Space 5 - Old hands can be newbs too, getting back in the game

I used Grab which saves in TIFF format and, of course, I didn't seem to have anything that will convert them. So looking around I see my old goto tool for screenshots, SnagIt, is now available for the Mac :)
Does Grab do anything that's useful these days? Preview has a File->Take Screenshot menu option with similar capture options to Grab, and it produces a PNG, or whatever.

Preview will also open a Tiff and export it as any format you need.
 
I guess that is the advatage of starting with near to zero experience with this version of the game. :lol: I am so glad I lured Alan and leif into this, :thanx: guys. :)

Not sure where that came from. I have as near zero Civ5 experience as it's possible to get.
 
@Space: yes, you can change builds without penalty, but those hammers dont get applied to the new building or unit, and pre-production is stored and avialable when(if) you switch back. Stored hammers decay after a period of time (can't recall exact numbers)...
lurker's comment: For units hammers stay intact for 10 turns, for buildings it's 50 turns. After that you lose 1 hammer per turn.
So if you're waiting for a building to come available in a few turns time, a wonder or so, you rather want to put hammers in a building - colosseum or whatever - than a unit, because of the quicker decay of hammers invested in units.

Switching builds is very possible, but in SG's I like a gentleman's rule that you don't switch the builds from the person before you just because you have a different preference. I never find it much fun receiving a save with several abandoned builds - you really need to look for them to find them as well, and they can easily be forgotten altogether...
 
Not sure where that came from. I have as near zero Civ5 experience as it's possible to get.

I've mixed you up with the boss. :blush: Sorry about that. Although you should really see that as a compliment, since you're the absolute GotM boss in my mind. :king:

Fixed the original post to give ainwood the credits of bringing in the CiV experience.
 
For units hammers stay intact for 10 turns, for buildings it's 50 turns. After that you lose 1 hammer per turn.
So if you're waiting for a building to come available in a few turns time, a wonder or so, you rather want to put hammers in a building - colosseum or whatever - than a unit, because of the quicker decay of hammers invested in units.
Thanks for the info, Optional. :)

Switching builds is very possible, but in SG's I like a gentleman's rule that you don't switch the builds from the person before you just because you have a different preference. I never find it much fun receiving a save with several abandoned builds - you really need to look for them to find them as well, and they can easily be forgotten altogether...
This crew has played together before, and most turnsets are discussed to the bone. Build switches are used as a strategic tool in CivIII, in which we have loads of experience. Building a Palace for instance, strictly as a pre-build, that will be switched to an important Wonder when the tech is avaliable to outrun the AI to it. It can not be used in this way in this edition, which will take gettng used to.
 
Does Grab do anything that's useful these days? Preview has a File->Take Screenshot menu option with similar capture options to Grab, and it produces a PNG, or whatever.

Preview will also open a Tiff and export it as any format you need.

Thanks for that info. I never knew or noticed that any of that functionality was there in Preview! I've always thought of it as a pure file viewer :crazyeye:

I've always just used Grab (on the Mac) whenever I needed to take a screenshot, which hasn't been often. I guess I read or someone told me that was how to do it in OSX and I've never looked beyond that :blush:

Cheers :king:


Ted
 
Pre-flight:

On load, a message that Alex has entered the Classical era.
Workboat due in 4 turns.
AH complete in 2 turns.
Border growth in 3 turns
New citizen in 6 turns
Next Policy in 6 turns - Collective Rule and a settler.

Trading Whales: Alex and Napoleon would give us 240 gold. Or Napoleon would trade four horses and 60 gold. The pretty one will give us 94 gold + 4 gpt

I propose the following:

Trade Whale for 240 gold to Alex. He seems to be our least likely first enemy.
Buy a worker
Mine the coastal hill (further away from the barbs)
Pasture the cattle unless horses appear in 2 turns.
Workboat to pearls after 4 turns. Look for trades.
Meanwhile continue fog busting between Cape Town and Paris.

Choose Collective Rule in 6 turns, and pause for discussion about the next city. That's when we'll know quite a lot more.

