This is a Training Day Game for players who can win on Warlord or Regent, but who start to find themselves struggling on levels above Regent. This game will be played on Monarch level, and hopefully by the end of it, participants will have developed the skills to win consistently on Monarch, and be ready to move up to Emperor.

I will aim to teach players good solid skills, but not to rely on any crutches, such as certain wonders, or civilization abilities. If you want to learn about ICS or RoP rapes, this isn't the place for you...

Anyone who has won on Warlord or Regent at least once, either solo or in a succession game, is ready for this game, and is welcome to join. Each player will play their round, giving a report of each turn, and then I will offer a critique on what they did and advice on how to do better. I will try not to be harsh, but obviously players will have to be willing to have their playing style hammered around a bit in order to play :)

This game will be played using Play the World.

The game stats are:

Monarch
Greeks
Continents
70% Water
Maximum rivals, random
EDIT: Barbarians will be restless.
All else random

We're being the Greeks because they are a solid civilization, but they don't have skills that I'm afraid will start becoming crutches. Hoplites are nice units, that'll help us out if we get attacked early on.

Variant rules: We may not build the Pyramids or the Great Library. We may capture them if we get the chance. What? Variant rules in a Training Day Game? Many players rely on one or both of these wonders, and so I want us to win without using either of them.

The first player will play 20 turns, and then 10 turns thereafter.

The game probably won't start for a few days, but signups are starting now. I will take up to five players, and Shaesha is going to play, so that leaves four slots.

Sirp
Shaehsa
Wetterlind
Matt_g
Stormrider
Renata

-Sirp.

I'm in and I hope someone joins us so I don't feel like the only moron on the planet

I'm NOT in, but good luck with this. How about running an Emperor training after this? ;)

I'm in, (insert Roger Rabbit sound) please!

- I haven’t received my copy of PtW yet.. Hopefully I get it sometime next week.

- Random barb activity? I believe that there should have some barb activity but not very much nor non at all...

What sized map is this played on?

Wetterlind: welcome aboard. As long as you do receive PTW sometime next week, you should be right to play. Although....if I get everyone who wants to play happy with playing under 1.29f, I'd be happy to play the game under that too.

Good point about the barbarians; they'll probably be Restless. Although really, with hoplites even raging barbarians shouldn't give us too much trouble on monarch.

Roadrunna: Normal sized map.

Harleqin: Thanks :) I may do an emperor level TDG after this, although imo there isn't *that* much difference between emperor and monarch, and by the end of this game, participants will hopefully already have a very good chance at emperor.

-Sirp.

I'd like to play. My copy of PTW is still in the cellophane, but I'll be breaking it out this weekend. 1.29f would be fine, too, if that's the way you want to go. I've won twice on Regent and have another game all-but-won (probably won't have time to finish), but have also lost a recent game on that level (rotten English sneak-attacked me early, and I couldn't recover).

My playing time may be limited for the first few weeks of this -- too much RL! -- but I'll do my best to make my turns :) and once April rolls around time won't be an issue.

If you'll take me with all that, I'm in.

Renata

Hi Sirp,
I would like to join this game if a slot is open.

Matt

As I fortold, if you make a Monarch or Regent SG, they will come to you. :goodjob:
I'll keep an eye on this one for on-the-side training.

I too would like to play if there is an open spot. I have been winning on Regent and am playing to stalemates (or losing)before getting frustrated on Monarch.

Gerry

Renata: Welcome aboard! I'll put you last on the roster, and if your turn comes around and you're busy, just post a 'skip me' message.

Matt_G and Stormrider, welcome. And uhh....we're full! That didn't take long, you were right Cromagnon :)

The game is still going to take a couple of days to start, so be patient please.

-Sirp.

Great! TY and no worries on patience from this end. :)

Renata

I am looking forward to this. :)

I'm planning for this game to go at a fairly lesiurely pace, with lots of time for suggestions and strategic discussion. I want all players to have some input on the overall course of the game, as well as playing their turns.

If I go too fast or too slow, please let me know. Remember, no question is too silly to be asked.

After we've done some initial expansion, I'm also going to ask each player to submit a dotmap proposal. A dotmap is a screenshot, where colored dots are placed on tiles where cities are intended to go. You can do this using Microsoft Paint for instance. The dots are generally ranked by priority to settle.

(I'm not going to discuss technical issues like what program to use to draw a dotmap, how to upload it to the server etc, unless someone asks. But by all means, if you don't know how to do it, ask and I'll be more than happy to help you.)

Once everyone has posted their dotmaps, I'll comment and post my own dotmap.

I'm also going to have a few 'quizzes' during the game. Each quiz will consist of a few basic questions, followed by some more open ended questions on how we can use the information to our strategic advantage. Players should try to answer the questions without referring to the manual, game itself, or any other reference material. The questions I'm going to ask aren't going to be trivia questions; they're going to be questions I know the answer to myself off the top of my head, and which I think that one really should know to be able to play on the upper levels.

Don't be intimidated though; the questions aren't going to be too hard. If they got very hard I probably couldn't answer them myself!

The first quiz is happening uhh...now. We're going to discuss the opening of the game, and various strategies.

(1) We are the Greeks. What traits do the Greeks have? What do these traits do?

(2) (Harder) Which technologies do the Greeks start with? Of all the starting technologies, which is the most valuable? (I.e. the hardest to research; the most valued by the AI)

(3) What is the Greek Unique Unit? What are its statistics? What does it replace?

and the more subjective questions,

(4) How will our traits and unique unit affect the opening turns? In what ways might our strategy be different than with other civilizations?

(5) Which technology do we want to research first? What technologies do we want to consider researching after that? Why?

Not all players have to answer these questions, just as long as you read them, read the discussions, and understand the answers to them. All players are welcome to offer an answer if they want though. After players have had the opportunity to answer, lurkers are also welcome to offer comments or ask questions etc.

-Sirp.

Hey Sirp. I know that I'm too late to join this one, but could I at least answer these "quizzes", follow along, and maybe make a comment here or there? Hope you won't mind...

Anyway, I'll at least answer the quiz, it can't hurt, right? ;)

1) Scientific and Commericial, IIRC. Scientific makes scientific improvements cheaper and gives you a free tech at every new age. Commericial gives an extra commerce on each squares or certain squares, IIRC.

2) Oh, crap. I have no idea. I'm going to guess Bronze Working and...Alphabet. :lol: I have no idea. And I think Alphabet is most favored by the AI.

3) Hoplite, 1 attack, 1 move, 3 defense. Replaces Spearmen, same price IIRC.

4) Because we have Bronze Working (IIRC) we can forget researching that early, leaving us with the more importent techs like Pottery and Iron Working to research early.

5) I'd say Pottery. Mostly because early granaries are VERY important, as CG4 and a little playtesting taught me.

Sorry if I'm intruding, tell me and I'll edit this post and leave again. ;)

If you provide this wonderful service again in the future, Sirp, please hit me up...

As it turns out, the snowstorm is keeping me from driving south for Spring Break and so I'd've made it to CG5 and/or this.

I'm subscribing to this thread so I can learn dot maps etc.

Great job Sirp.

Cool, my first SG. I am looking forward to this.
Hmmmm, I'll take a shot at these questions. :)

1. Commercial and Scientific. Extra commerce from cities and all scientific improvements are half cost, i.e. Library's, Uni's, etc. When does the commerce bonus kick in? I think it's at size 13 but I'm not sure.
2. Alphabet and BW. Alphabet is the costliest starting Tech.
3. Hoplite. 1.3.1, replaces spearman. Basically you get pikes right from the get go. ;)
4. The UU will be a big help with the Barb's. It would also make another Civ think twice about starting an early war with us. Starting with Alphabet will put us in a strong bargaining postion when making intial contact with other Civ's. Just don't 'give' it away!
5. With a low food start I would research pottery first for granarys. Then probably head for Lit. to build up culture with those cheap Librarys.

P.S. Does anyone know why the e-mail notification doesn't work most of the time?? :(

Matt G- it could depend on your email provider- if you have stuff sent to trash or junkmail without notification. Or it is a site problem, post your concern in Site Feedback so they know about it and keep your fingers crossed.

Originally posted by Sultan Bhargash
Matt G- it could depend on your email provider- if you have stuff sent to trash or junkmail without notification. Or it is a site problem, post your concern in Site Feedback so they know about it and keep your fingers crossed.

Thanks for the tip about the Site Feedback. I will post there as it is definitely a site problem. I am subscribed to a half dozen threads but only get e-mail on 1 of them, and have no filters running.

The only 'fact' of those above that I didn't know was Bronze Working. Do all commercial civs start with it? I'm just starting to pick these things up.

I agree with the others on researching pottery, only I tend to go for it even (maybe especially) with a good food start, as a granary can transform a nice steady expansion into an explosion of settlers. It's delayed, though, compared to going without, and I'm not sure which way is better in which situations.

I have no idea how to use the hoplite - I've only played Greece once, I think, and that was one of my first games. I've learned how to take advantage of early attacking UUs somewhat, but defensive ones not so much. On thinking about it, I suppose you could be a lot more aggressive in your settling, because there's really nothing the AI can throw at you early that would have a chance. (edit: Especially if you camp on their iron. :p)

What does a hoplite cost, by the way? 30?

Renata

cgannon64, I am happy for non-participants in the game such as yourself to enter into discussions, ask questions, and answer the quizzes etc. I would be delighted if not only the direct participants in the game learnt something from it, but others too. The more discussion over strategies etc, the better I feel.

However, with the quizzes and dotmaps, I would prefer if non-participants did give the team a small amount of time to answer the questions before replying themselves. You're welcome to try to answer the questions without reading any other responses though. It's just that I think the team members should have a chance to answer the questions for themselves, rather than having others already answer them before they get a chance to post. Once two team members have attempted the quiz, or about 24 hours passes, anyone is welcome to post their responses.

But don't worry about editing your post cgannon, it's fine. Non-participants in the game are also welcome to participate in strategy discussions etc.

Sultan, sorry you missed out on this one. If you'd like I can put you as a reserve in case someone drops out etc. You're welcome to follow the thread, and post questions, comments etc, or participate in the quizzes, under the above guidelines.

Matt_g and Renata, thanks for your answers, I'll post my answers and comment on yours once I've given a little more time for others to post theirs.

The site's email does seem a little inconsistent to me sometimes, but I've never been able to put my finger on a problem, so I might just be dreaming that up :)

-Sirp.

Thanks, yes, I will follow the thread and can step in if necessary.

When I answer these questions, I'm going to answer them off the top of my head. I'm not going to pretend to know things that I don't, and so I'm not going to give any textbook answers.

This isn't so much about being exactly technically correct, as trying to impart the amount of knowledge that is required to master the game. I don't want to leave anyone thinking that to be really good you have to know the cost of every technology off the top of your head, or anything silly like that. I know that there are a few players who are 'experts' in technology cost, but most good players just know the basics. Same with most things.

