[SPOILERS] swance bitten, twice shy

[ljubljana]

@tarkeel that's a very good idea.... uh, but i'm not sure what the easiest way to execute it is. i will look into it the next time i have Real Simming Time (which unfortunately is not now...)

behold, iteration:



fourth worker before the third city settler + settling nobamba one tile south on the ivory for the extra chop and 2h city center tile is what enabled this

cost of size 3 + scout before workers and settlers provisionally looks to be pretty much what you'd expect:



existing cities seem fine, but because all workers after the first came out 4 turns later in this plan, we have 3 forests unchopped that should be chopped, which, added to the 15 hammers for the scout and 18 hammers in queue, amounts to roughly a settler in opportunity cost..... idk guys, i'm not too sure this is worth it. maybe it'd be different w the third city we will have in production, which presumably will have enough of its own tiles that the capital won't need to be whipped off the ivory immediately to give it something to do...

[aetryn]

Scouting anything other than the immediate west probably doesn't affect the first expansion but might well affect the second due to the need to shift dotmapping on the east side depending on what we find around that river. It will definitely affect the third and all subsequent cities because we need to figure out what land we need to settle early or risk losing. It's unfortunate that our first scout ended up in a direction where we clearly don't need to settle it early to avoid losing it, as we probably have less information than most on the important area to settle in the first couple waves.

I wouldn't worry about chopping every forest immediately - it's okay for a few to live and be chopped into markets or forges or something later. The fact that we're chopping so many forests in your sims is actually a warning sign that we aren't claiming enough resources that need to be improved and thus have spare turns to chop. We want to accelerate a few key builds, sure, but we also resources hooked up and we've kind of done a terrible job of FINDING the resources to hook up. 

So I'd at least seriously consider getting that scout out as soon as possible - if not before the first settler, very soon thereafter, even if it slows down the second settler a bit - we don't want to be regretting city placement later because we didn't have enough info to pick well.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Personally, I always find the more information, the better. Early & accurate scouting data is invaluable in both planning where to settle and in navigating the geopolitics of the world. Gotta know who your neighbors are, who THEIR neighbors are, etc.

[ljubljana]

hmmm. i hear you, but.....do we value that even to the extent of giving up on nearly 4 turns of growth curve acceleration that equates to most of a missing settler on turn 50? hmm, but maybe i'm thinking about this wrong - in my sims the third city steals food from the capital so it can't work wheat + deer + ivory and has to whip the third pop point early, but one hopes that that is unlikely to be our situation in the real game.... and i guess another option is that we could finish off the scout with a chop to avoid the turn of wasted growth at size 3....

ok, i'm hearing enough of a chorus of voices in favor of this that i'm going to seriously consider/sim it out today. i reeeeeally really fear the kind of growth curve sacrifice we'd get by not having 2 workers chopping ASAP but maybe there's a way around it...... something like having the capital do the second worker before the scout while the first worker improves deer + ivory, then grow + scout on turns when chops are not coming in, while the chops go into settlers/workers?

anyways

turn 17/18 zulu



scouting intel reveals even more gold lol



our dear keisho is size 2, and i'm going to annoyingly hold the turn because whether to work the cow or ivory this turn is a significant decision point. if we're staying size 2, i like the ivory to avoid wasting food by having it stuck in the food box forever (not to mention it seems like it straight-up wastes food in a real sense because the size-2 plan doesn't have this city grow again until after it has a granary). but for fast size 3 obviously we want to get there ASAP

[ljubljana]

here is my best AH-first try so far: 

tech AH - BW - wheel - pottery
improve wheat - cow - deer - second cow at city 2
capital builds worker - scout - settler - worker - worker - settler - settler
second city builds warrior - worker - settler

for comparison the BW-first plan is
tech BW - AH - wheel - pottery
worker 1: wheat - deer - chop - chop - chop - capital cow - second city cow
worker 2: chop - chop - capital cow - chop
capital builds worker - scout - worker - settler - worker - worker - settler - settler
second city builds warrior - settler

today we are testing
tech: (mining - ) BW - AH - wheel - pottery
worker 1: (wheat - deer - ) ivory - chop - chop - cow - second city cow
worker 2: chop - chop - cow - chop
capital builds: (worker - scout - ) worker - scout - settler - worker - worker - settler - settler - granary
second city builds: scout - settler

i hate to admit it, but doing the second worker before the scout does totally fix the scout/growth timing while hopefully recouping some of the lost growth curve acceleration



first settler t33:, and we just got AH so the cow should barely be up in time



note that with working the cow on this turn (turn 18), we are working 3 improved tiles with exactly 0 food in the food box



you can see i've screwed up a bit on worker labor (road to the fourth city is too early, third city inexplicably missing a road) but we still had enough worker labor to get out to 5 settlers by turn 50, and the capital can either whip the third pop point into the granary or just use it on a cottage in a few turns (i may cottage the marble in this sim just to be annoying)



even though i was absolutely dumb as hell in this sim, i admit that this seems just fine. compare the best size 2 plan at turn 50

behold, iteration:


fourth worker before the third city settler + settling nobamba one tile south on the ivory for the extra chop and 2h city center tile is what enabled this

behind by 1t at cities 2 and 3 and 2t at city 4, but the capital's two sizes bigger and we're ahead on tech despite worker mismicro

ok brb, going to try this again while not being the biggest worker idiot alive. but this seems totally fine, as long as we still build the second worker before the first settler still i think the ivory does recoup the cost of the scout

are we sure the third unit should be a scout and not like a warrior though? i think i agree with that but, when is the earliest that it's reasonable to start worrying that other players' scouting warriors might show up and walk into undefended cities?

also, yeah, i assume one of our first 5 settlers will go for the gold in real life, but i'm not going to account for that for now so we can get a good comparison between micro plans

[ljubljana]

i think this is how we make the worker micro suck less:



split the workers 2:2 between the cap and second city instead of 3:1 as i've been going, then whip the third settler while double-chopping the fourth and then fifth settler:



so here's turn 50 of what i think is a plan that sucks less:

[aetryn]

Unlikely anyone is scouting with a warrior since everyone starts with Scouts in Close To Home - and in fact pretty unlikely anyone has even built one with barbs off unless they have made contact with someone. Everyone knows this is a huge spread out map, I'd bet everyone has built workers, work boats, and scouts only so far.

[ljubljana]

okok yeah that makes sense

i'm going to commit to size 3 + scout before settler plan i think unless i hear otherwise (commit by working the cow this turn)

[ljubljana]

Turn 19 - Zululand

Scout 2 finishes and we start the vaunted Second Worker (which will not actually take 7 turns, the deer camp finishing will shave off one). We move 2W and find....



...nothing so far. In the south:



this desert belt just keeps going. I'm beginning to wonder if this map isn't set up like the Civ4 AI Survivor championship map



with players in the north and south, separated by a wide band of contested (in this case) desert in the central latitudes...

[ljubljana]

Turn 20 - Zululand

wide-angle shot today:



No food yet visible west of the capital. We do have a third ivory though, for whatever that's worth. In the south, I think our scout might be a little lost now that we've defogged the relevant tiles around the two accessible golds - I am thinking about either turning north soon and scouting parallel to the second scout, or south -> east and defogging another line south of the explored area (an area which i still view as likely to contain at least one opponent). Open to influence in either (or neither) direction (bearing in mind that the fog 3W of them looks like another line of peaks)



We look to be in the running for first to BW - with 3t to go, no opponent has more than 9k milpower...