miguelito]

We got 3 turns in today, on a Monday, which is 1/5th of this game which started over a week ago.

And stuff has been happening, so a report is due:

Let's start with the good news:


My first reaction was welp, there goes the chance for the free settler (events can't repeat, right?). But I don't think we'd have had 100 gold before turn 70 or so, and the +1 pop in the capital is actually pretty huge at this point. We can get the settler out three turns earlier, at the cost of leaving the second scout at 6/16 hammers. Which I think is not that bad. We can finish her within a turn whenever needed, and we have very good sight around now:


Also, this is why you should not obsess with  a turn 50 sandbox in this mod  .
Sharp eyes will have noticed the bear that our scout spotted; we had 67% odds attacking, but we are planning on so little military before t50 that that did not seem worth taking.

The demos were starting to look terrible. Between our settler move, slow elven worker, 2 of the other guys being Ind and 1 turn walk to the wheat we are so much behind that others were already done famring their food while we were still 4 or 5 turns from completing the farm. With the free pop that looks better of course, so have the ones from the current turn (I have not logged when exactly everybody grew, and don't think it's worthwhile. The crafting starters all have got a tech by now, go figure.






Now the not so good news:


I took it. We want XP, and should exploit the attack bonus. It's the weakest animal, without a defense bonus.

Won. Of course. Just...


 
If I'm using the spreadsheet right, we're getting 56% odds.
(Also, can somebody explain why I'm not getting a combat log? In PB it used to work, but I noticed before that in SP it wasn't there)

Bob, you said you wanted to dotmap, so here's your canvas:


I deleted most signs so as not to influence you . Also attaching a save if you prefer that. Kaiser, you are invited as well of course.
Also, yum that west! I'm fantasizing with cottaging all over it while sending our water adepts and priests of leaves... we'll see if we're allowed to play that game here. Also good for us to have moved the settler in that direction.

Here are updated sandboxes for T3 like before and T41 (with a deviation in not finishing Exploration by being 5 beakers short, probably because I did not add the gold (but had to add a pop as my sandbox had a different event loosing us one pop in the cap)

If it serves as consolation, I also simmed a lot and it's now invalid

I think we are aligned that the Pig and NE are to be settled later due to the demand of Fishing and AH as well as them likely being relatively safe backline locations (granted the pig could actually be contested and the NE could hide a very narrow landbridge to a potential neighbor as well).
I do not find the Totestra map script in my world generation options, so I cannot test it to see what type of worlds it creates. What is its difference to a continents map script?

I think you get Totestra from civfanatics, but I'm attaching it here for you. Iirc it is meant to make more realistic continents, and also the maps are pretty big in general (mind this 2400 tile one is what you get when you set it to "tiny"). Maybe I should roll a few some time to get a better impression. I used it for the sandbox; my impression was of a rahter high number of continents lost in an immense bunch of water. But I'll assume that naufragar used settings that would provide something a bit more interesting.

Pig is a even better now if it can catch the cotton as well, also that's a bit far out, and doesn't share the cow..

With 200 tiles per player, that would mean roughly 14-15 tile squares and thus distances to the next neighbor. Obviously the land is not shaped in squares and the capital locations are not centered in their respective land area, but we probably should assume 14 tiles as a worst case scenario for the next neighbor and them being on a different continent (or 20+ tiles) as a best case scenario.
In any case, we very likely moved straight 3 tiles into the direction of our next neighbour, if there is one on our landmass. So something like 11 - 17+ tiles?
In that case, the river encircled forest tile we can barely view might already be a contested region, I am not sure how likely it is to assume that the gems were placed by hand in a contested region (something I have read about in BTS games)

I'm not sure no contact is our best case. Of course we don't want to get bogged down early, but our strengths are not necessarily late game either. Remember Bob's death by airship.
Anyways, no contact yet on t15, and no foreign culture in sight makes it pretty clear that they're far away. There will be animals . The gems and floodplains valley may be an intended contested region, in which case our settler move is golden.

