I had a good start to my game. At the end of the QSC period I had 14 or 15 cities. I also discovered the NE lake and quickly moved a second warrior over to block it off.
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads4/Greebley_lake2030.JPG

I liked the above setup because the way is not blocked (which hopefully means the AI is less likely to declare war to get through). I would only block it when there was a settler/unit pair which won't attack (In the above I can see them coming in time to close the gap). It meant I got all the land to the N except for 2 English tundra towns and one French that were settle by boat.

I also found that checking diplomacy every round really does make a difference. I was able to make a lot of deals I would normally miss. I also played alot more cautiously than normal and tried to MM alot more. It seemed to work well and I thought my position pretty strong.

In my game the Ottomans were killed very early. Everyone joined in and the Zulu got most of the land, making them by far the strongest civ.

I was glad for the favorable start for my first deity game. I am not completely sure I can win less favorable games, so I am thinking of trying the "epic30" deity game at the realms beyond civ just to see how I do.

I've got a quick question about DaviddesJ's post (on page 5 of this thread) and how distance is calculated. If I understand correctly, distance is calculated by counting tiles along the NE/SW and NW/SE axis, and using the Pythagorean theorem to figure out the actual distance. Now, I thought you had to be totally precise, but DaviddesJ has his second ring ranging in distance from the capital a bit. Specifically, he has 5 cities at a distance of 7.211102551, 4 at a distance of 7.280109889, and two at a distance of 8.0.

Now, I think it's safe to assume that he knows a lot more about the game than I do, so I'm guessing that the distances don't have to be precisely equal. Does anyone know how the distance number is rounded off? If it's a simple case of rounding to either the closest whole number or to a certain number of decimal places, then the above numbers won't equal out--you'll end up with 7 for the first two and 8 (obviously) for the last case. Is the distance value simply rounded upto the nearest whole number, or is there something even more funky going on?

Anyways, I'm sorry for asking this in a spoiler thread, but because I was referring to a specific post in this thread I figured this was the only safe place to put my question. If anyone (or DaviddesJ himself) could tell me how precise distance calculation is I would really appreciate it. :)

Looking back at my post, I really am a geek.:(

Stone Wolf

If you check DDJ's post in the corruption thread he linked to - this post (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?postid=986453#post986453) which explains distance calculation - you'll see that his cities are all 8 'distance units' away in the second ring. (It isn't the Pythagorean distance which is used, it's a special 'Firaxis' distance :))

MadScot

Ah, thanks much. :D

Well, this is a mixed Open start for me on 1.29f. Settled at the start, researched writing at min, and ran my first warrior east (I figured west was the sea, so east seemed a good bet.

Ran into the English, traded the Wheel for Pottery, and turned Madrid into a Settler factory. The English beat me to writing. After that, I was buying tech when I could - I'm way behind now. I can see now it would been much smarter to build embassies quicker and alliances for tech - ah well, bit late now.

By 1000BC I had churned out 9 cities with 10th one move from construction - I missed out on the slider for a turn and so had 1 turn to go to Code of Laws. After that, Repbulic. So not a great QSC from me (first time I've ever managed to keep all my notes - that's an improvement of some sort).

However, I have a few doubts about winning this game.

By about 300AD, I have traded for a full continent map with Shaka, who just built Sun Tzu's before being squashed by the Ottomans.

The Padishah's turf is HUGE - which means I can look forward to large amounts of Sipahi in the near future. :cry:

The English have Pyramids, the Keltoi have Great Library <snip>

I am absolutely certain that I reduced the discussion of the Middle Ages and events that occur off of your starting continent. I did not do this without carefully reading the post and determining that we really do not want to push the disussion beyond the limits defined in the announcement post for this thread.

This could have reverted because you may have had the original message open just as I redacted the pieces that clearly pushed into the next age. - cracker

EDIT: Pumped workers out of Madrid after settlers, so have some fairly good real estate for a change. I was planning on moving the Palace with a leader, but no such luck - and as fate would have it, Madrid was captured for a turn, jumping the Palace anyway. Time to rebuild it next to the coast for some more naval potential (going to need a big navy in this game I reckon).

And a lot of people are complaining about the Zulu! Hah! Which would you rather face, Impis or Sipahi?

EDIT2: Fair enough Cracker, I strayed out off the start of the MA.

For those curious (while being circumspect) - I do have a high risk straegy to catch up, but if it doesn't work I'll be dead rather quick. So watch the next spoiler thread to find out.

Originally posted by CruddyLeper
And a lot of people are complaining about the Zulu! Hah! Which would you rather face, Impis or Sipahi?


Now if that isn't the best quote to put things into perspective, I don't know what is. :D

Originally posted by DaviddesJ
I decided before this game started that I would use it to test/demonstrate a new idea that I call RCP (Ring City Placement).

I just ran some test games myself to confirm this works. Great discovery! :goodjob:

Would you like to start a thread in the Strategy Forum or the Articles Forum about it?

Originally posted by DaveMcW


I just ran some test games myself to confirm this works. Great discovery! :goodjob:

Would you like to start a thread in the Strategy Forum or the Articles Forum about it?

It really works quite well. I've tried it a couple times myself, and that first ring is just awesome! The second ring is weak, but it always is.

This plan has a lot more flexibility than I thought at first, too. You can vary the distance of the rings as resources and terrain require, but you can also set up secondary rings. I had one game where I had one ring at 4 with a few cities at 4.5 when I couldn't place them at 4. The 4.5 cities did have a noticeable increase in corruption, but it wasn't all that bad. The second ring wasn't affected at all by the cities being at 4.5. I think I'll try this next GotM if the terrain is at all appropriate.

Originally posted by DaveMcW
I just ran some test games myself to confirm this works. Great discovery! :goodjob:

Would you like to start a thread in the Strategy Forum or the Articles Forum about it?

OK, I'll do that when I have a chance. I was going to wait until this GOTM is over, so that I could use examples from this game, but there's no good reason not to start a thread about it sooner than that.

DaveMcW, I have two more questions regarding your palace-jump starategy:

1. Jumping the palace to such a nearby site gives you ma big production boost very early. Should I assume that, were you to expand greatly beyond that, you will use a GL to move the palace yet again?

2. In GOTM 20, why did you decide to jump toward France, despite having to go further south than desirable due to the jungle, as opposed to jumping to the NE, where the grass is green and the distance fits your theoretical parameters?

Originally posted by DaveMcW
Would you like to start a thread in the Strategy Forum or the Articles Forum about it?

I agree I think that the RCP model would make a fine strategy article, dare I say war academy ? However I hope that Davidesj remembers to reference Alexman when he writes it as the RCP model wouldnt be here without his hard work on the corruption calculations especially with regard to the city ranking variable which the RCP model exploits.

Originally posted by Davidesj
OK, I'll do that when I have a chance. I was going to wait until this GOTM is over, so that I could use examples from this game, but there's no good reason not to start a thread about it sooner than that

There are a couple of good reasons why you should not put the RCP model in the public domain until GoTM 20 is over. Firstly having actually used RCP in a couple of games now I know how powerful it is and I feel that it would give players that have as yet not started GoTM 20 an unfair edge over those who have already submitted and may have decided to use it had they known about it.
Secondly there is only one place up till now where one can learn about RCP and that's this thread. Players who submit games featuring RCP....well there would be something going on there.
I suggest that you show some discretion on this matter and delay publishing the RCP model.

