Let's play Deity: Hatshepsut

kossin said:

The worker only performs the action if he has movement points... it of course does not work if you don't have movement points.

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You would think that the behaviour as you describe would be intuitive, but if you go back and play Civ I, a Worker (back then a Settler doubled as both a City-settling unit and a Worker) could actually perform a Worker action when it had no movement points... and could do so infinitely until a square's improvement was complete.

For Civ 4, though, what you say is correct.

@vranasm
The way to think about it is separately from cancelling: a Worker can't actually perform any work when it has 0 movement points left, regardless of whether you try to manually issue it an order, try to cancel an existing order, or even try to be creative and manually issue an order when it has 0 movement points and then immediately cancel said action. So, it's the movement points that you need to pay attention to, not the act of cancelling a Worker action, for determining whether or not a Worker can actually contribute any more work towards an improvement on the current turn.

kossin said:

Worker micro

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While what you wrote sounds relatively intuitive to players who have done it for a while, and while doing so can make you feel great about having saved a turn here and there, isn't it also frustrating that the AI Workers can't be automated this intelligently? I was really hoping to see some better intelligence of Worker management or at least in-game options for customization of Worker management for Civ 5, allowing one to think about these kinds of efficiencies but without having to do all of the extra manual clicking involved. Oh well, as they say, micro is alive and well in Civ.

Another quick way to cancel a Worker's actions is to press the backspace key when the Worker is activated, which is actually the hotkey for the "Cancel Worker Actions" button (or whatever it is called).

If you Ctrl + number your Workers (Ctrl + 1, Ctrl + 2, etc), then it's a quick number press (1, 2, etc) followed by pressing the backspace key (or, as you say, in place of pressing Backspace, pressing the Spacebar... but pressing the Spacebar carries a greater risk of you skipping a different unit's movement points accidentally if your computer miss-registers one of your keystrokes or mouse clicks).

Each of my first ten Workers get numbered manually 1 through 9 and then 0 for the 10th one, making these micromanagement tasks slightly less tedious.

kossin said:

On the diplomacy side, I will most likely be safe for a very long time. Mansa is easy to please and he already has a worst enemy.

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Ugh, that's a lot of hatred. How do you plan to handle the diplo situation?
Be buddies with Mansa and shun Willem?
Be buddies with Willem and shun Mansa?
Stay out of things and be buddies with neither?
Try to please everybody and hope that they don't ask you to do bad things to their Worst Enemy?

kossin said:

Here is a possible dotmap

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Do you plan to go to war before War Elephants come into play? If not, since you aren't settling a Banana City on the Coast anyway, why not settle 1E of the PCow and 2S of the Banana? Yes, there will be a bit of a Cultural gap, but Mansa is unlikely to try and take advantage of it before your Culture expands a second time from one of those two planned Cities of yours. Maintaining Cultural control of the Ivory could prove to be an important role, and even if not, the earlier extra Happiness could be quite helpful.


Actually, I read a bit further (but not all of the thread yet) and it seems that Mansa stole my idea. You sure are playing awfully quickly... is that approach normal for your "let's play" games?

Dhoomstriker said:

While what you wrote sounds relatively intuitive to players who have done it for a while, and while doing so can make you feel great about having saved a turn here and there, isn't it also frustrating that the AI Workers can't be automated this intelligently? I was really hoping to see some better intelligence of Worker management or at least in-game options for customization of Worker management for Civ 5, allowing one to think about these kinds of efficiencies but without having to do all of the extra manual clicking involved. Oh well, as they say, micro is alive and well in Civ.

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The problem is workers don't know what you want to do with the city... are you preparing a big chopping marathon, etc
As has been said countlessly before... don't automate your workers (at least, in their current form).

Dhoomstriker said:

Another quick way to cancel a Worker's actions is to press the backspace key when the Worker is activated, which is actually the hotkey for the "Cancel Worker Actions" button (or whatever it is called).

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Interesting, I'll start to use that instead. There's also the risk of ending the turn prematurely with spacebar.

Dhoomstriker said:

Ugh, that's a lot of hatred. How do you plan to handle the diplo situation?
Be buddies with Mansa and shun Willem?
Be buddies with Willem and shun Mansa?
Stay out of things and be buddies with neither?
Try to please everybody and hope that they don't ask you to do bad things to their Worst Enemy?

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Willem doesn't care so much for religion (+/- 2) so I'll just ally with Mansa and ignore Willem unless I need to trade for now.

