RBD five-city-challenge game.

Civ: Russians.
Difficulty: Emperor.
Opponents: 6 (random).
Map: Standard.
Landform: Continents.

Other settings random (unless people have requests :) ).

Victory conditions: Space Race, Conquest, Domination (aim to win by space race, the others are for the AI).

Players:

Jaffa
Jester
Zed
Charis
Cyrene
Sirian

We have six players -- I was thinking five, which would allow for each player to found one city. Six is okay, if somebody doesn't mind not getting to choose a city site/name.

For the first round, first four players should each establish a city and play up to the point where they have a settler ready to go for the next player. Player five plays 10-or-so turns to bring the game up to a nice round year number. After that, 10 turns each.

This is intended to be a lower priority game until some of the other ongoing RBD games are finished. Turns should be short, though.

I'll likely start the game on Saturday.

Sounds good Jaffa.

Russia... Scientific and Expansionist. Interesting on the latter - you're right, the scout should help a LOT in recon to decide the best locations for our cities. Also should help us run the wind after goodie huts. You didn't mention Barbarians, but top aggressive would probably work well - give us some mil experience, and hurt the non-Expansionist AI's a little more.

Russians start with Bronze Working and Pottery. With only 5 cities and less expanding to do, 5CC usually can afford to go for more wonders, and earlier. This is offset by the fact we're at emperor diff. Half-GA wonders include Colossus, useless Lighthouse, Great Library and the science wonders. Also good later are Sistine, and ToE. Leos, SunTzu, Pyramids would be more to deny. Bard's theatre would benefit 20% of our nation! The Great Lib would be nice to get, as always, since our science output will be low, and since it would let us save up a nice bankroll.

The other thing to keep in mind is that we won't be able to found a city later to 'grab a resource'. The wheel for horses and Iron Working to see where iron is... the earlier the better!! Depending on Geography too, having a solid 'choke point' is really of great value in 'low #city' challenges.

Charis

I think there are going to be a few wonders that are going to be absolutely crucial, others are going to be downright useless.

Pyramids and lighthouse I don't think will be worth it. Denial is wonderful, if we can manage it, but I'm not sure that we'll have the surplus to fight for denial. If we can, though, pyramids wouldn't be bad.

Oracle might even be good for us from a utility perspective. Happy people are working people, and our cities are going to be much larger than most people's. Ditto hanging gardens. I think these will be prioritiy wonders.

Great wall is worthless. Great library is kinda iffy. We're going to be running heavy trade, which makes it both unnecessary and very desirable. We could profit by it, but we also don't need it. Hopefully we'll manage it, though.

Edit: Colossus! I knew I'd missed something. This is a definite must have, if we get a coastal city. It's usually not very heavily contested, it keeps our science up, and it improves with big cities, which we will certainly have.

Sun Tzu wouldn't be very helpful, denial only. Barracks are cheap as dirt, and easy to make for only 5 cities. Leo's, I think, would be fairly useful. We're going to keep most of our units for a LONG time, so cheap upgrades are a good thing. But not if it costs us...

The Sistine Chapel. THE wonder, IMHO. We need every happy person we can squeeze, and this will do a lot of squeezing. JS Bach's Cathedral and Shakespeare's Theatre are much the same way, to a lesser extent.

Newton's and Copernicus' strike me as must haves as well. They'll be essential to tech parity with so few cities, if we go for a space race victory. Put these two in our highest tech city, and we've got ourselves a powerhouse.

Past that, I don't think it will be much of a problem. We'll be outproducing them by a fair margin (if everything goes to plan), so whatever we want is ours. But, just for good measure, Hoover and ToE are the critical ones in the industrial era. We're not going to be very war weary, are we? SETI is a must for the modern era tech push; the other wonders are barely worth looking at, let alone getting.

So, rundown: (* maybe not necessary?)

Oracle
Hanging Gardens
Colossus
*Great Library

Sistine Chapel
*Leonardo's Workshop
*J.S. Bach's Cathedral
Shakespeare's Theatre
Copernicus' Observatory
Newton's University

Theory of Evolution
Hoover Dam

SETI Program

This seems a lot of wonders to get in the middle ages. We're going to have to either push a tech lead, which means likely not coasting with the GL, or we're going to have to get leaders. Or just massively, massively outproduce everyone else.

Any thoughts? Have I missed anything crucial? Ideas for wonders to include/throw out?

- Colossus would probably be more useful to us as an early wonder than Oracle... on a small map 1CC game, Colossus + Copernicus + Newton is enough to keep tech parity until ToE becomes available, even without trading much, so it should be just as viable in a 5CC. Plus Colossus doesn't expire until Flight -- shortly before Computers. :) We also start out with the tech needed to build it as a small added bonus. Of course if we gan get both Colossus and Oracle, so much the better.

- If we deliberately skip the Great Library we will not trigger a GA until we get near the end of the Renaissance era with Newton's (or Cossacks) which is probably a good thing. If we get the Colossus there's no reason we ought to need the Great Library.

- Universal Suffrage is good to get because we can. The cascade will be over by then, and the AI will not prebuild, while we will. End of story. :) We will probably be doing a lot of wonder building because we will be able to get all our core cities' improvements done much quicker than the AI can -- we won't be wasting time pumping out hordes of workers or settlers, and we won't have corruption problems, so we may be able to grab the majority of the Renaissance-era wonders without too much difficulty.

EDIT: Don't underestimate the value of denying the AI a civ-wide wonder like Pyramids or Sun Tzu. Delaying our opponents by forcing them to build granaries and barracks at every corrupt little town that needs them is a good way to slow down their unit buildups and expansion, as well as hurting them when they want to wage war. It's definately on a "if it doesn't hurt our ability to build a wonder we really want" basis however. In fact, I'd rate grabbing Pyramids over grabbing Oracle on that basis.

I liked both preceeding comments except for one small detail...

... we're on Emperor.

We won't be outproducing, and in fact if what we've seen is what we get for area, we're toast for wonders. Getting one, two max, wonders in combined ancient and middle ages seems about par for emperor. They'll out produce us, out sciece us, out military us.
Our **only** advantage is the ability to prebuild. Also, we'll need to make key city improvments in our cities and don't have many to 'spare' for extra duties. I would call the Sistine as top 'must get' wonder, and the Great Libary and Colossus as "well, if we can, great, but we won't lose sleep if we don't get. The Oracle and hanging gardens just plain don't last and aren't worth the shields.

Charis

I'll take your word for it, you've had much more emperor experience than I have.

If we can't get that many, then yes, the Sistine Chapel is the must have. Hopefully we can get THAT, at least.

But if we're not able to get many wonders, we're going to either have a LOT of military hanging around, or we're going to be using the "wealth" option a fair bit. That would not be good.

Infrastructure is going to go up at record speed, and we've only got 5 cities to defend. Plus, all of our tiles are going to be at maximum production for nearly the entire game. I mean, we've only got 85 tiles, total. How long could it take to get them all roaded and mined/irrigated?

So, I hope you're being pessimistic, Charis. Wonders are just about all we'll have to build. If the AI outbuilds us, even with such a concentrated empire, so be it, but it's more or less the only thing we have to try.

Actually, I agree with the idea of going for, and getting, more wonders. Charis sees "Emperor" but may be locked into patterns of expansionism in his thinking and foresight. I know he's tried the OCC, though. So it should occur to him that the usual need to continue building more and more settlers and units will vanish, leaving us the option to build more wonders.

A lot is going to depend on our land, our neighbors, and the lay of resources. With cultural victory disabled, our goal here is wholly the space race. If we get food bonuses at our capital, expansion to our five cities will happen more quickly. We could afford to build two settlers and then still grab an early wonder, if the land is strong.

Golden age may be overrated, but then again, the idea of passing on the Great Library for the sake of a later GA may be cutting off our nose to spite our face. Since the patch, early-years tech trading has become a TOTAL farce. Things still seem cozy in the later years, but from a cold start, it is now nothing short of Player vs The World. The AI's trade freely with one another but now shun the player. Why? I do not know. It may be related to government, as they seem "normal" with later-game games that have been ongoing, but sure are giving me the business in every new game I start. Thus Charis does have one point there: we're going to be climbing out of a hole.


I'm personally VERY disappointed with the new AI trading scheme. Sure, it makes the game harder, and harder is a good thing, but THIS kind of harder totally destroys my suspension of disbelief. I had more than enough of that crap of Me vs The Rest of the World in Civ2. That's one reason that game had such a short shelf life for me, the game was always the same no matter what happened. The AI's had no real feel to them, no diversity, and no depth, just a bunch of wholly interchangeable parts in a big conspiracy to combine to defeat the human player.

I'm not the only one noticing this new "Human vs AI Team" feel the game has taken on. There are a number of people growling about it in various threads. Moving AWAY from that nonsense was one of the biggest achievements of Civ III, one of the most vital improvements that brought me back to Civ, after I had sat out for several installments, waiting for a better AI to come along.

I have found myself losing interest in the ancient game now, since the new patch. I mean wholesale, like "what am I bothering wasting my time on this for" kind of disinterest. This is not a good sign. Whatever else has to be done to beef the AI's, it can't go down the road of giving them cheats, as opposed to advantages, or it's going to lose me. And this new "odd man out" trading system for the human player in the ancient era feels like that.

As such, the Great Library may now be the most urgent item in the game at high difficulty, to catch the player up to the AI's and get out of Despotism, wherein they seem entirely unwilling to sell the player RoP's or anything else. In fact, beelining to Monarchy may now become a vital strategy, IF in fact this new penalty is tied to the player being in despotism. I can't get a RoP any more, nor even trade techs three for one, while the AI's "combine" all their knowledge the moment they make contact. I-- don't know what to think of these changes, but I am not excited about them, rather the opposite, quite concerned.

At first, I thought the Right of Passage was totally FUBAR, but it seems to be working "normally" in all our ongoing RBD games. Just that I can't get one going in any of my new Emperor starts, and I haven't figured it out yet as I've abandoned all four of them now, before getting to the middle age. I start feeling "Civ 2 deja vu" all over again, it stops being fun, and I'm out of there. Even at LAST-CIV costs, they want an arm and a leg now in the ancient age for tech, and so they end up combining as a team amongst themselves, but the human player isn't invited to the party and has to research everything himself, one way or another (paying outrageous prices is just as bad).

