Foundation and Empire #2

We're still seeing new players struggling with Noble, and under questioning we find that they spend and awful lot of time and energy on things that aren't winning. So this is an attempt at stripping away all the things we do that aren't winning.

The lessons within are expected to be simple, and generally applicable. In particular, a lot of "important" elements of the game mechanics are going to be completely ignored, because they are a distraction from the basic approach. Also, simple matters of technique may or may not get much attention - it depends on the kinds of questions that are raised.


As an experiment, I decided to try this approach with the start for Nobles' Clube LXIII: Pericles of Greece. This has a couple interesting upsides: more starts to compare to, and more discussion of the way you might choose to divert from a main line approach in response to the circumstances (leader traits, nearby resources, and so forth).

As a downside - well, Pericles is Creative/Philosophical; these traits are strong, and Creative in particular distorts the opening play. Further more, Greece comes with an early unique unit (Phalanxen can basically ignore Chariots, unlike regular axes) and a unique building that coincides with a an important Classical tech (Construction).

I'd prefer to use someone like Roosevelt, who's opening is more "pure" (not too many distorting imbalances). So it goes.


The Plan for this game is Land, which offers a straightforward sequence of objectives


1) Claim more than our fair share of good land
2) Claim a neighbor's fair share of good land
3) Claim all of the good land we can reach
4) Win.


Settings
Difficulty: Noble
Speed: Normal
Map: Techtonics, Mediterranean, Wet. Think inland sea.
Huts: Disabled
Events: Disabled


Leader: Pericles/Greece

Opening position, with a borrowed screen shot


First checkpoint is: Turn 0.
Second checkpoint is: Turn 15.
Third checkpoint is: Turn 45

Following the standard plan, we settle in place, and start training a worker.



Again, the first phase of the plan is to research the techs we need to improve the capital.

• Agriculture
• Mining
• Animal Husbandry
• Bronze Working

With no hills to mine before Bronze Working comes in, we can shuffle the priority of that tech down, and so Agriculture -> Animal Husbandry -> ...


Meanwhile, the scout heads south, intending to run a circle counter clockwise around Athens, looking for interesting city sites. My initial move is toward the wheat - an interesting tile, but gold on a brown hill is more interesting, so I veer that way for a bit.

Next checkpoint: Turn 15.

Why shuffle Mining/BW down? Your worker won't be able to do anything after he improves the corn and the wheat, and he'll be sitting there. Couldn't you have gone WB first, or WB, swapping over when Athens reaches pop 2 to a worker?

GGracchus said:

Why shuffle Mining/BW down? Your worker won't be able to do anything after he improves the corn and the wheat, and he'll be sitting there. Couldn't you have gone WB first, or WB, swapping over when Athens reaches pop 2 to a worker?

Click to expand...

VoU is trying to keep it as simple as possible for people just starting to get a hang of the game. That means worker first -> research techs to improve your specials (while checking strategic resources.)

Workboat first is probably a legit way to go here, but it's complicated by not having a 3-hammer tile; and partial workboat -> worker is complicated by the fact that we don't start with mining, hence it's a ways until we would be able to whip. Done properly one of those might be superior to worker first but no need to give new players headaches with the complications.

Edit: ABCDPuppies anticipates well, and provides a nice summary


I'm going to focus my attention to the main line of play - there will be plenty of stronger alternatives in the other thread - but as an experiment I want to highlight some alternatives.

A quick way to estimate the timing of your worker is to assume that each improvement takes 5 turns; with a worker trained on T15, you can get two improvements done by T25, three by T30, and so on.

Here, we expect the worker to improve the corn and sheep by turn 25. Now, normally that suits Agriculture->Animal Husbandry->Mining just fine. But here, we can already see that we've got no hill to mine in the first two rings. So the worker is going to stall for things to do.

Possibility #1: which will show up in the main line, is to ignore the stall, take advantage of the Creative trait, and improve a tile in the third ring at T25 - something that will be useful for the second city.

Possibility #2: shuffle techs - if we can't use mining by T25, then maybe we should sneak The Wheel in first, and get some useful roads built. This works well when your early exploring shows you a good city location before AH is finished - as will be the case on this map.

In both of these possibilities, you can defer the decision until later.

Alternatively, you can look at what you do have, and try to take full advantage.

Possibility #3: Instead of training a worker out of the chute, try training a 12 turn workboat. At that point, you'll have improved the crabs, and be sitting at size 2, so the worker will train in 10 turns.

There are some comparison pictures in the spoilers below. My conclusion is that the workboat first approach is slower (not a lot), but stronger. Warrior -> Settler might not be the best followup sequence, but it will do for a simple comparison:

VoiceOfUnreason said:

Possibility #1: which will show up in the main line, is to ignore the stall, take advantage of the Creative trait, and improve a tile in the third ring at T25 - something that will be useful for the second city.