Dhoomstriker said:

Do you plan to go to war before War Elephants come into play? If not, since you aren't settling a Banana City on the Coast anyway, why not settle 1E of the PCow and 2S of the Banana? Yes, there will be a bit of a Cultural gap, but Mansa is unlikely to try and take advantage of it before your Culture expands a second time from one of those two planned Cities of yours. Maintaining Cultural control of the Ivory could prove to be an important role, and even if not, the earlier extra Happiness could be quite helpful.

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Nope... no early war I think. I'm going to need a ton of workers to clean up the jungles and the land outside the capital isn't that stellar. Looks like a renaissance-breakout is the safest approach, although not as rewarding as a well executed early war.

Dhoomstriker said:

Actually, I read a bit further (but not all of the thread yet) and it seems that Mansa stole my idea. You sure are playing awfully quickly... is that approach normal for your "let's play" games?

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The city below the Ivory is Mansa's capital, there would have been no way for me to control the Ivory unless I settled them in the first ring and added a lot of culture to the city... but yea, I had to alter my plans.

I'm actually a bit ahead in the gameplay right now... (got stuck with 1 more turn syndrome)... and haven't taken that many screenshots. I'll take some time to go back through autosaves (I have made a backup!!! wow - for those who haven't seen my previous games, I tend to overwrite my autosaves without thinking to back them up...) and show some of what happened. I made some decisions because I didn't consider clearly enough what I'd do but I'm in good position nonetheless.

Settling a City in the south to pick up the Happiness Resources is a pretty good idea. Mansa won't be buying them, though, as we can already see that he will have a source of both Wine and Ivory of his own. Still, there are other AIs that might be willing to trade with you.

I guess as for the exact location, you have some of the following considerations:
1. The closer that you settle to the Resources, the less chance that an AI (namely Willem) will Culturally steal one or more of them. If he were to steal one, then you wouldn't be able to trade him a source of said Resource.

2. Will it be worth it to gain an extra Hammer per turn from this marginal City by settling on a Plains Hills square or a Plains Ivory square?

3. How many Grassland squares (for Grassland Farms) can you afford to get in your big fat cross while still considering the above two points.

Right now I am leaning towards a primary location of 2S of the Marble for a good balance of points 1 and 3. 1S of the Marble could also work. SE + S of the Marble, on a Plains Ivory square, would net you an extra Hammer per turn, which may not sound like a lot, but will be a sizeable percentage of your total Hammer output for said marginal City.


Of course, if it really is your plan to settle down there, then you'll need to slot Hunting into your tech path for Ivory Camps... unless you have already researched Hunting (I seem to remember you saying that you skipped that tech, though, for an Animal Husbandry beeline).

Wow, two tech whores so close, gonna make it tough later if (when) they buddy up. Too late to rush Willem I suppose? Lots of WC's growing around the capital.

Love the chop just before settling Memphis BTW - surely a contender for MM of the year

Turn 43 - Turn 52

So Mansa took my preferred site for blocking... no biggie. I can manage something else.
I send my warrior north to take a look at the land behind for a good blocking location.

As I said earlier, opening borders with an AI with a religion often gets you free religion spreads. Also ensures I get the right religion


On turn 49 my warrior arrives at the Himalayas... guess I won't have to block here. I also gain research vision on Mansa which will be quite helpful.


I finish the next settler in the capital and get ready to send him south... where do I send him?


Here is an example of rounding issues with binary research.


I stop on turn 52 after Hunting is in to start the Ivory camp.


Mansa is researching Alphabet pretty fast.

I will have Ivory in 1 turn so I could decide to grow the capital a bit or build some more settlers to grab the land ASAP. The city just to the north is pretty good.

I will probably grow a bit on a library and then build 2 settlers from the first two cities as I still need to gather some intel on the next cities to the north. The wheat/horse/gems city will borrow the corn from the capital to grow quickly so I'd like to have grown the capital already by then.

Dhoomstriker said:

Settling a City in the south to pick up the Happiness Resources is a pretty good idea. Mansa won't be buying them, though, as we can already see that he will have a source of both Wine and Ivory of his own. Still, there are other AIs that might be willing to trade with you.

I guess as for the exact location, you have some of the following considerations:
1. The closer that you settle to the Resources, the less chance that an AI (namely Willem) will Culturally steal one or more of them. If he were to steal one, then you wouldn't be able to trade him a source of said Resource.