My answers are as follows:

1) The Greeks are scientific and commercial. Being scientific means that libraries, university, and research labs are half price. (research labs come so late in the game that they are of little consequence though). We also get a free technology at the start of every age. This technology is usually the top-left technology on the technology tree: monotheism in the middle ages, and nationalism in the industrial age, and I forget in the modern age.

Being commercial means that we have reduced corruption. The corruption formula is actually reasonably complicated, but we will find corruption reduced by a substantial amount. This corruption-reduction effect used to be almost unnoticable, but they doubled it a couple of patches ago, and now it is noticeable.

Additionally, the city center tile now produces more commerce than it would normally for cities above size 6. For cities size 7-12, I think it produces one extra commerce, and three extra for cities size 13+, but I'm not sure of the exact numbers.

Needless to say, being commercial means we will find ourselves with substantially more commerce than we would otherwise have.

2) The Greeks start with bronze working and the alphabet. When considering starting technologies, think about it logically: religious civilizations are going to start with ceremonial burial. Militaristic ones with warrior code. Expansionists want to expand, and granaries help with that, so hey have pottery. The Wheel and Masonry fits industrious civilizations. The alphabet matching up with commercial and bronze working with scientific isn't quite so intuitive in my mind, so you just have to learn it.

It is not uncommon for the alphabet to be traded for two other starting technologies.

3) The hoplite is the Greek unique unit. It's 1/3/1, replacing the 1/2/1 spearman. It requires bronze working to be built, and costs 20 shields, and doesn't require resources, the same as the spearman.

4) The first observation is that we are not expansionistic, so we don't get scouts. This means we will have to explore with slower units.

We do get hoplites from the very start, since we start with bronze working. This is a good advantage, but it also leaves us with difficult choices: Do we build warriors or hoplites to start with, and explore with? Certainly if we wanted the military for fighting, hoplites would be a better choice; but early military isn't just for fighting, it's largely for exploring and military police, and warriors do this just as well as hoplites at half the price.

An aggressive/expansionary approach would be to build 3 warriors first up, with two exploring, and one guarding the capital and acting as military police. Once settlers start getting built, hoplites could be produced to guard our cities at that stage.

A slightly more conservative approach would be to build 2 warriors and a hoplite, with the hoplite guarding the capital, and the warriors exploring.

These approaches will also depend on in-game factors though: How near other civilizations are, the presence of barbarians, the food/shield balance of our capital, and so forth.

Having hoplites means we should be relatively safe from attack in the early stages of the game.

Besides determining our starting technologies, our civilization traits don't do much for us early on. Being commercial won't kick in until later on, and we won't be able to build cheap libraries for a while.

5) We definitely want to discover pottery first. No matter what. It's a cheap technology, and it gives us access to the granary, which is far more powerful than any other improvement or unit this early in the game. The only possible reason you wouldn't go for pottery immediately if you didn't start with it is if you want to go for an early pyramids gambit, in which case you'd go for masonry. But that's prohibited in this game anyway.

After that, things are much much more up in the air as to what we should do. If we immediately went for iron working, we could probably get it before other civilizations, and thus trade it with them. It'd also help us to secure a source of iron early on.

We also want to try to get literature and republic fairly quickly, as changing from a despotism to a republic asap is almost always a great move, and getting literature will let us start building those cheap libraries and really get ahead in science. So, we could start going that route.

Really though, pottery is set in stone. Beyond that it's much more of a 'see as you go' mentality.

Some comments on other's answers
---

Matt_g: We'll go for pottery and a granary no matter what. This is almost always the best option.

Good points about the hoplites influencing our opening, as well as having the alphabet putting us in a good bargaining position. Trading it will require skill: we don't want to give it away, but we don't want to end up with them getting it from another civilization or researching it and us getting nothing. Ending up with two technologies for it would be ideal, getting a technology and some gold (20+) would be good too.

Note that commercial also gives reduced corruption, which is generally seen as the bigger advantage. The extra commerce in the city center starts kicking in at size 7.

Note that scientific also gives the free technology at the start of each age.

Renata: Hoplites cost 20, same as spearmen. A Unique Unit that costs more than the unit its replacing is always dubious, since unless it has substantially improved stats, it could well end up overpriced. Before Play the World, no unique unit cost more than the unit it replaced. In PTW, they ran out of unique units to make, so they started making 'super units', and then pricing them highly to make sure they weren't overpowered.

Carthage's Numidian Mercenary is 2/3/1 but costs 30 shields. In my view, the extra attack point is useless, and I'd prefer the 20 shield hoplite any day.

cgannon64: Good guesses on the technologies :)

Also you're completely right about the pottery/granary thing.

If there is one thing I want people to learn about this phase of the game, it's the power of granaries and maximized food.

-Sirp.

If my addendums get annoying just tell me...

Originally posted by Sirp
[B] This technology is usually the top-left technology on the technology tree: monotheism in the middle ages, and nationalism in the industrial age, and I forget in the modern age.
[b]

Computers if I'm not mistaken...


The Wheel and Masonry fits industrious civilizations.


AFAIK, only Japanese get the wheel, as a substitute ability for the usual militaristic tech of warrior code.


The alphabet matching up with commercial and bronze working with scientific isn't quite so intuitive in my mind, so you just have to learn it.


Commercial: I think it is because early Sumerian, Phoenician, and some other writing systems were developed to keep records of trade transactions.
Scientific: Think of the technical knowledge and expertise required to make an alloy.


An aggressive/expansionary approach would be to build 3 warriors first up, with two exploring, and one guarding the capital and acting as military police. Once settlers start getting built, hoplites could be produced to guard our cities at that stage.


What order does the city guard come out? I usually make it the third (or fourth) warrior.


5) We definitely want to discover pottery first. No matter what. It's a cheap technology, and it gives us access to the granary, which is far more powerful than any other improvement or unit this early in the game. The only possible reason you wouldn't go for pottery immediately if you didn't start with it is if you want to go for an early pyramids gambit, in which case you'd go for masonry. But that's prohibited in this game anyway.


This is a fascinating cornerstone of your thinking, one I've never considered before. Pottery is often the first pop out of a goody hut. I'm going to try this next game...

I just want to give you another :goodjob: on your commentaries, Sirp. In the monarch game you inspired me to start I am winning the histograph (considerably larger nation than the others- your settler first mentality really helped me secure land), even on technology (at education/gunpowder), and with a big enough army that when I tell them to leave or declare war, they leave. THANKS!!!

(I don't know if you ever encountered "The CivGuru" but you've got him beat!)

Sultan,

IIRC, the free advance most often received in the Modern age is Rocketry...

JMB

Sultan, thank you for your kind words :) I'm glad to hear your monarch game is going well!

I think everything you said is accurate, except for the computers thing which JMB is right about. I really do rarely get to play in the modern age. I've never discovered a future tech, never been nuked, never nuked anyone, and don't know what half the discoveries allow!

The order the city guard comes out is a bit of a 'play-it-by-ear' thing. You have to look for the presence of barbarians, and other civilizations, the directions which may be explored in and from which enemies may come, the time at which the capital needs MP (which varies according to the availability of food, and the difficulty level).

If you happen to get a conscript from a village it also changes things a little.

I try to avoid building more than three military units first up, because a fourth will give you five units altogether, including your worker, which means you'll be over the limit and have to start paying maintenance. It might still be worth doing, but by this stage I usually want to get my granary going.

If you're researching something, you can never get it out of a village. Pottery isn't a good thing to get out of a village anyhow: you'll research it quick yourself. Also, on the higher levels, you'll want to be a little more reserved about entering villages if you're not expansionist. The chances of getting something out of them are reduced, and the chances of there being barbarians in there are increased, and your bonus against barbarians is reduced. On monarch it's still a good idea in most circumstances, but on emperor and deity it starts becoming a much more dubious idea.

-Sirp.

Good start to what looks to be yet another informative game. Couple things, I don't think the last free tech is computers but rather Rocketry.

As far as relying on huts for free tech may not be the answer. Pottery is the cheapest available tech and if it pops will effectivly be less valuable to you. The best way to get a more expensive tech, from a hut, is to research the cheapest tech. What you are researching will never pop from a hut.

Also, popping huts too close to home without many units can be cause for concern. Barbs can cause a major setbacks if they come at the least opportune times. Not being expansionist opens your civ up to barbs.


Hotrod

Edit: Looks like Sirp was posting as I was writing :lol:

Ok guys, I've rearranged the ordering of the roster appropriately, and it now looks like this:

Matt_g
Stormrider
Sirp
Shaehsa - getting PTW soon!
Wetterlind - getting PTW soon!
Renata - Let's hope he has enough time!

So Matt_g, you're going to be up first! If anyone has a problem with the ordering, please let me know now. Also, if anyone needs instructions on how to upload files to the server/how to use zip, etc etc, please let me know now.

The first player will play 20 turns; every player thereafter will play 10. Especially at the start, I expect detailed reports: I want to know every time a city goes into civil disorder, and specific builds of every city early on in the game, as well as how you made people happy.

Before the game starts, we're going to have our first strategy discussion. This is our starting location:

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads3/SP4-start.jpeg

The very first phase of a game is a very short but important one: what you do before you've built your first city! This phase can last less than a turn, but it has ramifications that last the whole game.

Some questions:

(1) is this a strong/weak/indifferent starting location?
(2) list all the important features of our starting location.
(3) what do you think we should do? Found the city immediately, move the worker somewhere? Move the settler somewhere? Why? Compare to other types of possible start locations.

Let the strategic discussions begin!

-Sirp.

Sirp,

I agree with a lot of what you say and I too am a big fan of granaries. However, I do not think it is wise to state that pottery as the first research is "set in stone". Nothing is set in stone, in civ, it all depends on the circumstances. Consider these factors:

1) tech costs go up depending on map size and (for the human) difficulty level. I'm not sure what settings you're playing on here, but what you research depends on cost. For example, I often play on huge maps. On a huge map, in most circumstances whatever you research as the first tech takes 40 turns, even at 100% science. A similar situation is likely on large maps on emperor+ difficulty, and perhaps even on standard maps at deity. In these circumstances pottery is not what you want to research - if everything takes 40 turns, it is better to run the gambit on an expensive tech that you can use for trade. If this were the case in your game, if everything takes 40 turns to research at the start, writing would be a good tech for you to research, for its trade possibilities

2) also consider trade more carefully. Pottery is cheap to research but also cheap to buy (as long as you're not buying at second). It may befit you to consider techs that have high trade value in certain circumstances. This brings me onto:

3) neighbours and map type. If you are playing pangaea you are likely to make many contacts very quickly. In addition, expansionist neighbours (who start with pottery) are even more likely to make early contact as their scouts will cover more distance quickly, so the opportunity for early trade is even more apparent if you are playing on a map type where you wil have lots of contact.