I think DDJ made reference to Alexman in his post. And I see nothing unfair about someone reading a theoretical article on RCP, then starting GOTM20. That's no more unfair than players who wait for the previous month's QSC results to be thoroughly discussed (obviously in search of useful insights) before beginning the new game.

There are certain posts on the QSC thread that have been wisely deleted by Cracker. Rest assured if someone else had come up with the RCP model and then chosen to go public with it DDJ would be up in arms about it in the event that he had already submitted. One cant just leave everything up to Cracker as members of a community we have to take some level of personal responsibility about what is playing fair by our fellow competitors.
I agree he has placed a link to Alexmans thread I guess I am just irritated at what I percieve as his lack community spirit.

Originally posted by DaveMcW
I just ran some test games myself to confirm this works. Great discovery! :goodjob:So Dave, how are you going to combine the RCP and palace jump? I guess the initial ring would have to be around the planned forbidden palace city near the original palace? The 2nd ring would have to be around the city to jump the palace to. That's going to take some planning :).

I agree with cracker that getting carried away with RCP discussion here would take away from the intended purpose of this thread. I suggest everyone save up their insights on the subject until I start an appropriate thread in the strategy forum, as cracker has suggested. (My only problem is that I'm on vacation now, and won't have much time this month to even finish GOTM20, much less set up an additional sample game to illustrate the technique. But I'll see what I can do. It sounds like once I do start a thread, other people who've posted here will be able to quickly add their own examples.)

I certainly take samildanach's point about giving adequate credit to alexman for his great research on corruption, and I'll be sure to do that. Without his basic work to determine that corruption is based in part on the number of closer cities, I never would have thought to ask the question of what happens if several cities are placed at exactly the same distance, or to try it. But I think it's a little unfair, or premature, to accuse me of not being "community minded". I also don't particularly wish any advantage for myself from this discovery, and wouldn't be upset if other people use it more effectively than I do. I certainly don't think it's going to be enough to make me into the #1 GOTM player.

Finally, I agree in part with Sirp: I think perhaps it would have been better if Firaxis had avoided rewarding the RCP technique (my solution would have been to count all the closer cities toward corruption, plus 1/2 of the number of cities at the exact same distance). On the other hand, I don't really find that using the technique makes the game less interesting. There are still a whole lot of interesting questions around where to build the rings, whether to build all of the spots in the rings or leave some empty, whether to add some cities that don't fit the ring model, how to make the strategy mesh with the forbidden palace and/or palace jump, building cities outside the rings for strategic placement reasons, etc., etc. So far, it's given me more to think about, not less. I know I personally look forward to seeing other people use aspects of RCP effectively in future GOTMs, and still show off their talents by the choices they make in doing so.

Anyway, the corruption formulas are what they are, and I assume the community will adjust to the discovery, as it has lots of others.

Something really weird is going on in the forum (since the upgrade?). My post appears before cracker's and Sirp's posts, that I responded to! They are dated Jun 17, but where I am it's still Jun 16!

Originally posted by samildanach
There are certain posts on the QSC thread that have been wisely deleted by Cracker. Rest assured if someone else had come up with the RCP model and then chosen to go public with it DDJ would be up in arms about it in the event that he had already submitted. One cant just leave everything up to Cracker as members of a community we have to take some level of personal responsibility about what is playing fair by our fellow competitors.
I agree he has placed a link to Alexmans thread I guess I am just irritated at what I percieve as his lack community spirit.

I'm confused, you said you have used RCP (I don't even know what is is yet) in a couple of games in your previous post. Did you use it when you played Gotm 20 or did you use it after you submitted your game for Gotm 20?

There are lots of things to give one player an advantage over another in the GOTM, including a whole pile of gray areas like ICS, ROP abuse, resource denials, palace jumps and probably lots of other things. I would put RCP somewhere in that category myself; i.e. exploitation of game mechanics to sidestep the restrictions intentionally built into the game by its designers. RCP would fall into the same category for me, and as such, I won't use it.

That said, I see no particular reason to keep this secret just so that one or two extra people don't get a boost up the standings. This game is always going to have some people using techniques that others won't touch/ haven't learned yet; this is just another variation on the same thing, IMO, and not worth worrying about.

Renata

I would recommend that the right approach for Daviddesj to follow would be to stop fostering further discussion of RCP at this point in time and to wait until about the 25th of the month to open that discussion in the Strategy forum with a well though out general discussion adn perhaps some example maps and data that do not use Gotm20 as an example.

Timing here would address the sensitive behavior issues by making sure it was well after the closing of the Csc submit date on the 20th plus being late enough in the month to be of little avail to players in Gotm20. It would also make the concepts eaually available to all players in Gotm21 if they found it necessary or useful.

I also think we may have had enough discussion of this issue as a generic strategy concept and it may be distracting from the main purpose of this discussion which is the general issues of Gotm20 opening move sequences. I will seriously consider splitting the discussion off into a separate thread if it continues at this time.

This topic really does deserve it's own discussion thread the only really issue is how to implement it with responsible timing. In the past, many players have just posted great info that comes out of the GOTMS by timing the anouncements for when they feel it would be right for most of the members of the community.

We also want to be supportive and recognise these great discoveries/accomplishments by recognizing them with frontpage news stories but that has to be limited to fit the spoiler and game impact calendar in an attempt to keep things fair for as many players as possible.

Between now and the 25th of June, Daviddesj could produce a very killer foundation for a stratagy article post.

Originally posted by samildanach
Svar I didn't use RCP on GoTM 20. I will be using it on future GOTMs. If I remember correctly I submitted GotM 20 on June 4th.
I have since DDJ announced RCP in this thread used it in two private SP games. I am currently using it in an Always War game at monarch-my personal opinion is that in using RCP, AW has never been so easy.


Thats what I figured but wasn't sure. Where do I find details of this strategy? I would like to set up a test game to test it. For years I have been building cities in patterns that feature rows 4 tiles apart and the cities 5 tiles apart down the rows. That way each tile is covered by a city and there is only 1 overlaped tile per city if the pattern is consistant. I don't have a clue how effective it is corruption wise that is why I want to test it.

I propose to generate a random map and modify it to have an Australia like small continent for the test. I'll put all the resource and luxery tiles in the capital area and all the rest of the continent will be bonus grassland with cattle and parallel rivers 2 tiles apart. It will look weird but will give me an effective testbed for various city patterns that grows very fast.

I'll leave 2 other continents unchanged for the most part and set 8 starting positions. As I was typing this I just realized that I already have a Civ 3 (I play PTW now) world like this I just need to modify the small continent.

That was a very long post just to find the details of RCP.

PS. That Civ3 world has now been modified. I designated the starting position as player number 1 but the first time I started I got another starting position. Does anyone know how to gaurantee you always start in the same position?

Sorry Cracker I just now realized that you are trying to delay this discussion.

Svar I didn't use RCP on GoTM 20. I will be using it on future GOTMs. If I remember correctly I submitted GotM 20 on June 4th.
I have since DDJ announced RCP in this thread used it in two private SP games. I am currently using it in an Always War game at monarch-my personal opinion is that in using RCP, AW has never been so easy.
Renata while RCP exploits the city ranking number variable I do not think that it is an exploit. Many of the elite players on this board ( including you Renata :) ) may have come close to implementing RCP in their games purely because of their vast experience in developing their empires and making them as efficient as possible while not understanding the mechanics of RCP. I think it will be hard for players not to use RCP although I admire your stand.
Sorry Cracker this will be my last word on RCP :)

Originally posted by samildanach
Renata while RCP exploits the city ranking number variable I do not think that it is an exploit.