Shall I play to this plan?
 
Seconded.

Just a reminder that I've set City Focus to Production so you'll need to check work assignments after pop growth. Granny, eggs, suck ;)


Ted
 
I've played six turns and wanted to pause for discussion.

Here's the turn log:

============================

Pre-flight:
We have 139 gold
Do a deal with Alex: Whales for 240 gold (negotiation doesn't seem to work in Civ5)
We now have 2 happy faces
Buy a Worker for 310 gold, leaving 69 gold.
Check the citizens: Working 2 fish, whales, stone and cattle

Hit Next Turn

IBT: Our northern Jag is attacked by barb brute. 6 damage. We are down to 2/10 HP. Barb has 3/10 HP

Turn 31 2760 BC
Wounded northern Jag backs away north to the forest. There's a Russian unit to the east that can attack the barb.
Worker to coastal hill
Southern Jag healing at 8/10 HP. Not sure how he got wounded - no record in the previous turn set.

IBT: AH discovered.

Turn 32 2720 BC
Wounded northern Jag fortifies to heal
Worker starts mine. 6 turns
Southern Jag is at 9/10
Choose Writing. 8 turns

IBT: Russian troop movement. They probably killed the wounded barb last IBT.
Venice and Cape Town are both under barb attack, and ask for assistance.
Border expansion means we now have 2 pearls.

Turn 33 2680 BC
Southern Jag heals. Moves to hill 2 tiles NE. Finds Hanoi border, Dyes, Wine, barb camp, and a barb brute next to the hill. Should have moved one tile at a time! Let's hope we'll win some Brownie points from Venice and Cape Town.
Workboat next turn. Production = 6 hammers per turn, and 6 are needed.
The nearest horses are 5 tiles NE of the capital, past the cattle.

IBT: Genoa comes under attack and requests assistance. Workboat completes. Barb near southern Jag moves east.
Workboat completed.

Turn 34 2640 BC
Send Workboat to southern pearls and make nets. Move citizen from fish to pearls.
We are now on 9 gpt, 6 happy faces.
Select archer as next production (7 turns)
In memory of the mild-mannered Karasu, I decide to attack the barb with the southern Jag. Estimated result is minor victory. Actual result is a draw, both losing 6 HP. But at least I'm still on a hill.

IBT: Jag gets a promotion. Barb moves SE to forest. An Unknown Civ reaches the Classical era.

Turn 35 2600 BC
I can either instant heal the Jag and move, or choose Drill 1 to increase strength and fortify to heal.
I choose instant heal. I then have a forecast of decisive victory against the barb unit. Could win points from the three city states ... or not!
Southern Jag attacks the barb and wins, losing 2 HP.
As he does so, he contacts City State Hanoi. We are the first to meet them, so we get 30 gold.
Traded pearls to Napoleon for 240 gold. I was only trying to find out how much he would pay, but when I hit Propose, the deal was done!
We now have 355 gold, and can afford to buy anything except a settler, and we get a free settler next turn anyway.

IBT: Southern Jag attacked by a barb. Loses 2 HP. Barb dies. That's two. Let's hope we are going to get some credit from the City States.
A Greek archer arrives outside our NE border.
Message from Hanoi. Thanks for the dead barbs, have +12 influence :)
Pop grows to 6.

Turn 36 2560 BC
We adopt Collective Rule, and a Settler appears outside the capital.
Fortify southern Jag to heal.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++


It's now Turn 36 - 2560 BC. We just adopted Collective Rule, and we have a free settler, and two 6/10 damaged jags some distance from the capital.

We have enough money to buy a settler escort (archer or jag), or we could use it to buy a workboat to fish the second pearls.
I have not done as much exploring as I would have liked because of barb action (almost none!), so we know no more about the terrain east of Cape Town.

In order to use our settler, we need an escort. We have an archer in progress in the capital with 5 turns to go. This can be reduced to 3 turns if we MM for max. hammers and reduce food to stagnation level for those three turns. Or do we buy an escort archer now, and keep the one under construction for other duties?

