Dr kossin #37

Could you explain your thinking regarding settling the gold/corn site rather than the deer/copper/crab site? While that city will definitely pay off in the long run, it has higher maintenance costs due to distance and extends your military vulnerability.

It seems like you are making a calculated gamble that none of your neighbors are likely to attack you, and if they do you're basically toast. Of course, even with the Copper you may be toast if you get into an early war. Is that basically what's going on?

shyuhe said:

Toku may still choose you as a victim as well, especially now that you're over 8 shared tiles with Tokyo's border pop. It's up to the RNG, but if Ragnar is going after Hammy then the game should be good since you can dogpile and bribe against Hammy with Alphabet.

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Aye. Although he should be Pleased very soon since I'm almost done with Alphabet (gifts) where I should be more immune (albeit not completely).

drlake said:

Could you explain your thinking regarding settling the gold/corn site rather than the deer/copper/crab site? While that city will definitely pay off in the long run, it has higher maintenance costs due to distance and extends your military vulnerability.

It seems like you are making a calculated gamble that none of your neighbors are likely to attack you, and if they do you're basically toast. Of course, even with the Copper you may be toast if you get into an early war. Is that basically what's going on?

Click to expand...

The corn+gold is a great spot!
The deer/copper spot stinks!

There's room for 3 cities on the eastern front:
-pig+hills
-crab+floodplains
-deer+copper

At this point, green tiles are almost as good as resources when picking city locations... can't be picky anymore. The more cities I have, the more troops I can whip/draft.

Maintenance is a non-factor in settling cities. As long as the city has something going for itself (more commerce, resources, blocking value), the maintenance isn't important. Heck, putting Courthouses in those cities isn't even high priority.

As for calculated risk:
-I'll bribe Toku to Pleased in the next set before he can start planning war against me
-Ragnar will eventually move to Friendly with HR+religion
-Mehmed can also be bribed to Pleased more or less easily
-Peter is Pleased and far I think
-Hammurabi can't get to me (closed borders)

It is risky for certain but the DoW chances aren't that high really in this situation.

There's the option of crab/pig/FP for ultimate GT drafting later on, W of the crab loses the FP 2SW anyway, so there's no real penalty for settling SW of the crab, lose a FP, gain a FP.

Perhaps... I'll need to see. I have half a mind to go with mounted warfare here. Toku and Mehmed will probably be bacwards... swift war will probably be easier to take both out.

hm, you've got quite some possibilities settling cities here...

1. SEE of gold on the FPs for a monster commercecity, anything other would lose some FPs, e.g. on the coast near the pig
2. NW or NNW of crabs, NNW would have less usefull tiles but after all maybe there are more hills in the fog and a city with that many tundra tiles won't use the fresh water bonus anyway..
3. EE of horses for the pig, quite some green tiles..
4. on the coast east of the pig, but that way you'll lose some green land and iirc the stone in the south didn't have any food resource.. but you could share the corn with the eastern city for growth, after civilservice some irrigations could feed some mines. getting stone is pretty good in any case, either for oxford or some failuregold from any wonder


too much for me to consider, head explodes... 8[

Kossin, you make deity look so easy.

@ahcos

1 city with pigs + green hills
1 city with a lot of flood plains
1 mediocre city with deer and copper

