[SPOILERS] swance bitten, twice shy

[ljubljana]

ok, that makes sense but.... we founded the second city on turn 39, so we should have had 4 total population when turn 40 rolled..... shouldn't that extra 1k at least be showing up on the graphs now?

[aetryn]

UHHH because i forgot about binary science thank youuu 

in my defense we're only losing 1 GPT at 100% so we wouldn't burn through all 16 gold before mysticism finishes..... and there is a chance we'll want to put hammers into the monument immediately in 6 turns, though i think it's more likely we'll want to finish a chariot first. but yeah i just forgot thank youuuu <3

although @aetryn, you are smarter than i am, is there any other reason such a leading question might be asked other than because we could get an extra KTB on mysticism from meeting sumeria next turn?

Nah, our lurkers our better behaved then that. They're probably just trying to help because a) you're reporting and b) you're newer to Civ 4 and c) it's odd, like the 4-worker opening, so it makes them curious. Of course, it IS entirely possible that we do, since Sumeria wants to do Mysticism fairly early, but there aren't any guarantees. Also, Greenline's thread has been minimally active, so the lurkers may not even know what his tech schedule is.

There are three reasons to run binary science, two of which aren't important this turn:

1) To avoid losing fractional commerce. If you have 12 commerce and are running 90% science, that's technically 10.8 beakers and 1.2 gold. But I don't believe Civ4 represents either beakers or gold as decimals, at least not on a whole empire level (it may add individual city contributions up as decimals and then round). So in that case you're making 10 beakers and 1 gold and have thrown away a commerce.  This is never going to be more than one commerce lost (as long as you aren't running the culture or espionage slider, which you generally won't be!).

2) To take advantage of multiplier buildings. If you're about to finish 5 libraries in 5 turns and could run 50% science for 10 turns or 100% gold for 5 and 100% science for 5, obviously the latter is better so that you can run no science when you have no bonus and 100% science when you get 25% bonus science at those 5 cities.

3) When you couldn't finish the tech at 100% science, to postpone investment in a tech where the game situation might change. Basically, you can think of every tech as requiring a gold investment. If you make that gold investment as late as possible by running 100% science for the last few turns necessary, you have the most time to decide which tech is the best investment right now.

[aetryn]

ok, that makes sense but.... we founded the second city on turn 39, so we should have had 4 total population when turn 40 rolled..... shouldn't that extra 1k at least be showing up on the graphs now?

Some changes actually take 2 turns to show up on the graphs. Might be only your own changes? I don't know the exact rules here, but I experienced this in my game.

[ljubljana]

@aetryn opened the turn and it is true! we did indeed waste a fractional commerce last turn :|



50% and 100% sum to 17 net commerce, but everything else sums to 16 in last turn's screenshot. So that means we lost a beaker, yes? how annoying

question about the "free beaker" - the shown beaker number here is actually off by 1, right, and if i hit end turn i'll be credited with 10 beakers rather than 9? it is small ofc but it seems to be the difference in whether or not we can save this situation by running 50% for a turn and not lose a turn on the tech discovery

[ljubljana]

Turn 41 - Zululand

we do nothing, as i thankfully remember to swap to slavery when it actually matters



Tarkeel has half-completed the road on the wheat - let the workers be numbered 1-5 from west to east. Then the way to get the settler to the cow is by moving 3 onto the wheat, finishing the road, while 4 and 5 road the NW plains... Worker 2 would then move to the horse, which wastes its turn.... not something I'm happy about but there seems to be nothing else worth doing that justifies delaying the horse hookup. and yes, the settler would end turn next to two fogged tiles that could contain game-ending warriors. there is a way around it that doesn't delay the city but it is NOT pretty - we could waste worker 2's turn instead by moving to the plain NW of the wheat, end the settler's turn SW of the cow, and plan to double-road up to the city site next turn and move + found the following turn, and probably then use all four workers to just immediately pasture the cow so the new city never works an unimproved tile. that gives us an instant trade hookup at the new city and saves some yields by not working a blank cow....but it wastes 2-3 worker turns reallocating workers to the south and could delay hooking up the horse (and therefore starting the chariot in Mitakeumi). i am not so sure that i am a fan of that, especially since the city is still just as dead if GT moves a warrior into view a turn or two after we settle when we have no ability to whip...

and yes, GT says hi - i respond something to the effect of "evening for me, but hi " for all their friendliness, they have achieved yet another 2k milpower increase this turn, for what i believe to be a total of 5 warriors! that almost constitutes a full-on warrior rush... or just 4 scouts and 2 MP bodies. If they do throw everything at us, I'm guessing we need, what, 3 chariots in our western city to survive? that seems exceedingly unlikely given how dead they'd be to just one axe, but we weren't in slavery last turn and were very late to a second city, and i guess it's conceivable that they think we are so noobish and far behind that something like that could catch us off guard

re greenline: they have no techs we lack according to KTB, a size 4 capital, and are not in slavery either.... they also have contact with dreylin, which could suggest that they are directer neighbors than we are....or just that dreylin's southern scout met them a few turns ago as ours is now doing.