*shrug* We'll just have to agree to disagree. I do agree it's quite an amazing discovery, though, and I don't want to take anything away from Alexman or Daviddes by saying I won't use it.

Not that anyone probably cares what one good-but-not-spectacular player thinks about it, anyway. :)

Renata

.

I think it's something that Firaxis should have fixed by simply making it that if two cities are the same distance away from the capital, the first city in the database (i.e. the city that was founded first), gets the lower corruption, and the other city gets the higher corruption. (In fact that's how I assumed it worked, I hadn't read the nitty-gritty of alexman's article)

The main problem I have with it is that for me, it simply makes the game less interesting to have to concentrate on founding cities equi-distant from the capital, instead of focussing on the normal city-placement considerations one would expect, like terrain and proximity to resources and rival civilizations.

I haven't tried it, but I would imagine it would be a fairly powerful strategy, since you could have city five or six being only as corrupt as city two.

-Sirp.

Originally posted by Sirp
[B]
...
The main problem I have with it is that for me, it simply makes the game less interesting to have to concentrate on founding cities equi-distant from the capital, instead of focussing on the normal city-placement considerations one would expect, like terrain and proximity to resources and rival civilizations.
...


The way I play it (and have done for quite a while) is to approximate the rings with regard to local resources terrain. Kind of a half way house - I end up with some strange looking "rings", some of them are regular cities, others are just towns (and can't get bigger).

I first suspected something fishy was going on when I noticed that AI cities tended to occur in horizontal or vertical lines. Coincidence? Maybe. It just happened so often that I ended up using a similar strategy without working out the hard details. I was just happier my production was a bit better than before.

Edit http://forums.civfanatics.com/images/smilies/ptw.gif 1.21 - Open
Another late QSC finish. Hope I get to finish the GOTM too.

Here is my basic timeline.


4000 BC -
Look around. After all the discussion I am sure that is wheat to the south and east. I will move east onto the floodplain to hopefully get better coastal cities when I found them.
Sure enough it is wheat. Send my worker directly there.

3950 BC -
Found Madrid. Worker arrives on wheat.
Madrid produces warrior. Set research Writing at [8.2.0]

3900 BC - Worker starts irrigation of Flood Plain with Wheat.

3700 BC - Madrid grows to Pop 2. Worker 1 starts road. Taxes [8.1.1]

3600 BC - Madrid produces Warrior. Start another. Warrior 1 moves north
I chose to send him north because I wanted to scout the area
that didn't contain jungle all over the place.

3550 BC - Worker 1 to BG ne of Madrid. Warrior 1 continues north.

3500 BC - Madrid grows to Pop 3. Taxes to [6.1.3]
Madrid citizens work FP+w, BG, GL. (must keep +5 food)
Worker 1 starts mine. Warrior sees mountain east, heads for it.

3450 BC - Madrid Expands culturally. Start using plains with cattle
instead of Regular Grassland.

3400 BC - Second Warrior in Madrid. Start Settler.
Warrior 2 goes south. (2 south because of road)

3350 BC - Warrrior 2 turns east to skirt north edge of jungle.

3300 BC - Madrid grows to Pop 4. Taxes to [5.1.4]

3200 BC - Worker 1 starts road on BG.

3100 BC - Madrid grows to 5, produces Settler (Pop 3), Start another.
Settler goto (s,s,se). Taxes [6.1.3]

3050 BC - Worker 1 moves north across river to Grassland.

3000 BC - Found Barcelona (start worker).
Worker 1 starts road on Grassland.
Warrior 2 meets French Settler (escorted by warrior)
Joan is Polite (153 Gold and 2 cities (plut the settler))
She has Bronze Working, Masonry, Pottery and Warrior Code.
She does not have the Wheel.
Trade The Wheel and 8 gold to Joan for Pottery.

2900 BC - Madrid grows to Pop 4. (Work Plain to get settler next turn)
Taxes [4.1.5]

2850 BC - Settler in Madrid. Start a granary. Taxes [8.1.1]
Worker 1 to Grassland + cattle.
Settler goes to ne, n, n.

2800 BC - Worker 1 irrigates cattle grassland.

2750 BC - Found Seville (build warrior). Taxes to [6.1.3]
Barcelona grows to Pop 2.

2670 BC - Barcelona produces Worker (2). Start another.
Worker2 moves to FP+wheat.

2630 BC - Worker 2 irrigates FP+wheat.

2550 BC - Seville produces Warrior(3). Start Granary.
Warrior 3 moves to Madrid.

2510 BC - Worker 1 to Plains + cattle.

2470 BC - Worker 2 road on FP+w. Worker 1 irrigate Plains + cattle.

2430 BC - ARRGH - Disease strikes Madrid. I knew this could happen, but
I was hoping not.
Warrior 1 has moved east and meets a Celtic Warrior.
Brennus is Polite (29 Gold, Bronze, Mason, Warrior Code)
Woo woo he doesn't have Wheel.
Trade Wheel + 24 gold for Masonry.

2390 BC - Barcelona produces Worker(3). Start Settler.
Worker3 moves north.
Meet Ottomans
Annoyed, 108 Gold, Bronze, WC, Myst, 4 cities.
Buy worker for 115 Gold.
Slave s, w to prep next city (coastal to get incense)
After turn the Celts order my arrior out of their territory.
I say I will comply.

2350 BC - Meet Polite Shaka (240g, 8 cities!!!, BW, WC, and Myst.
Worker 2 moves to Dye south of Barcelona.
Worker 3 starts a road.
Slave starts a road.
Switch Seville to Pyramids. (don't remember why I thought this
was a good idea, but it is in the notes)

2310 BC - Madrid builds a Granary. Start a warrior. Taxes [1.1.8]
I need to get Madrid to pop 5. Then will be 4 turn settlers.
Worker 1 starts road on Plains + cattle.
Worker 2 starts road on dyes.
Warrior 3 leaves Madrid to do MP in Seville.
Meet Polite Ghandi. (13g, Bronze, Warrior, Writing, Myst)

2270 BC - Warrior 3 arrives in Seville. Taxes to [6.1.3]
Meet Cautious Elizabeth. Has 3 cities, Bronze and Warrior Code.
Trade Masonry to Lizzie for Bronze Working and 2 gold.

2190 BC - Worker 1 moves to BG nw of Seville.
Worker 3 moves to Incense.

2150 BC - Discover Writing, Start Literature.
Worker 1 starts mine.
Worker 3 starts road.

2110 BC - Slave Irrigates FP.
Trade Writing + 62 Gold to France for Iron Working + Mysticism.
Trade Mysticism to England for Warrior Code + 10 Gold.
Bacelona uses all FPs to max growth. Seville gets an entertainer.