Click to expand...

This is also what I did (though I expect you will do it rather more efficiently).

Initial scouting of the area to the south. I've been a little bit careless in two ways here

First, I should probably have more information about the area around the corn.

Second, I've pushed my scout back through the mountain range between Hannibal and I, hoping to find useful land. That choice really cripples the Scout, who needs flat lands to run free. What I ought to have done is pushed the scout up through the north east past Carthage, and then used my sentry warrior to scout along the path indicated while clearing the way for a settler to follow.

The damage of missing the south is mitigated a bit by the fact that Gold/Wheat/Sheep is almost certainly going to be the first city I settle - the sentry will be able to move south from there to explore the south.

Some deeper thoughts on the city position, and it's effect on scouting.

In the previous game, I trained three warriors before the settler. Here, I'm thinking to train only a single warrior.

The difference is the tiles around Athens: dry corn is weaker than wet corn, sheep are weaker than cows, and there are no hills available to mine here. In other words, I'll run out of improved tiles when I get to size three. The city tile, corn tile, and sheep tile are each giving me 3 more food and hammers than I put into them. But adding an unimproved tile to the mix adds a mere +1 hammer to the 9 I already have.

I've got only one warrior to play with, I can't send him west from the capital to get in some extra scouting and have him clearing the way for the settler. If I'm paying attention, I take that into account when moving my scout around on turns 0-30.

This is not, by any means, a critical point. One could auto pilot up to size 4 or 5 before starting to train the settler, and get the usual allotment of warriors done first. And guess what - since that's a reasonable play, you'll be fine.

T30 was pretty boring - not quite done with Bronze Working, half way through the settler, so I've decided to jump ahead a bit to T45. The usual tech rules are still in effect EXCEPT that because I'm playing a Creative leader, I drop Mysticism from the tech list until I have a need to climb that part of the tree. So Wheel -> Pottery -> Writing. That will unlock the half price library...



Wheat is 4 food, and Sheep 3, so I "should" improve the wheat first - but the sheep are inner ring. So it goes. I'm perhaps behind on food at the moment; I built the green mine while the worker was stalled, and the governor decided that was the most interesting tile to start with. Oh well. Wheat next, then the gold, and perhaps a road to the capital.

As you can see, I still haven't done a very good job scouting. I am able to keep tabs on Hannibal, but I'm losing some land the the NW that I don't even yet know if I want to fight for. Sad days.



A quick review of the southern dotmap ("settle toward green" is the commandment at work here), and short discussion of how I screwed up the position



C isn't serious play here, I don't think - not with the hills in the way. It's also not quite clear where it should go. Hannibal will eventually put it on the coast, which isn't too unreasonable, but it does give up some green tiles that would be hard to grow into.

Settling A before B is a complete no brainer decision. The easy part of that it seals off the corner, and a Creative border pop will close the door, and that will be that. He's not going to be able to take it from a hilltop fortified Phalanx, so that's that.

But the "real" reason to look to A is that it is stronger for your early game. All those hills marked with the orange dots are just waiting to be fed by the corn, while the fish provides all the additional growth you need. 16 hammers per turn easy at size 6, even when B needs to borrow the corn.

Soo much easier to use A to help found B than the other way around. So do that, instead being distracted by the copper (which you already have in the capital).

Next checkpoint: T60, as I try to decide which tech branch to take after writing.

That's weird; nobody else has commented yet?

Well, I definitely wouldn't have realized that A was better. I love fish, but wb take awhile. I would have thought that the sheep, corn and copper would have been the stronger play. Won't it take too long to grow into all those hills without a granary, as well?

The wb can come from Athens or be chopped out locally. When you found a new town, you should have two workers ready to develop the area. In the case of this town, the granary should definitely be chopped.

IMO, this site is actually superior to Copper but the main reason to choose it next is to seal off the south from Hannibal. If you don't get it now, it may be too late. (well... not likely on Noble but the principle remains)

the "B" is fairly weak city spot

I still didn't found a way how to make it better in mine game (the game is a bit on shelf due to ice hockey championship).

Imo the biggest problem of that spot is production. The copper helps a bit, but is not sufficient enough (imo). i am still drawed to make it inland. Probably 1N - PH+GH+copper + food.

There is overlap on the corn which is fine and the sheep

btw in mine game I settled sparta on the PH between wheat and sheep (as you surely know) for better city tile production.
Not saying it's better (just an alternate view) as your position can use some riverside farms after higher cap, but the position on PH is very good after windmills too imo.