@stopstopp
Don't look at Rusten, Duckweed,... & co's games then!

~~~~

Next round is played but I might not have time to post it tonight.

err, so which city will use the crabs? well, i guess i'll see as soon as you've posted the game x)

personally i'd settle

1S of copper

SEE of gold

EE of pigs

maybe SWW of the eastern corn mainly for claiming stone (i see alot of failure gold and cheap walls if needed, nothing to sneeze at here...), share corn to grow in alot of cottages on that green land...? not too bad, maybe even 1N of stone for a simple resource-saving-city, of course it has the least priority but still.. stone is nice to have

I actually like that DR better than previous ones, short turnsets and detailed explanations really let me learn some things about doing well at Deity.

Round 4

Another 25-turns round. I'll keep doing 25-turns for a little while and wrap up the game when the time comes (if it comes, that is - I haven't played any further so I don't know the outcome).

First, off I finished Alphabet and no one besides Peter had it. I kept it for a few turns before starting to trade it a bit.

First to Toku.


Then with Ragnar.


This was disastrous however... it revealed that I have no Iron whatsoever! The lone source I might have gotten was settled by Ragnar near the silver site up north... guess I should have chopped an extra settler earlier [see, I do make large mistakes!].

Currency was researched next which ended up as a monopoly... most excellent, I started begging and trading resources for gold.


While to some it may be no surprise (worldbuilder peekers), I was surprised that every AI is on the same landmass. I was expecting some poor soul to be stranded on an island by himself somewhere... I'll take it however! I really like Fractal pangeas... they just look good and make interesting diplo games.


Another calculated risk:


Trading with a worst enemy can be done without fear of "You traded with our worst enemy" penalty. You just have to watch and make sure you're not giving away something in the trade. In this case, Hammurabi had 40 gold so when he offered 35 I knew there would be no penalty for trading with him.

I finally took the time to farm a Great Scientist which made a most profitable Academy in the capital.


This trade (and another one not shown: Meditation for 30 gold) finally bumped Tokugawa to Pleased.


This was excellent news, allowing open borders and begging!

You can see as of the last screenshots that I was beelining Monarchy. Well of course, Hereditary Rule is a great civic to adopt here as I'm running out of happy surplus and it's Ragnar's favorite civic. While this trade might seem very uneven, it isn't at all:


What you can't see in that screenshot is that Mehmed had almost finished Alphabet (was only offering peanuts for it) so in reality the trade is Mathematics<->Monarchy with 2 minor techs to make up for the beaker difference. Saves me 1 turn of Monarchy research.

On the next-to-final turn of the set I got a rare sight:


...and then I issued the first civic switches of the game. Yes, I still was not in Slavery.


The capital... accounting for over 50% of my research.


Techs screen - not bad, not bad.


Diplo screen - not bad either


The known world. not resized.


You may wonder why I placed 3 of the new cities the way I did. This one is easy to answer: Toku settled on the Stone before I could. Therefore settling the pig like I did is the best way to get more good tiles for Rajavihara. Settling on the coast wouldn't help with the cultural battles going on in the region. This way, I can pretty much ensure those tiles are forever mine as 3 cities are nearby.
Floodplains+Crabs: it could have gone 1S to grab the final floodplain, however it would have 0 production. Where it currently sits it has the possibility to use a plains hill which is as good as it will get before I hit Metal Casting and the Guilds-Chemistry line.
Finally, the copper site will just try to swallow all the remaining useful tiles (the plains not currently in use).

I have an extra settler preparing to settle the many furs and fish (excessively bad city but the resources will be great for trading.) and another settler which I plan to use as a gift city to Mehmed in a way that will add border pressure. (I'm kinda hoping that multiple wars will happen while I tech along quietly).

With no Iron/Elephant your availabel VCs are diminished. Does this suggest diplo/cultural/space or is it still too early to make that sort of call?

ugh, no iron .. well, maybe you get lucky and pop some iron in the caps BFC

one off the coast in this case is really the best solution, although you miss out the traderoutes you'll have alot more greentiles for a looong time.

Ragnar isn't going after you, right?

CarlH said:

With no Iron/Elephant your availabel VCs are diminished. Does this suggest diplo/cultural/space or is it still too early to make that sort of call?

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Why would it diminish my chances? I can still build Rifles/Cavalry.

If anything, Pangea-ish maps lend themselves very well to Domination/Conquest/Diplomation.

ahcos said:

ugh, no iron .. well, maybe you get lucky and pop some iron in the caps BFC

one off the coast in this case is really the best solution, although you miss out the traderoutes you'll have alot more greentiles for a looong time.

Click to expand...

Or trade for iron with excess resources until I capture my own.