2030 BC - Madrid builds Settler, Start another (Yeah 4 turn factory)
Settler goes s, w, w to coast.

1950 BC - Found Toledo (Colossus) - Luxuries allow taxes to go to [8.1.1]

1910 BC - Taxes [7.1.2] - Must get more luxuries.

1870 BC - Settler in Madrid - Start another.
Send Settler to Barcelona + 1e, 2s.

1790 BC - Slave heads up north.
Worker 1 moves to horses by Seville.
Taxes [6.1.3]

1750 BC - Seville builds Granary (switched it sometime) - Start Worker.
Warrior2 Pillages some Zulu roads. (Between culture boundaries)

1725 BC - Madrid Produces Settler - Another started.
Send Settler north. Will pick exact target next turn.
Found Santiago 3se, 1s of Barcelona? (produce warrior)

1700 BC - Barcelona produces Settler, Start a worker.
Send Settler e, se e.
Seville builds Worker(4). Start Settler.
Worker 4 Southeast to BG.
Taxes [8.1.1]

1675 BC - Worker 3 sw to Plains. Worker 4 build mine.
Found Mucia on Horses. (Start Warrior)
Taxes [7.1.2]

1650 BC - Worker 2 to Wheat west of Santiago.
Worker 3 irrigates.
Worker 1 builds road on BG near Seville.
Slave to BG.
Found Valencia on hills east of the fish on west coast.(warrior)

1625 BC - Madrid Settler - keep on going with the settlers
Barcelona Worker(5) - start barracks.
Worker 5 west to FP.
Worker 2 irrigates Grassland + wheat.
Slave starts Road.

1600 BC - In between turns, France contacted me about maps. Time for
some frenzied trading.
Buy Joan's World Map for my World Map + 140 Gold
Trade World Map to Ottomans for World Map +44 Gold
Trade World Map to Ghandi for World Map + 26 Gold.
Trade World Map, 2gpt, 115g to Shaka for MapMaking + World Map
Trade World Map to Brennus for World Map + 1 Gold
Sell World Map To Joan for 42 Gold.
Sell World Map to Osam for 6 gold
Sell World Map to Ghandi for 5 gold.
I didn't do as well as I would have liked, but I made sure the AI couldn't do more massive trading either.
Post Turn : Ottomans build Pyramids.
Post Turn : Zulu build Oracle.

1550 BC - Seville builds Settler - Start another.
Worker 3 starts a road on plains.
Found Cuidad de la Luna on Grasslands Between Iron and Incense.
Produce warrior. (Name should have had Spanish for song in it too)

1525 BC - Madrid builds a Settler. Starts another
Worker 1 builds a road.
Worker 2 starts a road on GL + wheat.
Worker 4 Builds a road.
Found Zaragosa 3 north of Seville. (start worker)

1500 BC - Santiago builds Warrior. Start Worker.

1475 BC - Slave starts Mine.

1450 BC - Found Pamplona 3 east of Madrid. (build worker)

1425 BC - Madrid builds Settler - Another.
Seville builds Settler - Chariot.
Toledo Builds Barracks - Chariot.
Mucia builds Warrior - Worker.
Cuidad de la Luna builds Warrior - Barracks.
1 Settler to SE Jungle to secure area.
2 Settler to north to claim furs.
Worker 2 mines BG next to Santiago
Worker 1 moves to furs.

1400 BC - Valencia builds Warrior. Start Barracks.
Worker 4 road.
Worker 1 road on furs, City will be founded by time done.

1375 BC - Barcelona builds Barracks. Start chariot.
Worker3 to FP sw of Madrid.

1350 BC - Settler founds Aldea de Ribanna east of Furs.
Worker 3 builds road.
Worker 5 mines.
Taxes [7.1.2]

1325 BC - Madrid builds Settler. Another started.
Barcelona builds Chariot, start Settler.
Sevile builds Chariot, start settler.
Santiago builds Worker. Start Warrior.
Worker 7 to east.

1300 BC - Toledo chariot, start another
Mucea worker, start barracks.

1275 BC - Zaragosa Worker - Start Settler
Worker 8 to Wheat to irrigate
Worker 2 builds road.

1250 BC - Worker 7 builds road.
Worker 3 road.
Worker 1 2 east. (East of Aldea de Ribannah)

Zulu complete Great Wall.
1225 BC - Settler in Madrid. Start another.
Found Casa del Bamrapido west of Ivory. (spearman)

1200 BC - Seville Builds Settler, start Palace
Pamplona builds Worker, start Barracks

1175 BC - Toledo builds Chariot, start another.

1150 BC - Barcelona builds Settler, start ??? (oops didn't write it)
Found Vitoria between the cattle and fish on east coast.

1125 BC - Madrid builds Settler. Start Another
Santiago builds Warrior start worker.

1100 BC - Barcelona Produces Warrior, start another.
The first one was a mistake, but I decided to go with it
so I could use a combo Chariot/Warrior upgrade blitz on France.
Aldea de Ribannah builds Warrior, start Worker
Found Santander (7 ne of madrid, produce worker)

1075 BC - Shaka demands 45 Gold + World Map. I give it.

1050 BC - French build Colossus.
Barcelona builds Warrior, another
Toledo builds Chariot, another

1025 BC - Madrid builds Settler, another. (almost done expanding)
Found Asturias (ne of game, s of fish on north coast)

1000 BC - No special moves

I have
15 cities
3 settlers
9 workers
1 slave
12 warriors (8 reg, 2 vet)
5 chariots (4 vet, 1 reg)
2 granaries
3 barracks
Contact with 6 rivals.
Embassy with Ottomans.

After reading others, I am not to happy, I should have done better.
I am 1 turn from Literature (in 975).
My intent is to get several more chariots and warriors. Hook up iron and
do my upgrade and attack Joan. I should be able to use Literature to get
Horseback riding from Lizzie.

After QSC I went ahead with my plan. I declared war soon there after. After a long war I left France with one city and took the rest of Joan's land. (The one city is north of me so my Capitol is much closer to the captured cities)

Joan enlisted Lizzie and Osam to her side, and I got India to help me.
I managed to get a lot of slaves from settlers that they sent in during the war.
In 510 BC I made peace with Osam for Philosophy and 6 gold.
In 490 BC I made peace with England. I paid 110 gold and got Mathematics.
In 270 BC
Get Leader (finally)
Trade WMap + 225 g to Celts for Code of Laws.
Trade World Map + 94 gold to Ghandi for Polytheism
Peace with France for Construction, Currency, Republic and Monarchy.
I will use the leader to rush my FP in Orleans.
In 270 I start a revolution and switch Seville to Hanging Gardens (waste 15 or so shields).
This means I get Hanging Gardens, Enter Republic and trigger my Golden Age all on next turn.
This should allow me to quickly catch the AI in the tech arena.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads4/Open.jpg
http://gotm.civfanatics.net/common/ptw.jpg v1.14f Euro.

Small question for the folks who settled at the starting spot : did anybody else follow the same sequence with the worker ? I found this a pretty fast way to set up my settler factory.
Sequence was :
worker south - irrigate - east - irrigate wheat - road - go west - go southwest - hook up incense - go back into Madrid - go north - cut forest (just in time to deliver the 10 last shieds for our granary) - road - go northeast - irrigate cattle - road.
Production was warrior-settler-granary-settler-settler....

I was just wondering what other people did with the worker; can't wait until the QSC's are published next month. :D

CivIII V1.29 Open.

Moved worker south and did not move settler.
Started writing at min science.

My exploring warrious did not move in the right direction to get early contacts. I first met France in 1910BC. England in 1600BC, Keltoi in 1575BC. I bought contact with Zulu from Keltoi for Writing. I bought contact with India and Ottomans for gold.

I buy pottery from France at first opportunity and start granary in Madrid. I rushed granary in Madrid when I could do it at a cost of 1 citizen. I turn Madrid into a four-turn settler factory. I didn't produce settlers anywhere else but I probably should have.

When I bought contact with Zulu he has only three cities. He must have been at war and come off the worst out of it.

France and Ottomans were the tech leaders.

