Ducki Does C3C at Emperor

[Cort Haus]

Originally posted by donegeal
Wow Dominae and Sir Ralph!

Thats some VERY good stuff there!

Compliments of the Gathering Storm Faculty of the Apolyton University!

[cracky]

Oh no, it looks like I might have caught the MM bug! This seems to be the thread (mostly) for managing pumps, so I'll add my two cents here rather than starting a new thread.

Okay, I've read this thread. Actually, I've read it more than once. But every time I get to the detailed, turn by turn descriptions of how to run a pump my eyes glaze over, my thumb hits space-bar until the account is over. And then I decided to just try it for myself and see if that made it easier to "Get It". Wow, did this clear things up. All that +6, +6, +8, +8, worker moves here, worker moves there, luxury slider to this, "magic" shields, etc... started making sense.

Anyway, enough of the MM settler pump infomercial. (All we need is Ronco and a couple of of aprons and we're set for late night TV here!)

I managed to get a 4 turn pump going. But, this is something of an ideal start, and I'm sure I bungled it anyway. If any of the gurus (and you're one now too Ducki!) can give me some pointers on how to speed up my pump, it'd be greatly appreciated.

Enough already. Here's a turn by turn of what I did and then the save of the starting location. I'll add a quick second post to the thread right after this one with a jpeg of the start. (maybe you _can_ attach two files to one post, but I don't think so...)

Oh, and Thebes build queue was: warrior, worker, warrior, granary, settlers

Cracky attempts a 4-turn pump

First 2 turns. Move NW to get into perfect spot

3900
Thebes built.
Irrigation started on cows
Warrior started

3750:
road started on cows

3650:
road finished, worker moved to wines.
warrior finished
1 turn to growth
worker started

3450:
barracks started as prebuild for granary
2nd worker finished
wines irrigated.
Worker starts roading wines
2nd worker on shielded grassland to SE

3400:
2nd worker begins mining

3350:
growth to size 2
working cows and wines for max food.
1st worker moving to shielded grass

3300:
1st worker begins mining grass

3250:
2nd worker begins mining grass

3200:
road, mine done on 1st shielded grass
workers move to other shielded grass
growth to size 3 in one turn, pottery in 3

3150:
both workers start mining shielded grass across the river from Thebes

3050:
citizen moved from wines to mined, but not roaded shielded grass.
Growth to 4 in 3 turns, granary in 6.

3000:
workers moved to last shielded grassland

2800:
granary done, size 4, making one more warrior for MP.
Workers moving to road/irrigate second wine.

2710:
pump starting? 6 shields coming in, 5 extra food, 5 turns until settler.
Two mined/roaded shielded grasslands are being worked, as are an irrigated/roaded cow and wines.

2670:
growth to size 5. the third mined/roaded shielded grassland in now being worked by a citizen. +8 shields, +5 food Because of those two “magic” shields, the settler has 8 shields completed now.

2630:
1 turn to size 6. 14 shields left on the settler.
The workers are done with the pump city for now (I think!) and are going to road-build for the pumped settlers for now. +8 shields, +5 food still

2590:
size 6: The settler has 4 shields left in it (Does my pump produce too many shields?). Would this be the time to set the governor to food (as suggested above) for the 6th citizen to immediately start working on the other irrigated wine? Is there magic food production like magic shield production? Also had to bump the Luxury slider to 10% here to avoid happiness problems.

In a real game I would have put out a settler before the granary to get a second city up and running, but since this was just an exercise to see if I understood about pumps.

Oh, and this is 1.15 with no AU mod.

[cracky]

...and here's the pic of the start location.

[ducki]

third mined/roaded shielded grassland in now being worked by a citizen

If you want the extra security of knowing for sure that you will work enough shields, this is groovy, but (IIRC) you only "need" two Bonus Grasslands mined and one Grassland Mined when you have the cow.
City +1 shield
Cow +1 shield
BGx2 +4 shield
Wine +0 shield
-------------------
+6 spt x2 for size 4 = 12 shields

Grass w/mine +1 shield
(plus above tiles)
--------------------
+7 spt x2 for size 5 = 14 shields

Forest on Growth +2 shield x2(once at 5 and once at 6)
+4 shields _total_ of "growth bonus"

12 +14 +4 = 30.

