[SPOILERS] swance bitten, twice shy

[ljubljana]

I think the cow city is only bad medium-term.... short-term it can work 2 cow, 2 grass river cottages, and a plains river cottage, which is pretty serviceable for the "all cities are happy-capped at 4-5 pop" era IMO. and long-term we want to productively use as many tiles in our sphere of influence as we can, and actually I think splitting the cow and wheat off to separate cities does that better than stacking them.... it seems (to me anyways) better to farm over the river valley, swap to serfdom, and grow onto windmills then have one strong city full of cottages and let an entire line of 4 plains hills (2 riverside) and one riverside plains permanently go to waste. That said, I definitely would pick 3W of the capital (or maybe 1S of that on the ivory, which gets a 2 hammer city center tile) if the river was connected..... but that one road we need comes at a really awkward time since we won't have the tech for it for quite a while after the city is founded, especially without +4 TR commerce that the cow plan has us using to bootstrap Wheel research..... IDK, i'm uncommitted, let's see what's over there first i guess

Turn 12 - Oligarchical Governing Council of the United Federation of New Zululand



Guiltily I confess that today's scout move is partly the product of bad fog-gazing.... I thought those plains tiles were grass and wanted to widen the circle to check for possible food bonuses that could inspire a city on the eastern side of this lake. Next turn I'll do SE-SW onto what my fog-gazing no doubt much more accurately suggests is a hill, then turn back west - that should be just wide enough to capture any possible city that would range at least one of the gold tiles. Of note is that the scout's current position is 10t from the capital, so if there is a neighbor directly south of us we should be making contact soon. And I agree that we may as well make contact now since we can't really rush through those hills.... if we are NOT rushing a neighbor, we'd probably prefer them to know they're here so that our early BW the prospect of AGG impis can possibly influence them toward not forward-settling us



i'm getting Tokugawa's theme music instead of the zulu when i zoom in close like this..... interesting that just importing a foreign leader can induce an entire culture to adopt the shamisen as their national instrument.... of course, Tokugawa is a good candidate for #1 on the list of "civ4 leaders least likely to accept the crown of a different country in real life" so maybe this was just one of his conditions for joining us here

[aetryn]

I think the cow city is only bad medium-term.... short-term it can work 2 cow, 2 grass river cottages, and a plains river cottage, which is pretty serviceable for the "all cities are happy-capped at 4-5 pop" era IMO. and long-term we want to productively use as many tiles in our sphere of influence as we can, and actually I think splitting the cow and wheat off to separate cities does that better than stacking them.... it seems (to me anyways) better to farm over the river valley, swap to serfdom, and grow onto windmills then have one strong city full of cottages and let an entire line of 4 plains hills (2 riverside) and one riverside plains permanently go to waste. That said, I definitely would pick 3W of the capital (or maybe 1S of that on the ivory, which gets a 2 hammer city center tile) if the river was connected..... but that one road we need comes at a really awkward time since we won't have the tech for it for quite a while after the city is founded, especially without +4 TR commerce that the cow plan has us using to bootstrap Wheel research..... IDK, i'm uncommitted, let's see what's over there first i guess

Turn 12 - Oligarchical Governing Council of the United Federation of New Zululand



Guiltily I confess that today's scout move is partly the product of bad fog-gazing.... I thought those plains tiles were grass and wanted to widen the circle to check for possible food bonuses that could inspire a city on the eastern side of this lake. Next turn I'll do SE-SW onto what my fog-gazing no doubt much more accurately suggests is a hill, then turn back west - that should be just wide enough to capture any possible city that would range at least one of the gold tiles. Of note is that the scout's current position is 10t from the capital, so if there is a neighbor directly south of us we should be making contact soon. And I agree that we may as well make contact now since we can't really rush through those hills.... if we are NOT rushing a neighbor, we'd probably prefer them to know they're here so that our early BW the prospect of AGG impis can possibly influence them toward not forward-settling us



i'm getting Tokugawa's theme music instead of the zulu when i zoom in close like this..... interesting that just importing a foreign leader can induce an entire culture to adopt the shamisen as their national instrument.... of course, Tokugawa is a good candidate for #1 on the list of "civ4 leaders least likely to accept the crown of a different country in real life" so maybe this was just one of his conditions for joining us here

Long term the capital really wants that cow back and definitely needs to keep the wheat. We want the capital to grow to size 14+ once we have the happy for that, and it's going to need food to sustain all that pop and keep growing. Building farms over cottages is usually something you want to avoid if possible. We're very likely to get the happiness resources - we're already looking at size 8 with Ivory and Gold connected (and Markets and Forges built) - even if we have to trade a spare ivory for something. The capital's your most likely location for your one-use commerce doublers (Oxford and/or Wall Street) so it's far better to have the tiles used by it than by a satellite city. Cities that share food with the capital are useful now as a bootstrap but their longterm fate is likely a backwater working a few tiles that no other city can reach. Ideally you want to specialize cities, so commerce cities should absolutely be concentrated as much as possible. It's fine to have a city there to make use of those hills, but it's in fact much better to have one strong city full of cottages and the other just be whatever after the initial phase of the game. If the second city doesn't have enough food to whip regularly, that's okay, because it won't need as much infrastructure compared to the capital.  I'd probably make it a slow military trickle city that pretty much just builds units after essential stuff is done.