2. Will it be worth it to gain an extra Hammer per turn from this marginal City by settling on a Plains Hills square or a Plains Ivory square?

3. How many Grassland squares (for Grassland Farms) can you afford to get in your big fat cross while still considering the above two points.

Right now I am leaning towards a primary location of 2S of the Marble for a good balance of points 1 and 3. 1S of the Marble could also work. SE + S of the Marble, on a Plains Ivory square, would net you an extra Hammer per turn, which may not sound like a lot, but will be a sizeable percentage of your total Hammer output for said marginal City.

Of course, if it really is your plan to settle down there, then you'll need to slot Hunting into your tech path for Ivory Camps... unless you have already researched Hunting (I seem to remember you saying that you skipped that tech, though, for an Animal Husbandry beeline).

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Getting the resources themselves is usually reason enough to settle a city. The added possibility of trading them is icing on the cake.

1. Yes, but also the more close borders tension which I don't necessarily want early on as I am very weak and have no copper/Archery (also the longer I am not a land target, the better... it's 8 adjacent tiles)

2. Sure, but here it's not convenient. The city would be further away (more upkeep) and more close borders.... also Willem could try to squeeze in a city on the western side.

3. As much as possible... only 3 here

Hunting was the next tech.

Kid R said:

Wow, two tech whores so close, gonna make it tough later if (when) they buddy up. Too late to rush Willem I suppose? Lots of WC's growing around the capital.

Love the chop just before settling Memphis BTW - surely a contender for MM of the year

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Nah, I don't like to abuse early UUs to take advantage of the AI. Despite that it would probably lead to an earlier finish, I'm too much of a builder

They're not gonna buddy up as they have different religions so Mansa will always hate him.

Roosevelt is usually a pushover so I'm not too concerned there either.

i might settle on the marble, being cultural i wouldn't be worried much about anyone stealing a resource, the land down there isn't inviting for the AI to place a city once yours is online.
And the further away from Orange the better, guy is a pita.

Why the hell did you settle your cap 1 W?

Why why why why why?

You could have settled 1 SE and made a killer HE capitol, pumping out units in 1 turn. Then you could take out mansa or oranje early.

I actually partially played through a game where I took out Mansa those elephants / catapults. It worked very well. My second town was a huge commerce site where I grabbed the gems + pigs + corn.

You just wasted all those hills in my view, that kind of a start is a unit pump cap that is so rare it is such a shame to not use it.

1S... must have been fun trying to grow that location.

There are so many approaches to most maps.. I am merely showcasing one. Feel free to shadow in spoilers!

Nice game so far Kossin. Your last city might be crappy in growth terms but 2 ivory, 2 wine and marble is nothing to sneeze at. Will be keeping track of this again.

@AbsoluteZero, RE: Settling location

I have just found this thread and wanted to read it all but I am not able to view the pictures from the first round (T0-T14)! Is it just my issue or is it the same for all of you?

EDIT: I cannot view only the first picture,the others are ok.

^^^the first one will not open but the other 2 will for me

Re-uploaded the first picture. Seems to work now.

Dhoomstriker said:

@AbsoluteZero, RE: Settling location

Spoiler :

I must confess that I am slightly confused by this suggestion.

The total number of Hills squares only goes up by 1 by settling 1SE compared to 1W.

You can at most work 5 of those Hills by moving 1SE if supported by a Flood Plains Farm and an irrigated Rice's Farm, meaning that you would have to grow the City above Size 7 or tech Machinery for Windmills before you can use any more Hills squares. I don't perceive either scenario being likely in time for a Chariot rush, particularly given Deity Level's Happiness cap.


I'm not sure about you, but I think that giving up on 2 Hammers in exchange for 5 Commerce is a strong move. That would be: working a Grassland Hills Gem Mine instead of a Grassland Hills River Mine plus not getting an additional Hammer from settling on a Plains Hills square.

We can't fairly count the Pig, since it wasn't visible when the decision to move the Settler was made, so you are still looking at using Corn + a Flood Plains square to be able to "feed" 5 Hills squares, pretty much the same as we can get in the short-term by moving 1SE ("short term" meaning before we can acquire more Happiness Resources and before we have a ton of turns to grow the City any larger).

Actually, if we execute the calculation for those two City locations, you can get 17 Hammers at Size 7 in the 1W location and 19 Hammers at Size 7 in the 1SE location. The difference, of course, is that 1W gives us additional Commerce via the Gem Resource and the additional Flood Plains that would allow you to grow the City further without having to rely on Farmed Grassland squares (again, discounting the Pig which we could not have known about).