Miss out the trade routes? One road to the river gives it trade routes. Or do you mean miss out on harbor?

stopstopp said:

Ragnar isn't going after you, right?

Click to expand...

He went WHEOOHRN while Cautious to me and Annoyed+Worst Enemy at Hammurabi. The odds are in my favor but you never know... you'll know once the next set is played/posted

Kossin, thanks again. Reading yours threads I always find something new for myself.
Today this one:

"Trading with a worst enemy can be done without fear of "You traded with our worst enemy" penalty. You just have to watch and make sure you're not giving away something in the trade. In this case, Hammurabi had 40 gold so when he offered 35 I knew there would be no penalty for trading with him."

It's great that there is no penalty for equal trades. So, actually the penalty depends on the size of gift, isn't it? And does AI consider tribute as gift?

Good luck with your game! The position is pretty good.

@RedKi-rr
I remember that I got very annoyed once for getting a traded with worst enemies after accepting a tribute demand. :| So I guess it counts that way.

Looking good Kossin!


One question: You are running HR, yet your capital is building an expensive temple rather than a cheap warrior for happiness control. Would you not be better off with a warrior (same happy as a temple) and building wealth with the saved hammers?

RedKi-rr said:

Kossin, thanks again. Reading yours threads I always find something new for myself.
Today this one:

"Trading with a worst enemy can be done without fear of "You traded with our worst enemy" penalty. You just have to watch and make sure you're not giving away something in the trade. In this case, Hammurabi had 40 gold so when he offered 35 I knew there would be no penalty for trading with him."

It's great that there is no penalty for equal trades. So, actually the penalty depends on the size of gift, isn't it? And does AI consider tribute as gift?

Good luck with your game! The position is pretty good.

Click to expand...

I'll look for the post with the actual code but yes, it sums up the excess and only counts the 'gift' part of the trade.

SillyGoat said:

Looking good Kossin!

One question: You are running HR, yet your capital is building an expensive temple rather than a cheap warrior for happiness control. Would you not be better off with a warrior (same happy as a temple) and building wealth with the saved hammers?

Click to expand...

The temple is a placeholder iIrc... I have some overflow and I'd rather not send it into a cheap warrior - which cost upkeep so you might as well delay them as much as you can.

kossin said:

The temple is a placeholder iIrc... I have some overflow and I'd rather not send it into a cheap warrior - which cost upkeep so you might as well delay them as much as you can.

Click to expand...

True, but the overflow is saved if you are building wealth/research.

(placeholder I can accept... )

Round 5

This part of deity games (actually all games at this stage are) is usually boring, and this was no exception. You grow cities, whip here and there, look for trades here and there and try to stay out of trouble.

I settled that gift city for Mehmed... I almost wanted to keep it for the iron but that would have been silly. Now Mehmed will have a spare source of Iron that I can trade for.


Another day, another trade.


Which I then sell to Toku as he almost has it anyway.


As the MoM was completed, there was plenty of gold to be had, which helped keep the slider high.


As the RNG had it, Hammurabi was the recipient of Ragnar's DoW... and more than that. Toku jumped in (bribed) the next turn.


It doesn't stop there however, Hammy bribed Bismarck into the fight and Toku bribed Sury in the fight. Wait, that's me! (Brownie points for sharing war... should help me keep Ragnar Friendly for many many trades).

This trade was a bit one-sided in Ragnar's favor...


...but then I used the map I got and sold it to get ~200 gold more.

The rest of the round was pretty quiet. I didn't bulb anything, all manual research so far. A Great Scientist will soon be completed, I'm thinking of triggering a Golden Age and using the opportunity to spawn a few more GPs, possibly a Merchant for upgrading units (Horse Archers > Cuirassiers?) or just to race to Rifling+MT.

Tech screens


Diplo


The capital - I ended up building the temples after Civil Service... they were fast builds and I had money to burn a bit. It's still pulling over half my beakers.


The known world (not resized, flying camera view)


I actually played up two more turns because I failed to notice the 125th turn at first but went back to the autosave. Don't worry I saved at t127 as well and nothing happens

Tokugawa has some excellent land. A swift war should help me tremendously. Mehmed is likely to be lagging in the tech department as well a bit. While his land isn't as great, the added production of his cities will be most helpful.

The biggest obstacle to victory: getting Iron. Just kidding, it's Peter with his insane land and 10 cities. He'll start teching pretty fast soon. Unless he does something stupid like avoiding Rifling, I'll have to hit him at Bombers.

I don't know if Hammurabi will hold on in the war but with Bismarck also in I think he might be just fine. Toku is still far from Samurais so he really isn't much of a threat at this moment. From now on, I'll try avoiding most trades with Tokugawa to make sure he's as backwards as possible for when I want to hit him.