[ljubljana]

You can't count the grass cow because you are stealing it from the capital where it will be put to a much better use with a granary and whipped into settlers and units. This leaves you with a 3-3 plains cow and nothing else in the first ring. Cottages are fine but still require food investment at full rate because it's not worth getting a granary there, and can be matched by any alternative city. AH could wait for after the wheel if the extra commerce is more important. But there are advantages and disadvantages to every course and it's about what feels best to you.

I'm getting more drawn in than I'd like so I'll go and spoil myself on the other threads to avoid further temptation. Good luck with the rest of the game, I'll still be rooting for you

ok, sounds good! thank you for your advice up to this point - i hope enforced genlurking is enough to successfully reduce your investment to a manageable level

Long term the capital really wants that cow back and definitely needs to keep the wheat. We want the capital to grow to size 14+ once we have the happy for that, and it's going to need food to sustain all that pop and keep growing. Building farms over cottages is usually something you want to avoid if possible. We're very likely to get the happiness resources - we're already looking at size 8 with Ivory and Gold connected (and Markets and Forges built) - even if we have to trade a spare ivory for something. The capital's your most likely location for your one-use commerce doublers (Oxford and/or Wall Street) so it's far better to have the tiles used by it than by a satellite city. Cities that share food with the capital are useful now as a bootstrap but their longterm fate is likely a backwater working a few tiles that no other city can reach. Ideally you want to specialize cities, so commerce cities should absolutely be concentrated as much as possible. It's fine to have a city there to make use of those hills, but it's in fact much better to have one strong city full of cottages and the other just be whatever after the initial phase of the game. If the second city doesn't have enough food to whip regularly, that's okay, because it won't need as much infrastructure compared to the capital.  I'd probably make it a slow military trickle city that pretty much just builds units after essential stuff is done.

righttt. i'm more thinking of what we should do with the river valley area outside the capital's borders. farms + plains cow + a bunch of windmills is not a great (or even good, really) city, but it's still a net positive and i assume will be better than if the city works cow + cottages, doesn't steal tiles from the capital, and is capped at size 5 for lack of food....

[aetryn]

You can't count the grass cow because you are stealing it from the capital where it will be put to a much better use with a granary and whipped into settlers and units. This leaves you with a 3-3 plains cow and nothing else in the first ring. Cottages are fine but still require food investment at full rate because it's not worth getting a granary there, and can be matched by any alternative city. AH could wait for after the wheel if the extra commerce is more important. But there are advantages and disadvantages to every course and it's about what feels best to you.

I'm getting more drawn in than I'd like so I'll go and spoil myself on the other threads to avoid further temptation. Good luck with the rest of the game, I'll still be rooting for you

ok, sounds good! thank you for your advice up to this point - i hope enforced genlurking is enough to successfully reduce your investment to a manageable level

Long term the capital really wants that cow back and definitely needs to keep the wheat. We want the capital to grow to size 14+ once we have the happy for that, and it's going to need food to sustain all that pop and keep growing. Building farms over cottages is usually something you want to avoid if possible. We're very likely to get the happiness resources - we're already looking at size 8 with Ivory and Gold connected (and Markets and Forges built) - even if we have to trade a spare ivory for something. The capital's your most likely location for your one-use commerce doublers (Oxford and/or Wall Street) so it's far better to have the tiles used by it than by a satellite city. Cities that share food with the capital are useful now as a bootstrap but their longterm fate is likely a backwater working a few tiles that no other city can reach. Ideally you want to specialize cities, so commerce cities should absolutely be concentrated as much as possible. It's fine to have a city there to make use of those hills, but it's in fact much better to have one strong city full of cottages and the other just be whatever after the initial phase of the game. If the second city doesn't have enough food to whip regularly, that's okay, because it won't need as much infrastructure compared to the capital.  I'd probably make it a slow military trickle city that pretty much just builds units after essential stuff is done.

righttt. i'm more thinking of what we should do with the river valley area outside the capital's borders. farms + plains cow + a bunch of windmills is not a great (or even good, really) city, but it's still a net positive and i assume will be better than if the city works cow + cottages, doesn't steal tiles from the capital, and is capped at size 5 for lack of food....