The game is NOT weak in the ancient age, just closing the poprush loopholes takes care of that. Where the game breaks down completely is at rails. Rails convey such a massive strategic military advantage to the player, the AI's have no hope, because they can't recognize the scope of the threat, nor use artillery worth snot, nor defend themselves against the human's ability to mass his whole army at a point of attack or defense. The game balance is out of whack now because the AI's have to be given a MASSIVE head start to be able to win. If they player can get to rails at all, the game is pretty much over then, once you know what you're doing. Yet if the head start is too massive, it's no fun that way either. You pretty much get pushed into all the cheap and nasty tricks you can find to get an edge any way you can. I'm not turned on by that, either. I guess this is another example of overkill? They tried to fix poprushing not only with negative happiness, but also increased penalty durations? And they fix trading problems by changing the AI's to where they simply won't make fair deals with the player any more? Hmm. My excitement for this patch was quite high, but I do not find that translating to more fun in the games, just more frustration. I'm no longer sure this was a step in the right direction, though clearly some things are better now.

Am I just that hard to please, as a gamer??? As much as I want to thrive on this game, the latest patch promised much but is delivering some confusion. I don't think it was such a good idea for them to "include surprises" in with the things they did. I could be misinterpreting some of this, but just the idea of NOT KNOWING, of playing in the dark and trying to piece it out from my experiences, smacks of Diablo II to me, and reminding me about that game is a distinctly BAD idea. You know? :)

I'm losing some faith in their judgement here. These are the first changes I've seen where I'm scratching my head wondering what are they thinking with this?

So what are we left with? Play normally at Regent/Monarch, then cruise to easy victory in the industrial age? Or scratch, claw, and pray for survival in Emperor/Deity, climbing out of a huge hole in which, if you can just somehow survive until the industrial age, you then have the means to compete? One way, the early game is fun, then the late game is a hassle. The other way, the early game is the big hassle, then the late game MIGHT be fun, or at least a little less certain. Blah. It may be asking for a lot, but it sure would be nice if the game could be played fun in both parts, and if fixes to make it harder left the well-balanced ancient and middle ages alone, and focused on improving the impoverished AI performance in the late stages.


Anyway...

With 5cc, and once our cities are all founded, what else will they have to be doing while we wait for tech to come online BUT to be building some wonders?

I guess we'll just have to see when we get in there.


- Sirian

By the by... how's this for ironic? The changes to the tech trading in ancient times now makes ancient war FAR more appealing/rewarding than peace. (Oh yeah, JUST what the game needs, more leaning/rewards/incentives to push the players into ancient warfare. :rolleyes: ). Bully one or two of the AI's in on the Good Ole Boys tech trading network and work them over for techs in the peace negotiations -- most rapid way to advance, now that peaceful builder players are getting thumbscrewed by the new trading "options". Back to the "Vassal State" method from the first version, as the way to get ahead.

One alternative to building wonders is building barracks and cranking units, and go pick on somebody. We wouldn't be allowed to capture their cities and may not want to raze (or we might) but we could perhaps round up some workers, pillage their lands to all get out, and harass them for a bit, then do it again 20 turns later, over and over. Unless we start alone on our landmass, that is.

I wonder how much pillaging and raping adds to war weariness? Hmm. I honestly have no idea, as I never mess around. I either leave a civ alone or go for the jugular, never done much of that highbrowed bullying thing, rattling sabers and terrorizing but not conquering. Still, you get the point. The player is now severely disadvantaged, as even having contact with everybody is pretty much like being isolated right from the start. They don't offer you acceptable deals, so it's the same as not even knowing them. :(


- Sirian

Charis, bear in mind what horrible Wonder-builders the AIs really are. Yes, if we're on Emperor they will have a significant production advantage, but remember:

1) The AIs are rabidly expansionistic, and their best cities will be an order of magnitude less developed than ours for a long time because of it. They will have other priorities besides wonder-building, at least until the Middle Ages. Ours will build all our needed infrastructure much more quickly and will thus be in a much better position to build wonders.

2) The AI is not known for its intelligence or speed in land development. Thus again their best cities will be significantly less productive (aside from their Emperor bonus) than ours, and ours will be fully developed much sooner. They also have corruption to deal with, while we won't.

3) The AI is often stupid in terms of selecting which cities to build wonders in. Some little size 3 corrputed hole in the middle of nowhere is not a threat.

4) We will have 5 cities capable of building wonders, with little else to do besides build military. We can have more than one prebuilding at a time! The only way the AI *ever* prebuilds wonders is accidentally by cascade. If we can build wonders fast enough relative to the pace of tech discovery, we can cause the cascade to end prematurely and further enhance our pre-build advantage relative to the AIs.

The big question is not IMHO whether we can keep up with wonders in terms of production, but whether we can keep up in terms of tech. I was't worried about this until Sirian mentioned the tech-trading changes in the last patch, but I'm still not hugely concerned unless we get a bad starting position or really aggressive neighbors. We'll manage somehow. :) If we can't avoid being a tech laggard in the ancient age, it's not a critical problem so long as we can catch up by the time everyone starts entering the Middle Ages wonder-building era. That's the part of the game that will be the most important for us. I think we'll be up to the challenge. :hammer:

Great Library: It may become necessary to build it if we find we are having problems maintaining tech parity. We could easily start it as a placeholder and then see if we ought to switch away to something else potentially more useful, or just finish it. Certainly if we do get a GA out of it, it will come late enough that it will not go to waste, since there are good governments and city improvements available around that time. So, if we need the GL, we should definately get it; it's just a question of whether we will find that we need it or not.

Well, this was a much shorter opening turn than I expected :D

0) 4000BC We start on the square due north of the (northern) cattle. Okay, so there's a river right there. Settler goes to build city amidst the lush grasslands (don't want to build on the shield-bonus square, so need to move twice before we can settle). Worker goes to irrigate cattle (overlooking that it won't be immediately within city radius, but city will expand soon enough, and I already moved him, so...)

1) 3950BC Settler moves again. The river delta is right ahead. Hmmm. Do I make the capital a coastal city? I don't really want to build just off the coast, where we have coastal squares in city radius, but can't build a harbor to get maximum benefit from them. I can't go to coast and keep the cattle unless I move off the river. Decisions, decisions...

Scout crosses river to hit a goody hut. We get a skilled warrior! Yay!

2) 3900BC I see no other bonus food squares other than the cow. Decide to go with the coast instead of the river. Settler moves again.

Scout moves to head of river in mountains. Seems like we have this one patch of grassland surrounded by plains. Another river is visible.

3) 3850BC Tamaringrad founded. Scout spies incense in hills beside the second river.

4) 3800BC Our warrior has 9 turns before being required to pacify the citizens. He goes exploring along the coast. Scout finds a desert area with bountiful incense. It seems our citizens will smell nice, if nothing else :)

5) 3750BC Worker finishes irrigating cows for future use.

6) 3700BC Scout hits a second goody hut and gets .. a settler! Woot!

Seeing as how the settler is right there on the river, with game in forest, shield bonus squares and incense all in range, we might want to found our second city right where he is standing. The ideal place for the palace city would then be between Tamaringrad and this second city. Hmmm. How practical is it to move the palace very early in the game? Or will corruption with just 5 cities be sufficiently negligible that having a non-central palace doesn't matter?

Zed, you want to go next since we're in weekend-time?

The World :)

Ok, I might be able to get a quick turn in tomorrow. Got it.

Settler from a hut? Oh goodness, that should be interesting. If we get one of those after we have five cities, I'll guess we'll just have to fold him into one of them.

Jaffa, you didn't check the starting tiles for gold bonus, I see. That would have told you we started next to a river. Not founding on the river is going to haunt us. This also looks like a very poor land configuration for 5CC. We won't be able to build an FP, so... with our capital on the end and all our cities in one direction, our corruption is actually going to be kinda bad. I'd have much preferred poorer quality land, but a more amiable landform, to rich lands with an unkind shape to them.

Maybe the early start on second city will counter some of that, and maybe we'll move the capital (costs will be high, but doable, since we won't have many cities).

Go ahead and move me to the back of the rotation. That will let everyone else found the cities. :)


- Sirian

Ummm. I saw the river. Read my notes :)

My thinking was that, since I had already committed to moving in this direction which turned out to be where the coast was, I should go ahead and make a coastal city, and I wanted to keep the cattle in range for the food bonus.

Are there secret additional benefits to rivers other than being able to grow past six without an aqueduct? If most of our other cities are on rivers (which looks possible), we can use Tamaringrad as our early settler/worker production center, and it shouldn't matter that it won't be able to grow past six for a while.

--
Jaffa

Hmmm, perhaps I was being overpessimistic. I just saw visions
of Hanging Gardens AND Oracle AND this and that was wildly unrealistic
for Emperor. I fired up my old OCC game and saw that I built the following:

Colossus, Great Library, Copernicus, Newton's, ToE, SETI. Also Apollo
and CIA. This was only Monarch!

It's a good set for One City. Almost ideal, actually. I think my
response was colored by how few I got here. With five cities, each
in a mode of "What else am I going to do?!" We should snag rather
quite a few more!

As far as initial placement, UGH, so many almost good spots, but
each one somehow flawed. Two inland lakes for natural water and yet
not next to coast (hmmm, you can build harbor if on internal lake,
no?) One square NE of where you founded is on river and coast but
loses the nice cattle square. That forest square a knight's move from,
and catching both cattle is interesting, and also with fresh water.

Actually, it's plain and simple a curse. Ever coop Emperor team game
for Sirian ends up with someone founding capitol by moving OFF a river! :hammer:

Tamarindgrad looks like our Colossus builder and perhaps science city.
It will lack true shield power for the production powerhouse. With
the river in city radius, Hoover CAN be built (as we confirmed in rbd7).
For a high food city building a wonder, the lack of need for aqueduct
is nice in that it can go from sub-6 to 7+ while cranking on a wonder.

Wow, from what I see I love the site the settler is standing on!
Zedville has river, decent shields, three luxuries, and the new-and-improved
game. The other lux's there will need be "colonies" unless it also happens
to be ideal to found a city there.

Geographically, a spot between the two is perfect, but on opening the
game file, the best spot posisitionally is NOT on the river. If it goes
around there, two left, off to one side or one on each side. Glad we have
a scout.

Good luck founders!
Charis

Originally posted by Charis

Actually, it's plain and simple a curse. Ever coop Emperor team game
for Sirian ends up with someone founding capitol by moving OFF a river! :hammer:

*cough* not EVERY Emperor game. :rolleyes:

Rah Rah Rah! Go Delphi Go! Yay Carbon! :D [party]

Jaffa: You chose that spot knowingly? OK no problemo. I did read your notes but didn't catch the full meaning. Although... leaving the cattle for a city behind us on that side wouldn't have been so bad. Still, a settler/worker farm is good. Rapid improvement of all cities.

Charis: inland lakes do not a harbor make. Remember Bangalore in RBD1? I thought that would be the case, but didn't work out that way. A flaw in my dot map! :eek: :lol:

As for colonies... not necessary. Just get the city to 100 culture, it will expand out an extra square... so long as the AI's don't crowd us. We might have to run some blockades, depending on how it all breaks down.