B 1N would be far better than coastal, where it is now has too little production. Once you move it 1N, it's a better site that A. Coastal is not the holy grail of civ4, losing 5 tiles to make a city that much better in the early- and midgame is worth it.

Hi everyone,

I would have settled in this way & ordner (see att.), thanks to the creative trait you should be able to hold hannibal off, maybe even out-culture him?

Your thoughts on that? (solution-oriented criticism is welcome )

Don Promillo said:

Your thoughts on that? (solution-oriented criticism is welcome )

Click to expand...

That's a solution I would never choose, on the grounds that it violates the "at least one food resource per city" guideline. It really looks like you are pushing that city to the west to pick up the whales, and... whales just aren't worth the effort.


No city with copper and two food tiles is ever short of production. Once the fish are improved, the A location doesn't need the corn all the time - so long as *some* city is working it, you're fine.

More of a problem for me is that this game is supposed to be about simple, and tile juggling probably shouldn't be allowed.

Even with the corn fully dedicated to city A, I think the sheep and copper are enough. City B doesn't really need all that much. Granary, Library, a late Lighthouse, and you're done.

The suggestion on B without food is pretty funny, nothing learned from your threads
Why do i have a picture of a teacher banging his head against a wall poping up in my head

vranasm said:

the "B" is fairly weak city spot.

Click to expand...

I wanted to come back to this, because we may not agree what "weak" means in this context.

Would I expect this city to construct a National Wonder? No, not really.

Would I expect this city to construct a Forge, for the production bonus? Probably not - it could happen if Metal Casting was discovered early in the lifetime of this city. It needs what - 44 turns of production, plus whips, to pay for itself? Hard to say - those whips start getting more expensive (proportional to food) as you go - but if you have to have that much infrastructure, then there it is.

In actual play, where the forge is also worth a happy, you'll probably do it.

Would I expect this city to construct a barracks? Not really - any spare hammers are more likely to go into workers/settlers/missionaries/scouts.

But most of the time, the city is putting out 5 / turn, running two scientists, and working a fist of river side cottages. That's not nothing.

(Although if you aren't using the corn at all, you should put this city on the other side of the river.)

VoiceOfUnreason said:

I wanted to come back to this, because we may not agree what "weak" means in this context.

Would I expect this city to construct a National Wonder? No, not really.

Would I expect this city to construct a Forge, for the production bonus? Probably not - it could happen if Metal Casting was discovered early in the lifetime of this city. It needs what - 44 turns of production, plus whips, to pay for itself? Hard to say - those whips start getting more expensive (proportional to food) as you go - but if you have to have that much infrastructure, then there it is.

In actual play, where the forge is also worth a happy, you'll probably do it.

Would I expect this city to construct a barracks? Not really - any spare hammers are more likely to go into workers/settlers/missionaries/scouts.

But most of the time, the city is putting out 5 / turn, running two scientists, and working a fist of river side cottages. That's not nothing.

(Although if you aren't using the corn at all, you should put this city on the other side of the river.)

Click to expand...

I think I didn't use words like "nothing". I used weak.

This city will be tough to utilize without natural production, even for commerce cities you usually are supposed to have around 3 "hills".

Don't take me wrong, I will put there city (somewhere), but as number 6 probably.

Btw that city spot could be strong after watermills+boosted workshops (actually it can be possible that will end as one of strongest production cities ).

vranasm said:

This city will be tough to utilize without natural production, even for commerce cities you usually are supposed to have around 3 "hills".

Click to expand...

Tend to disagree, usually the next important building for a commerce city after library/granary (whipped) is the University. At that point slavery is the norm to whip them in most of your cities at once.

But, not making this spot a production base by moving it 1N is prolly a crime for harder games, it is a great hammer location. That is strengthened by the traits, cottages are fairly weak with PHI in all locations except really strong commerce spots.

vranasm said:

This city will be tough to utilize without natural production, even for commerce cities you usually are supposed to have around 3 "hills".

Click to expand...

I hear you, but I don't recall that guideline was ever particularly well supported. In the discussions I remember, people were talking about 8-10 / turn vs 20, not versus 5. In other words: "you don't need so many!"

10/turn for 50 turns is 500 hammers (ignoring bonuses). Do you really have that much infrastructure to set up? To keep things simple, I'll ignore trait bonuses, but....

30 Monument
60 Granary
90 Library
80 Harbor ?
120 Courthouse?

If you're a recovering buildaholic, and need to spend one hammer on units for every hammer invested in infrastructure, then you drop the courthouse, but the rest fits. Given where the city is located, Market/Grocer is probably a better choice than Courthouse anyway, given the proximity to the capital.

If your definition of weak is "has no hammers to spare"... I don't think I can convincingly refute that.