I would road and mine a riverside normal grassland and let the other Bonus Grassland be used/shared by a tightly-spaced city #2 that can use the second wine for fast growth. Not sure if it could be a worker pump(probably not without wheat or another cow) but it could definitely crank the workers out quickly.
This town could be uncomfortably close, since it's going to be a long time before you let Thebes grow beyond size 6, it only ever needs the exact 7 tiles it uses as a pump, the rest are "wasted".
Use your first Settler to plop down very close, use the extra Bonus Grassland and the extra Wine to crank out fast workers for all those towns that will be coming out. Build no improvements and when the pumping is done, abandon it to allow Thebes to grow.

Non-related - I would road one more tile SE of Thebes(to your border) on the same side of the river and put a town on the next tile(just outside your border) and if the river goes far enough, another one after that(CxxCxxC). I'm a sucker for rivers - never build an aqueduct and get bonus commerce in half a dozen tiles.

[Dominae]

both workers start mining shielded grass across the river from Thebes
...
workers moved to last shielded grassland

Are you sure you need to have your Workers improving tiles together? Unless it's necessary, it's better to have only one Worker enter each tile without a Road. Otherwise you're wasting Worker-turns just moving them.

I only glanced over your queue so I cannot give any more specifics comments, but it looks like you're doing just fine without any help.




Dominae

[cracky]

Originally posted by ducki

If you want the extra security of knowing for sure that you will work enough shields, this is groovy,

heh, this was just the first start that looked good enough. The first two were half swamp and all desert.

but (IIRC) you only "need" two Bonus Grasslands mined and one Grassland Mined when you have the cow.

Okay, I've got it with the shields, and it looks like the food works out as well.

This town could be uncomfortably close, since it's going to be a long time before you let Thebes grow beyond size 6, it only ever needs the exact 7 tiles it uses as a pump, the rest are "wasted".
Use your first Settler to plop down very close, use the extra Bonus Grassland and the extra Wine to crank out fast workers for all those towns that will be coming out. Build no improvements and when the pumping is done, abandon it to allow Thebes to grow.

True... It seems there's a corollary to settler pumps. If you can't get a second city churning out workers fast, you're going to quickly fall behind on tile improvements. Also, I've never been one for abandoning cities, but with the tile improvements in this start, I'm starting to warm to the idea.

This was just a throw-away kind of start to see if the numbers made more sense if I was actually doing it. Now I'm actually going to try this out in an epic game.

[ducki]

This was just a throw-away kind of start

I did far more of those than I posted here. Waaaay more. I'd reload till I got a start with what looked like +5 food and then play long enough to get the pump up(sometimes a bit longer), then start again. It was a huge help in getting the numbers to make more sense, especially the 4 free shields from growth - that one had me twisted in mental knots.

I also have a huge problem abandoning cities, but like you am starting to see the sense in having temporary suburbs if for no other reason than to keep up on workers/garrisons without messing up my chances at a big core of metros.

If you want more practice, I think I've got 2 or 3 saves posted in here that don't require you to restart, especially if they are just throwaways.

Welcome to the club.

[vmxa1]

Cracky now that you have the MM bug for city management, take heed on the point Dom made on worker turns. MM worker turns can be a big help.

The tricky part of MM a pump early in the game comes from levels where you get unhappy pop after the first born. If you do not have any lux and try to get by with no MP for a time, you have to be very careful to use the slider to not get lost production due to mad pop.

Take a look at AU501 at deity with no MP's for the first 20 turns or so and you will see what I mean.

[cracky]

Originally posted by vmxa1
The tricky part of MM a pump early in the game comes from levels where you get unhappy pop after the first born. If you do not have any lux and try to get by with no MP for a time, you have to be very careful to use the slider to not get lost production due to mad pop.

Indeed. I've been bitten by this on nearly every attempt at a pump I've made. Somehow I remember to check it when the pop is going, for example, from 4 to 5, but totally forget when it goes from 5 to 6, and end up losing a turn to riots.