- Sirian

3700 BC (0): I guess our turns are going until we are ready to found another city, that being why Jaffa stopped short. I'll stop after 10 unless I get a settler first. Tamaringrad is building a Granary -- that won't do; we will need happiness factors long before that gets done. That means we need a couple warriors. After checking that there is a way to get another city between Tamaringrad and where our bonus settler is standing, we found Zedropolis, which starts a scout.

3600 BC (2): We build a warrior in Tamaringrad and start another warrior. Our new warrior goes east scouting the local neighborhood.

3450 BC (5): Zedropolis completes scout, starts warrior.

3350 BC (7): Tamaringrad completes warrior, starts settler. It will be done a bit early; I alter production slightly to time it so that our settler will be done the same turn we grow.

3300 BC (8): We get the Wheel out of a goody hut.

3250 BC (9): We get another settler out of a goody hut popped by Tamaringrad's scouting warrior! Ah, the joys of being expansionistic post-patch... :) Since we have another settler I stop.

There's a ton of jungle north of us to provide a natural barrier to our expansion (and the AI's expansion, at least temporarily...)

Here's a pic of our land. Blue square is a possible non-overlap city between Zedropolis & Tamaringrad, though you could go one square south if you wanted wheat in exchange for overlap. Red square in the east is a good long-term city site, though you could go north to yellow instead.

For the sake of the goddess and the team's sanity--be sure and found all the cities before my turn comes up!

I normally use the dartboard method for determining city placement...

--Cy

Originally posted by Zed-F
3700 BC (0): I guess our turns are going until we are ready to found another city, that being why Jaffa stopped short.

That's the plan. Doesn't anybody read stuff that I write? :)

Do we want another coastal city? With this map, do we have much choice? Coastal cities are good for science and the treasury, but we do need some of our cities to be able to produce stuff.

I see Tamaringrad should have been founded 2 squares NE, on the other side of the river delta and getting the wheat (which I couldn't see, of course). Drat. Still, it does get horses from its current location.

Cy, you're set to found the last city. I'm sure the team could manage to recommend a site or two for you :D

--
Jaffa

Red dot square is a coastal city but without many coastal squares, so it should still be pretty good production-wise. We probably want 2 coastal cities so that 1 city can build infrastructure/ships while the other builds a coastal wonder.

We only get five cities. I give a hearty nod to blue and yellow dot locations Zed marked. Those look superb. Red would overlap yellow, and overlap in THIS situation is entirely unwanted unless no other choice. Also... we might want to postpone founding the last city until we can see where the iron is, make sure we secure some. Just a thought.

- Sirian

Red vs Yellow was an either-or choice, not both. Yellow has river but more coastal squares for less long-term production, while Red gets a slower start but has more long-term potential. I considered it a wash between the two, but others may have different preferences. Blue is potentially a good spot if we decide to move our capital.

Hopefully we can get another city in on semi-decent terrain on the other side of the incense, otherwise our last city will have to hack itself out of the jungle. I don't think we want to do that as it would be too far from our capital anyway.

UPDATE: I've discovered that the severe trade penalties of the new patch apply to difficulty level more than anything. Monarch games seem wholly or largely unaffected. Emperor games are getting the shaft.

On this basis, I would have to downgrade us from Charis's pronouncement of "Emperor-Capable" crew. Emperor has gotten a LOT harder now with the player effectively isolated as a diplomatic pariah now. The folks in RBD8 really have their work cut out for them, as do we here. I'm thinking that any more new games we start should back down to Monarch for a while, unless we find the crew rolling over RBD SG's 8 and 9 so badly, that Monarch loses its appeal.

The sad breakdown comes at the industrial age. The game is either too easy at that point, or too hard prior to that. There just doesn't seem to be any such thing as "a good challenge" that holds up through all stages of the game. (You might say that's what my Environmentalists variant idea was aiming at: hogtying the players more effectively in latter stages, to see if that is worth anything).

OK, news flash over. Now back to your regularly scheduled 5CC. :)


- Sirian

So far it's looking decent but not super -- our production might become an issue. Too many mountains, and they as a clump, and too few hills.

The yellow dot stood out as pretty nice, I like that spot and would have no problem founding there. I don't care for the red nearly as much. How about...

The spot 3 spots due south of the current settler position? ("Green dot" to give it a name, although no such dot exists :P)
It's got wheat (key! we're short on food++ resources), two hills, three mountains, and is coastal. Central to palace but no overlap.
Alas, you wouldn't want to do that one AND the blue square. :(

One other thought is the very southern tip - whale and cattle, and JUST no overlap with palace.

That west warrior is near unknown territory. If we get lucky and have a bonus resource there we're good, else our focus will be westernly. Up north, that's a pretty vast jungle. Founding a city up there would not stand up to the cultural pressure it would one day feel when surrounded.

Red and blue dots are good 'pairs', and yellow and green are good pairs. Yellow and blue are exclusive, red and green are exclusive. So... ack... we need more info :P (Not to mention knowledge of iron)

Or... do we need to see iron first? It can *only* be in hills and mountains, and those locations are quite sparse. Zedropolis covers the northern hills/mtns. Green dot covers all the southern iron spots, red dots covers a good chunk of them, and blue covers a good chunk. Either of those are close enough that if off-by-one space, we can build a colony and extend road one further out.

Good luck Jester,
Charis

EDIT in PS: Sirian, at first read of your earlier comments I had no idea what you were talking about. So I fired up a new emperor game. It was revolting. Disgusting. I don't know I would have been able to say what it was that gave a feeling of being cheated, but your comments all made sense now. Civ3 had gone from a pretense of each country out-for-itself to (again) you vs the world and everyone you met would be, from day 1, out to serve no other purpose than screw you over. In my mind, too, this is **not** a welcome or intelligent change. It merely makes MORE painful the part that doesn't need to be more painful, without addressing the real concern of... if you make it to modern era you win. It turns the game into more of a formula. For deity I've come to expect that, but creeping the 'formula win' nature down to Emperor is sad. After playing 95% of games in Monarch and now after rbd7 feeling confident of stepping out into Emperor, I'm not sure I want to. Still, these two emp games now started will be good indicators of if the new perceived pain turns out to be minor or a major "nuissance" factor.

It's like across-the-board phys resistance in D2X -- a simple solution that does not much more than increase the pain in playing, without addressing in a meaninful way how to 'increase challenge and fun'

Err, I don't see blue and yellow being mutually exclusive at all. In fact, if we can found a decent city in the west (unexplored but what we can see doesn't look too bad) I would say that's probably better than founding in the south near Tamaringrad, considering the fact that we will likely move our capital -- Zedropolis is too far away otherwise. Blue would be smack dab in the center of our empire; perfectly situated. Also, green loses too much production due to being (very) coastal. We don't really want that many coastal cities. In contrast, with rails for irrigation on plains we should have no problem grabbing all the mountains in Blue's radius.

Since nobody seems to like red we'll toss that as a possibility; IMO we should stick with Blue and Yellow.

Yep, Yellow and Blue. (Let's all chant it now: Phoenix and New Bombay! Phoenix and New Bombay! What's that you say? They fixed that in the patch?? Eep! :eek: Uh... Yellow and Blue, We Love You! Yellow and Blue, Our cities true! Yellow and Blue, what more can I say? Yellow and Blue, let's found them today!)

Jester, you're up, kiddo. :)

Wow, I didn't know we actually had an order for this going.

I've got it, and I'll play 'er tonight.

Jester

"... so came the time of the third ruler, Jestrus Jestrovich Jestrovsky (known first as "Jester the Foolhardy", later as "the Great") and the founding of the port city of St. Jestersburg, or colloquially Jestrograd. A city under mountain, bordering on the coast; a favorite tourist destination..."

Yellow dot is now Jestrograd. The next settler is ready. Who's on deck?

Jester

Charis up next. Will need a save file, though :)

There we go...

:smoke::hammer:

The cry rings through the ears of the incumbant "Yellow and Blue! Yellow
and Blue!" The incumbent had campaigned on a platform with Red and Green,
trying to be more primary, and yet... with Yellow founded, Blue is the
best choice and the pair will do swimmingly, I'm sure :p (The only problem
is... where to put the fifth and last city??? I see several ok choices, but
none really stellar. Iirc Cy's comments, input from others on this would
be good!)

3000 BC (0) - Looks like Tamaringrad is our best Colossus candidate.
With Burial about to land, let's pop a temple and rock on it.
I see spears being built, but on emp diff we really can't afford
expensive non-vet units -- better to build a barracks and have one
city crank out vet troops for the others. Warriors are ok non-vet,
they're more like entertainer-scouts :P

2950 BC (1) - Southern hut give maps, northern one by scout gives Settler
(yay!) I'm going to at least bring him back to the homeland and get some
quick turns before hand off.

The NW goody huts gives us Warrior Code. (Better than maps anyway!)

Persia. Why do we have to be next to Persia. Why are they ALREADY annoyed??
This does not bode well. Urgh nasty silly ugly new trade screws, Persia
won't consider trading Masonry or Iron Working, even though they have
nothing. Persia already knows where the iron is??? Uh oh!

2850 BC (3) - Charistroika is founded at... Blue dot!

2800 BC (4) - Crud, barbarian camp appears next to settler. I start running!

2750 BC (5) - Run Logan run!

2670 BC (7) - Whips the temple in Tamaringrad, now off to the races on
the Colossus.

2630 BC (8) - Zedropolis completes road to incense and happily starts to puff!

2590 BC (9) - Finally our warrior running North meets Logan running South.
He defeats the chasing barbarian and becomes 'regular'.

2550 BC (10) - All done except the settler has his move left.

Zedropolis is set to get whipped next turn (at 39 shields) for its temple,
unless you don't like whipping. Next up for him would likely be barracks
and five spearmen for the nation. The workers are trying to first get all
cities connected via roads, then mine some hills. Tamaringrad has its temple
and is ok for happy until size 3. Charistroika will likely need another warrior
right away to send down there. We're 10 turns from alphabet, heading for
literature and the Great Library.

Next city placement? One more oddball thought is... found it WAY up North,
at the relative choke point. But up a human wall and fortress there, and
claim those dyes :P Also claim the jungle as our own, and fight/kick out
anyone who lands on our area and settles! There are four squares at the
thinnest point. On the hill is good defense, but third grid, to the NE
of the mine-grassland, gets both dyes, a hill in radius, is coastal, but
lots of non-water squares. That's the non-traditional approach, and would
almost require the FP up there for the city to be productive long term.
Too bad can't spare/get enough units up there to blockade it now.

A second semi-choke placement is up on the jungle river on/near the fresh
water lake. Would take a lot of worker effort but could be made nice, and
has a mountain gold square. This is where the settler is now (on his way
down from his birth hut way up north). The current spot (for more production,
less coast), one to the right (coastal) or one SW (on river and also lake)
or two SW (coastal, still has river in radius).