[Tarkeel]

ok, that makes sense but.... we founded the second city on turn 39, so we should have had 4 total population when turn 40 rolled..... shouldn't that extra 1k at least be showing up on the graphs now?

Some changes actually take 2 turns to show up on the graphs. Might be only your own changes? I don't know the exact rules here, but I experienced this in my game.

IIRC it's that the graph snapshot is taken before turn processing, so you hadn't actually grown at that point. I could be mistaken here.

[williams482]

My inclination is that moving next to two unfogged tiles in a no barbarians game with seemingly enormous spaces between players is a reasonable gamble as part of the farmer's gambit that pretty much everyone is likely doing. As you say, the alternatives are not only expensive, but only mitigate a small portion of the risk to moving that settler out unescored in the first place.

[ljubljana]

Turn 42 - Zululand

i did the scary settler thing, and........



it was fine, of course. thanks for talking me down on this one we are going to have options with the mitakeumi warrior - the plains 3t from both cities is a good spot for it so it can reach either city in 2t if a warrior appears from the fog. that should be just in time, unless we get double-moved... but wait, that could happen though :/ so let's say the new city has unexpanded borders and our warrior is 3 tiles away along the road. could someone wait until after we move, then move themselves to reveal the warrior (at a 2 tile distance from the city), then roll the turn, then declare war and move next to the city, then say that they are claiming the first half of the turn split so we only get one warrior move before they are in the city? if we have to worry about that, then one warrior is insufficient for this kind of zone defense assignment.......

it is also true that we might just want the warrior in the west anyways to have better odds of preventing GT from delaying our city. then our defense plan if someone wanders in range of the new city can be to whip the mitakeumi chariot. either way, we are going to be very exposed for the next few turns and will have to not get immediately called on this plant. that.....makes me very nervous, but is it just standard practice for this stage of these games? how do yall not get second and third cities sniped constantly by wandering warriors if it is? MAN is it nerve-wracking for cities to not be able to defend themselves

i think starting next turn i will want our eastern scout to go check out that NE copper? in theory it is a faster hookup than the southern copper, though it is likely over the line into what our presumed eastern neighbor would consider an aggressive settlement. i could be convinced to risk it.... but delaying the gold is a major cost too, our cities are going to absolutely smash into the happy cap here and we also need the gold tile itself to avert pre-currency collapse, hmm. well, it depends on what's up there, which means it's probably worth checking out.

i am undecided on whether the new city should do a warrior or a scout first, and would love opinions on that. we've reached the stage where totally undefended cities make me nervous of course, but our scouting is still pretty lacking tbh. ideally given our assumptions about the map structure, we would want one scout exploring west and east along both the northern and southern line of civs to make contact quickly. but we are short a scout for such a plan, and we'd also need to sneak our western scout past GT-of-many-warriors somehow and redirect the southern one to the SW...



thrawn the worker has half-finished a second road, and will probably full-finish said road next turn. the idea is to leave exactly half the road tiles half-finished, so that when we transfer a worker over from the east, it can finish them as it goes to avoid labor wastage. which.... yeah, which means i moved the scout back a little early since we are still a turn or two out from making the dangerous move onto the forest. oh well...



these guys have a gorgeous first-ring copper site with wheat and three flood plains all in the first ring :| wow. well, maybe the idea is that half the civs have convenient horse and inconvenient copper and the other half have the reverse of that.... the only horse we have spotted near GT is indeed out in the middle of nowhere. that makes some sense from a "don't make every start exactly the same" standpoint.... naturally we'd rather have the copper, but i'm guessing our start has received some other compensation to account for that. probably that means the gold.... but we'll know more on that front in the next few turns, as i think for now this scout wants to defog the area between our two capitals to see how contestable it is (and then probably turn SW to try to meet more foes)

[aetryn]

Turn 42 - Zululand

i did the scary settler thing, and........



it was fine, of course. thanks for talking me down on this one we are going to have options with the mitakeumi warrior - the plains 3t from both cities is a good spot for it so it can reach either city in 2t if a warrior appears from the fog. that should be just in time, unless we get double-moved... but wait, that could happen though :/ so let's say the new city has unexpanded borders and our warrior is 3 tiles away along the road. could someone wait until after we move, then move themselves to reveal the warrior (at a 2 tile distance from the city), then roll the turn, then declare war and move next to the city, then say that they are claiming the first half of the turn split so we only get one warrior move before they are in the city? if we have to worry about that, then one warrior is insufficient for this kind of zone defense assignment.......