Yeah, outside the capital's lands in the eastern city you farm as much as you need to maintain around a +4 food surplus in the city. I'm just saying you don't steal the capital's cow and/or farm capital riverside to support a second city that's always going to be pretty weak. And you probably accept that long term this city isn't whipping much because you don't want to build so many farms it will have a strong food output. It's less weak in a vacuum if it goes between the two foods and builds a quick monument to pop borders (since then it only needs to borrow the cow for ~30 turns or so) But that couldn't be the second city settled since you won't have Mysticism any time soon, and also could affect settling the NE river land, and that's probably more important to have strong food because the land is much better over there. So I'd try to scout THAT area if you can (probably impossible given current scout positions and need to scout western river) before finalizing a dotmap.

[ljubljana]

turn what turn is this again



i stood staring at this oasis for a loooong time debating between stepping onto it and SW onto the hill. it hit me that the lake to the east of the scout could be the outlet of a floodplain region symmetric to that in the west, which if so would tell us a lot about how the map is constructed - eg, very likely an opponent due south of us, can use symmetry in the future to deduce likely border regions and capital positions, most likely we are closer to one FP region and them to the other and should plan accordingly, etc. but after revealing that forest and especially those peaks it's now looking a little unlikely.... if there is such a region and its river goes due south, the peaks would obviate most of the settlement spots..... i suppose there could be a symmetric region that goes EAST though...?

not sure how long it's worth diverting from the gold to investigate that. i could just go SW-SW onto the desert hill and ignore it next turn, or poke around a little more - lmk what you think

[aetryn]

turn what turn is this again



i stood staring at this oasis for a loooong time debating between stepping onto it and SW onto the hill. it hit me that the lake to the east of the scout could be the outlet of a floodplain region symmetric to that in the west, which if so would tell us a lot about how the map is constructed - eg, very likely an opponent due south of us, can use symmetry in the future to deduce likely border regions and capital positions, most likely we are closer to one FP region and them to the other and should plan accordingly, etc. but after revealing that forest and especially those peaks it's now looking a little unlikely.... if there is such a region and its river goes due south, the peaks would obviate most of the settlement spots..... i suppose there could be a symmetric region that goes EAST though...?

not sure how long it's worth diverting from the gold to investigate that. i could just go SW-SW onto the desert hill and ignore it next turn, or poke around a little more - lmk what you think

I'd go SW-SW. More important to know what's around the gold than to make map-mirroring guesses. If it is mirrored it will be come apparent in time to do something about it.

[ljubljana]

Turn 15 - Zululand



more floodplains in the south instead of what i expected, superdeath of rome

not sure what this means...? i'd expect very fertile land to be equidistant between us and the nearest rivals, but these southern floodplains are surely too far away for that....

[aetryn]

Turn 15 - Zululand



more floodplains in the south instead of what i expected, superdeath of rome

not sure what this means...? i'd expect very fertile land to be equidistant between us and the nearest rivals, but these southern floodplains are surely too far away for that....

Maybe we have rivals closer east, west, or probably both, and further away to the south? Unlikely we have anyone north at all given latitude information we have now, unless they are right smack up against the north pole. But it might make sense to have some immediate rivals close and then later rivals as we finally settle the land in the middle. There's no guarantee the mapmaker would have stuck very fertile land in the midpoint if this is intended as a later flashpoint. It does possibly mean that our scouting wasn't optimal if we missed meeting our near neighbors for our far ones, but I don't see how you could have known that. Given this, I really recommend a third scout so this one can stay south, and we can cover both the east and west.

[ljubljana]

Turn 16 - Zululand



capital finished the farm - deer will be next. somewhat surprisingly, this takes us to third in crop yield (7). there is someone out there who still has 2.... it's getting late enough that i'm not sure what opening could produce that (worker first, then start an IMP settler working a 3-hammer tile??)



i agree on the need for a third scout, but i'm not sure how soon we want to prioritize it.... current plan is to have the second city do one as its first build, but maybe that's not fast enough. i'll sim out what it might look like if we go wheat - deer - ivory with the worker and grow the capital to size 3 on another scout.... but if it yields a major setback to our foodhammer growth curve i'm not sure it's worth accelerating scouting of an area that isn't really a candidate for our first 1-2 plants...

edit: we could get the third scout t22 if we grow to size 3, second city delayed until ~t34, but at least the settler can move during the slavery flip and work a cow from t0



cap's off by 1h from getting the settler next turn, i think/hope we can optimize that

[Tarkeel]

capital finished the farm - deer will be next. somewhat surprisingly, this takes us to third in crop yield (7). there is someone out there who still has 2....

Ranks aren't that useful at this stage, as many of you will be working similar amounts and ties are broken by player ID. This is how you can figure out who is working what yields by swapping around your citizens. Max and average are much better comparisons than rank.

Edit: May I suggest changing the color in your sim or something similar to make it more easily distinguishable from the actual game?