[90 Spoilers] Saxony's splendour and Miguelusten's glory

[Mjmd]

One of my major mistakes when having too much time to micro is not building in the copper improvement turns and then I have to redo all my micro anyways.

[Amicalola]

One of my major mistakes when having too much time to micro is not building in the copper improvement turns and then I have to redo all my micro anyways.

That was one of the reasons I got fed up with simming.

[Miguelito]

One of my major mistakes when having too much time to micro is not building in the copper improvement turns and then I have to redo all my micro anyways.

What a very mean thing for you to say, when I'm basking in the glory of my opening !
I also think it likely doesn't apply here, as I probably will not build the copper mine within the scope of this sim, prioritizing the farm instead. So it is just a possible extra hammer that may pop up.
I have to look up though when to expect barbarian axes and spears. In PB59 a spear pestered us badly around t58 and following. I have read up on one CFPB89 thread where they kept getting warriors until much later, but I want to check two more threads yet. One relevant factor I believe is that with assumedly everzbody on islands, existing barb warriors and animals will not be culled, so it's less likely for them to be replaced with metal units. Does that make sense? Also need to look up when they start entering borders, was it at an average of 3 cities/player, unless they can attack/pillage?

I tried an alternative where the cap grows to 3 before the first settler. The idea was that we had established that city 2 would only be really useful with granaries in, so it can be delayed a bit.




upsides:

• The granaried capital has a fuller foodbox (and the granary gets filled perfectly to exactly 13f)
  
• there's a road on the fur for happiness - although that should also work with the original plan, if city 2 gets delayed by a turn. I'll try that yet.
  
• instead of the grassland we could actuall road the riverside plainsforest, for another riverside cottage soon
  

downside: 

• city 2 has like 20 less hammers in the terrace, that's a lot.
  

[Charriu]

Reserved for useful links that I always have to double-check

Great People Tech Preferences
Soldies Points of Units/Techs + other demo stuff
When do Barbs Enter Our Borders
When do Barbs Appear

Barb spawning mechanics (stolen from SevenSpirits):

Barbs are spawned for each landmass individually. The game will spawn barbs up to a max of one barb per 50 (on prince) unowned tiles on the landmass. This is why islands (smaller than 50 tiles) won't get barbs.

At other difficulties, unowned land tiles per barb unit:

Noble: 60
Prince: 50
Monarch: 40
Emperor: 35
Immortal: 30
Deity: 25

Also: how many barbs spawn per turn on a landmass? It's one, plus one more for every four missing units. So if a landmass supports 20 barbs, and there are currently 4 on it, then there are 16 missing, so 1+4=5 will be created.

[Amicalola]

I am curious about preferring to cottage the riverside plains over the non-river grassland. My instinct would be that the +1 food is more valuable than the +1 hammer/commerce, even with FIN. Particularly when it is a shared tile vs. only the second city. Do you disagree with the instinct, or is there something specific about this start that changes your assessment (like saved worker turns)? Or are you just not working the plains cottage?

Edit: Nevermind, I can tell from context you aren't working it. Move along, nothing to see here.

[Miguelito]

Your question is valid. In the shot the cities are freshly whipped down (and I have to assess yet whether this much is really justifiable for an asap city 3). But both cottages have been worked (one is, in fact, a hamlet already) and are essential to get BW and Sailing at this date.
The grassland is freshly chopped, and the cottages are built before BW, so this isn't an option, but we have to decide whether we want the road and chop on that tile, or rather on the remaining forested riverside plains, which will likely decide which of these tiles will get cottaged first (we probably build a copper mine somewhere first though).
Mind that we are playing unnerfed Fin, so it's 1/1/3 vs 2/0/1, (1/1/4 vs 2/0/3 after ten turns, but that's a long time) and also commerce is really important on deity if we still want to expand fast (and of course we want to, always).
Would you still prefer the grassland? You are correct that food is scarce.