The fleshed out barbs will stop any neighbors from claiming land to quickly as well, so if we think B might be to dangerous because of barbs, then we should delay it and settle it later. Remember I am CIV4 noob, how do you approach city overlap here as A1 and B would have quite a lot (not even talking about the overlap betwen the Capital and A1)? Is it similarily beneficial than in BTS or are there reasons to try to share only key resources and spread out a bit more?

I'd argue that with slow workers, who also spend extra turns improving on forest we benefit a bit more from overlap than usual. With Cre I guess many would argue that you should aim for less overlap, but I want the wheat shared, and then A1 and B seem like the logical choices to me.

I actually like your argument about using A1 to work the commerce, while the capital pumps Settlers and Workers. If my understanding is correct, our two main challenges are:
- handling barbs
- cost increase by growth
While the first can be answered with units and maybe your animal strategy, the later requires technological development and infrastructure. Do you think cottages will be enough to make cities profitable and counter the curve?

You may add keeping up with workers as a challenge, if that isn't obvious. We actually have sort of the best barb traits (well after the Barbarian trait ). I expect Cre to help a lot, spotting them early when they approach, and giving cities quick defense boni.

Are there other techs we need to be able to settle more?

I'd appreciate Bob's feedback here, but:

• Short term economic techs I see as necessary, roughly in order - Calendar, Crafting, Mining, AC->Myst (GK), AH, Education, Fishing, Festivals*, Bronze working
  * I think markets are better than ECs, because you can dump negative beakers into useless techs. Would you still build ECs though, in cities that don't need the scientist spot?
  
• After Education I'd consider the first military techs (well BW also counts right) - hunting, way of the forests, HBR
  
• Mid term economic techs - trade, sanitation?, CoL if costs are bad?, cartography when we have so many cities that the GK capital becomes a net loss
  
• Mid term military - hidden paths, philosophy->priesthood (also economy for bloom), knowledge of the ether -> alteration (+ elementalism mostly for economy), animal handling (mabye earlier), feral bond, poisons, sailing at some point not too late
  

Should we aim for a limited amount of cities or aim to get as many cities as possible and get them to become net income contributors?
Are coastel cities more likely to become net income contributors?

I'd argue there is just not really anything besides cottages? Well there's Deruptus, I've mentioned markets, which can help (or are they too expensive as non-Fin?), and Bob brought up the academy. But yeah I see our future in heavily cottaged forested land. I expect that this should keep up with costs, even if we go at a rather high speed. I don't see how coastal cities would help a lot. EitB has the 2 TR great lighthouse that we banned from BTS, but we don't have much of a chance at it with our early expansion focused inland and mackoti having the free wonder machine.

Wow, a lot of text

Well you got some in return . And it is appreciated, talking about strategy, apart from the direct input, makes me seocnd guess myself and get to new ideas.

[Kaiser]

Thanks for the files and the update, I will have a look tomorrow at the save.

No worries about the invalidated files, I was enjoying to play around with the worldbuilder and went ahead to create something useful (or not )

This is looking very interesting and I am wondering how Bob will dotmap this. I was thinking about NW of the Cow to leave a spot NE or E of the cotton sharing the pig as that looks decently defensible and the cottage city would be decent in commerce while the cow looks good in production.

If I understand the game mechanic for fighting correctly here, then your scout will defend with a strength of 1.7 with +20% strength +50% vs animals and +50% river crossing, right? That sounds like the lion would attack 2 into 4, so more a 66% chance to win?
Capturing animals comes with AH, right?

I never even considered a religion a military tech, but your right that it unlocks units for us which we likely will want to use offensively.
If working coast is unattractive, the fillers in the E are even less important and that floodplain valley looks like a hugely important area to claim and defend. Do you already have any first contact protocol for certain players?
It sounds like we should consider taking advantage early, so some more aggressive scouting would be beneficial. Maybe we should not delay the scout to much aftert the Settler.

I am confused Bob, would you recommend using the wiki or should I stick with the in-game information?