There are also other variants to consider, for example, in always war, pottery may not be the best first tech, also, OCCs. In general, I do agree with you, Sirp, that pottery is a very sound first choice, but I do not think that setting it in stone is the best thing to do, as it is better to be flexible in civ than be guided by strict prototypes. Hope you don't mind the comments, I shall be following this with great interest

Nad: Sorry, when I said that it's "set in stone", I meant for the specific game we're playing: Greeks, normal world size, continents, with a prohibition on building the pyramids. Under those circumstances, I would say it is 'set in stone'.

I have played games where I didn't get it. For example, one of the Realms Beyond Epics (13 IIRC, the Iroquois mounted warriors rush one), we had 4 civilizations packed into one sardine can of an island - I made contact with India in the second turn of the game! If I had wasted time going for a granary, there would have been no free city spots left by the time it was done!

Of course, the research of pottery was a moot point in that situation, since the Iroquois are expansionistic and so I started with it.

In *that* case, the best thing to do was go straight for horseback riding, so I could take other cities by force.

However, generally, if you don't start with pottery, I can see very very few circumstances where you wouldn't start researching it. You simply don't know who you're going to run into, or what's going to happen in the game, and you do know you need it. If you don't go for pottery, what *are* you going to go for? Bronze Working (if you're not scientific)? Iron working? I really can't think of anything that comes close in terms of its potential benefits.

As for OCCs, well, my analysis doesn't include variants. You could come up with any whacky variant you want that throws half the game's common idioms out the windows. I'm just trying to teach good, solid civilization play here, and in my view there are precious few cases where going straight for pottery isn't the best thing to do.

EDIT: I also want to add that I had a very painful experience with trying another strategy all the way back in Epic 4. See the full report on my homepage. It was a Deity game, and I thought I'd make contact quickly, so I didn't research pottery. Turns out I didn't make contact quickly, and combined with me missing out on planting my capital near to a bonus food tile, I was in serious trouble. It almost cost me the game.

The ability to produce granaries is something far too important to leave to chance.

-Sirp.

Just to add a bit to the discussion about which modern age tech is obtained:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Originally posted by Mike B. FIRAXIS


Basically, it's a result of the algorithm used to randomly select an available tech. It's unintentionally heavily weighted towards the available tech that appears first in the list of techs (in the editor). It is supposed to select, at random, one tech from the new era that is available to the player (i.e., it has no prerequisites).

As an example, with unmodded rules you have the following available techs in the modern era with these approximate chances of being received:
91% Rocketry
1% Fission
1% Computers
7% Ecology

As you can see, Rocketry is heavily favored (simply because of it's placement within the list). This is unintentional and all 4 techs should have an equal chance of being selected. I will look into improving this for the next PTW patch.
From a recent GOTM discussion, but I couldn't find the link.

Originally posted by Sirp
Some questions:

(1) is this a strong/weak/indifferent starting location?
(2) list all the important features of our starting location.
(3) what do you think we should do? Found the city immediately, move the worker somewhere? Move the settler somewhere? Why? Compare to other types of possible start locations.

-Sirp.

This'll have to be short-ish. I'm supposed to be working. :p

1. I'd call it fairly strong, certainly better than average, at least in my experience, primarily because of the cow and the river.

2. A) the cow. When irrigated, will allow fast growth for settler and/or worker production without sacrificing shields. B) the river. Fresh water allows you to dispense with an aqueduct, plus adds commerce to any tiles bordering it, which can help cash flow. Unfortunately, C) the jungle will hamper early use of some of those high-commerce tiles. D) Between the jungle and the mountains, it does not appear that Athens will be able to reach size 12 unless the jungle is chopped, if located where the settler is. D) A lux that close-by is always nice. E) Coastline just visible to the east is an early help with exploration directions. F) Unfortunate shortage of bonus grassland.

3. It looks like the tile the settler is standing on is regular grassland, and I think it's a river tile (I always double-check corners like that, because it seems sometimes they are and sometimes they aren't.) If I'm right about both assumptions, I'd settle where we are; I don't see any great bonus in moving. The worker can go to the cow first turn, but that won't reveal any more land due to the mountains and hill so can be done before or after settling.

The schedule looks fine to me, and I'll be able to play unless I happen to come up in the wrong few days. And by the way, I'm a *she*. :)

Renata

Sorry I missed the first quiz. I will throw in my 2 cents on our first strategic discussion.

1. I would say this is a fairly good start. Cows, incense, hills, and a river are good for starting. Jungle is cleared with a little hard work. We also seem to be near a coast (maybe a lake). Coastal cities are good for commerce and can take on a strategic aspect in a non-Pangaea world where you have naval warfare, invasions, and the occasional water-based Wonder. Unless I am playing Archipelego, a coastal starting city is not a must. It also looks like there is decent terrain on the other side of the mountain range to our west.

2. There are some strong points to this location:
a) River eliminates need for aqueduct and obviously makes irrigation much easier
b) Cows are tasty and nutritious. Eating your cows every day will make your cities grow big and strong.
c) Incense smells nice and can make you friends (or cash via trading)
d) Hills = shields. Mountains do too, but they are limited until you get some serious food production going.
e) Bonus grassland is also a nice.

3. Where to start?, hmmmm....

The only exposing we could really do is to move the worker to the hill to our North. While that would display more map, the area exposed in all proabability not be good enough to justify the several turns we would lose moving our settler.

Where we are now is good and will keep 2 of the incense and their hills in our eventual 21 radius. The only other move that I can see would to settle in the jungle to our NW. That would save a square of jungle clearing, but would move our starting city out of radius range to those juicy incense hills. We could always found city number 2 to take those incense in, but that may lead to major overlap with city 1 based on the terrain and coastline we can not see.

After some deliberation, I would probably found in our starting position.

Stormrider

Just like Renata this will have to be short. I am supposed to be working also.
This seems to be a strong location to me also. Good combination of food and shields will make a very strong city. Is that jungle?
It kinda looks like forest to me but I'm sure the others are right. In any case I will find out when I download the save. If it's forest that will help with early builds by chopping forest once the best tiles are improved. (the cow irrigated/road and the bonus grass mined/road.) If it's jungle then there is a good chance this is on or close to the equator. That means we are going to need a ton of workers.
Having a lux in range of the capitol is always a good thing. 2 extra for trading purposes is even better.

My inclination is to found where we stand. This will give us 12 grass, (some of which might be bonus after clearing) 1BG, 3 mountains, and 4 hills in the city radius. I think that is a good mix.
I would move the worker to the cow and settle on the starting tile. Then set research to Pottery at best no deficit rate and start a Warrior for exploring purposes. Get the cow irrigated and roaded then mine and road the BG. Perhaps 3 Warriors to start (2 exploring and 1 for defense/MP) Then start a granary, or if Pottery isn't done, start a prebuild.

Got to get back to work.
Matt

Once again Sirp you challenge my old ways of thinking. I'm sure I know how you will answer this.

Until recently, my first move with a worker would be to build a mine (for faster shields) then a road. Now I go road first, then mine.

I should be irrigating right?

I'm also guilty of occasionally moving the citizen to the forest on the first turn to get a faster warrior build. Crazy right?

Originally posted by Sultan Bhargash
Once again Sirp you challenge my old ways of thinking. I'm sure I know how you will answer this.

Until recently, my first move with a worker would be to build a mine (for faster shields) then a road. Now I go road first, then mine.

I should be irrigating right?

I'm also guilty of occasionally moving the citizen to the forest on the first turn to get a faster warrior build. Crazy right?

I'm not Sirp :D, but I'll put in my two cents. I will always irrigate a bonus food in the early going unless either of the following applies:

- There is tons of food at the city site. Example: 4-cow start, floodplains with 2 wheats and a cow besides.
- The food bonus is only +1 (wine or game), and it's on plains. In this case the despotism penalty kills it, so I might as well mine for the shields.

You need both food and shields to turn out settlers and workers, and you need settlers and workers to expand. Food tends to be harder to come by so in most cases is best to maximize.

As far as the forest chop for warriors, it's just too much waste. A forest chop gets you a maximum of ten shields, and warriors only cost ten. Given that the city itself is going to be producing at least one (and probably more) shield per turn, all this does is waste shields. Better to wait until you're building something bigger, so all ten forest shields go into your production box.

Renata

Not a chop- I mean that you move a citizen on the city screen off of the plains/grassland and onto a forest space where there is one food and two shields per turn. No I would never chop for a unit.

Ah, ok, gotcha. Good to know. :)

Renata

1 & 2) The starting location is a strong one. When you choose a starting location, these are the main considerations:

- Access to fresh water. This is the most important consideration.
- Access to bonus food tiles.
- Coastal access.
- The general strength of other tiles in the area
- Defensive positioning

Note that access to luxuries is not on the list. Having luxuries nearby is *not* an important consideration in my mind. If luxuries are near enough that you can see them before you found your first city, then you're going to get them anyway long before they become very important.

The first two considerations complement each other. Lots of bonus food starts to lose its appeal if there is no fresh water. Fresh water isn't quite as good if there's no bonus food to let it grow fast. If you have checks next to both of thse, then you already know you have a strong starting location.

That the bonus food tile is cattle is icing on the cake. This also means shields early on. If it was wheat instead of cattle though, it wouldn't make that much difference. One shield lost is insubstantial compared to one food lost at this stage. This starting location could obviously be better with more bonus food tiles, but at least one good one is what you want, more are icing on the cake.

It's good to see there's also a bonus grassland nearby. Hopefully there'll be more, but there's only one tile in the radius of our starting location that could possibly be more grassland.

Other features are: The coastline or lake to the east, which needs investigating early. The incense nearby is going to be a good bonus once we get our empire going a little. Then there's, ahh yes, the mountains and jungle. Jungle often hides good land underneath, but cutting it does take a long time. We may have to cut some early on to get good land going.

Mountains will be reasonably good in the long term, as it means that we'll have some strong shield tiles. However, at the moment they are useless for us, and make our land more difficult to defend.

3) It's often good to move the worker first to get some extra intelligence about the situation before deciding where to found the capital. However in this case, we are next to a river and a cow, and I can't see any nearby starting location that could possibly be better. The only places that *might* be better are one space north, *if* there is more bonus food up there, and two spaces south-west, if there is more bonus food to the south-west.

However, opening moves are about strategically choosing the best starting location for the capital; not throwing away moves based on wishful thinking. Also, moving the worker onto the tile you intend to improve before founding the city, just to 'look and see' if there's anything that could possibly make you change your mind, is often a good idea (but not always: Once you found the city, you can see further and might change your mind about where you want the worker to go), however in this case the worker can't see anything more by moving onto the cattle.

Sooooo in this case, we'd want to found the city where the settler stands, and move the worker onto the cattle ready to irrigate. The worker can move first, or the settler can found first; it doesn't matter.

---

Comments on what other said:

I was impressed by the responses.

Renata: Good observation of the features. Yes it's a regular grassland, and it's a river tile. I believe that the 'corners' of rivers are only not considered river tiles at the start of a river. However, if unsure it's always good to check. To those unaware, you can check if a tile is considered next to a river by right-clicking on it and seeing if it produces one more gold than an equivalent tile that's not next to a river.