it is also true that we might just want the warrior in the west anyways to have better odds of preventing GT from delaying our city. then our defense plan if someone wanders in range of the new city can be to whip the mitakeumi chariot. either way, we are going to be very exposed for the next few turns and will have to not get immediately called on this plant. that.....makes me very nervous, but is it just standard practice for this stage of these games? how do yall not get second and third cities sniped constantly by wandering warriors if it is? MAN is it nerve-wracking for cities to not be able to defend themselves

i think starting next turn i will want our eastern scout to go check out that NE copper? in theory it is a faster hookup than the southern copper, though it is likely over the line into what our presumed eastern neighbor would consider an aggressive settlement. i could be convinced to risk it.... but delaying the gold is a major cost too, our cities are going to absolutely smash into the happy cap here and we also need the gold tile itself to avert pre-currency collapse, hmm. well, it depends on what's up there, which means it's probably worth checking out.

i am undecided on whether the new city should do a warrior or a scout first, and would love opinions on that. we've reached the stage where totally undefended cities make me nervous of course, but our scouting is still pretty lacking tbh. ideally given our assumptions about the map structure, we would want one scout exploring west and east along both the northern and southern line of civs to make contact quickly. but we are short a scout for such a plan, and we'd also need to sneak our western scout past GT-of-many-warriors somehow and redirect the southern one to the SW...



thrawn the worker has half-finished a second road, and will probably full-finish said road next turn. the idea is to leave exactly half the road tiles half-finished, so that when we transfer a worker over from the east, it can finish them as it goes to avoid labor wastage. which.... yeah, which means i moved the scout back a little early since we are still a turn or two out from making the dangerous move onto the forest. oh well...



these guys have a gorgeous first-ring copper site with wheat and three flood plains all in the first ring :| wow. well, maybe the idea is that half the civs have convenient horse and inconvenient copper and the other half have the reverse of that.... the only horse we have spotted near GT is indeed out in the middle of nowhere. that makes some sense from a "don't make every start exactly the same" standpoint.... naturally we'd rather have the copper, but i'm guessing our start has received some other compensation to account for that. probably that means the gold.... but we'll know more on that front in the next few turns, as i think for now this scout wants to defog the area between our two capitals to see how contestable it is (and then probably turn SW to try to meet more foes)

Definitely time for military garrisons. We need to be able to defend our cities from random wandering neighbor warriors and MP will become relevant as they grow past size 2. 3 scouts is pretty good. We can use chariots for scouting later if we need it, no need to build more scouts at this point.

NE scout should definitely check the copper and ideally confirm whether Dreylin is our neighbor or someone else is there. 
Southern scout should prioritize contacts, so I'd head W-SW. We can defog the desert later - it's unlikely either of us will be settling into each other anytime soon.
Priority generally should be: scout land I might settle next > find opponent lands > scout lands that might be contested in the next few cities = screen against a military buildup from a neighbor > defog an ocean trade route > everything else.  We messed this up early by not scouting land immediately around our capital but getting caught up on possibly contested lands that weren't our next settlement. But we've mostly remedied that, so the next priority is to find our opponents, especially our eastern neighbor, and then scout the lands that we're contesting east and west (south looks FAR too far away to worry about yet, assuming they also have east and west neighbors).  The southern scout is too far out of position to help with that, so he might as well find the rest of our opponents. We need to know who's next to who - especially who's next to the big warmongers and the possible food. (Hopefully they aren't next to each other, that would be pretty bad). Ideally we get a pretty acceptable border split with our of our neighbors that we can demilitarize, keep one scout screening the other border, use the second one to scout the middle, and the third one after finding everyone can come back and help with the middle. But the middle's pretty low priority at this point, gold notwithstanding.

Also so far the map gives me no reason to think that it's been perfectly balanced. It appears to be a step up from PB72 "just make sure all the capitals are roughly the same and copper/horse are mirrored, and leave the rest of the world alone" but somewhere below a PB70 entirely hand-crafted map. Of course, you can partake in the fine tradition of grumbling at the map luck, or we can take what we have and make what we can out of it!

Double moving into war is illegal, so people won't/shouldn't do some of what you said. i.e. if you are moving right next to someone's land at the end of Turn N, you have to let them play first on Turn N+1 when you declare war, since the move up to the border is effectively an extension of the war. Basically you should strive NEVER to double-move except where it's totally irrelevant (empires at peace, internal moves, not moving near each other, etc). For some aspects of the game (bulbs, corps) this is a little murkier, but the precedent is pretty well established on war at this point.

[ljubljana]

ok, point taken on scouting and on military garrisons - i will order up a warrior and cross my fingers that nobody appears before we can do anything about it..... i do thiiiiink i want to defog some of the land between us and greenline as it could be important in a future conflict and once they settle it we may never get another chance to, but i will make it brief and then head either SW or SE in search of neighbor-neighbors

definitely not inclined to grumble about the map, we have some great spots here. if failing to hook up copper until the fifth city in the t60s kills us, that will be my choice and my fault [and if you think that is likely, i COULD research archery next instead of pottery, though that delays some, um, rather important things] i do think we'll want to prioritize the gold fairly soon (maybe city 6, assuming nothing else strong in the fog), as both the 8 gpt from working the tile and the one extra pop size from the happy seem crucial in forestalling economic collapse. but we shall see what is revealed