In 1325BC I bought Code of Laws from France and traded it around.
I get Map Making from England, World map and Warrior code from Keltoi.
I Get Mysticism and Masonry from Ottomans.
I get Iron working, Maths, and Horseback Riding from Zulu.

In 1275BC I start forbidden palace in Barcelona as prebuild for Great Library.
(I missed the library by 7 turns, built forbidden palace with a loss of shields, and abandoned Madrid after adding workers to my new designated capital).

In 1000BC I got literature. In my QSC submission I did not trade it, my thinking being that the lighthouse should be completed somewhere soon. If it was completed before everyone else learned literature I would get to complete the great library.
After I submitted, and spent some time thinking about it, I decided to trade literature. I get Polytheism, construction, world maps and some gold. I don't know how much this will affect the QSC score.

PTW 1.21, Conquest (sorry, don't have the image handy)

My qsc actually qualified my for the thread. I knew the whole continent and got the last tech I needed at 1000 bc. I haven't played further and I have serious doubts that I will have enough time to finish the game. :(

Before I post my comments and observations, I really have wanted to ask 2 things for a while....

1) Based on where I chose to start out. I came to the conclusion that I had a trade off to make from the get go. I could get 2 warriors, 2 defenders (ignoring the chests), or some combination of them in 8 turns. This would have delayed the growth of the city to 2 until turn 12. As an alternative, I could have just built one of those units in turn 10 and grown to population 2 at the same time. What is really the better thing to do? This puzzled me for a
long time, which is why I really want to ask.

2) This is really aimed at the conquest players, but I would be very grateful if the more experienced players speaking up. To me, based on the extra units exploring, the obvious place to settle was the hill. (IMHO) However, since I was sitting on 2 settlers, I decided that settling one immediately seemed better since you already had one to move around.

My question is, what did you think of your starting options and would it have been better to move both of the settlers? (I know this was discussed in the pregame threads, but I thought it might be nice to revisit this since we now know a lot more of the map.)

Thanks,
Forged

Originally posted by forged

1) Based on where I chose to start out. I came to the conclusion that I had a trade off to make from the get go. I could get 2 warriors, 2 defenders (ignoring the chests), or some combination of them in 8 turns. This would have delayed the growth of the city to 2 until turn 12. As an alternative, I could have just built one of those units in turn 10 and grown to population 2 at the same time. What is really the better thing to do?

2) To me, based on the extra units exploring, the obvious place to settle was the hill. (IMHO) However, since I was sitting on 2 settlers, I decided that settling one immediately seemed better since you already had one to move around.
1) My feeling is that food is almost always the top priority at the start, exceptions are rare. It is better to grow first and get shields later. A couple of reasons: a) Growing faster leads to more shields anyway, you get your second (and later third and so on) citizen sooner and these citizens add to the shield output. b) A top priority is to pump settlers. For that you need citizens asap. The settlers will get out there somewhere and build towns which produce shields, you'll get better production soon by focusing on food -> settlers -> more towns than by focusing on production in the start town.

2) Actually has the same answer :) I'd move one settler to the hills and the other south intending to work the wheat. The hills location is great for food, after expanding and some improvement it will get 5 surplus food per turn by using both cattle. That's a very nice number because it divides into 20 (or 10 if you have a granary) evenly, there's no waste. The second settler would go to take advantage of the other bonus food, the wheat.

Another plus from splitting the settlers this way (one uses both cattle, one the wheat) is that the "primary" town, the one using the cattle and with good production, is safe from floodplain disease. It can be the important settler pump. The secondary town working the wheat is vulnerable to disease but is not as critical and can better afford the occasional hit.

I'd go as described above even before considering the chests. With the chests nothing changes - they add bonus shields and food remains the most important thing to maximize at the start.

PTW 1.21, Conquest (sorry, don't have the image handy)

My observations about the continent as a whole:
I saw no barbarians, no squids (I guess I got lucky or they weren't in conquest?), no disease, and one disserted goody hut, which I almost didn't open. I don't know if it is hard and fast rule, but if the computer ignores the hut when I feel that they had ample opportunity to pop the hut, I almost never get anything positive out of the hut. I got very lucky there were no barbarians. I also received no demands from the AI. However, by the end of qsc I had 3 warriors, 5 spearman, and 3 fortresses which may have something to do with it. (All the AIs claim to fear the Fortresses. If only they realized they cannot move.)

I got the a majority of the maps for the continents (with some very minor black spots) in 1790 bc. Quote from my qsc log: "Net result I gained Mathematics, MapMaking, Horseback Riding and all world maps costing me a net of 64 gold plus 3gpt. Zulu and Ottomans have the only gold left, and I'm going to gift everyone
my maps to prevent the computer from using it as a trade bait."

In my game, England has been significantly behind in tech for most of the way so far. France shot themselves in the foot by trading me 5 slaves over the course of the quick start and got designated target #1 by most of the other civs. Zulus got out to a blazingly quick start, although in my game, I really didn't feel that India and Ottomans were really all that far behind. It will be
(if I ever get there) to see if Ottomans can overtake Zulus dominance by using the Saphi correctly. My guess is no, but that is based on others comments about the AI's military tactics and not personal experience.

I have paid a lot (techs and gold) to get slave workers. I ended up buying 8 out of the 9 I saw available. (I wasn't as good this game about checking diplomacy every single round for everyone I knew. :( ) This came up in the last gotm spoilers (I think), but I thought I would ask since I obviously still figured out the strategy that I should use with them. I understand that early on buying slaves can cripple the AI civs. How valueable are slaves when the AIs are reasonably established? Most of my slave opportunities (ignoring my picking on France to keep them down in that regard), were later in the game and it may have not been my best use of gold since they are 120gp a pop. So my question
is, beyond the very early years when it is obvious that you can cripple a civ, when is it good to buy slaves?

I actually only did the last slave buying deal with zulus because if they think I'm the next target, they will have to break a gold per turn deal.

Moonsinger's trading thread helped me improve my trading, although I still need improvement there. I thought I remember this from another thread, but I thought I would ask this as well. At what point will AIs pay you gpt deals? I couldn't get one.

I suppose I should comment, in my game, while all the ancient age techs have been researched, only the Zulus have Monarchy and they just got it recently. I have held off for the time being giving the Ottomans the last tech they need to get, because as soon as they get it, they are getting a free tech in the middle
ages. I don't know how long will hold off selling them that last tech.

I tried a suicide galley gambit for the first time ever, and after wasting a few turns, I truly braved the unknown. It was a conscious decision to try this, but I don't know how to correctly analyze the trade-off on how many galleys it is worth risking/losing before it becomes a really bad idea. I would be curious to hear what others think of when risking galleys becomes a bad idea? (I wonder if I asked this before and already forgot the answer... //ponders my own bad memory//)

I used a minimum writing research gambit. While I didn't get it first, I did have fruitful trading with it. All my other research ideas have not panned out. Hindsight makes me think I really should have gone for literature. When the AI got map making, I caught up some more in tech. And I am buying a lot of techs otherwise. I did have a serious screw up at one point where I completely wasted a turn researching something I had no intention at the time of researching. I wasted gold trying to catch up in the one I actually wanted, but I couldn't regain the turn. Ironically, I would have been a lot better off going for the tech that I thought I didn't want. (Literature.)

I have been going back and forth if there is anything worth researching at this point or to truly go to just buying things. I also think I need to go to war. (Which is ironic because I have more fortresses/spearman than I probably should.)