You're also *right* on track with irrigation.

Stormrider: Great answers; right on track.

Matt_g: Also good stuff. Good observation on us going to need lots of workers. It's unfortunate we're not industrious.

Also good idea with the prebuild for a granary. (Although ermm....our best prebuild option may be a hoplite!)

Sultan: I think you answered your own question :) I sometimes do go for more shields early on. To build my granary faster so it can get more food faster :)

-Sirp.

Time to get this game rolling!

Matt_g has been appointed the first ruler of the Greek people. His advisors and strategists have discussed the path the Greek people should take towards establishing a powerful civilization.

The Game (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads3/SP4-4000BC.zip)

Your reign will last 20 turns. Each player after this will have a 10 turn reign. (Yes these reigns are short for the start of a game, but in a training day game, I think it's important to focus alot on the start).

All files should be uploaded zipped up with the filename SP4-<year>.zip

where <year> is the year the game is in, xxxxBC or xxxxAD.

The roster:

Matt_g <--- UP NOW
Stormrider <--- on deck
Sirp
Shaehsa - getting PTW soon!
Wetterlind - getting PTW soon!
Renata - Let's hope *she* has enough time!

Good luck!

-Sirp.

I just picked up PTW. Do I need to download the latest patch (sooo slooow), or can I play right out of the box?

Stormrider

You need the patch, for this and for any successful application of the game without bugs and errors.

Yup, everyone definitely needs the latest PTW patch, 1.14f. On this topic, there has been talk that Firaxis may release another patch sometimes soon. If they do, then players may NOT play the game with that patch.

You have to stick with 1.14f: moving a succession game over from one patch to another is just too hard. It is apparently possible to have two installs of the game, one with the old patch, one with the new. That's something that can be tried if anyone really wants to be able to use the new patch for other games.

-Sirp.

Got it.

Ack! I didn't realize that a new PTW patch, 1.21f has *just* been released. The details are at http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?threadid=46040

Now since this game hasn't really started yet, I am tempted to restart it, using this current patch. If it was half way through the game we'd keep playing under the 1.14f patch of course, but we haven't even started yet!

There is only one concern: The patch only works with the US version of PTW (but I think most English versions are US version compatible), are any of the players unable to get the patch?

I'm going to look at regenerating a start and posting it soon. All players will have to get the 1.21f patch. If there are any concerns or problems with this, please let me know ASAP.

Really sorry about this guys, we'll get into the game soon, I promise :)

-Sirp.

OK, I am downloading the patch as I'm typing this. I will wait until a final decision has been made before installing though.
I am glad I checked back here before playing my turns! :crazyeye:

I hope everyone can get the patch. The one thing that will affect us for sure is "Improved random free tech selection for the Scientific civ trait."
I remember reading a post from MikeB (Firaxis) saying that in the modern age for example you had a 91% chance of pulling Rocketry. I believe the odds were heavily stacked for Monotheism in the Middle ages as well. If it's truely random now that will sure change the flavor of the game. :)
The old Nationlism slingshot may not be around anymore. :lol:

:( too slow, couldnt join. When u making another one, sirp?

Ok, when I install the patch it crashes my machine. I have tried installing and uninstalling several times, including trying uninstalling PTW and Civilization III and reinstalling from CD and trying to reinstall the patch, but still no go. I have posted a message in the thread introducing the patch asking about this.

However, this game has taken too long to start already and I don't think we should delay any further. It's unfortunate that we can't go with the latest patch, but hopefully they haven't changed *too* much.

If you want to use the latest patch for other purposes, I think it should be possible to either install two copies of Civilization III on one machine, or to apply the older patch over the newer one when you want to play. (i.e. keep the exes for both patches in a directory, when you want to play using 1.14f, run the 1.14f patch. When you want to play using 1.21f, run the 1.21f). However I can't test if this is so for obvious reasons.

If you do play with the 1.21f patch, make sure that when you play this game, you're using the 1.14f patch. You can check this by looking at the number in the bottom left of the title screen.

So, the original start stands. Everyone must have 1.14f. Matt_g, take it away.

Jason: Sorry you didn't get in on this. You're welcome to follow the game and ask questions though. *If* this turns out to be as enjoyable/successful as I hope, another one may start when it's done, but uhmm...that may not be for a while.

EDIT: oh also, if anyone really wants to play with the latest patch right now, and doesn't want to have to swap all the time, then I understand if you want to drop this game and go find other games which are run on the latest patch. Just let me know now so I can find other players to fill up the roster.

-Sirp.

OK Sirp. I got it and am using version 1.14f.
If I have time tomorrow, I will do that testing you were trying to do and let you know the results.

Here goes. Hopefully I will avoid any :smoke:
4000BC: Move worker to the cow. Found Athens on starting tile. Increased vision shows we will have 3 total BG in city radius before clearing any jungle. :) Research set to Pottery at break even rate. Due in 14. Production set to a Warrior. Made sure the citizen was working the cow tile.

3950BC: Worker starts irrigating.

3900BC: Zzzzzz
3850BC: Zzzzzz
3800BC: Zzzzzz

3750BC: Worker finishes irrigating and starts a road. Tile now pulls 4 food and is timed perfect because Athens needs 4 food to grow next turn. No waste. Warrior completes and another is ordered. I am sending him to the east to check out whether that is coast or a lake over there.

3700BC. Athens grows. Check city screen to make sure that second citizen is working the BG. Warrior 1 tile East. It’s coast, not a lake. Will send him south next turn.

3650BC: Warrior moves south.

3600BC: Worker finishes roading the cattle. Sent to the BG east of Athens. Move warrior south. Extra gold from road cut research time on Pottery. Now due in 4.

3550BC: Athens builds warrior, a third one ordered. Sent him west. Warrior #1 sent south again. Worker starts a mine on the BG. There are 2 cattle SE of Athens as well as a lake 1 tile from the coast.

3500BC: Athens expands. Looks like there is coast 2 tiles north of the city. Move warrior #2 1 tile west onto the mountain. Move warrior #1 another tile south. Glad I checked the city screen because the damn governor moved the citizen from the BG to the forest SE of Athens when the borders expanded. Moved him back to the BG.

3450BC: Athens grows to size 3. I am able to drop research on Pottery to 50% and still get it in 2 turns. No way to still get it next turn and keep Athens from rioting. 0.9.1 just doesn’t cut it. 1.8.1 would, but at 80% we lose the turn anyways. Raise lux to 10% to keep Athens from rioting next turn. After all this we are making +1 gpt with the sliders at 4.5.1. Move warrior #2 1 tile north. Move warrior #1 southeast.
Oh yeah, I set the third citizen to working a BG. The governors really have a hardon for forest tiles don’t they.

3400BC: Athens completes warrior, set to barracks with the intention of changing to a granary next turn when Pottery comes in. Hmmmm, fortify or send him on a quick 2 turn each way jaunt to the mountain south and a little west of Athens to bust the fog in the immediate area of the capitol. If I fortify him I can drop the lux back to zero. Let’s see what the other scouts tell me before I make a decision. I hit the W key and move the other scouts. Warrior #2 goes NE and spots a goody hut. I can pop this in 2 turns. Warrior #1 goes SE to the coast and finds more land wrapping around to the north and east. There is also a wheat tile and a river down here as well as another lux. Don’t know what that is yet. All I can see is the happy face under the fog.
Decision time. I drop research to 30% and still get pottery next turn. This nets us 1 gold. If I send the third warrior out for 4 turns round trip that will cost 4 gold. If I get barbs out of the goody hut in 2 turns they can’t get to Athens before the warrior gets back and since the last turn will be on a road he will be able to enter the city and fortify. I think it’s worth it so I move him to the mountain due south of the cattle. I”ll see if Sirp thinks this is :smoke: when he reviews my turn.

3350BC: Pottery is discovered. Athens switched to a granary, due in 14. Writing or IW next? Best rate at either is 40 turns without a deficit. If I didn’t have to run lux we could get IW in 32 at break even, Writing would still be 40 turns. I want to know where the iron is so we can better plan our expansion. #1 moves 1 tile south. #2 moves NE. #3 moves onto next mountain south and sees a lake or coast 6 tiles SW of Athens with a bunch of plains and a BG between the 2. sliders at 8.1.1 and we are making +3gpt.

3300BC: Warrior #3 heads back to Athens for MP duty. #1 moves SE onto a hill and sees that other lux is another incense. :(
I was hoping for a different lux. Oh well.
#2 pops the hut and gets barbs. Damn, I almost didn’t pop it just for this reason. Now I wish I hadn’t. The worker should be done with the mine before he has to retreat to the city if that becomes necessary.

3250BC: 1 of the barbs attacks and kills our warrior. :( The other 2 are headed towards Athens. Worker finishes the mine and starts a road but I doubt he will be able to finish it due to the barbs.
Warrior #3 1 tile from Athens. #1 moves east.

3200BC: Warrior back in Athens and fortified. Athens grew this turn also but I don’t need to adjust the lux due to the MP. Still at 10% lux. 1 of the barbs is on the hill north of the city. The other is swinging around to the west. Citizen #4 set to working a BG. With the mine done, the granary is now due in 7.

3150BC: Warrior #1 moves north onto a hill and spots red borders! They are expanded so that means whoevers capitol in only 11 tiles from ours! This is a bit crowded. I’m assuming it’s Rome but I am not sure. Damn barb that was north of the city doesn’t attack. Instead he goes to the open grass NE of the city and next to the worker. The other heads SW and is 2 tiles from the city.
Hmmm, risk attacking, or just leave the warrior fortified and pull the worker back to the city, losing the work on the road? If I win the worker doesn’t have to retreat, saving turns spent on that road, but if I lose, Athens will be sacked and the worker has to retreat anyways. Can he be killed in the city? I’m not sure on this, but I will assume he can be. I make what Sirp will probably call a :smoke: move and risk it. Our warrior attacks and wins without losing a single hp! Better to be lucky than good? :p
Remembered to up the lux due to MP not being in town just in time. Damn near hit the spacebar. Have to run 30% for 1 turn.

3100BC: Only having 1 scout sucks! Our scout moves east along the border. No contact made yet. The other warrior is sent back into Athens and the last barb moves next to the city. Worker finishes road and moves to the adjacent BG. Lux dropped back to 10%.

3050BC: Barb moves onto the cattle. If I don’t attack he will pillage it. Our warrior wins and promotes! Now I have to raise the lux again. :) Our scout moves east and we make contact with Caesar. He has WC, doesn’t have pottery. He already has BW, not that I would get him any closer to IW. No trades possible now. Pottery and all our gold isn’t enough for WC, and even if it was I wouldn’t do it.

3000BC: Scout moves back to the west. Our vet moves back into the city. He can be fortified next turn. Lux is back to 10%. Right now we are running 10% science with IW due in 33, and making +4 gpt. Going up to break even only shaves 2 turns off of the research.