[Amicalola]

Your question is valid. In the shot the cities are freshly whipped down (and I have to assess yet whether this much is really justifiable for an asap city 3). But both cottages have been worked (one is,  in fact,  a hamlet already) and are essential to get BW and Sailing at this date.
The grassland is freshly chopped, and the cottages are built before BW, so this isn't an option, but we have to decide whether we want the road and chop on that tile,  or rather on the remaining forested riverside plains,  which will likely decide which of these tiles will get cottaged first (we probably build a copper mine somewhere first though).
Mind that we are playing unnerfed Fin, so it's 1/1/3 vs 2/0/1, (1/1/4 vs 2/0/3 after ten turns,  but that's a long time) and also commerce is really important on deity if we still want to expand fast (and of course we want to, always).
Would you still prefer the grassland? You are correct that food is scarce.

I think the other thing I hadn't really considered was the need to get to Sailing as quickly as possible. In that context the riverside cottages probably beat out the grassland one for me too, yeah. In the post-Sailing world I might prefer a grassland unrivered, all things being equal, but it depends a little on the total food of the city working it (how many turns it speeds up growths, essentially).

[Miguelito]

I think the other thing I hadn't really considered was the need to get to Sailing as quickly as possible. In that context the riverside cottages probably beat out the grassland one for me too, yeah. In the post-Sailing world I might prefer a grassland unrivered, all things being equal, but it depends a little on the total food of the city working it (how many turns it speeds up growths, essentially).

I think you have not completely understood me yet,  but you've convinced me anyways.  Ftr, it's straight up impossible to build a grassland cottage before Sailing because the grasslands are all forested, hence why the 2 riverside plains cottages are without alternative.
But you are right that afterwards an off river grassland cottage is better, especially given our early granaries.  What with 1f>2h etc. And after Sailing hammers will be needed more than anything,  in order to get a firm foothold on both landmasses. And we certainly are in no peril of happycap issues due to whipping with all those drylands. Anyways,  before any cottage comes a copper mine (assuming we have some).

Pointless PBspy observations:

• Last turn we were tied for first place in score with TR, having researched two first column techs. this turn more people grew.
  
• Just 7 players grew together with us. 7 more did the turn after; of those only 2 had not founded on t0. I have trouble explaining that - if everybody had a 3f->5f combination we should all have grown together; if not you'd  expect more disparity actually because the workers should come 3 turns later. Maybe some had to move two tiles for a farm ? vanguard with Shaka (!) grew on t8. Confirms my placing of him in the esoteric tier. kreutzberg and Xist10 (Hammer and Rammer) are still on size 1.
  
• Apparently the Exp players (Pacal, Peter) could not realize their worker bonus . Maybe that's the reason for vanguard to grow early,  but I can hardly imagine it's worth it.
  
  

[Rusten]

I'm a little swamped, sorry. I'll have a lot of time from next Monday. Will read through everything and get up to date then.

[Miguelito]

I'm a little swamped, sorry. I'll have a lot of time from next Monday. Will read through everything and get up to date then.

Looking forward to it. I don't know how loosely you have been following, did you getthe part where I threw all previous plans out of the window at the eleventh hour in order to go Pottery first?

On that note, I think I have never changed plans and redone a start plan so often like with this one. I suppose that's a compliment to the mapmaker? The game was intended as a casual side gig to PB59, but here we are...

Anyways, I came up with a new plan again, and now I think I'm satisfied, and there is maximum a hammer and coin or two left to be obtained by further optimization:


So instead of building the galley in the cap on whip overflow from the settler, we instead generate overflow from a workboat, and settle the southern fish. The downside of course is that the distance to the cap is 7 instead of 5, which is 0.42 coins more expensive at size 1 and 0.8 at size 8, so that's not nothing. But we want to settle both fishes soon, so it will cancel out. The upsides though:

• Because the settler does not need to generate overflow and he can come 1 turn later, there is more time in the cap to prepare things. Specifically we can remain on size 2 until the terrace is finished, and make the fullest use of it.
  
• In turn that allows city 2 to grow to size 3 (then whip WB), so it doesn't end up miserable at size 1 with no food in the box, like in the previous sims. It has only 37 hammers in the terrace, which it will have to finish with a chop or maybe with a copper mine.
  

When trying to whip the settler into the galley before, the cap always had to grow asap and put a lot of food into the settler. Meaning that we built an early terrace but didn't use it actually, just filling it finally when growing 3->4, the effects ofwhich would only become useful after the whip.
Mostly I'm happy that city 2 doesn't end up a stub. So that's the plan that I would follow if there are no objections.