Then of course are the much more traditional placements to get them as
close as possible to the palace.

Thoughts?

Good luck Cy,
Charis

... but we can't actually build a forbidden palace, can we? Don't you need a certain number of cities, which we're way under?

Just checked. This is a standard map, right? So we need eight cities to build one, and we're only ever going to hit 5, unless we cheat.

Jester's right. Thus, I would vote for close to the palace.

With only 5 cities, I don't think we want to be entertaining the thought of being aggressive defending that jungle. Certainly the AI empires will be able to out-produce us militarily. Look how tense things were in RBD4 when we were jammed in between Babylon and India, and we had at least double the number of cities we will have in this game, and with a smaller map! Better to keep our borders small and try to keep a low profile, IMO.

Looks to me like our best spot for our last city is at new Red dot, located on the following map. No overlap with existing cities, and only 6 coastal squares. Bad news: no hills/mountains in range. We could move a couple squares SE to new Yellow dot to get a mountain and only 4 coastal squares but then we'd overlap Charistroika by its hills.

I agree with the red, as according to Zed. We secure all that incense, improve our defense, it just makes more sense, because that jungle's too dense! We get a coastal city with good lands, a horsie, and a nice tight border. With some luck, we might even expand our borders far enough to prevent any rabid AI settlers plopping down in the gap there.

Yes, an obvious brain spasm leading to the FP thought with this few cities. Boo. If it weren't for that I still like the jungle city. As it stands now, the AI *will* be settling cities all around us. We won't have a "front", we'll have a "circle" that will be tough to defend. This thinking is colored by the fact that in my similar CC games, lack of resources with tiny # of cities was a big factor, and having a choke point let me have literally 1/2 the military I would have otherwise needed.

But with FP requiring 8, nope, he's just too non-productive and isolated up there.

Please don't overlap with Charistroika -- it's rough enough I had to take the blue of the yellow and blue when my thoughts were orange and green :crazyeyes: The new-red is a better choice.

I don't know WHEN it will come, but it will come, Persia WILL come a callin' someday with stacks of immortals so large it will sicken our delicate russian sensibilities. We're taking some liberties here in military to get a strong start with workers, a quick temple or two and a wonder, but if we delay too long getting a barracks city and at least ten spears, we're inviting immortal doom. (Especially since we'll soon have a second city going for a wonder after literature arrives)

Again, Emperor diff non-trading is going to be painful. In other days or diffs, trading 2-3 techs and giving good prices turns Xerxes from an assailant-to-be to a decently polite person for a good while (til he runs out of expansion land)

Charis

Red dot looks good to me :)

We do look to have quite a buffer zone between us and Persia at the moment (is most of that peninsula jungle?) If we don't give him our map (please don't) he's not going to even think of moving his immortals against us until he's had a scouting party down in our little corner. So I don't think we need to worry about him with any degree of urgency, at least until he's got a scouting party or two wandering about our land.

What cost is it to move the capital to Charistroika? Does the cost of a palace-move depend solely on number of cities, or will it go up if we wait?

--
Jaffa

Solely number of cities. Every turn delayed, however, means shields and commerce lost to some corruption at our three distant cities. Then again, there is cost to pausing to build the new palace, so when is the best time? I have no idea. :) I've never actually moved my capital, at least not since civ1! :lol:

- Sirian

We probably want to do it as soon as we've got a temple going in Charistroika. Even if cultural victory is disabled, (a) happiness = bigger city = more production, and (b) more culture = better AI relations. (Sirian, I wonder if the problem with lousy AI relations at the beginning of Emperor diff is that you haven't got enough culture yet? Might be worth examining.)

Of course, for that to work, we need more workers to chop forests & irrigate around Charistroika. We probably ultimately need at least 8 and preferably a dozen for an empire this size since we're not industrious. We might get away with less if our land weren't so dry...

I agree, let's not give Persia our map, at least for now. I doubt Persia will move against us even once he does send a scouting party down our way, until he starts feeling crowded, which means settling all that icky jungle north of us. Hopefully by that time we'll have enough culture and defensive units that he'll think twice about it or we can pay someone to get involved on our side. One thing we can do to discourage settlement in our "circle" is to plop down some spare military units in likely city-founding sites until our borders expand sufficiently to cover them up. That might take a lot of units at least at first, but it's worth considering. (Remember the AI won't build anywhere within 3 squares of a foreign city or 4 squares on a straight NE/NW/SE/SW line.)

It looks like the "red dot" is the chosen location. I'll found Cyrilla there tonight.

Besides the obvious, the name was inspired by all the nice trees around, and it is NOT intended to invoke the fortunes of the Martyr by that name...

--Cy Cyrillic

Cyrilla founded.

I took it all the way to 1750 BC as I hunted down a couple of Barb settlements.

I delayed the Temple in C-Town to get another worker out to buff our cap city, otherwise not much happened.

--Cy

Inherited Turn: Ruh Roe. Persia has Iron Working? :( I find that I can buy Masonry off them for Alphabet and 54 gold. That's a totally unfair price, but I'm thinking we ought to make SOME kind of deal with them soon, or else we'll be giving in to some demand of theirs soon, or going to war. That thick jungle and long distance might let us build up enough to fend them off in a war, but I'm also curious as to how costly that Palace will be.

Ugh! 300 shields for the Palace move? Somebody at Blizz North-- er... I mean Firaxis... --is smoking some seriously PUNGENT weed. OK? :smoke: :smoke: :smoke: Yeah yeah, it may be convenient and all that to have a Palace placeholder on large maps that can store up to 1000 shields, but as far as the option actually MOVE your Palace, they're out of their freakin minds! You'd need to spend a Great Leader or give up a major wonder to do it. BAH, I say. Whether or not we should do it anyway, remains open to debate. It might still be worth it. We're going for space race win?

Well, OK. I swap Charistroika to max shields and plan to whip its temple. At least get that going before the town is locked into Palace building for the next 50000 years. I also raise our science rate so that writing will come in a turn sooner. Finally, I wake our scouts and send them toward Persian lands. "What are you?" "We're scouts, Your Majesty." "So... go scout something! You useless bastages." If we leave them sitting around out in the wilderness, they'll just end up being eaten by some barbarians. They might have been on watch duty if they were closer to home, but they are all alone out in the middle of nowhere with no hope of military support.

1725BC: I increase luxury to 10% to keep Tamaringrad from getting unruly.

1650BC: Xerxes demands we remove our "smelly infidels" from his lands. We promise to, then keep right on scouting his territory. I hope to dash across his lands and emerge on the other side to keep exploring before he pulls a hissy fit and throws our scouts off his lands.

Writing discovered. After much hard pondering, I choose Literature. We don't have any cities prebuilding the GL yet and it's almost 1500BC? We'd better HOPE Tamaringrad can pull it out, because that's going to be our only chance to get it.

I whip the Charistroika temple.

1600BC: Um... there IS NO OTHER SIDE to Persian land. He's on a knob at the end of our continent, with just enough land to build one full ring of cities around his capital. He's got the world's whole silk supply, I believe, and sadly, there is a road to a mountain next to his second city. KNOWING that the AI beelines in cheating fashion for the sites where future resources will show up, I'd bet a dollar to a doughnut that he's got iron online. He would naturally send his first settler right to the iron. We are in some deep Russian latrine goo here, folks. Going to need a LOT, and I mean a TON, of horsies, which we can eventually upgrade all the way to Cossacks. Start thinking mounted units, and building chariots even, if necessary. Going to take a lot of horsies (and maybe some cata's) to fend off the inevitable immortal stacks coming our way at some future date.

1525BC: Zedropolis changed to max trade config to get enough trade to pull a lux out of 10%. It's due to build a spear next turn, when it can back off max trade. Some irrigation of plains south of Zed needs to take place, for both cities, so I started on that.

1500BC: How long before the X-man comes demanding writing from us? I have no idea. At least he doesn't have the land up there for massive expansion. Most of his cities are heavily coastal, and he's got some ice. Silks are one of the best luxuries though. Only wines and gems offer more benefit.

We're almost done with colossus. After that, the GL will kick off our golden age. We could probably use mapmaking, but the next 50 turns are not my problem any more. :lol:


- Sirian

Originally posted by Sirian
Silks are one of the best luxuries though. Only wines and gems offer more benefit.

Umm? Could you explain this? I thought the different luxuries were all exactly equal (in game terms) -- do they have extra benefits that I'm unaware of?

My turn, but it may be a while before I get to it, what with RBD5 going on too.

--
Jaffa

Ugh, that's an expensive palace. I would *NOT* make the move anytime soon at all, there's just too much else to do. If we're at a point where no wonder to build or it's a placeholder for a far out wonder, that if we don't get, "well fine, I'll let the palace complete" then.

Good call on the horses as our solution to Iron. If we can survive to reach Cossacks, Persia is toast. That's a Huge 'if' though.
Question: Persia is a bona fide threat, do we handle it by i) avoidance of war, or ii) being ready for war. They're very different approaches. The former gives him good deals, trades him whatever he needs, builds a worker army so when he counts (cough) military strength it doesn't look inviting to go after us... basically buying time until we get our Cossacks and raze him right off the continent. The latter approach says combat is inevitable and builds barracks at our north-most city and in a troop-crank city, and builds up a plausible army of solid attack and defense units. Those are the two poles, not the two only choices. We can still make barracks in zed and make several horses and workers without fully committing either way. Research wise though, it does turn Horseback riding into a must have.

The thing I fine MOST annoying about X-man is that, unlike many other civs I've seen, he can be ultra-polite and smiling and yet, if there's weakness, he'll surprise attack every time. And if we're alone on this rock with just him... smiles or not he's coming after us.

Jaffa, I would suggest slipping this game in before you finish 5. See Sirian's comments and my followup in the infantry thread on turn length and game delays. Consider 5 as now having a 72 hr turnaround while we're at war. It will take a while anyway, so don't delay a game THIS young for that one.

Charis

Jaffa, I think he means in terms of +food/shields/trade, not in terms of "lux value".

Sirian: shall we fix my position in the turn order here as well & give me 72hrs?

Ya, gems add four trade per tile! Wines add food and trade, silks add 2 trade, furs add a shield and a trade. I've also noticed that gems seem to trade for slightly higher -- there may also be SOME difference in the pricing of various luxuries, too.

Zed: that would be up to Jaffa. I'm good with anything he wants for this game, he's running this show. :)


- Sirian

0) 1500BC I look out over our HUGE empire (well, I was just playing RBD11 :D ).

1) 1475BC Zedropolis starts another spearman (and continues building them the rest of my turn). Tamaringrad grows to size 5, runs a tax collector to avoid unrest (we still get Colossus in 2 turns). The warrior from Charistroika is reassigned to Tamaringrad to help pacify the populace.

Persians start building Pyramids.