Summary: I think 5 tiles SE of Athens would be an excellent place for our second city. It would have 2 cattle and 3 BG plus it would be on the coast. Yeah it would waste 2 hills right next to the capitol, but you can’t have everything. My exploring pattern leaves something to be desired, though it would have looked better if I hadn’t lost that other warrior to the barbs.

Here's a pic.
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads3/SP4-3000BC.jpg

Here's the save (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads3/SP4-3000BC.zip)

Matt's turn is done, and the game is afoot! We've almost got our granary ready to start cranking out settlers, we've survived an early barbarian scare intact, and we've made contact with one of our rivals: the Romans. So far so good!

3950BC: Worker starts irrigating.

A good move. Irrigate *before* the road. This is an age-old question: do you irrigate/mine first, or do you build the road first? Usually I build a road first, mainly so that other workers can come and help out with the irrigating/mining, because it gives more flexibility for the worker to flee if in danger once the road is finished, and it allows use of the road immediately.

However, in situations when the extra food or shields could really help, I will mine or irrigate first. At the start of the game is such a situation.

3400BC: ... I”ll see if Sirp thinks this is :smoke: when he reviews my turn.

Nope this was fine. You knew it would cost a couple of gold, and you judged it to be worthwhile. It was well thought-out and executed.

#2 pops the hut and gets barbs. Damn, I almost didn’t pop it just for this reason. Now I wish I hadn’t. The worker should be done with the mine before he has to retreat to the city if that becomes necessary.

This was a little :smoke: but also a little unlucky. You could have popped a settler, but you got these guys instead. What terrain was the hut on? If on a hill then not so bad, since you know the warrior will be better defended.

However, you chose to build a warrior as Athen's guard instead of a hoplite. This wasn't a bad choice in itself, however seeing that you built a warrior, popping villages near the capital is a bad idea. If you had built a hoplite, then you could much more confidently enter villages.

Note that as the difficulty level goes up, the likelihood of barbarians in villages does too, and your combat advantage against them falls. On Deity, you don't want to pop any villages early on unless you're expansionist. I'm an Epic 4 (http://www.network54.com/Hide/Forum/message?forumid=189557&messageid=1027308667) survivor; anyone who played that game will live in fear of barbarians forever.

Although this is a Monarch training game, I want to impart skills that are useful all the way up to Deity. Although popping the village isn't so bad on Monarch, it would *definitely* be bad on Deity. See the upcoming quiz for ideas on how to deal with villages.

Hmmm, risk attacking, or just leave the warrior fortified and pull the worker back to the city, losing the work on the road? If I win the worker doesn’t have to retreat, saving turns spent on that road, but if I lose, Athens will be sacked and the worker has to retreat anyways. Can he be killed in the city? I’m not sure on this, but I will assume he can be. I make what Sirp will probably call a move and risk it. Our warrior attacks and wins without losing a single hp! Better to be lucky than good?

I would have probably done the same thing as you. A worker can be killed in a city, so you'd have had to retreat him back into the wilderness. Then the barbarian could move onto the improvements and you'd have to attack him anyway to stop him pillaging them. Or he could go chasing the worker. Barbarians are more annoying these days. It could have cost us big, but it didn't. We dodged a bullet there.

To be honest, I think you're afraid of the :smoke: here because uhmm..you're actually having to make decisions that haven't come up in the pre-game discussion! :) This game isn't designed to be filled with robots who follow a perfect gameplan. You will have to make real decisions, don't be afraid to go with what you think is the best move. I'd much rather you go with what you genuinely think is the best move rather than what you think is the best move to avoid criticism.

Only having 1 scout sucks!

It sure does!

Our warrior wins and promotes!

Ok, we dodged the bullet. It'd have been better not to have it fired in the first place though.

3350BC: Pottery is discovered. Athens switched to a granary, due in 14. Writing or IW next? Best rate at either is 40 turns without a deficit. If I didn’t have to run lux we could get IW in 32 at break even, Writing would still be 40 turns. I want to know where the iron is so we can better plan our expansion. #1 moves 1 tile south. #2 moves NE. #3 moves onto next mountain south and sees a lake or coast 6 tiles SW of Athens with a bunch of plains and a BG between the 2. sliders at 8.1.1 and we are making +3gpt.

Ok, so you decided to go for a min-science gambit. But, you went for the cheaper technology, iron working. If you want to go for a 40-turn gambit, you go for a combination of the most expensive technology/the technology you think the AI is the least likely to get.

I can appreciate you wanting to see all the iron, but we'll almost certainly get IW off the AI before the 40 turns is up. So what should you have done? Research IW at max science. But it would still take 40 turns? No it wouldn't. You already saw that if we didn't have to run luxuries we would get it in 32 turns, so you knew we are almost big enough to research it in under 40 turns. Our economy is going to grow substantially over the near future, you should have researched it at the maximum, and as we grew in size, it would have come well down. I'd say we could have had it in 25 turns or so, and probably be the first to get it.

Going for writing in 40 turns would be a not-too-unreasonable option, but missing out on seeing where the iron is for that long is a pretty big disadvantage.

The next player should almost certainly set the science to the maximum. Thankfully your mistake here isn't too bad, since we can just use the surplus you built up to run deficits for a while, and make up the research.

I played a shadow of your turns, before I read your report. I'll probably play a shadow of most people's turns, mainly so I can compare how they went with my shadow. That way there'll be a benchmark to judge against.

Others are welcome to play shadows a little later, but not yet. You're not allowed to play shadows yet because you would discover parts of the map that would give away game information and influence later turns. Once our continent has been discovered, I will rediscuss others playing shadows if they want.

Your internal development was *exactly* the same as mine. I built 2 scouting warriors, then a warrior for guarding. Your worker movement was exactly the same. Good work on that. Something that would have been :smoke: but a common mistake I think would have been to move the worker onto the incense to hook it up. Hooking up a luxury isn't worth very much this early, and since they're on hills, it'd have taken a long time. Anyone who had done that would have gotten :whipped:

Your citizen tile placement was very similiar. Good work on taking them off the forests (and yes, city govenors do like shields too much). However, when the granary was almost complete, I put the citizens back on the forests. I timed it so that the granary would complete one turn before the city would grow. That way, you get the benefits of the granary earlier, having the food box half full. This is a minor optimization that can net you a little extra food. It's worth it though. At the end of your turn, Athens was size 4, growing in 1 turn, with a granary due in 3. At the end of mine, it was size 4, growing in 3, but with the granary due in 2.

Your way, the city grows, and you actually end up completing the granary in 2 turns, due to the extra growth. By the end of the third turn, you'll be size 5 with 6 food in the box, and one turn into your next project.

My way you'll be size 5 with 10 food in the box, and one turn into your next project. You'll also end up with a bonus shield due to the earlier growth, I'll end up with an extra commerce, due to the reduced need for MPP.

Not a big difference, 4 food. Still, the small stuff matters at this stage.

That I'm discussing such a minor nit is a reflection on how great your city management was other than this. It really was very good other than this small thing.

I didn't see any villages in my shadow, let alone pop them, so needless to say I still have 2 scouts in tact, which is obviously better; although you were partly unlucky in this regard.

Overall, your turn gets a B+. Good solid play, definitely good enough play to win on Monarch level.

EDIT: Oh I forgot to comment on your suggested city placement. 5 tiles south-east of Athens. I thought *exactly* the same thing myself. That would be a great place for a city. We can't really get the hills next to the capital unless we have major overlap with the capital and/or sacrifice being on fresh water. The first would be silly, the second would be a huge :smoke:

-Sirp.

Stormrider, you're up! Take the game whenever you can. Matt_g's report was excellent as far as details go. If everyone can do reports that good, I'd be happy. If you don't have the time for *quite* as much detail, I understand, but remember, the less detailed you are, the less I have to critique.

My mistake on the second round being 10 turns, Stormrider take 15 turns.

The roster:

Matt_g <--- just played
Stormrider <--- UP NOW
Sirp <--- on deck
Shaehsa - getting PTW soon!
Wetterlind - getting PTW soon!
Renata - Let's hope she has enough time!

Ok it's time for our next quiz! Matt_g did a very good job of introducing this quiz topic in his turn. The topic is Villages (Huts).

The questions are,

(1) What are the possible outcomes when one enters a village?
(2) Under what circumstances can you be sure that entering a village will not produce barbarians?

Subjectively,
(3) What is a good policy on when to enter villages and when not to?

-Sirp.

Matt_g - well done. I am afraid I also can not keep my hands out of the cookie jar (i.e. goody huts).

Sirp - I will play my 15 turns tonight (I am downloading the patch as we type)

Quiz:

1. Settler, conscript warrior, tech, barb, $cash, map, nothing (deserted)
2. I believe that expansionist trait prevents barbs
3. I try not to pop huts to close to unprotected cities/workers. Other than that, I have very little self-control in popping them. I suppose that will change when I get burned more frequently at the higher levels.

I will post my turns later.

Stormrider

Just popping in for a look-see before I go incommunicado for a couple of days.

Yay, Matt! No :whipped:. ;)

That SE city site needs a temple to get the cows, right? Hard to tell on my screen, too dark. (I could adjust the brightness, but that would take effort, and I just got out of bed. :p) At any rate, that means we'll need ceremonial burial before too much longer.

As to the quiz:

1) barbarians, maps, 25g (I've seen 50g in late-popped huts but don't know the criteria), tech, nothing, settler, conscript warrior. I guess in PTW you can get an advanced tribe (city), too? And someone somewhere mentioned getting an army, but that must be very rare.

2) If you're expansionist, you'll never get barbs. I think I remember reading you don't get barbs if you haven't built any military yet, i.e. you pop the first hut with your worker, but I'm not positive. (Never dared to try, lol.) And again I *think* that popping a hut by founding a city immediately adjacent to it will not give barbs.

3) I have no really good feel for this at this level - I was playing warlord level a handful of games ago and chieftain 5 or 10 games before that. I've never tried monarch. I suppose I'll have to start avoiding huts close to home until I have some extra military lying around. Huts on defensible terrain are obviously safer. Other than that, I'm not sure.

Renata <--- will check in again after the weekend

PS Sirp (or anyone) if you know how to prepare screenshots for upload using Paintshop Pro could you email me with directions? I know how to take screenshots and paste them in, but after that, that program just baffles me. Thanks.

Welllll I'm suppose to leave for work in 20 mins and I am sitting here in a towel, so this will be fairly short.

To anyone that doesn't know, I am sooo new to this game. I did a TDG with Sirp for Warlords. It was just him and I cuz noone else signed up! That's one of a couple of games I have played to the finish. I plan on staying in this game unless/until I start to slow things down too much then I will drop out and let the game continue =o) So, if I ask what seem to be basic questions, that is why!