Hey, at least all this is teaching me to use the luxury slider.

[vmxa1]

I am not real fond of the nth degree MM. I will do it in a tough game or Deity. A tough game, meaning I have a less than desied start.

[ducki]

Originally posted by vmxa1
I am not real fond of the nth degree MM.

Ditto that.
I am, however, currently drunk on the power of MM and all the advantage it can give.
As I've said before, after AU501 I'll likely go back to Monarch for most games, and the MM skills will still be useful but not near as necessary.

I can't recommend strongly enough for any player that has the stomach to learn how to MM a pump to actually play some of the saves here or the AU501 start long enough to get a pump going, just to see how it works, how growth works, how shield- and food-per-turn can be averaged and doesn't need to be a constant, etc.

There's so much knowledge to be gained in learning to pump and knowledge is power. Even if you play at Chieftain level this knowledge can be useful, even if there's not much motivation to actually use it.

I'm sorry this thread strayed so far from the original plan, but I am deeply grateful to everyone for following me on my wandering and for helping me and everyone else that doesn't already know about it, just how a pump works and how to get it going. I'm actually glad I hijacked my own thread.

[Tolwyn]

Originally posted by ducki
Pottery 100%
Warrior-Worker(thanks Aeson)-Warrior-Settler-Warrior-Settler-Granary(or Warrior)-Warrior(or Granary) - something like that.

ahum....maybe a stupid qustion. but does this mean your 2nd build is a worker? I don't get the meaning of this. can someone explain why this is done?

[Dominae]

If your capital has very high growth (4-5 Food per turn), it makes sense to build a Worker early because you need to keep up on tile improvements. Growth is great, but if all your extra pop is working unimproved Grasslands you've got a problem.

To convince yourself of this, pick a starting location a high-Food start and play it out 20-30 turns, once without an early Worker, once with.

I do not recommend doing this with a low (2-3 Food per turn start); your lone Worker can typically keep up with 7-10 turn growth (at worst, completely improving a Grassland takes 10 turns). The Industrious trait influences this in obvious ways.


Dominae

[ducki]

Yes, second build was a Worker.
In the majority of starts, I can build a Warrior in 5, then a Worker in 5(just in time to grow to 2 pop).
The first warrior is out exploring, so no use as MP for citizen 2.
The Worker can help keep Tile Improvements completing as fast as the town grows or help chop forest for the Granary or start a road to City Site 2 and City 2 doesn't have to wait for a Worker to improve tiles; it gets a running start.

If desired, you can add the worker back into one of the towns after the granary build to grow faster so you can get your 3rd settler out faster.

In AU501(in the Apolyton University forum) I actually build a Worker as build 1 since we had high enough food to not "waste" turns/shields waiting for growth, though this was mostly done to avoid getting barbarians from a hut that got popped when the capitol's borders expanded, since you can't get barbs if you have no military units.

Also, I tend lately to build the Granary before the first settler most of the time, whether or not I build a Worker in the first couple of builds.

I find it to often(not always) build a Worker in the first couple of builds just to get enough tiles improved for the Capitol and the Second city so that my citizens don't have to work unimproved tiles.

Like building a granary before your first settler, it is dependent on the situation, IMO, but (counterintuitively) it does not slow down your expansion the way you would think - there's a slight delay ultra-early, but you seem to surpass the other model rather quickly.

I know it sounds backwards, but it seems to work well for me.

I hope that helped, but also, hopefully one of the more experienced veterans or elites will pop in with more detailed analysis or better explanation.

(EDIT: Speak of the devil, thanks Dominae!)

[Tolwyn]

So in the long run you end up being more developed with a greater production&growth capacity?




Never thought of that,building the worker first I mean.
I always went for an immediate granary and settler. (with warriors or curraughs is between as needed)

One drawback of all this pump stuff does rely heavy on the bonus tiles....according what I understand from these posts. so yout starting position has to be good....

[ducki]

with a greater production&growth capacity?

and more importantly to me lately, greater commerce and mobility from roads.

I never thought of it either - I read something by Aeson somewhere(maybe in this thread, I should reread it) that made me try it.