2) 1450BC We finish the Colossus :) Jestrograd finishes temple.

3) 1425BC Start on Pyramids as placeholder, and hope nobody can finish them in before we get Literature in about 16 turns.

The worker building a mine in Jestrograd's mountains is allowed to finish since he only has 2 turns left. Mining the plains would have been more useful. Whip temple at Cyrilla.

5) 1375BC Whip barracks at Cyrilla.

8) 1300BC Whip barracks at Jestrograd.

10) 1250BC I realise I could have reduced luxury tax when Tamaringrad got its extra defender. Ooops.

Zedropolis will unrest if nothing is done when it grows next turn.

Pyramids in Tamaringrad is a placeholder for Great Library.

We need to contact somebody else if GL is going to benefit us (unless we want to do an RBD7 :) ).

Zed: 10 turns on 5 cities shouldn't ever take that long. You can go into a normal rotation if you think you would normally be able to play within 48 hrs or so. Or you can stick with the 'it's Zed's turn when it gets to the weekend' arrangement, but no jumping in midweek -- that just gets too confusing. Your choice :)

For this round, I'll pass on by email to whichever of Zed or Jester posts to say they can play within the next day or so (and gives an email address).

Badda bing, badda boom, I'm ready, willing and able.

Send it to Jesterlord@hotmail.com

Jester

P.S: You're whipping my beautiful, beautiful city? I feel so... so... violated!

Speaking of whipping...

I have using this game to replay sequences of turns to try to evaluate the long term cost/benefit of whipping just once for a temple.

The issue is not clear-cut at all. In the one situation I have checked more than I care to ever do again, you end up losing most of the turns you saved due to the snowballing effect of losing that pop point so early.

For example, if you whip a temple to save 19 turns, build barracks, then build spearman, vs normal build, you end up only saving about 5 turns and with a size 3, 7 shield/7 food (gross) town vs a size 5 10/11 town. The longer you extend the comparison out, the muddier the waters get as you have to decide what statistic carries more value. Not at all clear cut 8-0.

Obviously, though, the variables are immense, and the value to whipping grows greatly with distance from the Capitol (well, actually, I am *assuming* it does, and I used to *assume* whipping speeded thing up, so...).

Clear as mud, eh?

--Cy

Jestograd was not whipped. Charistroika was, on my turn, and Cyrilla was set to be. Did Jaffa whip Cyrilla? (Nobody seems to read poor Jaffa's genuinely brilliant and witty reports! ;) ).

Oh, and the mining of the gold mountain was King Cy's idea, not mine. I decided not to veto, though. Might as well get that out of the way early, as rough as some of our happiness problems are, might be better to run break even food with the mountain than grow too large and use a taxman.

Still, I would definitely not have chosen to mine there first. Not until the Good Tiles were operational at least.


- Sirian

Originally posted by Sirian
(Nobody seems to read poor Jaffa's genuinely brilliant and witty reports! ;) ).

Witty and brilliant? Oh, ack!! I assure you I was aiming solely for 'functional', and if any wit or brilliance leaked in it was entirely accidently and not my fault!

Might as well throw me in the rotation on this one. Wherever fits is good.

Okay. I'll put you in after Jester from now on, so turn order is:

Jaffa
Jester (playing)
Zed (on deck)
Charis
Cyrene
Sirian

Time limits flexible, but aim to play within 48 hrs. "Got it" post and ETA appreciated if it's going to be more than 24.

"8) 1300BC Whip barracks at Jestrograd. "

My beautiful city!

It did happen! I'm not just crazy! I'm not! Really!

P.S: I don't have the game. Am I supposed to be getting that by email? It might be too big for hotmail... has this been tried yet?

Originally posted by Iester
P.S: I don't have the game. Am I supposed to be getting that by email? It might be too big for hotmail... has this been tried yet?

Yes, you were supposed to be. I did send it.

Oh well. Guess I'll just post it here now.

Aha! So those lazy slobs in Jestograd WERE whipped into shape! :satan:

Ah, but not by my! Not me! :jesus: I'm just an angel, the most benevolent of Russian leaders toward the good and kindly people on the north sea, the stalwart peasants of Jestograd. :D

I'm the Leader Without a City, so maybe I'll plant roots in fair Jestograd and bask in the glow of devotion (when Jester's out of town) and stoke up the fires against the capitalist pigs living in the rich capital city of Tamaringrad. :lol:

Oh hey, and be thankful! You COULD BE living in Cyrilla! :eek: :beer: ;)


- Sirian

Caretaker turn this time around.

Mined a grassland or two, built some roads. Tamaringrad is building the GL, and the others are mostly building granaries, seeing as how we're likely going to miss the pyramids, and libraries, because you can't get in on that action soon enough for my taste.

Science has been set to minimal. If this library is ours (and it sure better be) we're not going to need it. If the library isn't ours, we'll need money to catch up. Mapmaking is on deck, since nearly everything else will be instantly GL'ed.

No other civilizations talked to us. The persians threatened us for our entire treasury. I gave them all six shiny pennies, since I thought we'd rather have happy persians for the moment, rather than angry persians wiping our poor little civilization out completely. Besides, 6 bucks is cheap for anything, even a kick in the ass.

I did zero whipping on my turn. I just don't like it, and I'm not even that convinced that it helps, at least considering how much we've already done. If the next ruler wishes to overturn this decision, go right ahead, make up for lost time.

Oh, and why was charistroika (love that name) building a palace? So we could move our capital sometime by about 600 AD? 132 turns is longer than I'm willing to stomach for that project. I switched to a library, then a granary. Hope I haven't ruined any dreams.

Jester

Got it. I'll most likely fit this in before I finish Infantry (or however much of Infantry I can get done... :) )

Well, I keep trying to get the smart, scientific ones to do the work for us on scoping out the real bottom line on whipping, but I just can't seem to suck them in.

From the work I have done, I would say whipping is good for the obvious stuff: (1) when you really need something right NOW (as in barracks in a war), or, (2) when you have more food than shields, or, (3) when you understand the tradeoff and want/need the immediate gratification (temple right now, even if it ends up costing you pop and productivity down the road--the whole "culture doubles after 1k years" thing makes this a really hard nut for simple old men like me to get a statistical handle on).
I do not think it is the end-all, especially in light of the rule changes.

--Cy

"are we not men?"

Originally posted by Iester
Oh, and why was charistroika (love that name) building a palace? So we could move our capital sometime by about 600 AD? 132 turns is longer than I'm willing to stomach for that project. I switched to a library, then a granary. Hope I haven't ruined any dreams.

Well, moving the palace to Charistroika was actually the plan. We were having quite a discussion about it earlier in the thread. Did you miss all that?

It was discussed, but no decision, and I think there's a ton of better stuff to do right now. (Then again my view of the map is old) I would have done the same thing Jester did at this stage.

Charis

Well, I would have stuck with building up for the Palace -- it's only 132 turns if we stay at size 3. If you really wanted more infrastructure first, a Granary would have been a better choice. A Library is not very useful when we're running 80% cash and only 10% science!

The library was precisely the thing to be sure to get in before the palace - getting the culture building in early and get the 1000 yr doubling bonus far earlier. I just looked at the save file to get current, and I would whip the granary in two turns (when <=39 left) then go palace. You'll be size 4 or 5 soon enough and palace needing 300 shields will take about 30 turns once you get those hills mined, or in less than 50 turns from now. With the temple and library "in", we're set to move palace. The granary isn't 100% needed now, but... you can whip it with no probably because you'll lose the 40 turn memory for sure by the time the palace is built.

Charis

Took a quick 10 turns. Changed some cities to Granaries, got Irrigation over to Cyrilla in the west. We now have horses in our road net. Otherwise, pretty uneventful.

IMO, Charistroika should go back on Palace again as soon as its done the Granary. Give it a bit of a chance to grow and it will be able to get 300 shields out in a non-absurd amount of time, since it's on a river. Just keep chopping down those forests and irrigating those plains.

750 BC (0) -

Great Library due in 9? Great! I was wondering about the map making,
but those two go together well. Time does seem right now for a palace
shift, so I move a worker to forest to complete granary a turn early
then go for palace. Should be a quick turn? After granaries are in,
defintely time to double the worker force - it will help mining and
roads a lot, AND increase our 'perceived' military strength. Persia
has spread out pretty nicely up north. I *hope* they're not feeling
cramped anytime soon at all. Their power is much higher than ours and
our mil advisor says we're weak compared to them (eep). He's cautious.
I want to improve relations so I trade him literature (safe now) for
iron working and horseback riding and give him about 100 gold and some
gpt to keep him off our backs. Frankly, with cash just building up, they
just make higher demands when it's tribute time.

Speaking of iron... it's one square too FAR for Charistroika to reach,
and in range of unsettled 'red dot'. Shouldn't be a problem - we can
use a colony, right? It *IS* within Charistroika's temple and library
enhanced borders :p Actually, in our cultural border, we won't need a
colony will we? I think not, but it hasn't come up for me yet ina game.
Persia has two iron sources and there's a third between us. They also have
horses. Good, nothing to come digest us over!

Hmm, Z, J and Cyr cities all have barracks :P Perhaps some 'real' military
wouldn't hurt either. Horses will some day make cossacks, so they're not
wasted. Probably better to use them for offense rather than obsolescent
swordsmen anyway.

730 BC (1) - Now he's cautious again cuz our 'troops' are near Arbela.
Get that scout home to ride in a ship! :P

710 BC (2) - We start the Palace in Ch. Luxury up to 30% as Z-polis hits 7.
It's put on a diet of zero growth and max shields (8) for now, cranking
out a horse in 4 instead of 5 turns.

650 BC (5) - Cyrilla is feeling granarious, and starts its library.
I move a warrior out on a road to check its state of whippedness. It's
got two workers put out for cruelty, so doing one more for library
might be painful. And yet... we need both the lib AND need it to get
cranking on troops. Did I mention X-man is now annoyed? :( (I *hope*
it's just the scout running through is land to get home)

610 BC (7) - Jestograd now feels granarious too, does its lib.
590 BC (8) - It shows one whipping memory, and so braces itself for one more.
(Since lux slider has to cover all cities, seems to make sense to have
cities of same size at same whip-memory) :whip:

570 BC (9) - GOLDEN AGE!!!! Russia completes the Great Library!
It's a bit early, but actually, not bad timing. We have all our cities
anyway! :P This will help us finish the palace quicker, and crank out
some troops. Too bad no real wonder to work on. (Pyramids? Someone is likely
finished, and we have all our granaries built anyway)

Odd... what kind of GA is this? 9 shields instead of 7? Oh crud...
we're still in despotism 8-( No other gov is even on the horizon.
Palace due in 33 turns.