As for the quiz.. I only knew about getting gold or a technology from a village. As far as getting (or not getting) barbs from a village... I only knew that you could get barbs from reading this thread so I don't know =o)

Lastly, reading Matt_g's report let me know how much I *don't* know! Leave it to me to miss some very basic concepts =o) I'm not sure how Matt_g figured out where to put the sliders. Now the slider has always given me trouble... I have dreams about it! Ask Sirp! At any rate, I never realized you could 'predict' what would happen on your next turn =o) If someone would please take the time out to explain it to me, I'd appreciate it.

TIA for your patience!

If you're talking about rioting, what you need to do, basically, is when a city grows, check your F1 screen. (Conversely, you could check the city itself, but the lux slider is on the F1 screen, so it's easier that way.) You get one turn of leeway with an unhappy-citizen excess before your city riots. So if you see that, for instance, Athens now has one happy, one content and two unhappy citizens, you know it's about to riot. You then move the lux slider up as high as necessary to to get the happy citizens at least equal to the unhappy.

That's about it. It takes practice to keep on top of, but isn't hard once you've done it a few times.

Renata

Shaesha, Renanta pretty well covered it. Main thing to remember is that content citizens are neutral. Just pretend they aren't even there. If you have more happy than unhappy it will riot.

Sirp, about the timing on the granary build, I know better than this and spaced it out. :o
I hate it when that happens. :lol:
BTW the hut was on a jungle tile, N,N,NW of Athens.

Question for you. That spot 5 tiles SE. How do you know you will get the benefit of the fresh water in the city, i.e. not need an aquaduct? I have never been sure with lakes, and I believe I got burned by this once in one of my first games (1.21f) regular Civ3.

[/lurking]
Yeah, when you have more happy than unhappy people they'll riot and it's called carnaval... :lol:
[lurking]

Stormrider: Since you only just got PTW, it's not unlikely that your CD would already have 1.14f on it. Just remember (and sorry for repeating myself but I'm kinda paranoid about this!) you have to have 1.14f to play. NOT 1.21f.

Shaesha, I'm not sure exactly what you're asking and if Renata already covered it.

On Monarch, the first two citizens in a city will be content. Every citizen thereafter will be unhappy, unless you 'give them a reason' to be otherwise.

Content citizens indeed don't count. A happy citizen will counteract an unhappy citizen. So if you have 1 happy citizen, 1 content, and 1 unhappy, the city will be fine. If you have 8 content citizens, and 1 unhappy citizen, the city will riot, since it has more unhappy citizens (1) than happy (0).

Generally, you should start getting familiar with when a city will riot. I.e. when it grows, or when you remove soldiers from it in despotism. I know that some people check the city every turn at this stage in the game. Soon though, it should progress to being 'second nature' to you. "I get two content citizens for free, and there is a soldier in there, so when the city grows to size three, I'll be fine. I don't have to check on it until it's size four" you say to yourself. You don't do this later in the game though; it becomes too complex to work out. Then uhh.....you either (1) check every city every turn. (2) accept that some cities will riot sometimes, especially less important ones.

I must admit I'm lazy, and go for (2).

The Quiz:

1) You can get barbarians, gold (25 normally, 50 if you're expansionist), maps of the surrounding region, a settler, a conscript warrior, a conscript army, or nothing at all! I'm not sure if you can get a free city.

The chances of getting an army is very low. On the harder difficulties, the chance of getting a settler is also low. Additionally, if you have a settler active, or have more than the average number of cities for all civilizations, you can't get a settler. This does mean that on Deity it can actually be slightly more likely for you to get a settler, since you'll certainly be behind in cities.

2) You can't get barbarians if,

- You're expansionist
- You don't have *any* military units
- You open the village by founding a city next to it

3) If you're expansionist (which we're not), you obviously just go into all the huts all the time. The higher the level gets, the more of an advantage it is to be able to enter huts with impunity. On easier levels, no-one cares, because the barbarians are easy to deal with anyhow. Not anymore!

Otherwise, entering a hut when you are confident your scout, on the terrain the hut stands on, could take out the barbarians is a reasonable starting point.

This means that unless the hut happens to be on mountains, you probably *don't* want to open it with a regular warrior.

However, if the region has already been explored (i.e. it would take the scout a substantial amount of time to reach new territory to explore), then you may consider risking the hut anyway. If you do this however, be sure that nearby cities will be able to handle any barbarians that arise.

Also, popping villages by founding a city next to them is a *really* good idea! For any given village, there's a reasonable chance that you'd want to found a city on one of the tiles next to it anyhow. If this is so, then this is the best way to pop it.

I'm like anyone else, I love to pop villages too. But uhh...it's a pretty dangerous thing to do. Remember, Matt_g's village pop "only" resulted in us losing our scout. That was bad enough, setting our exploration back a substantial amount. Imagine if Athens had been pillaged by the barbarian! On the other hand, the most we could realistically have expected to have gotten from the village would be hmm...another scout, which would have been pretty good, or maybe 25 gold, which would have been ok, or maps, which would have been fairly useless. A settler is unlikely.

On Deity, I believe there is only about a 30% chance of getting anything good at all out of a hut, while 70% of the time it's empty or has barbarians. Not good odds.

Renata: Perfect marks on the quiz. Let us know when you get back, I'll look at emailing you instructions on how to use a painting program.

EDIT: Matt_g: A body of water is a fresh water lake if it consists only of coastal tiles. If it includes sea tiles, then it's an inland sea; not fresh water.

If you build a city that is next to the lake, i.e. so that if a land unit stands in the city, it can't move in one of the 8 directions because it'd run into the lake, then you get access to fresh water.

i.e. if you built a city on any of the 8 tiles surrounding the lake in our game, you'd get access to fresh water.

Renata: That city site *will* have one of the cattle in range. The cattle is two spaces away from it, however it's just outside the cultural reach of Athens. Athens has cultural control of the tile north-west of it. By building where Matt suggested, we'll have cultural control of the tile south-west of the cattle. It's a game rule that if you have cultural control of opposite sides of a tile, then you get control of that tile too.

We'll need a temple to get the other cattle that'd also be in range though.

-Sirp.

State of the Empire (aka Pre-turn): I max out science and IW drops from 33 to 31 turns. Should drop further with more roads... Slider is at 0.8.2 we are making no cash, but once we get better than 0 gpt, IW goes back to 33.

Will obviously review the slider frequently to maximize benefits.

My priorities: Settlers and another scout.

2950 BC: Athens at 5. Fortify Warrior in Athens. Leave new citizen on forest - Granery in 1. Move slider to 0.7.3 so we do not riot next turn. IW in 32, GPT -1. Move Scout-Warrior south.

IBT: Barb out of the fog N by NE 3 tiles from Athens.

2900 BC: Athens set to settler (in 4 turns). Leave workers where they are. Slider to 5.2.3 IW still in 31, but GPT +2. Warrior to SW

IBT: Barb 2 tiles N by NE from Athens.

2850 BC: MM Athens - Growth in 4 settler in 4. Warrior West onto hill to go onto mountain next turn to get a better view of what lies in the darkness...

IBT: Barb 2 tiles N of from Athens.

2800 BC: Looks like Mr. Barb is going after our worker. Worker is done mining in 1 - enough time to save him from Mr. Barb, but my MP Warrior may have to leave Athens to avoid plundering of the soon to be mined BG. I will MM Athens next turn if need be, but until the Barb commits, I won't either.

That being said, Warrior-scout moves onto Mountain and reveals several squares of forest.

IBT: Barb moves S. Is now immediately north of Athens and West of worker.

2750 BC: Would have been nice to start the road this turn, but move worker South for safety. Move scout W. MM Athens to +3 GPT.

IBT: Barb SW

2710 BC: Warrior from Athens takes out Barb, no damage. Barb was on grassland - small risk of our warrior dying. Have to increase lux to prevent rioting 4.2.4. Worker back to recently mined BG. Warrior-Scout west to Mountain - exposes river valley.

2670 BC: Settler heads for 5 SE of Athens for new city. Athens set to warrior. Warrior back to Athens. Worker road. Scout warrior to NW. Rome still at only 2 cities

2630 BC: Scout W. Settler SE. Slider 6.2.2 GPT+23 / IW in 25

2590 BC: Athens warrior, now set to Settler. New warrior (W2) goes off exploring. Settler SE. Old Scout (W1) moves W sees some more very tasty terrain (river/plains/grassland). Athens grows next trun. Slider 9.1.0.

Nothing I can do for the last several turns will make IW come any faster, so I try to make some $. GPT +3

2550 BC: :smoke: I could have sworn I had 4 content peeps in Athens, but they riot. Set slider to 8.1.1 My bad. Road done. Worker off to make road to our next city - move to grassland south of Athens. W1 finds game along river. W2 still in area already explored. Settler in position for city next turn.


2510 BC: Athens grows. Settler and growth in 3. Slider 5.2.3 GPT +2 / IW 22 - can only make IW faster by losing GPT.

Glorious Sparta founded 2510. Set to warrior. W2 heads NW. W1 still exploring river valley. Worker road.

IBT: W2 meets Barb coming south.

2470 BC: Keep exploring warriors. Did not attack Barb as he was on hill.

IBT: Barb moving S towards Athens - 3 tiles away. The Barbs I knew and loved in CIV3 would have jumped me, unless there was a worker to kill in range. PTW barbs are not as predictable :(

2430 BC: W2 climbs mountain and finds massive jungle with goody hut in the middle W1 finds goody hut. I am already twitching, dreaming of that cookie jar...

Have been periodically checking on Rome. Nothing new, but
the advisor tells me the Roman Army fears our warrior. So we have that going for us.... :D

IBT: Barb moves closer to Athens

2390 BC: Settler produced. Athens set to Hoplite in 3. W2 finds Barb camp and sees spice to the north. Worker finishes road and moves to BG South by SE of Athens. W1 found 25 in the cookie jar, err, I mean goody hut. Sees a cow.

Settler heads two tiles south. I am heading him towards the plains tile that is on the river 3 tiles South and 1 tile SW of Athens.

Reasoning: Small overlap with Sparta, none with Athens. On a river = no acqueduct. Also in a direction to prevent future Northern and far western Roman expansion (very small factor in my decision). I might have moved him to the West of Athens, but the barbarian scared me off.

Slider 8.1.1 GPT +6. Definitely no rioting next turn. IW still will not research faster.

IBT: Stupid Barb skirts away from Athens onto a mountain in the general direction of Settler.

2350 BC: I switch Athens to warrior (next turn). Move warrior from Athens two south to chase the Settler and provide some protection. Slider 7.1.2 to keep athens at 2 happy and two unhappy (learned my lesson...) GPT +5.

Only deficit spending (and with no MP, a rioting Athens), will IW move from 18 to 17 turns.

W2 disperses Barb camp (+25 GP). W1 moves onto cow and determines that large body of water to the north is fresh water (2 food). Settler to South. Worker road on BG.