And yes, bonus tiles seriously affect the value of much of this stuff. By nature a 4-turn settler pump is a special case, but if you are presented with a situation that allows it and you don't know how it works, you can end up missing out on a huge advantage. Even if the circumstances don't allow a 4-turn pump you can often get "close" with a 6 turn pump that's not as efficient or as fast, but still hard to argue with considering the alternative of using every city to produce a settler at size 3.

I'm off to print this thread and reread all the good stuff the vets have said here (and all my ignorance. taking the bad with the good, heh.)

[Tolwyn]

Me too.... And maybe more important I'm going to collect all the important bits and pieces so I don't have to search a multi-page thread again

[ducki]

I need to try to do that again. I was going to try to craft a "how to build a 4-turn settler pump" article but had so much trouble extracting the juicy bits and then reconstituting them into a readable whole. Another, slightly less detailed, example of the 4-turn pump is Bamspeedy's "Babylon's Deity Settlers" article over in Civfanatics War Academy.

But I'll take another stab at a consolidation on this one unless you or someone else finishes one before I do.
Also, check out the AU501 thread(s) in the AU forum for another example of a 4-turn pump implemented by different folks on the same start if you haven't already.

[Arrian]

Well, a short version of such a 4-turn settler-pump article would list the requirements:

1) A city capable of a +5fpt surplus.
2) A granary.
3) 30 shields of production over a 4-turn span.

It's often that last bit that gets trickey. Something like this might do for an explanation:

The city needs to average 7.5 spt. Recommended size range for the city is 4-6 or 5-7 (the latter if the city has a river, for instance, since the extra citizen will almost assuredly pull in more commerce than it will eat up via the luxury slider).

Example: a city that has a grassland cow (irrigated, for 4f, 1s), a plains wheat (irrigated, for 3f, 1s), and 2 bonus grasslands (mined, for 2f, 2s) produces 7 spt at size 4. If it doesn't pick up extra shields when it grows, it will produce only 28 shields in 4 turns. That's not hard, since when the city grows to size 5 it will work another tile, which can be developed to produce +1spt, surely. A city that puts out 7 or more spt at size 4 is an idea settler pump.

The difficulty comes in with less ideal terrain. This often happens with floodplains cities. Tons of food, low on shields. In these cases, having a forest tile is a lifesaver. The game calculates things in this order: 1) commerce/tech, 2) food/growth, 3) production. Therefore, on a turn when a city grows, production is calculated INCLUDING the new citizen. Since the AI will normally autoallocate the new citizen to a high-shield tile if your city is running a high food surplus, the new citizen will be sent to a forest tile, and pull in 2 shields on that turn. Then you can reallocate the citizen to keep the city at +5fpt.

Therefore you can have a city that produces 6spt at size 4 or 5 but still manages to pump settlers every 4 turns. Starting at size 5 with 15food in the box (which I tend to call size 5.5), the city can produce: 6, 8 (6 + 2 from forest), 7, 9 (7+ 2 from forest). That's exactly 30 shields.

As Dominae once pointed out to me, forest isn't necessary if you have a plains tile and 6 worker turns to spare. Mine the plains and it's effectively a forest.

That's my attempt at a short version. Obviously one might wish to go into greater detail explaining things like what tiles to irrigate versus mine, how to best time the completion of a granary (it's best to finish it with an *almost* full food box), the benifits of forest chops, the use of the luxury slider, etc.

-Arrian

[Dominae]

Originally posted by Arrian
As Dominae once pointed out to me, forest isn't necessary if you have a plains tile and 6 worker turns to spare. Mine the plains and it's effectively a forest.

Or a Desert. Also, a Volcano or Iron Mountains fulfills the same purpose without improvement.

[Arrian]

Will the governor autoallocate a new citizen to a zero food tile like an iron mountain or volcano, though?

-Arrian

[Dominae]

Yup, as long as you end up with at least a 2 Food surplus.

[Arrian]

Ahh... gotcha. Hence my experience that it will autoallocate to forest so long as the city is at +3fpt when the city grows. The forest brings it back to +2fpt.

Edit: in a situation where you have both a volcano and a forest, which do you think the governor will pick?