And of the two sites under discussion, which do we favour? Or do we hold the settler for a few turns and push our wounded jags into the fog to see what's there?

Lots of questions!

Here's the save.
 

Attachments

Looking good Alan. :thumbsup:

Seeing Corinth is a bit of a worry because Alex will soon have 4 horses for Companion Cavalry, we may have to reevaluate who gets :hammer: first...

Recommendations for your questions:
Think we should go ahead and purchase an Archer to escort the Settler to the site near Venice. As much as I would like to locate it on the desert hill 3-tiles NW of Venice, perhaps 1 or 2 tiles west of the Marble would be better. Hill tiles along rivers can be quite powerful because you can irrigate them and, once you discover Civil Service, all irrigated tiles along rivers gain one fpt, so hill tiles along rivers get 2 food, 2 hammers and 1 commerce. 1 west of Marble may be best.

This means we will need another Settler sooner rather than later. We should claim the Horses to the northeast before Greece does.

In the capital we have a non-working citizen. Should put him to work on either the Stone tile or one of the Fish tiles for growth. We also need to get the Fish working as well, requires more Work Boats. :sad:

We have a mission to eliminate barbs for Venice. Our new Archer (the one we are building) should probably try to fulfill that as his first mission.

Also, just noticed that our Jaguar near Hanoi can grab a Worker from the Barb Camp, should do so immediately. If we think we can get him home, we can escort him, if we would rather leave our Jaguar out exploring, we can return it to its civ or City-State for good diplo boost. If it is Hanoi's, we may get an alliance out of it. :please:

After Writing, suggest we head for The Wheel and Math as we have lots of things to build in the capital before we have time for a Lighthouse.
edit - a Library for one.
 
Wow! Plenty of action.

First I have a question. Since Alex has paid lump sum for 30 turns of whales - what happens if a barb boat comes along and sits on the whales tile? I'm worried it will break supply, screw our rep and even cause a war with our strongest adversary. But I dunno.

I can't access the save at the moment, but I would imagine buying an archer would be a good idea. We should be able to devise a tactic for using archers and jags together with the range and 2 movement combo to kill barb camps with low risk. Also I suspect we are perceived as militarily weak by the other civs. I think I would buy an archer and let the other archer complete. I would settle the tile north of the river that would get both cows and the horses.

Has the cost of a settler reduced from 500 to 250 gold now we have collective Rule? Can we buy a trireme? Maybe now we're trading two coast tiles we need to protect that investment. Maybe, buy trireme, let archer complete in 3 turns, and then escort settler? Maybe.

Appreciate you interrupting your turns to discuss next steps Alan. It looks like you played some great turns.
 
First I have a question. Since Alex has paid lump sum for 30 turns of whales - what happens if a barb boat comes along and sits on the whales tile? I'm worried it will break supply, screw our rep and even cause a war with our strongest adversary. But I dunno.
Yeah, that wouldn't be good, but it also wouldn't be the end of the world. :)

I can't access the save at the moment, but I would imagine buying an archer would be a good idea. We should be able to devise a tactic for using archers and jags together with the range and 2 movement combo to kill barb camps with low risk. Also I suspect we are perceived as militarily weak by the other civs. I think I would buy an archer and let the other archer complete. I would settle the tile north of the river that would get both cows and the horses.
If we are going to settle north, then we should settler NE of the Horse at least to gain the riverside Wheat. :)

Has the cost of a settler reduced from 500 to 250 gold now we have collective Rule? Can we buy a trireme? Maybe now we're trading two coast tiles we need to protect that investment. Maybe, buy trireme, let archer complete in 3 turns, and then escort settler? Maybe.
No, the cost is still 500 Gold. :cry:

Need to settle as soon as we can. :)
 