Summary: I think I only made one obvious weedy move. Keep an eye on Athens as it is about to grow. Keep an eye on the Barb. Sparta to make warrior next turn. Settler not in final position. Change if you think it is necessary. Rome still only has 1 additional city. They have WC, we have Pottery. Although Sirp recommended next player (me) to max science, only running a deficit would have improved research by one turn. Instead,
I added some coins meager treasury. Still a goody hut in the middle of the jungle if my successor is feeling lucky.

I learned that PTW barbarians are not as predictable. I reconfirmed that only one scout sucks. Not sure what to make of a 2 city Roman Empire 35 turns into the game.

I am not used to playing for an audience, so instead of flying by the seat of my pants, I actually thought out some moves and even thought out in terms of 1 or 2 turns ahead of where I was. Big change in my playing style. Since it is early in the game, I hope any ill-advised decisions of mine will not hurt in the long run.

p.s. We need more workers. I kept on checking to see if Rome had any for sale, but alas, they did not. :( Maybe for Athens' next unit...

Trying to figure out how to post the screen shot. Will do so later, as my wife has declared that I have been playing "that stupid game' long enough. Love that woman...

Originally posted by Sirp
1) You can get barbarians, gold (25 normally, 50 if you're expansionist), maps of the surrounding region, a settler, a conscript warrior, a conscript army, or nothing at all! I'm not sure if you can get a free city.



I have gotten Free cities multiple times.
The requirements are you must be expansionist and the spot qualifies for a free city. I don't know what the qualification is, as I haven't tracked it that closely.

@ Sirp: Actually, I'm still here. Change of plans. So suggestions welcome at any time. Thanks. :)

edit @ Stormrider: I took a peek at the save. Plenty of good open land down south, very nice. And our first four or five cities should all be on freshwater, which is better than nice. The rivers should help our research a lot, which by the way, really isn't that bad - we could have ceremonial burial right now in 8 at 80%, for instance, and even masonry is only 16 turns.

Rome must be working on something expensive if they still don't have a new tech and are still at only 10 gold. Could it be .. iron working? ;)

Renata

I max out science and IW drops from 33 to 31 turns. Should drop further with more roads... Slider is at 0.8.2 we are making no cash, but once we get better than 0 gpt, IW goes back to 33.

Good work maxing out on science. Yes it should drop further with roads. I don't know why you're concerned with gpt though, we don't care alot about that at this stage, we care about getting IW asap.

Will obviously review the slider frequently to maximize benefits.

Ok, to be good at Civilization, one often needs to work smarter, not harder.

Do you know how researching technology works? We dedicate a certain amount of income to science. The amount we dedicate each turn goes into a box, much like the production or food box of a city. When the box fills up, we get the technology. The only difference with this box is that we can't see it in the game, and that there is a minimum of 4 turns for research, and a maximum of 40.

The only time you get inefficient waste of science effort is if on the last turn of research, you produce too much and it overruns the amount needed. For instance, if we need 8 beakers to get a technology, and we are producing 6 a turn, then we will get it in two turns, but at the current rate, we'll end up getting 12 beakers when we only need 8, and so waste 4. Suppose that we wait until the last turn, when we only need 2 beakers, to adjust the slider rate. If we can adjust it to an amount that will give exactly 2 beakers, then we will have no wastage at all. It is likely that we will still have a small amount of waste however, and so we might try to adjust it 2 or 3 turns out from discovering a technology, to try to eliminate that waste.

Even just adjusting it on the turn before the invention is discovered will eliminate 80% of science wastage. Don't even bother adjusting it for waste elimination more than 5 turns out

The turns reported to research a technology are if we keep researching at the current rate. Observe three simple facts:

- we know our commerce is going to rise in the near future, although we're not sure by exactly how much
- we want iron working ASAP. We don't care that much about money at this stage
- iron working is a long way off.

Obviously the amount of time displayed to get the technology on the slider is very rough at this stage. As such, what we want to do is put as much commerce as possible into iron working, even if it doesn't affect the quoted turn rate.

Only deficit spending (and with no MP, a rioting Athens), will IW move from 18 to 17 turns.

Excellent! We have lots of cash, start spending at a deficit. You didn't? Hmm...why not? Our cash isn't doing much sitting around in our coffers. Use it to get IW faster. Even if the quoted turn rate doesn't change, plug as much as possible into science!

By the end of your turn, IW was due in 18 turns. By the end of my shadow, it was due in 10. Sure, I had lots less cash on hand than you did, but uhh....that cash isn't going to be terribly useful. I guess we might be able to use it to buy WC off the Romans.

I also went to less effort with the slider than you did. I just set-and-forget it to max science, only occasionally keeping an eye on my treasury to make sure I didn't run out of cash.

IBT: Barb out of the fog N by NE 3 tiles from Athens.
2900 BC: Athens set to settler (in 4 turns).


Well I played more conservatively: When the barb appeared out of the fog, I set Athens to build a warrior. You took a smallish risk, in exchange for slightly faster expansion. Doing things my way allowed me to move Athen's guard onto the hill though, denying the barb from interfering with our worker.

I would have preferred a hoplite in Athens, but there wasn't time to build one before the barb arrived.

The Barbs I knew and loved in CIV3 would have jumped me, unless there was a worker to kill in range. PTW barbs are not as predictable

Yeah, I haven't had as much experience with PTW barbs as I'd like yet, but I do know they are smarter and much more annoying. I'm thinking of playing a Deity, Raging Hordes game with lots of open land, just to see exactly how bad they are :)

I could have sworn I had 4 content peeps in Athens, but they riot.

Ok, why would you have 4 contents? You just said that you set luxuries to 0, you have 2 content by default and you just have one warrior for MP. That'll make 3 content citizens and 1 unhappy. At this stage, if you have luxuries at 0%, you shouldn't have to look at a city to know if it's going to go into disorder, you should just know.

---

Your internal development was great. Your worker moves followed the exact same pattern as in my shadow, except that in my shadow I didn't have to retreat from the barbarian. Your settler rate was great. You built one city, and have set it up for the next player to build one almost immediately.

Notice that we have the same number of cities as Rome: 2. We will almost certainly beat Rome to a third. That's *with* an early granary!

I notice that you sent settlers out undefended. With confirmed barbarians around, this is a somewhat unadvisable move. Sure, it lets you expand faster. To be honest, I'd have to say it's a great move if you're planning to reload or restart if things turn sour, it's a bad move if you intend to win *this* game without cheating. (I am not implying that this is the way you do or have ever played. I know that many players do play this way. I am ashamed to admit that I once used to play this way). Losing a settler this early is just too damaging to not escort them. You have to protect your most valuable assets.

Since it is early in the game, I hope any ill-advised decisions of mine will not hurt in the long run.

Well, bad decisions will likely be game-lasting at this stage, however you did just fine. Your play was definitely good enough to win on this level.

The first two turns have been great, and we've had some detailed analysis. However, I said when I started this game that anyone who had beaten Warlord or above could play. That means we're going to get players who are barely Warlord capable, through to players who can sometimes beat Monarch. This is fine. I want to help each player at the level they're at. I'm also happy for you guys to try to help and advise each other.

So, don't be intimidated if these first two rounds have been over your head. Just do the best you can, and you'll be sure to get lots of valuable advice. Everyone was a crappy player once :)

p.s. We need more workers. I kept on checking to see if Rome had any for sale, but alas, they did not. Maybe for Athens' next unit...

Yes we do need more workers. Building one in Athens wouldn't be a bad move, although I'm thinking that I might get one out of Sparta: It's a high food city too!

Workers are not nearly as cheap to buy from the AI anymore. Buying workers used to be a great move. Umm...so good that it was borderline exploitive: it could cripple that AI. Checking with the AI every turn to see if they have workers is boring, repetitive, and involves no skill whatsoever. If I see a worker for sale, I'll consider buying it, but I don't check every turn.

Finally, umm....your biggest :weed: might have been the state you left the game in. A barbarian two tiles away from Athens which is undefended, although about to produce a regular warrior. Hmmm....

And you know what? That barbarian is probably going to move onto the cattle. That will deny our workers in Athens the use of the cattle for that turn, and the govenor will move them somewhere else. This will result in Athens getting less commerce for the turn, which might result in it rioting....which would mean the warrior won't get complete, which means the barb will pillage it! I tried this out, and confirmed that that's exactly what'd happen, so we have to raise our luxury rates.

SUMMARY:

Good - development, building a scout, exploring, building settlers; placement of Sparta, intended placement of next city.

Average - sending out settlers undefended

Poor - Not going max science, letting Athens riot, leaving Athens threatened by barbarians.

-Sirp.

Originally posted by Renata
Rome must be working on something expensive if they still don't have a new tech and are still at only 10 gold. Could it be .. iron working? ;)

Renata

I would bet the farm on that. :lol:

Sirp was right. We could have had writing and probably got WC and IW for it.

Originally posted by LKendter



I have gotten Free cities multiple times.
The requirements are you must be expansionist and the spot qualifies for a free city. I don't know what the qualification is, as I haven't tracked it that closely.

I got one in a solo game I'm playing now as the Mongols. Luckily it was in a good spot.
FYI, according to this thread (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=36596) You don't have to expansionist. It can happen for any Civ. Being Expansionist does increase the odds though. Personally, I would much rather have a settler. At least then I control where the city is placed. :crazyeye:

grrrrr I was in the middle of a long post and then it decided to refresh the page, losing everything I typed for some reason :mad:

It's dotmap time! Here is the current State of the Nation:

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads3/SP4-2350BC.jpeg

Unfortunately we don't have as much intelligence as we'd like, largely due to the early scout loss. Nevertheless, we're going to plan our empire.

I would like it if each player could submit a dotmap. Just download the above image, and place a colored dot on each tile that you think a city should go on, with a commentary on which order we should found our cities along with why that is a good city site.

It's not mandatory, but it will hopefully improve your city placement skills, which are an important part of the game.

Renata, I can't give you help with Paintshop, because I'm not familiar with it, but I can give instructions using Microsoft Paint, which is available on all Windows machines, and which is similiar to Paintshop anyhow. I'll give instructions here, since they might be of benefit to others too.

NOTE: I use Windows XP. IIRC some versions of Windows shipped with a version of Paint that doesn't support Jpegs; if your version of Paint doesn't support Jpegs you'll have to use another program like Paint.

To make a dotmap, download the above image (right-click and put save). Then open up Paint from Start -> Programs -> Accessories -> Paint. Open the image. There is a pallete of tools on the left side of the Paint window, and a pallete of colors at the bottom. Select the brush tool, and select a color from the bottom. You can draw a little dot on the tile you think a city should go on. You can use Control-Z to undo if you make a mistake.

When you're done, save the image, giving it the name SP4-dotmap-<your-name>.jpeg - so Renata would use SP4-dotmap-Renata.jpeg for instance.

Then come to the forum, put "Upload File" at the very bottom right of the page, and select your file.