The scout returning stops in the mountains outside their cultural
borders. Xerxes is down to cautious (good). He'll hang there until
forced out, I think. Oops!! Did I pillage your road connecting your
key cities?????? Soooooo sorry!

550 BC (10) - Our warrior sentry up north notes a new Persian city
Ergili, now in the jungle. They'll found about 3-4 more cities, and
then they're out of room to grow. :eek: (If we had SIX spare
units, and we don't we could form a human wall around the mountain and
lake, to slow advancing.)

Thoughts...
- I did NOT trade our map, wasn't sure if that was still secret from Persia,
since we do have unsettled area where our borders haven't expanded yet.
- Didn't get to start much on workers yet, we do need some. Consider topping
off MapMaking when Cyrilla's lib is done, to go hunting.
- There are workers to the east of Charistroika. When the mountain
road or iron road is finished, mine and road that hill spot.
(This may bring iron online too)
- I thought I saw a persia settler pull BACK WEST. Did they find an island
better than the jungle??

Jaffa
Jester
Zed
Charis
Cyrene <<<< up
Sirian << on deck

Good luck,
Charis

I did read the stuff before about moving our capital. Charistroika is the place to move it to, yes. But there's no reason to cripple its infrastructure for 1000 years just to get the palace what, 15 turns earlier?

By building the library and granary now, we'll hardly lose a turn on the palace, and we'll gain some science, a lot of culture, and have a faster growing city.

It just seemed somewhat of an absurd scene to be building a palace at 2 shields per turn before it had even the most basic buildings.

Jester

Well, this was a particularly uninspiring turn 8-(.

The lowlight would have to be when I produced a couple of workers, which put us into negative cash flow, requiring research to be shut down for about 3 turns until the pop was replaced.

Oops.

X-man extorted a territory map, after which he started shifting his forces the other direction, which is an insult, I think. What, our land isn't worth taking?

I put up a picket line of spearmen in the jungle. There is one immortal trapped on our side, you might want to let him out before he pisses in the potted palm or something

The new palace is due in about 12.

--Cy

oh yeah

Jaffa << on deck
Jester
Zed
Charis
Cyrene
Sirian <<<< up

Got it. Should be able to play late tonight.

IT: not much to do. Tamaringrad still had granary to build so I switched it to that.

330BC: X-Man establishes embassy with us. He's now polite.

310BC: I decide that the jungle blockade is bad for the following reasons:

* Won't stop them from using ships to drop off settlers behind our blockade.
* Our units may get sick and die off, with long term jungle duty.
* We have a MUCH more urgent need for these units elsewhere.

I vetoed the Cy Blockade and started pulling the units home, although I did leave two spears on the mountain. I ordered up one swordsman, then went and pillaged the iron to take it back offline (so we don't risk losing it in a situation where we can't go take over some more).

Rest of my turn until 150BC: organizing the "You'll Build a City in Our Back Lines Over Our Dead Bodies" blockade. Got them up JUST in time to stop a Persian galley from (possibly) landing a settler pair near our incense.

When our golden age ran out... we ran into a new and quite severe problem: Our military budget is over the top! Even with me having disbanded the scout, we have 32 units and that means 12gpt to support the extras. Um... we only HAVE 12gpt! This means that running 20% lux (necessary to prevent riots) and 80% taxes, we are running at break even. When we build some galleys with our finally-arrived Mapmaking, we will go into budget-busting deficits we can't exactly overcome easily.

Something will have to be done.

And yet... our only source of iron is stuck way out on the edge of our borders, and some AI (read: Persia) will sail along, plop down a settler and steal it from us, unless we keep the YBACIO-BLOOD-Blockade in place.

We have two three options:
1) bust our budget for strategic purposes and keep the full blockade in place. We will sit and earn NO cash and wait helplessly for the Great Library to carry us forward, until such time as we can build courthouses/marketplaces and/or change governments.
2) Disband some of the units and expose one or more areas to enemy settlers.
3) Disband all the extra units (mostly warriors) and let the AI's have their way with our lands.

I'm in favor of Option One, but it will be painful. The team should discuss this. Eventually, our cities will reach 1000 culture and our borders expand some more, allowing us to fire a couple of the blockade units at that time. But that is a good long way off. I'm sorry I couldn't hand off a better situation, but at least we're in no real danger of being wiped out militarily! :lol:

The best news: with five incense, we can trade them away time and time again for techs, cash, favors, etc. We've got a long way to go until Launch, and will be trailing most of the way. At least we won't start permanently falling behind in tech until post-education.

Our next big prayer: that our galleys find their way to other civs. Our science advisor is calling us "a backward people". :(


- Sirian

The file:

Well. I'm at work at the moment, so can't go into the game for a detailed look, but on the face of it I prefer option 1, as recommended by Sirian :)

When our Palace moves north in 3 turns, will that help with our cash-flow any? How much are we losing to waste in our northern cities?

If Persia has no contact with other Civs yet, we'll probably have to wait at least until Great Lighthouse for our galleys to find anyone. In case of our galleys not being able to find anyone (until navigation?) would it make sense to run a scientist in one of our cities to pick up essential techs at 40-turn rate?

--
Jaffa

The Palace move will help, but we're also building even more units.

Running 40 turn research probably makes sense if we could be researching Republic, or Construction. Here... probably not. That could be a taxman or a trade unit for 40 turns.

Topping off the tank goes by beakers invested, NOT turns due. Running zero science and one scientist for 20 turns would only shave 20 gold off a purchase price anyway, NOT cut that price in half. Keep that in mind.

It will all depend on what our galleys find. Xerxes has not yet circumnavigated our island, so there may be links to other islands he hasn't found yet.


- Sirian

Probably grin and bear it with option 1.

Good move on the coastline blockade.

--Cy

Palace move completed! Yay! We gained about 5gpt, which all got used up for the extra units I built. We're actually running -ve cash flow now, so I don't know if we want to build more units, or switch our cities to wealth.

I mined Tamaringrad's cattle in an attempt to speed the Lighthouse, but it seems to have been too late to make any difference.

Our culture borders expanded, allowing four blockade troops to be relieved of duty. And Persia stuck Jinjan on the little peninsula south of Tamaringrad.

Our galleys are exploring up the Persian coast, which may have been a mistake. If Persia decides to complain about them pre-Lighthouse, they're vulnerable to being shoved out into sea, and sinking.

Jaffa
Jester <<<< up
Zed << on deck
Charis
Cyrene
Sirian

Jester?? Check in if you have this? The 5CC game turns are extremely short, so hop in there! :P

If no reply shortly, Zed please hop in with a 'got' or bump.

Thanks,
Charis

Ok, if no reply by tonght, will get it.

I got it, I just forgot to post "got it". I'll play it as soon as I can.

Jester

I'll post a lengthier description when I've got more time...

Biggest point: We're in a tech hole, and we need to get out.

Jester

Cyrene's up... I'm on deck. Cy, any chance you can squeeze in at least five turns before your weekend starts?


EDIT: OK, wrong thread, wrong game, wrong roster. Cy's not up. Ignore this mistake. I don't know who IS up (Charis?) but I do know that I follow Cy. Right? I do follow Cy in this one don't I? :)

I'm now going to go back to Jestograd and doze some more.

:smoke:

Jaffa
Jester
Zed <<<< up
Charis << on deck
Cyrene
Sirian

Usually we don't get commentary before the notes, but let me point out...

- We're in anarchy (headed for Republic I assume) - out in 2
- We know about the Chinese and Indians
- Must have had a 'GL flood' come when that happened,
and alas, Education popped out. Crud!! They beelined Edu!
No Engr yet (we're researching that now) or Chivalry
- We're building Courthouse and Marketplaces, and the Great Lighthouse, about 2/3 done. This must be a placeholder though, for Sistine (which we have the tech for, about 1/3 done, and I would guess about 45 turns to finish)
- Couldn't spare units to blockade the south or it wasn't a priority, but Persia has settled just below us (do have E/W blockaded anyway)
- We're strapped for cash. Looks to be about zero surplus even with 0 or 10% science. Unit costs are WAY up there. With lesser trade bonuses, we would likely fare as bad in Monarchy. Must be fear of Persian (hard to blame ;p I see immortals on the horizon)
- Persia is currently annoyed! :eek: I think we have too much
he wants, two communications and two techs. The clown can't even build a road down to us to trade mutually beneficial luxuries

Looking forward to the report! :D
Charis

Ok, got it.

Originally posted by Charis
- We're building Courthouse and Marketplaces, and the Great Lighthouse, about 2/3 done. This must be a placeholder though, for Sistine (which we have the tech for, about 1/3 done, and I would guess about 45 turns to finish)

Heh. Well, I guess it could be a placeholder now (GL expires at Navigation, right?), but I don't think it was intended to be when we started.

GL expired at Education. *(

I do tend to undervalue Great Lighthouse in non-naval games and especially where we can't build any colonies anyway. If however others think it's a good idea, chime in! If it were before the GL expired, to meet more civs and get more techs, would make more sense unless trying the Cuban Black Hole GL Gambit :P

Charis

EDIT - Response to Jaffa...
... duh!! :splat: Silly me...
Is "GL" an overloaded term or what?!? :smoke:

Yes, Library expires at Education. When does Lighthouse expire?

Lighthouse may still be useful if it allows us to meet earlier the other Civs we haven't met yet -- a bit of tech or communications brokering would do wonders for our finances.

--
Jaffa

(Great Leader expired at Education? Oh, damn. Guess all that new learnin' was just a bit too much for him :) ).

Ok, only had time for 3 turns (and this in a 5CC game! :eek: )

Traded contact & maps around, got a bit of gold & Engineering. How did our galley get over to China without revealing the map along the way? I'm confused... :confused: Our problem is not that we're behind in tech (we're not), it's that we've got way more units than we can afford and Persia is about to try and rape us. I guess we're about to see which of those problems is worse...

I envisioned this game would look a lot like an OCC except that we'd have 5 wonder-able cities instead of one. It has NOT turned out that way at all -- instead we've got 5 cities that are still working on relatively basic improvements in some cases, and a tough time grabbing more than a couple wonders from here on out due to lack of infrastructure and an economy that's shot all to heck even under Republic. Though I've been known to be overly pessimistic before, it seems to me we're in trouble here, people.

Did we misplay this or are we a victim of circumstance? Most likely a combination of both, but if anyone thinks we went drastically wrong somewhere I'd like to hear about it...

We got evicted. The persians DEMANDED that we get our lazy butts out of their territory. I complied.

Our galley ended up in china. What's so unusual about that?

:smoke:

I don't get it either.

Jester

They'll have to suck the last dying breath out of the last Russian peasant in our last city to deter my optimism. With the 1.17f tech system, as soon as we make contact with the world, we can buy ALL the tech we're behind on for a song. Believe it or not, keeping that iron out of the hands of AI settlers is worth the gpt we're paying for the blockade. OCC you just sit back and play at the mercy of the AI's. Here, we're actually trying to control some territory, in some odd ways it can be harder.