IBT: Southern Jag attacked by a barb. Loses 2 HP. Barb dies. That's two. Let's hope we are going to get some credit from the City States.
lurker's comment: The barb needs to be killed while it's on the CS's border or inside of it. You will always get 12 influence points, whatever the type of unit. It also works whether you've got a specific message for help from the CS or not.
Since Alex has paid lump sum for 30 turns of whales - what happens if a barb boat comes along and sits on the whales tile? I'm worried it will break supply, screw our rep and even cause a war with our strongest adversary. But I dunno.
No loss of rep in Civ 5, and no other consequences either. I have no idea why the developers didn't do anything, but the only thing happening is Alex losing the whales, but he won't blink an eye.
I'm afraid it's a reasonably popular exploit in Civ 5 to sell your resources or even gold per turn for lump sum and then to declare war - incase there's no handy barbarian around. It doesn't make the game prettier and I'm not expecting this team to use those tactics.
Has the cost of a settler reduced from 500 to 250 gold now we have collective Rule?
No, only the hammer cost gets halved.
 
Looking good Alan. :thumbsup:

Seeing Corinth is a bit of a worry because Alex will soon have 4 horses for Companion Cavalry, we may have to reevaluate who gets :hammer: first...
I don't know how many units you need to be able to go to war, but with our other priorities, I can't see us doing anything serious within the 30 turns trading time. We need a trireme to protect the fish/pearls, another settler asap, a workboat for the other pearls ....
Recommendations for your questions:
Think we should go ahead and purchase an Archer to escort the Settler to the site near Venice. As much as I would like to locate it on the desert hill 3-tiles NW of Venice, perhaps 1 or 2 tiles west of the Marble would be better. Hill tiles along rivers can be quite powerful because you can irrigate them and, once you discover Civil Service, all irrigated tiles along rivers gain one fpt, so hill tiles along rivers get 2 food, 2 hammers and 1 commerce. 1 west of Marble may be best.
I agree, having slept on it.
This means we will need another Settler sooner rather than later. We should claim the Horses to the northeast before Greece does.
Next build after the current Archer? Or should we go trireme then settler? It sounds as if the penalty from losing pearls or whales to barbs is we would need to build more workboats, so we should still protect them even though there is no penalty hit.
In the capital we have a non-working citizen. Should put him to work on either the Stone tile or one of the Fish tiles for growth.
He was on the fish. That's probably left over from my testing to see how fast we could finish the archer.
We also need to get the Fish working as well, requires more Work Boats. :sad:
Lots to do! Hence my scepticism about being able to war any time soon.
We have a mission to eliminate barbs for Venice. Our new Archer (the one we are building) should probably try to fulfill that as his first mission.
Cape Town and Genoa have also asked nicely.
Also, just noticed that our Jaguar near Hanoi can grab a Worker from the Barb Camp, should do so immediately. If we think we can get him home, we can escort him, if we would rather leave our Jaguar out exploring, we can return it to its civ or City-State for good diplo boost. If it is Hanoi's, we may get an alliance out of it. :please:
Both our Jags have spent most of the six turns with reduced hit points. They are currently at 6/10 each. Would you move them or attack with them in this state, or wait for them to heal?
After Writing, suggest we head for The Wheel and Math as we have lots of things to build in the capital before we have time for a Lighthouse.
edit - a Library for one.
When do you think we'll ever have time to research and build decent fighting units?
 
:D

This is why we need more cities. I reckon we could buy a settler quicker than we could train one (maybe).

How can you tell if barbs have a worker available for capture?
 
This is why we need more cities. I reckon we could buy a settler quicker than we could train one (maybe).
At max production without starvation, the capital can produce 11 hpt giving a settler in 7 turns.
At max gold generation, the capital can produce +8 gpt. If we don't buy anything else, it would take 18 turns to get from 361 to 500, but I really think we ought to buy an archer to get our first settler into position asap, and that would cost 200 gold.
How can you tell if barbs have a worker available for capture?
There's a red triangle icon in the barb camp, under the icon for the barb unit.
 
Nice work AlanH :goodjob:

I can't look at the save but all seems well. Not much to add except to echo the "Too much to do, not enough resources" cries of the others :)

@M-B: I think the Barb worker will have the triangular stone hammer icon so should be easy to spot.


Ted
 
Back
Top Bottom