Then post a message, describing your dotmap, and press the 'IMG' button above the message box. It will ask you for the image location, enter "http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads3/SP4-dotmap-<your-name>.jpeg"

And you're done!

If anyone really has trouble with this, they're welcome to post a textual description of where they think cities should go instead. (insert Chinese cliche about pictures and words)

I'm up now, and then hmm...Shaesha and Wetterlind still don't have PTW as far as I know. Renata seems a little more ready to play than she previous indicated.

So, Renata, if you're ok to play after me, just post "I got it" after I do my turn, and you can play. Otherwise, whoever out of Shaesha and Wetterlind gets PTW first and can play can take the turn.

Matt_g
Stormrider <--- Just played
Sirp <--- UP NOW
Renata - On deck, if she can make it
Shaehsa - getting PTW soon!
Wetterlind - getting PTW soon!

-Sirp.

I don't think I've ever gotten a city from a hut. Does it still display the "We have found an advanced tribe" message like in Civ1?

I think it's a good idea though; getting a settler from a hut is a bit too good. A city is more balanced, so they could make it happen more often.

Yes, it is likely that Rome is discovering Iron Working. If there are other civilizations on the continent, we want to discover them before Rome, so we get the trading opportunities.

If we get IW and Rome still doesn't have it, we can get a good idea of whether they're researching it by offering it to them and seeing how much they value it. If they won't even give us WC for it, we know they've almost discovered it themselves.

-Sirp.

Yep just ignore this one :)

Well... Here goes nothing!


http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads3/SP4-2350BC-shaesha-dotmap.JPG


First I would start with the red dot. I would start here to keep the Romans from
expanding, because there is access to fresh water, and because of the 2 different
types of bonus food tiles.

Second, I would go to the yellow dot. There is a bonus food tile nearby, and
hopefully more goodies to the southwest.

Next, the black dot. Actually I am having trouble between the black and the blue.
From what I know about the two, the blue will have access to fresh water. Now,
where my question lies... is it possible that after clearing some of the jungle
that the river will continue in through there? If so, I'd definately go to the
black dot. Lots of opportunity there

The reason I'd like to use paintshop is for the ability to crop images. I actually can do it, but I'm never quite sure what size it will turn out after pasting.

At any rate, I can get by.

I can play Monday night, if that's ok. Dotmap sometime tomorrow.

Renata

2350BC (IT): Luxuries increased so that Athens will not go into civil disorder even if it is denied its cattle. Science taken to max.

2310BC (1): The barbarian moves onto the cattle. Athens produces its warrior. But now what do I do? If I defend the city, the barbarian may pillage the cattle. If I attack, we may lose and he may pillage Athens! If he pillages Athens we will lose a whole heap of gold, or a citizen. Pillaging the cattle would be almost as bad.

I choose to attack him. We win. A bullet dodged. Athens is set to build a hoplite. (Afterwards I reloaded the game, just to see if he'd attack, pillage, or go after the worker if I didn't attack. He pillaged. My observation is that this does make hoplites and other defensive units substantially weaker against barbarians).

I move our scout around that body of water, trying to confirm it is indeed fresh water (and wondering why he can't just taste it to see!)

Sparta finished its warrior, and is set to build a worker.

2270BC (2): We build Thermopylae, which is set to build a warrior.

Rome has a worker to trade. They want Pottery and 50 gold for it though. This is now a pretty fair trade; in the past they'd value them at about 40 gold. If I thought that Julius would build a granary in Rome if we give him pottery, I wouldn't give it to him. Since I don't think he's going to do that, I do the trade.

I confirm that the body of water is indeed fresh.

2230BC (3): Our scouting warrior spots blue borders in the north!

Rome has just managed to come up with The Wheel and Ceremonial Burial. Hmm...did they research one of them? Meet someone and trade? Find em in huts? Hopefully they researched at least one of them, meaning we'll definitely get IW before them, and be able to trade it most likely for all three.

Our worker moves on to build a road on the cattle, rather than mine the enriched grassland near Athens. A close choice there.

2190BC (4) Athens builds a hoplite and is set to build a settler.

2150BC (5) Our warrior in the south-west sights green borders! The Romans have Iron Working :(

We are now four technologies behind Rome. Don't worry, we'll catch up. To play on the harder levels, you have to learn to play from behind in technology.

IBT the Babylonians contact us (we're at their borders, so they can see us, although we can't see any of their units yet). They want to trade Pottery for Ceremonial Burial. Hmm...we'd rather trade Alphabet to them in exchange for all their technology (Ceremonial Burial and Warrior Code, plus all their cash, 10). This is what is meant by Alphabet being so valuable :)

It's also of no *immediate* value to them, while pottery, the far less expensive technology, is!

2110BC (6) Athens grows to 6, luxury slider adjusted. Sparta builds a worker. We make contact with the Aztecs in the south-west. They are ahead of us by the Wheel. The Romans and Aztecs each have 2 cities, the Babylonians 3. We also have 3. The Babylonians have Mysticism, but are not interested in trading it.

I suspect that the Aztecs and Romans have contact, due to their similiar techs, and since the Aztecs having Jags would be likely to have made contact with them. However I doubt Babylon has contact with either. So, we do have brokering opportunities.

Athens will be a settler/worker farm, always maximizing food, trying to churn out as many settlers as possible. Sparta is high-food so it can also build some workers, but will concentrate more on improvements/military. Thermopylae is not high food, so we will make it produce military, as well as trying to build a granary in it at some point, so it can grow as quickly as possible.

2070BC (7) Thermopylae builds a warrior. It is sent exploring; set to build a barracks.

2030BC (8) Babylon now has Masonry. The only way they'd trade it with us is for gpt. IW is 5 turns off, hopefully when we get it we'll be able to start to make some good trades. Hopefully.

1990BC (9) Settler/hoplite pair almost at site for fourth city.

1950BC (10) Athens-Sparta connecting road complete. Irrigation near Sparta complete.

I wasn't terribly detailed in my report. If anyone doesn't understand why I did something, please ask.

The Game (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads3/SP4-1950BC.zip)

(Can someone please help me out here? Is it ok to attach files to posts? I knew at one time it wasn't, but I heard rumors that it's ok again. Is it ok or do you have to upload it to the server?)

Renata, I'll move you up in the roster, which means you're up now. Monday night will be fine.

Matt_g
Stormrider
Sirp <--- Just played
Renata <--- UP NOW
Shaehsa - getting PTW soon!
Wetterlind - getting PTW soon!

Wetterlind, please update us on your PTW status and availability.

If we manage to get IW before the Aztecs and Babylonians do, Renata should have some great brokering opportunities. The game is certainly going to be interesting. Us between three civilizations, all of whom are known to be rather aggressive at times.

I went 10 turns and it's going to be 10 from here on out, unless it gets real slow in the IA, in which case we might drop to 5.

If people want, they can use the updated map info to do their dotmaps.

-Sirp.

Sirp

Thanks for the education on science research. I did not realize that it added beakers up like food. The reason I left gpt was that even if I went to deficit on $, my turns to discovery only decreased by one. I figured I might as well get some money if only one turn would be saved. Live and learn.

Question: If I change tech mid-stream, do my beakers start over from scratch? I am under this impression, although I have nothing to back it up. This is the reason why I left IW.

As I said, I tend to play a little risky, which is why I left Athens in the state I did. In fact, I usually pump out as many settlers as possible with as little defense as possible. Risky, I know. I recently became a forum lurker and now understand at leastm the value of a granery - something I did not bother with in the past. Live and learn.

Stormrider

Dot mapping is still one of my weaker skills.
However, I can give a hint to help.
I draw the borders that the cities will create.
This will often reveals problems when I do the maps.

Do you notice the weakness with the city radius on the map?

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads3/SP4-2350BC-shaesha-lak.jpeg

Just to address a sub-discussion going on in this thread, you get a free city if (and only if) you have no settlers out there or under construction, and your number of cities is less than the number of cities in the game divided by the number of civs in the game... in other words, you are behind.

The map:

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads3/SP4-1950BC.jpeg

I intend for that hoplite/settler pair to settle on the tile directly north of where they stand. There's lots of land to grab in all directions, before our rivals get to it. There's rich land near the Romans and Aztecs that we'd like, and there's a source of Spices near the Babylonians. Course we can just build fairly non-aggressively for a while to come.

-Sirp.

LKendter: Thanks alot! Your picture illustrated the point far better than my explanation would have :)

Stormrider: Yes if you switch research midstream, all your research to date is wasted. You should very rarely switch research midstream.

Shaesha: you might like to try a second attempt at a dotmap. Hopefully LKendter's explanation will have helped alot.

-Sirp.

LKendter -

Thanks for taking the time to do the map that way. I didn't have a good understanding before, that helped alot!

Just tossing in some comments.. :)

I move our scout around that body of water, trying to confirm it is indeed fresh water (and wondering why he can't just taste it to see!)

You can, of course, right-click on a water tile; if it shows 2 food it's fresh water.

(Can someone please help me out here? Is it ok to attach files to posts? I knew at one time it wasn't, but I heard rumors that it's ok again. Is it ok or do you have to upload it to the server?)

You can if you really need to or if the file server isn't working, although the practice is discouraged.

Question: If I change tech mid-stream, do my beakers start over from scratch? I am under this impression, although I have nothing to back it up. This is the reason why I left IW.

Yes, all your beaker accumulation is lost if you change research goals.

a conscript army, or nothing at all! I'm not sure if you can get a free city.

You can't get an army from a hut anymore; that was fixed in one of the patches. As for a free city, only Expansionist civs can get that, and only in PTW. Yes, it does give the "advanced tribe" message. (Note that a settler is actually better than an instant city, since then you get to choose the location to found, but an expansionist civ has an additive chance for both.)

You either (1) check every city every turn. (2) accept that some cities will riot sometimes, especially less important ones.

You might want to get the graphics mod that adds to the citizens in the city screen small mood icons indicating happy, content, or unhappy. With that, it takes about one second per city in the F1 window to find any that will riot. I do that every turn until sometime in the industrial age, then I do go with Sirp's #2 there. :)

I can't seem to find it in the graphics forum, so I uploaded it to the file server here. Put it in the Civilization III\Art\SmallHeads directory, and it will work for both Civ3 and PTW.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads3/civ3moodbadge15x15simplesmiley.zip

BTW, Sirp - did you still want to try a different sound.dll for patching? If so, drop me a PM here with your email address.

You can, of course, right-click on a water tile; if it shows 2 food it's fresh water.

Yes you can. Why didn't I think of that before? I guess one of the good things about running this TDG, is that inevitably some lurkers who know more than I will come along and point out things I can learn.

Thanks T-Hawk.

-Sirp.

And then some fun...

-Still alive-

Well, I haven’t head a single sound from the Internet shop... no PtW yet. I suggest that I’ll skip this round and hopefully I can play the next time it’s my turn. If I haven’t received my copy by then my spot in the roster is open if any one else (i e a lurker) wants it.

Anyway, here is my dotmap.