Based on other people's comments I thought the wonder race was actually very interesting to watch from a distance.

-- Ottomans got the Oracle in 1750 BC in Sogut.
-- Zulus got Pyramids in 1625 BC in Zimbabwe.
-- #### got Colossus in 1150 BC in ####. (I pulled it out only because it was a non-continent civ. While I don't think it would reveal too much, I don't want to spoil things for others.)
--Zulus are working on the Hanging Gardens in Zimbabwe and are currently the only civ that has Monarchy.
-- I am competing with 4 others for Great Lighthouse and I know I won't get it.
-- Zulus are working on the Great Library in Bapedi.
-- Ottomans (in Sogut) and Zulus (in Ngnome) are working on the Great Wall.

Lastly, I bought the final techs to get into the Middle Ages, but it was a questionable idea on its value of doing it so soon. Especially since I still cannot seem to get a gpt deal with the AI. (That is giving me gpt for something like a tech.) At the end of the qsc, I have 178 gold paying out 3 gpt, and I could earn 29 gold per turn if I stopped research and only paid luxury stuff. I might be able to get more if I MM for optimal gold.

Mundane stuff: 17 cities. Embassies with all but French on continent. 10 workers plus 8 slaves (5 french, 1 celtic, 1 zulu for the gold per turn deal). In histograph I am second to zulu with 700 points, although they have 939. Third place is not that far from me (9 points).

Oh! I almost forgot. How I used my chests once I stopped exploring with them (which happened fairly quickly because I thought barbarians were going to be a serious issue): In Barcelona, 2 chests dedicated themselves to getting a temple.
Barcelona got the temple in 3650 BC. And is actually the #2 overall city in culture because of it. #1 is Sogut, and I seriously doubt I will catch it. And apparently, I didn't write in the timeline how I used the first chest. It was in Madrid based on my notes, but not sure if it was to hurry a settler or a grainary. Drat ... I meant to record how I used it.

Anyway, here's hoping this is useful for some people and that hopefully people can shed some light on some of the many mysteries that this game presents me. :)

Thanks,
forged

Originally posted by forged
It was a conscious decision to try this, but I don't know how to correctly analyze the trade-off on how many galleys it is worth risking/losing before it becomes a really bad idea. I would be curious to hear what others think of when risking galleys becomes a bad idea?
I think it is worthwhile on this map to keep sending out suicide galleys so long as contact has not been made by anyone else and I can afford the galleys (i.e. there aren't urgent overriding priorities on the home front.) The way I look at it is:

o We know there are four more Civs out there somewhere.
o We know that the map is 55% water. This makes me think that a galley probably needs to survive at most two turns at sea - from any likely looking jump off point, getting past 8 tiles of sea/ocean is a considerable distance, very likely to result in contact.
o That means one in four galleys ought to make it overall. Of course there's a large element of luck in that - in about 1 game out of 20, ten galleys in a row wouldn't survive two turns at sea. Still, one out of four is the overall expectation.
o I translate that to figure that my average expectation is to spend 120 shields to make contact.
o That translates to 480gold in terms of cost to rush 120 shields.

Since I expect to make quite a lot more than 480g if I establish first contact, it seems to me a worthwhile gamble to continue investing in indefinitely.

Thanks to all involved for the GOTM. I'm still playing this game in 1832 but I could never have hung in that long without the assistance on the start. I usually play at the Regent level. Diety level strikes me as not only impossible but as unrealistic as a simulation.

Start: I moved NE two squares since I can't stand to lose people to disease. Built Madrid and did build a defensive unit. Moved north of Madrid to build Barcelona. I trailed the AI through out history and survived by building infantry-type units and avoiding war. Minimized research and used the funds to expand and build and upgrade enough infantry-type units to avoid becoming a weaker, attractive target for the AI.

Map: I expanded enought to the east to build a city at the north of the inland sea which blocked expansion by the civs to the east. The Keltoi and the English were not in position to threaten. To the south, the French became more and more powerful but remained friendly.

With this low-key strategy, I never built any naval units to speak of. So, in summary, my early strategy was to expand, avoid trouble, and hope to become more powerful later.

Hi ThorRex,

welcome to the GOTM. :)

edit: Removed obsolete comment.

EDIT: seems the database is a bit confused again. This is in reply to ilovetoast's posts.

I think you gave up too early. On deity you will always fall behind in tech, but as long as you have enough room to expand, you can slowly work your way up to the lead.

Just like Qitai I didn't have any luck with research, but by checking with the other civs every turn you could sometimes get a couple of techs by first buying one and then sell it around to civs that lack it.

Also, apart from the map trade, a very good trading opportunity is to find the other civs first. This will usually give you lots of techs and gold.

Hello, this is my first post and the first time I decided to play with a GOTM. Not submit mind you...but try one out. I just upgraded my Civ3 to 1.29b2(Mac) and I am running OS 9.

I am reading through the post here as I got to 1600BC and gave up any thought of submitting. Instead I thought I'd post my progress to 1600 (since it fits in this spoiler thread) and see if any could point out the many errors I must have made.

I started by building Madrid at the starting location. I moved the worker S to see if the wheat/incense mention in the pre-game discussion where there, figuring I could irrigate and road the space anyways. That is what I did while buidling 2 warriors.

The first warrior was sent NE, I figured there was coast to the West and that given the map position I might find other civs to the NE up the river. As I headed out, I began to angle more E than N and came to the far sea. I turned due N and found the narrow choke point. I introduced myself to the Kelts and English, and fortified my warrior on the choke point. At least one Kelt warrior and one English scount made it through before I could fortify though.

While that warrior was going E/NE the second went S. I ran into the French and traded them the wheel and a little gold for pottery. When I finally met the english and kelts, they had the wheel and no interest in trading me anything unless I gave gpt. They were all 3-4 techs ahead of me at that point.

While this was going on Madrid experienced disease around 3200 or so. Lost 2 pop. :( Finallly churned out a settler who settled NE up the river and started to build another warrior there and then a worker. I then built a granary in Madrid and went to just settlers. I built a 3rd town to the S as the French were coming at me. My 4th city was SE, as I realize I need to prevent the Frencg from expanding into my area.

By this point I'm assuming I'm on the west coast as noone new has emerged from that direction, and so if I can hold the chokepoint and expand across to the east coast I will have a large area to myself to expand in.

I built a 5th city to the NW completing one ring around Madrid and have a settler about to make a 6th city to the SW. Madrid is near to having another settler built (1 turn I think) and is spitting 'em out every 4-5 turns I believe. By my estimation I can easily have 10+ cities by 1000BC.

Seems ok so far? It did to me. I don't do a good job of talking to the other Civs when I have nothing to trade, so I ignored them until I got Writing after 40 turns. I thought it seemed like a good plan to try given pregame discussion. Unfortunately everyone had Writing....and 5-6 other techs. I spent all my gold and 2 gpt just to get Bronze Working....figuring I better get some defense beyond warriors.

I was researching Literature at 40 turns until....At 1650, the game chimed in to tell me that the English were building the Great Library. I still had 20+ turns to go before I had the tech. This scrubbed any thought I had of the Great Library. So then I thought to go for one of the other techs... maybe Poly and trade if I could get it first.

So I went to each of the 3 civs I knew and found out that to a one they had all of this which I lacked:
Contact with the Zulu, Indians, Ottomans.
Masonry
Iron Working
Philosophy
Code of Laws
Literature
Map Making
Mysticism

I could basically have my pick of any 1 for all my gold (100 or so) and 5-6 gpt and my world map. Hmmmmm. I got Mysticism just to see how screwed I was. Bad choice.... they have Polytheism too - so much for switching my research to that.