-Arrian

[Dominae]

In Despotism, the Forest. Without the tile penalty...probably the Volcano, but I do not recall that happening in any of my games.

[ErikM]

Originally posted by ducki
In the majority of starts, I can build a Warrior in 5, then a Worker in 5(just in time to grow to 2 pop).

Not to nitpick, but in most generic starts a city will produce 25 shields by the time it grows to size 2. So the warrior/worker sequence wastes 5 shields.

It works like this (turn #/shields/food/comments)

 1  0s,0f // worker moves to bonus grassland
 2  2s,2f // worker mines (mine in 6)
 3  4s,4f // mine in 5
 4  6s,6f // mine in 4
 5  8s,8f // mine in 3
 6  10s,10f // mine in 2
 7  12s,12f // mine in 1. Worker job completes before production, so we get an extra shield
 8  15s,14f // worker road (road in 3)
 9  18s,16f // (road in 2)
10  21s,18f // (road in 1)
11  25s, Size 2 // we get an extra shield from a new worker.

This works very well for seafaring civs, since you can produce a warrior and a curragh in first 10 turns without shield waste in any sequence.

Then, assuming there is a forest nearby, on can put one citizen to mined BG and another one on forest for 5spt, or a worker in two turns. Two workers would then team up to cut some extra forests to speed up granary construction. Imo, this is an optimal sequence as it avoids any food/shield waste (although it trades two food for two shields on worker production).

If you cannot build a curragh, it is impossible to avoid some shield waste. The best sequence is probably warrior, warrior, worker:
1st warrior on turn 6
2nd warrior on turn 10
worker on turn 13
although it wastes 3 shields.

[ducki]

Great analysis, ErikM, looks like you are absolutely correct.

Except that I wouldn't limit the curragh thing to seaFARING civs, just seaside capitols. I could be wrong, but I think units(ships included) cost the same for everyone, so the seaside city of any civ is less wasteful with a Warrior-Curragh build with typical +2fpt growth.

It would seem I need to ratchet up the analyticalness of my starts just a tad.

[Theseus]

Originally posted by ducki
If desired, you can add the worker back into one of the towns after the granary build to grow faster so you can get your 3rd settler out faster.

Let us extend this thought...

Something I've noticed in, oh, the past six months, is that a number of experienced players are building a LOT of Workers, more than ever really, to dramatically decrease tile improvement time cycles, and thus increase overall production much more quickly... and then joining the Workers back to the best rivered cities to get up to 12 pop and waaaay high production in core cities very quickly.

Moral: If you've got the right terrain for it, build Workers... a LOT of Workers, more than you'd think.

[ducki]

I think the hurdle to get over - at least the hurdle I am struggling with - is the one about Workers really just being freely transferrable population.

I think of workers as Workers. I take population away from a town and spend shields so that I have a Unit capable to improving my empire visibly, physically, tangibly. That feels, to the old me, too valuable to add to a town and force myself to build that unit again, "steal" population from a town again, "waste" time and shields on it again. That doesn't feel very efficient to the old me.

The new me - the MMing, 4-turn settler pumping, cultureless military training camp building, no spearman having, fpt/spt averaging, power of population believing me - is just coming to grips with the concept of maintaining a worker pump for the express purpose of transporting cheap labor from one town to another where he is inherently two, four, six, maybe eight times more valuable(food cost, immediate commerce/production).

That version sounds very efficient to the new me.

Now to just get my head around it by doing it.
Do you have any experimental games in which you've tried specifically to explore this idea?

[ducki]

Here's a start that I think can support both a 4-turn Settler Pump and a 2-turn Worker pump.

I haven't looked closely enough to be 100% sure, and not having explored beyond the wheat, I have no idea of the true shieldcount of the site(s), but there's definitely enough food and I'm 99% sure enough shields.

Might be a good game to try out the whole "build workers specifically for pop-transfer" thing.

Game settings are:
C3C 1.15BETA
AU Mod 1.03b(flavored research), though I think you can play the save without needing the mod

Large, Random landmass, Temperate, 4bil
You are Japan.

[ducki]

And a screenie for those that just want to practice mentally, or while at work.