[Miguelito]

If I understand the game mechanic for fighting correctly here, then your scout will defend with a strength of 1.7 with +20% strength +50% vs animals and +50% river crossing, right? That sounds like the lion would attack 2 into 4, so more a 66% chance to win?

River crossing is just 25%* (50% is for amphibious attacks off boats), AND it's more complicated because the scout fights with str 2, but with 85/100 HP, so the lion only needs five hits instead of the usual six. The detailed rules of the civ4 combat system remain arcane to me as well, but going into combat with a wounded unit can rapidly decrease your odds.

* or so I thought, but in EitB it's 40%, actually so we have 60% odds. News appreciated, but still scary.

[Bobchillingworth]

Bob, you said you wanted to dotmap, so here's your canvas

See attached for my attempt (I wanted to upload a picture, but I couldn't get a decent resolution zooming out).

I tried to adhere to the following rules:

* Waste no workable land tiles

* Don't settle on flatland desert tiles (the tile defense malus will make defending the city a liability)

* Don't unnecessarily waste forests


I also marked the order I'd settle the first 7 cities, since having 8 cities by T100 should be your minimal goal.

City spots with fogged tiles are obv. just based on the best information on hand.



Short term economic techs I see as necessary, roughly in order - Calendar, Crafting, Mining, AC->Myst (GK), AH, Education, Fishing, Festivals*, Bronze working

I agree up through Education; after that, Fishing can probably be delayed depending on the order of settling (not worth it IMO if your only seafood after Edu is the Fish near the starting tile), Festivals is probably okay (especially since a market in the capital benefits from GK), but then despite your having a fair amount of jungle, and copper Warriors being important for defense, I'd be tempted to head straight to Hunting -> WotF. Having to rely on copperless Warriors and somewhat pricey Hunters and Fawns for a largely mobile defense isn't ideal, but will likely be sufficient in the relatively short term, and getting those ancient forests online will be very important.

Not 100% sure on this, though. Depends in part who and where your neighbors are, and if you're desperate for the happiness from some of those jungled resources.

Edit: also, Exploration for roads- I might slot this as late as after Myst. Remember, don't go crazy building them, Dave can always adopt Raiders later!



* I think markets are better than ECs, because you can dump negative beakers into useless techs. Would you still build ECs though, in cities that don't need the scientist spot

If I didn't have anything better to build, and/or was cratering my economy via expansion and needed the beakers to limp to City States. Also you'll likely want them in the mid / late game when your cities are able to grow to very large sizes and it's worth opening a Sage slot in them.



After Education I'd consider the first military techs (well BW also counts right) - hunting, way of the forests, HBR

Agreed on HBR after BW, Hunting, and WotF.




Mid term economic techs - trade, sanitation?, CoL if costs are bad?, cartography when we have so many cities that the GK capital becomes a net loss
Mid term military - hidden paths, philosophy->priesthood (also economy for bloom), knowledge of the ether -> alteration (+ elementalism mostly for economy), animal handling (mabye earlier), feral bond, poisons, sailing at some point not too late

You'll probably need Cartography before the other techs in this phase of development. I'd put Sanitation before Trade, and note that if you score the free Great Artist at Drama, then he can bulb Sanitation so long as you've researched BW. Worth considering.

Military plan sounds exactly right, though any crazy revelations involving islands might bump Sailing out of the military category and into economic.



I am confused Bob, would you recommend using the wiki or should I stick with the in-game information?

I would stick with in-game, but I also haven't used the Wiki since it had a malware issue several years ago, so it may be safe now. The wiki presumably doesn't cover EitB changes either, so not sure it's really any more use than what you can find on this forum and in the Civilopedia.

[Kaiser]

Interesting, so basically you would settle the NW first before heading SW for B and the floodplain valley?
What is the reasoning behind?

It looks like you are in favor of A2 over A1, is this to avoid overlap or are there other considerations worth taking into account?
What is your general opinion on overlap for Volanna?

I was wondering how far the next players are away from that FP valley because we might be able to get more of it.
How does you next scouting plans look like Miguelito?