So I decided I was screwed and came here to read the spoiler. People with 10-15 cities at 1000 bc... OK I'll make that.

I estimate I'll have 10-15 cities, walling off my area of the map.
I have 3 workers and will likely have 4-5 more.
I have 4 warrior and 1 spearman. I am making more spearman every 4-5 turns.
I have gone 40 turns to writing and then was going to go 40 to Lit or Poly...only to find I have lost the tech race very very very very badly.

My map is attached (I hope).

Can anyone tell me where I blew it? Any help would be very much appreciated. I am tryng to wade thought this entire thread as well to see what others did. But so far I am seeing people who were able to pull off the 40/40 turn research to lit or poly. How did I blow it by 25++ turns?

Thanks

ilovetoast

Here is my map zoomed out.

I did not get to be the first for both writing and polytheism as well. I didn't even have much luck on Wheel selling either. To get to tech parity, I make use of the map making tech and world map. World map is quite valuable to AI if it has not already been traded. So, when map making is out, buy it. And with it, you can sell world map which should get you all the other tech that is known at that time. To get the most benfit, you need to keep track of when map making tech is researched.

Do I have to do that right when Map Making is discovered? Noone has much interest in my map now (I haven't traded it to anyone).... they offer 20 gold or so - no techs at all. I can trade to them as they all have Map Making (and I don't).

They won't consider giving me their maps...any of them...no matter how much gold I offer. They will accept my World Map for their Territory Maps.

I was under the general assumption that my World Map was valuable if it was large and/or noone else had explored the same areas. Since I have no scouts....and the English/Kelts? have explored my lands... how do I get good value out of my map?

Well, you can't wait to long. Because if you do, then it has been sold already making it's value very low. So, this has to be done as soon as map making is available. For details on how to do this, I recommend Moonsinger's thread on "a pracise session on trading". There is a lot of examples on how the good players do their trading.

Arrrrr, Ilovetoast, my advice on a Deity level game would be to place your cities within 1 move of your capitol. Y'know, build roads so that when you pop a settler, it goes down 2 road tiles and just plants a brand new city real quick. It's more efficient, and you gotta be that way on Deity. On Emporer and lower levels, it can still help you out but isn't quite so big a deal.

My other advice on a Deity level game would be to offer your territory map to every civ every turn as soon as the option becomes available. If they offer territory map, ask for 1g instead. If there's 6 or 10 civs in the game, that's 6-10gpt. Now if you have enough workers and can complete a worker project like a road or mine in the middle of your turn, you can go around and offer your territory map to every civilization again, since you've changed your map, and they'll all give you 1g for your map. Or if you have some kind of scout that uncovers black tiles, like a galley or scout, every tile you uncover is worth 1g per civ. Or if you can take out roads mines ect. from other civs, each one is worth 1g per civ. And taking cities from axis of evil civs, each one changes your map, right? Ect.

Originally posted by SirPleb

I think it is worthwhile on this map to keep sending out suicide galleys so long as contact has not been made by anyone else and I can afford the galleys (i.e. there aren't urgent overriding priorities on the home front.) The way I look at it is:

o We know there are four more Civs out there somewhere.
o We know that the map is 55% water. This makes me think that a galley probably needs to survive at most two turns at sea - from any likely looking jump off point, getting past 8 tiles of sea/ocean is a considerable distance, very likely to result in contact.
o That means one in four galleys ought to make it overall. Of course there's a large element of luck in that - in about 1 game out of 20, ten galleys in a row wouldn't survive two turns at sea. Still, one out of four is the overall expectation.

Since I expect to make quite a lot more than 480g if I establish first contact, it seems to me a worthwhile gamble to continue investing in indefinitely.

You left out the probability of having your galleys sunk by squids. You also left out the possibility that the map is constructed in such a way as to make contact more difficult (e.g., there could be a wall of unpopulated land that blocks your galleys). I can also think of one or two other ways to make contact more difficult.

This is why I don't like reading about other people's suicide galley results here: I think the initial assessment of the probability has a lot more uncertainty than "1 in 4", and reading the spoilers affects that. If one of these months the GOTM is constructed to defeat suicide galleys, it won't really achieve the desired effect, because people will spoil the map secrets in the Spoiler threads. :(

As for the value, clearly your calculation makes sense at some point in the game, but it's unclear whether it makes sense very early. To take an extreme example, if your capital were on the coast, spending your first 30 shields on a galley wouldn't make much sense (of course you wouldn't even have Map Making yet, but leave that aside).
You allow for this when you say "urgent overriding priorities" (presumably growth is urgent), but, from reading this thread, I think differentpeople make pretty different decisions about the relative urgency of exploration vs growth....

Jove very useful post. Thanks.

Jove,

Good idea, but considering how long a turn is taking already,with visiting every city to check for the right food / shield balance and visiting every AI for possible trades, each turn already takes 20+ minutes. I just don't have 6 hours a day to play using every new procedure that pops up.

Deny

:wallbash:

Originally posted by DaviddesJ
You left out the probability of having your galleys sunk by squids. You also left out the possibility that the map is constructed in such a way as to make contact more difficult (e.g., there could be a wall of unpopulated land that blocks your galleys). I can also think of one or two other ways to make contact more difficult.
You're right, I should have included factors like that. I can't think of a way to include them numerically but they certainly do reduce the probability below what I calculated. As well as increasing the expected average cost of contact they increase variability. I do still think the value of the gamble is clearly good - these factors don't seem to me to increase the expected cost beyond the expected gain, which I'd expect to be at least a few thousand gold.

ilovetoast: it looks like your Luxury rate is at 40%; this is draining a lot of money from your treasury. Make sure that your MP's are sufficient to allow a minimal Luxury rate, and that you build roads wherever your citizens are working to maximize the commerce you generate. All these river tiles are great for generating commerce (especially when roaded, and they all NEED to be roaded), and increasing your taxes, which gives you more trading power.

I've kept at minimal research this game and have yet to discover any technology first; therefore trading and treasury have been critical to keeping up.

edit: taking a 2nd look, you've hooked up Incense which makes 1 content person happy. With 2 units stationed in Madrid, your Luxury rate could be 0%. (Lots more money!!)

Arrr, Denyd, that's the rub...

Originally posted by civ_steve
ilovetoast: it looks like your Luxury rate is at 40%; this is draining a lot of money from your treasury.

[...]

edit: taking a 2nd look, you've hooked up Incense which makes 1 content person happy. With 2 units stationed in Madrid, your Luxury rate could be 0%. (Lots more money!!)
One thing to bear in mind is that the best strategy with the Lux rate is not necessarily to set it to the lowest value to keep the most discontent city content. Why? :

[list=1]
Score : Number of happy citizens can make a big difference to your score. Raising the Lux tax a little may make all the difference.
WLTKD : Raising the Lux tax a little may make the difference between being in/out of WLTKD. Being in WLTKD reduces corruption/waste, so you could actually increase your productivity by raising the Lux tax a little.
[/list=1]

I'm not saying I know what the best strategy is, just that it is a far from obvious choice.

1. Score is averaged over all the turns in the game. If your game lasts 300 turns, it takes 300 gold in entertainment to increase your score by one point. There are many more efficient ways to use gold in the ancient age to increase your score.