As for building "one unit per turn" in time for a Chariot rush, we could certainly accomplish this feat with aggressive Forest Chopping, regardless of where we settled, given how many Forests exist around our initial Settler's location. If this kind of a rush is your goal, it can be made to happen without acquiring an additional Hills square within the capital's big fat cross, particularly since that additional Hills square won't be usable until well after the time that a Chariot rush will have a strong chance of being effective (to a point where the "rush" would no longer be a rush and would only still be quite effective against an AI that had absolutely zero access to Strategic Resources).


Now, if you were to still be able to get the Corn by moving 1SE but could also pick up the Rice, you'd have a much stronger case... again because we couldn't know about the Pig... and then could argue that in the long-run, we'd have sufficient Food to feed the additional Hills squares. But, seeing as how we have no visibility of such an additional Food Resource for the 1SE location (partially because one doesn't actually exist) and because we know that we're moving away from Flood Plains squares and a Gem square, I find it difficult to justify a move 1SE for the reason that you stated and could only come up with an argument to do so if one wanted the extra Hammer from settling on a Plains Hills square for the extremely-short-term, say, for pumping out your first Worker a bit faster.

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The 1 unit per turn was not for a chariot rush, but after you had HE + forge. And yes you can work all those hills with farmed FP + Rice + a few more farmed tiles. I don't know the exact details but I did it in my last game where I took out mansa. IIRC it was at size 13 or so.

You don't have to settle the plains hill, you could simply go 1E, but the extra +1 hammers helps quite a bit in the early game.

About the game: I'm going to have to skip 2 days of updates here, with the reunions I'm unable to spend much time at the computer!

bah-humbug, Kos! BAH HUMBUG!
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ho ho ho

Got a couple of updates coming up in a few hours, I have played up to turn 100 so depending on how much time I get it could be several updates. Stay tuned!

Turn 52 - Turn 60

My last tech was Hunting to hook up the Ivory (+1 hammer, +1 commerce, +1 happy per city).

I faced a choice next... keep pumping workers/settlers or grow Thebes on a library. As I said earlier, I'm going to loan the corn to the horse/wheat/gems city so it can grow quickly and work its good tiles.

So... I decided to start working on a library in the capital and focus on growth (give the mine to the rice city to produce a worker then chop a settler) while turning off the research slider.

What tech do I need next?
Fishing? Useless for the moment.
Mysticism? Likewise.
Masonry? It'd be worth 1 more commerce than a plains Ivory... what a waste.
Iron Working? There are a bunch of good tiles that don't require Iron Working!
Archery? Please.
Alphabet? Mansa is about to get it.
Mathematics? Could be helpful. However, it is highly likely one of Mansa's next techs so I will wait to see what he gets next before investing research into it.
Aesthetics? Likely, but it's still early.

The thing to remember is I don't need any tech right now to develop my cities. Even though Mansa will have Alphabet shortly, there's nothing I can trade to him right away so I might as well stockpile gold while I build research multipliers.

After the workers were done with the Ivory, I sent both to make a road to Mansa's nearest city... I get one more commerce per city from trade routes. (2 from Mansa instead of 1 from myself). This one extra commerce makes a big difference in the early expansion.


They are sent to help out with chopping and improvements next.


Mansa does indeed go after Mathematics (6 turns!) next so I will go with the usual Aesthetics line.

I start on settlers with the help of some chops (no granaries yet so I'm not going to whip).


I have 4 workers for 3 cities but I'd like to have about 7 right now

Here is a tentative dotmap I had by turn 59. I still need to explore a bit the west coast but that's about it.


I need to decide on a filler commerce/farms city to work the Dyes in the middle somewhere.

Roosevelt revolts to Judaism for a while... and that's about it for now.

Since my resource city is growing (and my library is done), I start research on Mysticism for a few reasons:
-20% tech bonus to Masonry
-opens up Polytheism
-Poly opens up Literature
-I have Ivory: Statue of Zeus will be attempted for failure gold so I need 3 Obelisks

As always, if you have questions/want clarification, just ask and I will try to answer.

I can't believe I never considered lowering my tech bar and waiting to see what the AI researches . So many times I choose the same path as the AI and have no trades

Why do you think Mansa won't beat you to aesthetics also? He can research it next if he wants. Is there a some AI logic that says if an AI goes for math he will go for construction next or something? Or is there a pattern you've observed that tells you this?