As for why we don't have more wonders... cities too far from the capital, to put it bluntly. Corruption! Our GA went to waste building units, I'm afraid.

What went wrong? In 1.17f, contact with other civs is the UBER factor. All else pales to irrlevance next to that one point, and we sat too long without it. The GL was the right bet for 1.16f, but I'm starting to think that in 1.17 we'd have been better off going straight for Mapmaking, building the Lighthouse, trying desperately to make contact sooner, and also saving our Golden Age.

But don't fear. As long as we don't get conquered, those incense can buy us all kinds of favors. Just tough it out a little longer, you'll see it will be OK.


- Sirian

I'm between you two in optimism. Full agreement with Sirian that if we don't get wiped out we'll be ok after a short bit. But... we're stuck alone on a continent with Persian and they're coming after us?! That makes the earlier "if" a big one :p

Got it...

Charis

-- EDIT --
Question: What on EARTH is that galley doing over in China -
it's not a scout it's a troop transport!!! Two spears?? Persia is about to start a war with us and 15% of our top defenders are seeing the Yellow River? Uh.... it'll take them forever just to get home - Disband them to help the economy? :P

Well, we're in contact now, and we're not behind on tech. However, we're on Emperor, where the AI has a substantial production advantage, and right now our best cities are no better than the AI's best cities. That will make it considerably harder to beat the AIs out for wonders, especially with Persia breathing down our necks.

*IF* we can survive Persia until the modern age, I suppose ultimately we won't be too badly off -- we should be able to buy our way to tech parity without too much trouble. But, for us to win a space race, we can't just be at tech parity, we have to have a tech and/or production advantage. Nuclear plants will be a good start, but will it be enough? Perhaps the fact that we won't have most of the middle ages wonders will not be the problem so much as that the AIs will have them. I haven't tried for a space race yet so I'm not sure how a close one plays out.
BTW, Tamaringrad is our best bet for Sistine right now, due to prebuilding Lighthouse, but it's stuck at size 6. I might be tempted to switch to Zedropolis and let Tamaringrad complete the Lighthouse and get back to basic improvements, but with war coming I don't think we'll likely be able to.

Well... if somebody hadn't moved off the water... :lol: ;)

- Sirian

Okay, okay, next game I start I'll put our capital on a river if I have to walk across half a continent to get there :)

The two spearmen in the galley are from my turn -- they were stuck on a mountain out in the jungle, until the Persians booted them back into a culture hole, and the galley was the only way to rescue them.

Strategy-thought of the moment: how about, instead of sitting in our corner waiting for the Persians to move against us, we wait until we get Chivalry and then go after them? If we can wipe the Persians off our continent, and let all the other AIs settle in their normal patchwork fashion, none of them should have sufficient local production base to be much of a threat to us.

Or do I need a new supply of :smoke: :smoke: ?

--
Jaffa

Well we can try to build middle age wonders... or we can build knights and attack Persia. I don't think we can do both. Persia may be aggressive, but with our ratio of units to cities, frankly I'd be shocked if they just marched on us in surprise attack fashion. Rather, more likely they will bully us... but um, we're broke! :lol:

I would vote to go for the wonders and infrastructure upgrades.


- Sirian

Well, Sirian, prepare to be shocked... when I left off they had a number of immortals in our territory and were moving more in. As I said, they looked like they were planning to try to work us over.

280 AD (0) - Ugh. Ugh!! This is one of those turns you think... "I wish
someone else were up!" The map shows Persia and China as biggest powers,
with us the only other civ on Persia's continent. Any sensible Xerces would
not rest until we were dead or vassalized.

Can war even be avoided? I think not, judging from the five immortals already
on the way toward Zedropolis. Can we "hole up" until they get tired of
beating on us. If we want every single square plundered of improvements
that's a swell option. What should we be building? Current items in
construction are Harbor, Courthouse, 2 Markets and Sistine. To support our
'relatively' big standing army, we need money. To expand our borders and
free up a dozen of the more useless units, we need to expand borders quicker.
So University and Troops are options. Abandoning wonder would cost 125
shields and hurt chances for culture victory significantly. No thanks.
Let's consider our opponents Sistine chances. Zimbabwe, Warwick, Canton,
Hastings, Teno don't seem a threat. Bombay, Shanghai, would be if only they
would mine. Hmmm... maybe our chances are quite strong. Even better, as I
look at the royal records, I see we prebuilt at least 1/3, so excellent,
it's our if Persia doesn't drag us down.

More than anything, Sirian's comments scare me:

Persia may be aggressive, but with our ratio of units to cities,
frankly I'd be shocked if they just marched on us in surprise attack fashion.

This has a real rbd2 'Egypt' flair to it :P

Buy the Persians off for 20 or 40 turns til we get tech for better troops??
My experience with Xman is that if he's coming after you, he's coming
after you. The galling thing is... he's polite. He just smiles and winks
and pats you on the back while the immortals come streaming down. RoP
just can't be done. The clown has no road to trade.

What Tech? We have 40 turns left so we're just staring. Current is Music
Theory which no one else has. Yet I fear a cascade loss on that with
everyone and their brother building both SunTzu and Sistine.
Six techs away from Mil Tradition, or if pressed for war NOW, Knights are
possible if we research Chivalry. What a waste though if not needed - alas,
we can't well afford that. Astronomy would head us to Coper and Newton.
Invention would let us hole up indefinitely, except... do we (or Persia)
have any gunpowder?? Well that's something I would sure like to know soon.
(No iron online yet for us, which must be intentional so it doesn't disappear)
Other civs? China, India, Zulu have Astronomy. (Er... not Cavs, Cossacks,
even better.)

Well... Invention path leaves all options open. If we want Back we can prebuild
it anyway.

Here's an odd move. What if we land those settlers - I see no
space with no culture borders, would we get 'backed up' clear home doing
that? Worth trying, they're useless there, can't make it home, and the
savings in upkeep costs if we end up disbanding can pay to rush a new one.

290 AD (1) - "The Persians declare War!!" :eek:

If it weren't for the prediction above this would be chilling. Instead I
chuckled. But then... I'm chilled again. Eep!! That stray worker pile was
too much temptation for him. I was hoping to let him finish the mine in one
turn then bring him home. (Doh, truly wishful thinking they would not)

310 to 320 -
Here and next turn it's slow as they're not really massed yet. We win a few
and lose a few, shift one or two horses closer to the front lines of Zedropolis
and Jestograd. One horse engages a lone spear and dies 8-\
Persia starts Art of War (cough, they seem to have the basics down ok!)

330 AD (5) - Reconnect the iron, we need those Spears to be Pikes in the
biggest way! (Should probably have stopped my irrigation and done this a
turn earlier). I count nine immortals in the area.

350 AD (7) - Pikes online, and Zed can produce one every 2 turns (until every
thing around us is plundered.)

360 AD (8) - On their turn, an immortal going against a spearman made elite
last turn leads to...

A GREAT LEADER!! Ivan the Terrible!! :) [party] :hammer:

No less than *EIGHT* immortals impaled themselves on the defenses of
Jestrograd!!?? wow! Besides the GL, they made the Pikeman elite, whacked
everyone down to 1-2 hp, and even got our horse to defend and win. We
did lose one pike. After several minor weedy choices this turn, it's clear...
it's better to be lucky than good! :lol:
(Interestingly, I think they would have been heading toward Zedropolis
had not the workers lured them east to Jestrograd. I prefer them there,
because from Zedrograd they can go around and threaten other cities.

Aztecs join the Sistine race, in other news. The top tech civs, China and
India, have banking now in addition to Astro. China and Aztecs a little
annoyed with us. (Due to weakness??) Someday when we have cash, we'll set
up embassies with someone else besides Persia 8-\

370 AD (9) - Persians complete Great Lighthouse in Arbela. Aztecs begin
Sistine? Did I misread last turn? (or confuse my notes) I hope that's not a
cascade. No (other) cascade notices. Two spears land next to Tamarinagrad
off boats. No offense units? We shift a few units to there. Cyrilla enters
the fray, picking off a lone spear with a horse (aka future Cossack).

380 AD (10) - Chinese are building Leo. We defend three immortals vs Jestro.

As good a time as any for a handoff, this will go another ten rounds for
sure! I've moved 3 Pikes and the Leader within range of Jestrograd.

*IF* you want to have an army defending the city next turn you can
(if careful about orders! Leader to town, build army, step out on road
towards pikes one step, have all three pikes take 2 steps on road to
army, load, then army steps back in city. Any other way doesn't work!)
Building Heroic epic is culture, although I hope not to fight enough to
see another leader :P

*IF* we want Sistine for sure, and a great shot at another wonder, turn
that leader around, switch Jaff to SunTzu and hurry the Sistine in Charistroika.
The three pikes will continue alone to Jestrograd. With one other coming
per two turns, they can (???) hold out a while I hope. Currently 12
immortals in the area. At any time, half are moving up to mountain to
attack and half are running back to barracks to heal.

I've been running 1 scientist and 0% sci to have upgrade money. Just now
switched to 10% because Invention got cheaper. If you need more,cash go
back to scientist and/or entertainer.

The two spears are fortified in no-mans-land in central asia. I would
disband and save 2 gpt, but up to next leader.

This is the new leaders call, but if folks have thoughts... speak up!

Jaffa
Jester
Zed
Charis
Cyrene <<<< up (lmao! Cy, you always get fun turns!!)
Sirian << on deck

Good luck!
Charis

Originally posted by Charis
Abandoning wonder would cost 125
shields and hurt chances for culture victory significantly.

Actually, it wouldn't. Cultural victory is disabled :)

Enabled victories: spaceship, conquest, domination.

*IF* you want to have an army defending the city next turn you can
(if careful about orders! Leader to town, build army, step out on road
towards pikes one step, have all three pikes take 2 steps on road to
army, load, then army steps back in city. Any other way doesn't work!)

Ummm? I thought armies could only be loaded in town? Or is that something else they changed in the last patch?

--
Jaffa

> Actually, it wouldn't. Cultural victory is disabled
> Enabled victories: spaceship, conquest, domination.

Ah... ya, we'll dominate :P That one and conquest are
in for Persia's sake, eh? Spaceship?? Oh goodie, this will
be a hoot, if we live that long!

> Ummm? I thought armies could only be loaded in town? Or is
> that something else they changed in the last patch?

Don't know about earlier vers, but I've done it for sure in 1.17, loaded an army out of town. However you cannot convert a leader to an army in town, hence my odd instructions! Leader has move 3 and can get to town and become an army with 2/3 of his move left, so road in and road back into town JUST make it.

They've shown almost no interest except minor harrassment and love to come against Jestro, so if they continue that idea, an army with about two other vet pikes in town make it almost impregnable (yay!!) (Would they defeat the equivalent 5 pikes?)

Charis

Ouch.

The good news—no cities lost.

The bad news—everything else 8-).

Takeover turn: Used leader for Sistine. I didn’t think an army of Pikes was going to accomplish much. Set Jaffaville on Shih Tsu Art of Kibble as placeholder for Leo. OR our tombstone…

390. Carnage in Jester-town. Every Immortal won. If they would have had another unit handy it would have been a 4CC.

400. Istakhr tries to revolt to us! Zut! ZUT alors! This is the Persian base for the entire assault, and their healing city. Losing this would cripple the assault! AND I CAN NOT ACCEPT IT! ^@#^@#$ ^%$^%$! Goat felching imbibers of donkey piss! I curse variantism in general, and myself for getting into these sorts of games. Ah well. Looks like about a dozen Immortals heading for a big party at the sack of Jesterville, and a few spearman heading down the other coast towards Cyrilla. I’d better grab the tactical initiative and see if I can short-circuit the AI. I start grabbing horsies and flinging them into the fray. We take and raze Jinjin in the south, and I start two into the interior of Persia towards Zohack. Let’s see what Xman thinks of that…

410. The immortals veer off from Jesterville and head into our interior. This is NOT what I had in mind. I dial up the X-man. For peace, all he wants is Jestrograd. I don’t think so. Crap. Oh well, might as well play it out. Send first 2 horsies to the city gates of Zohak, and start the rest north out of Jestrograd towards Istahir. Roll them dice.

420. AI stumbles. X-man shuffles troops around without really advancing or retreating. I decide this is working. Zohak is guarded by Pikes. Oops. I veer off further north. Send my last two horsies after the spears advancing on Cyrilla.

430. Xerxes blinks. An immortal takes on the eastern horsies, all the rest of the troops but spears retreat back into interior to regroup against our Powerful (cough, pitiful) assault force. Eastern horsies take out wounded immortal, then have to pull back because they are wounded badly. Cyrilla relief kills a Spearman. Western duo plunges north hoping to lead Immortals on wild goose chase.

440. X-man brings up fresh Immortals and cuts off our two eastern horsemen. Uh oh. I try to pull them out. Cyrilla relief whacks the another Persian Spearman, and our territory is now free of all Persians.

450. Immortals kill a Horseman in the jungle, but the second one wins! Shocking. All Persians still retreating chasing lone horse. The western diversion went so well, I regroup eastern horsies and prepare to send them out again.

460. Bummer. Xman turns entire assualt force back south. War weariness starts to kick in.

470. 4 of our cities kick into unrest due to war weariness (I actually saw Jaffa-town coming and headed it off as it was the wonder city). The Immortals are spread instead of stacked on the east, so I pull the Eastern horsemen out and send them to join up with the west in case the next leader wants to do another goose chase in the west where there is more room.

480. Immortals close in.

Ok. You have 16 Immortals and 4 spearmen bearing down on us. Our two front cities have 4 Pikes apiece and a couple of odds and ends. We also have 6 horsemen left healed up and ready to go, and we ARE up to 13 Pikes, so we aren’t exactly roadkill, depending on the prng. 4 (sigh) of our 5 cities are in the red because of war weariness, and the wonder city is yellow. Sigh. We are running a –9 per turn deficit (against only 22 gold—eeek) to bring Invention in in two turns to flip Tama-town over to Leos (which might be moot anyways—other civs have been busy beavers—check the f7).

Sirian—I have NO strong feelings about anything on this one-except good luck, you are gonna need it 8-). I hope you can sort out our cities, this was the best I could do—I was just trying to keep them out of disorder and I knew a better player was due in 2 turns 8-). You still have a turn or two to shuffle troops before the next wave hits—none of the Pikes has moved yet so you can move them on the continuation. I don’t know if Xerxes will bite on another horseman diversion, but I do know you know what you are doing, so I’m not going to granny you with unwanted advice.

You know, some times in war you just hate to turn the game over to the next guy—you really want to finish what you started. This is NOT one of those times. 8-0.

Have fun.

--Cy



Jaffa << on deck
Jester
Zed Charis
Cyrene
Sirian <<<< up

AI surprise attacks are always about cities with resources. I've been in similar situations many times, in terms of relative strength, and not been attacked, so what made the difference? I presume that it was having our units on blockade instead of in the cities. I've been surprise attacked by the AI so many times in Emperor games, I've gotten a pretty good feel for them. One problem, though, with the resource surprise attacks, is that the AI blatantly cheats with regard to foreknowledge of where resources not yet visible will one day appear.

I shall endeavor to hold on for us. Wish me luck. :)

- Sirian

I'm just glad that it isn't on my watch. All the luck in Ireland wouldn't save us.

Good luck, Sirian. Even you're going to need plenty of it.

Jester

Cy, I'm so glad you went after me! Win or lose all our cities, that was just... really different! Sometimes I get too stuck inside the box on a given turn. When it was Jed's turn I looked at Persia's city down below us and said, "we'll raze that puppy with horses if Xman attacks!" then forgot all about it.

Your "solution" was definitely not one I envisioned. Then again I saw 8 immortals die to a pike, two spear and a horse. What you saw was more like 5 immortals winning against a city of pikes and if they had 1 more the city was gone. I was in "Pikes can hold them off til we get Muskets" mode. Now, maybe that was correct, but it's good to see these other alternatives. And it seemed to work to some degree. For kicks after the war is over I'm going to have to see what happens with "make Pike army, other cities make pikes, send all made pikes to Jestro" and see what happens... The downside to that approach is of course... all Xerxes needs is ONE lucky turn to win the city. We need consistent luck, even if each turn we 'on average' kill 4 and lose 1.

I was wondering if a flip would occur, just didnt expect it so soon or mid war. Lol that's hilarious timing. Ironic too, we could have used it to give away for peace if there was a "you can have a sixth city but cant own it for more than a turn" clause :P (j/k)

War weariness for us?? We're not even attacking?! (Hmm, or maybe you were) I can only hope it gets to be downright oppressive for Xerxes like NOW.

btw, tip for next leader - you can topoff Invention for a mere 7 gold from china on the save-file-turn, then move the slider as needed (and have Leo available as cy suggested)

With regards to Sirians post which showed up between me reading cy and hitting post-reply...

Does this mean we'll have Saltpeter under Jestro?!??! :)

Charis

Weed alert.

Ok, might as well confess it now. I don’t know anything about armies. Don’t know how to load one. Only used one once in a SG. Always laughed at the AI ones. What do I not understand?

How I see armies:

Offense

Good: You should be able to kill one defender in one turn.

Bad: You just burned 4 units to do it.

Eval: Sometimes the prng hates you, and if you attack with separate units, every time you lose the defender gets promoted, and you end up with 2-3 dead units and no win. We’ve all seen it. I’d rather have a wonder than an army, though.

Defense

Good: If you put in 4 units, you gain 3 defensive hit points, as the army lives or dies as a unit and the top 3 can burn all their hit points and live.

Bad: 3 hit points is one unit. Is losing a wonder worth one unit?

Good: OTOH, depending on the prng, those 3 hit points could cost you 4 units. That is a lot at times. In a 5CC, if that costs you a city, a city is worth more than a wonder.

In sum

This is yet another aspect of Civ3 I don’t really understand. I am not trying to argue against the army route, but (1) saying I went the other way because I do not understand the army route, and (2) asking for enlightenment.

Believe it or not, my solo games have really picked up steam since starting the SG’s—despite my weediness I seem to be picking up some pointers 8-).

--Cy

ps—hey, I know you don’t play with me to worship in awe at my mastery of the game—I thought I was SUPPOSED to play oddball strats 8-)

Originally posted by Cyrene

Bad: 3 hit points is one unit. Is losing a wonder worth one unit?


You don't gain 3 hit points, the total health of all the units in the army is the armies health. If you had 3 elite pikemen, that is a 15 health unit, with a base 3 defense. Add in the fortification bonus, and the city size bonus, and that one army can hold off waves of immortals by itself. Even if it loses 14 health, it will heal back up to 15, you don't lose any of the pikemen in the army. With seperate pikeman, you will lose some to waves of immortals.

On offense, those health points can make an attack that you would never consider quite possible. A cavalry army will almost always beat a fortified infantry in a 13+ pop city.

The only downside is how slowly they heal, only 1/3 of its max health a turn in a city with a barracks.

One thing I am not certain of, and I never thought of until reading this thread, considering the cash flow problems you are experiencing, does anyone know if the maintaince cost of an army is 1 for each unit in the army, or just 1 for the army, since it is basically 1 unit now.

Well, I've played. Going in, my assessment was that, militarily, this wasn't the worst I've seen. (Have you ready my OCC report?) Pretty bad, this, anyway, but not hopeless. On the other hand, what really sucks (like OW it sucks hard) is our economy. Heh, I kid you not, we're going to have to take some unit losses here or we're going to go broke and the game will start selling off our improvements!

So I check our garrisons to find out where our cata's are stashed. Oopsie, somebody seems to have misplaced them! (We did some build some, right? At some point? Yes? No? No??? :eek: ).

IT 480AD: Must... have... catapults...

Oh yeah, and I saw that we could research Invention in one turn at 17 gold loss, or... just buy it from Ghandi for 7 gold. Ghandi got paid.

Two immortals next to Zedropolis now. Our first-ever cata shot... IS A HIT!

:jump:

I decide to use those horsies in that stack on the offensive. Our first one attacks and loses.

:splat:

The others win but each loses 2 hps. :cry:

One is in danger. If he misses his retreat roll, he's toast.

I send a pike toward Zed from Cy, it will be replaced next turn.

However... that won't come until later. :) You don't want to miss this, trust me.

I'm posting turn by turn so you can open the games and see the results, what I was thinking, what went right, what went wrong, and how it all came down in the end.

500AD: All three of our cata's score!!! :hammer:

I send our elite horse NW one tile (so he's not attacking across that corner of the river) then attack the wounded immortal there. Our elite wins, but barely, and I retreat him back to town to rest.

Cy's Gambit is looking good right about now, as the enemy stacks are NOT being good little boys and beelining for our cities in such a way as to be attacking us across the rivers. They look like they're going to pass up Fort Zed in the middle there and run to pillage our roads or who knows what. So I sent a horse toward their city. I also refrain from attacking across the river :nono: against their wounded unit, yet must prevent them from pillaging our incense hill, so I fortify two units there.

I've known Cy for over a year now, and though I can't begin to fathom his mind, I much respect his results. Sometimes he's just... brilliant. Brilliant!

The entire horde of immortals shifts westward, heading toward their endangered city, and units in the back lines near their city above Jestro retreat entirely. Why yes, I do smell an exploitable AI pattern. Yes I do. :lol:

Oh forgot to mention las