2. You can't get WLTKD until the city is size 6.

Originally posted by cracker
I would recommend that the right approach for Daviddesj to follow would be to stop fostering further discussion of RCP at this point in time and to wait until about the 25th of the month to open that discussion in the Strategy forum with a well though out general discussion adn perhaps some example maps and data that do not use Gotm20 as an example.


All right, for anyone who was reading the discussion here, I've started an RCP thread (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=57026[/url) in the Strategy Articles forum.

A few clarifications:

My lux slider was at 4 beacuse that was the minimum to keep Madrid from rioting on the turns before the screenshot. On the last turn before the screenshot, I moved a warrior into town and completed the road to the incense. But, up until that turn I had to keep pushing it up to keep from rioting. Thanks for reminding me to keep close watch on that for gold though.

I see the massive trades failures now. Thanks to all for pointing those out. I will have to remember to keep exploring with my warriors and not let the cpu sell me all contacts and remember to talk to each cpu civ every turn for tech/workers/peace/maps.

As to the road network...maybe I'm doing something wrong (surprise) but for much of my game I only had 1 worker...I was desparate to get out a few soldiers...didn't want the AI thinking I'm too weak. Plus desparate to get settlers to build more cities. I only recently made my second and third workers. Two of which are trying to connect/improve my city to the south (one worker came from that city...the other had just roaded the incense). The other moved to hook up Toledo to the SW--figure it would help that cities happiness, etc. and facilitate settle movement SW to block Frnech N expansion. Never wasted (deliberately) a worker move(?) .... always at least built a road.

I seemed to get Madrid started well (aside from the damn disease). Got the squares I wanted improved efficiently. A question... when do you guys go for a second worker? I could really use some guidance there. I think I do it to late. My first cities often seem good....but then my infrastructure seems to fall behind (among other thigns).

Thanks again for the help...I will improve at this with time and practice and more good advice :)

ttv

Personally, I built workers in:
2110Bc, 1910BC, 1700BC, 1550BC, 1525BC, 1425BC, 1350BC & 1300BC

The 1525BC and 1350BC workers were built in Toledo, which was my city on the river to the N, between the horse and the wheat. The rest were built in Seville, which was beside the southern floodplains wheat (and Seville had a granary).

Even with a total of 9 workers I felt I had too few (in 1300BC, for comparison, I had 10 cities).

A worker costs you 10 shields (and a population) - equivalent of a warrior or two. That worker will enable you to mine or irrigate a number of tiles, getting back your investment in shields and population quickly enough. So you don't gain much in terms of military by not building workers, since your growth and production lags.

I'd go with Mad Scot - less than about 1 per city and you start getting behind if you let things stay that way. I generally turn settler factories into worker factories and make do with less at the start... but the ideal way to do it is capture workers off the AI. They're free, even if they are slower than "your" workers. Plus of course it messes up the AI civ early on.

Originally posted by DaveMcW
1. Score is averaged over all the turns in the game. If your game lasts 300 turns, it takes 300 gold in entertainment to increase your score by one point. There are many more efficient ways to use gold in the ancient age to increase your score.

2. You can't get WLTKD until the city is size 6.

Good points Dave. I guess you're saying the obvious strategy is to keep the lux slider as low as possible?

A worker was just about the first thing I built. 1, maybe 2 warriors, then a worker... someone on here recommended it in the pregame I think. I also purchased a number of them in the ancient age- I think 100g will be recovered from a worker acquired that early in the game. I was fairly satisfied with the road system.

PTW 1.21f Open

I played the first 3500 years of the game early this month, but have only found time to finish recently, som early spoilers will be a bit general as I can't recall how things exactly unfolded early on.

I started out by moving the worker south to the floodplains from the starting position, then moving my settler on the hills, revealing an excellent location for my capital and two other cities already, with two cows and the wheat nearby. With so many great locations nearby, after building some initial warriors for military police and exploration, I started on a settler in Madrid, since I wanted cities on these productive locations ASAP, resulting in the founding of Barcelona to the north in 3150 BC and Sevilla in 2590 near the wheat.

I had started researching writing on 10% science, as I figured that with this great location, pottery wasn't an absolute must early on, and I hoped that I could get to writing first this way. After contacting the French, I recieved pottery from them in a deal involving the free starting tech the wheel.

With about 37 turns of research on Writing done, I cringed as I noticed the Zulus and Ottomans had discovered writing themselves, but there was also reason to rejoice as I noticed contacts between the AIs were scattered between them, with some civs not knowing others yet, but all contacts available to buy from different AIs. Using this, I managed to get writing relatively cheap, trading some contacts around to get some gold back, and more importantly allowing me to start my next research gambit, polytheism, a few turns earlier, as every turn is critical with so many AIs having contact with eachother early on.

Meanwhile, I thought I had finished exploring to the north of Madrid, having only left a small patch of fog to the northeast, but since I hadn't seen any AI unit come from there, I (falsely, as i later discovered) assumed that the lands to the north were for me to claim, and decided I'd let Madrid pump settlers to fill the lands to the north, and then disband it to jump the palace to a better location to the north. With this in mind, I started the FP early in the city near the gold just northeast of Madrid. Unfortunately, after this plan had already been put in motion for some time, I suddenly noticed a Celtic border in the northeast and some quick exploring revealed the Celtic city of Richborough, located just after an the landbridge between "our" and their land, and also another land bridge to the north where they founded Eboracum. Too late to stop them there now, bad exploring on my part costing me a golden opportunity to secure the northern lands... :(

In around 1075BC, after some nerve-wrecking turns, I managed to get to polytheism first, and trading it around resulted in instant tech-parity with all the other civs and netting me all of their gold, leaving Spain as the only nations to have something to fill the treasure vaults with, 1100 gold to be exact. Zululand gave only 30 gold for polytheism when I contacted them about it, making me really glad I had been able to start on polytheism a few turns earlier by buying writing. Here's what the Spanish empire consisted of in the year 1000 BC:

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads4/1000BCspanje1.jpg

and the minimap:

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads4/1000BCminimap1.jpg

I was researching the Republic at that time, and entered the medieval age some time later after the AIs had finally discovered currency in about 750BC.

Before turning Republic, I had been able to rush two galleys for suicide missions, but both sank on their first turn at full sea, and later I had other priorities than building galleys, but that's out of the time period for this spoiler thread.

OK--game never finished in time to submit, but I did promise a report.

[ptw] 1.21 http://gotm.civfanatics.net/common/swordsman_small.gif

Report of the ancient age can be found here (http://sheridan.freewebpage.org/GOTM20/gotm20.html).

The rest of the report is not written yet, and the game is some long turns from a conquest victory. Sorry if this is a bit out of the ordinary, but so am I :crazyeye:

-Bam-Bam

Bam-Bam,

When I click on "GOTM XX - Part Two", it says that "Oops... The page you are looking for cannot be found."

Well, he wrote, he only has the ancient age report ready.

Nice game BTW.

I enjoyed what you wrote so far Bam Bam...although some of those huge paragraph chunks with no breaks were a bit hard to follow.. :suicide:

thanks for the feedback, folks.

Yes, rabies, I can ease up on the long paragraphs. Hadn't yet gotten to the final parsing of the paragraphs. It is an easy fix to make. thanks for the constructive help on readability. :goodjob:

And, yes Moonsinger, I have not yet written the second page, though it will be up soon. Later pages may have to wait the 4-5 hours of slogging through the endgame. :hammer: