[BTS] Quick advice for city placement with screens

[Seraiel]

I did read that, I just could not believe that you would prefer to be an a war instead of using less overlap. Must also be a Marathon thing, defensive wars are easier the faster the speed is. If you get DoWed on Marathon in like 2500 BC because your Capital had 8 tiles of overlap with 2nd city, there is nothing like defending because you will just have gotten BW 2 turns ago.

[Handel]

Originally Posted by Seraiel

It is. I usually don't understand the early Happiness problems the people have, even without any Happiness Ressource the cap is 5, even if it's reached, one can grow to 6 and produce Settlers / Workers, because 1 unhappy citizen doesn't cost Food while producing those,

You mean if you have just 1 unhappy citizen he forages for himself if you produce settler/worker but eats food if you produce anything else?

For Buro to be effective though, you have to learn how to put up a Super Science City, one that can easily have an output of 400 BPT alone at 1 AD.

And you move the palace to it? Can you show a screen of such city pls?

I. e. if you want to oracle Machinery on Deity, you need something like 3-4 Golds / Gems, but 1 city could never grow fast enough and still be whipping to work all of those, especially with the low-happy-cap. Therefor, one founds 2nd and 3rd city so they can share the gold, making them able to work it virtually at size 1 while the capital is something like size 4 working 2 Food 2 Gold.

So what you do with late "helping" cities when they become obsolete? I presume they produce gold/wealth; do you try to improve them or leave them at bare min?

Edit: And as we are talkign about the cities - how the GP farm work when the emancipation kicks in and the caste system must be abandoned?

Sera[/QUOTE]

[ahcos]

Beside that 8 overlap is impossible ( ), there are early daggers on Normal, too, but you won't survive them if your empire's wide spread. Ofc, when you don't have units/metal/Archery, you'll be dead in that case aswell. Overall i really don't believe that a mad Shaka won't declare on me just because my cities don#t overlap - it's just a little bit less likely. Distance, Diplo and Powerrating will still be more important than the overlap check.

[coanda]

Originally Posted by ahcos

Beside that 8 overlap is impossible ( ),

aHA! A chance to nitpick a trivial oversight!

You have overlooked the possibility of settling cities closer together if they're on different landmasses, which does make it possible to share 8 tiles (or more).

[Seraiel]

Originally Posted by Handel

You mean if you have just 1 unhappy citizen he forages for himself if you produce settler/worker but eats food if you produce anything else?

Yes. As long as you produce Settlers / Workers you get the Food back that the unhappy citizen costs while producing other things, therefor, you can always grow 1 above happy-cap if you plan on producing those allowing totally different whips.

And you move the palace to it? Can you show a screen of such city pls?

The fact that the city produces exactly 666 BPT at 1 AD is pure accident, but it's funny. Don't overlook that this is in a GA, normally that city would produce something like 500 BPT I think.

Sera

[Seraiel]

Originally Posted by ahcos

Beside that 8 overlap is impossible ( ), there are early daggers on Normal, too, but you won't survive them if your empire's wide spread. Ofc, when you don't have units/metal/Archery, you'll be dead in that case aswell. Overall i really don't believe that a mad Shaka won't declare on me just because my cities don#t overlap - it's just a little bit less likely. Distance, Diplo and Powerrating will still be more important than the overlap check.

That's a totally subjective opinion. You have absolutely no backup data about how much overlap matters but downgrade it. What I understand having read this it matters greatly, having a value of ~100, while each adjectend landtile (worst case scenario of no distance at all) only values +4. You're right, that other factors also matter, i. e. AGG-AI matters greatly, Diplo matters greatly, but those are factors you have absolutely no influence on in the early game. You can influence though how you found your empire, and you can believe me or not, when I say "not a single DoW in over 20 games" since not more than 5 tiles of overlap for each city and maximum horizontal expansion, so lots of small cities on large space.

Originally Posted by coanda

aHA! A chance to nitpick a trivial oversight!

You have overlooked the possibility of settling cities closer together if they're on different landmasses, which does make it possible to share 8 tiles (or more).

Thx

[Handel]

Originally Posted by Seraiel

The fact that the city produces exactly 666 BPT at 1 AD is pure accident, but it's funny. Don't overlook that this is in a GA, normally that city would produce something like 500 BPT I think.

Sera

With university, bank, Oxford and corporation at 1 AD? At which speed and difficulty is this?

[ahcos]

Originally Posted by Seraiel

That's a totally subjective opinion.

Erm, well... not really. You can avoid overlap like the plague, if you settle right in Shakas face and cut him off from further expansion, there WILL be a DoW. I won't go through every possible scenario, but you get my point.

I had tons of games where i had zero (numerical: 0) overlap and still got DoW'd by Deity AIs. Even had the same thing on Immortal recently. My subject oppinion? Okay, your subject oppinion too, i guess.

You have absolutely no backup data about how much overlap matters but downgrade it.

I'm not saying that what you wrote is wrong - i'm just saying that, no matter what you say how bad overlap is for DoW checks, i'll just keep on overlapping. You know, not everyone plays huge maps where you have tons of space to expand into, and when i roll a fractal-alike map on Deity, i'll have to overlap or won't get out more than 2 cities sometimes. Not to mention that i will chose to overlap, even when i don't have to by all means, because it's useful. You know, not everyone plays HoF where a DoW cripples your score and whatever.

After all, Diplo's still the way to go to avoid DoWs on Normal/Normal, and tbh i won't argue with you on "your" gamestyle because, to be perfectly honest, i'm not interested in Marathon or huge. Not - a - single - bit. I'm thankful for that you provided me that information, but avoiding overlap to avoid DoWs is simply not an option in my games, believe it or not. My subject oppionion, yeah well, deal with it.

[ecuwins]

Originally Posted by ahcos

if you settle right in Shakas face and cut him off from further expansion, there WILL be a DoW.

Yes, he tends to be a whore for that. Sadly, to my dismay. I hate him.

[Handel]

As we talk about cities tell me please how to manage with the GP farm when forced to change to emancipation? The buildings which can turn pop into specialists may be many but you probably will not build everything there and besides you will not be able to determine which kind of specialist you will produce?

[Seraiel]

Originally Posted by Handel

With university, bank, Oxford and corporation at 1 AD? At which speed and difficulty is this?

Huge Marathon Deity.

Originally Posted by Handel

As we talk about cities tell me please how to manage with the GP farm when forced to change to emancipation? The buildings which can turn pop into specialists may be many but you probably will not build everything there and besides you will not be able to determine which kind of specialist you will produce?

In the lategame if going Military with Kremlin you'll mainly want GMs, so build a Market and a Grocer, of course the city should have a Forge and Factory because GEs are just awesome at any time. GP Farms tend to suck with Emancipation, if you're good, you can farm out like 15-20 GPs using GAs + Pacififsm before someone has Emancipation, and as long as it's only 1 Civ, you can always switch them out of it via Espionage.

[ahcos]

Originally Posted by Handel

As we talk about cities tell me please how to manage with the GP farm when forced to change to emancipation? The buildings which can turn pop into specialists may be many but you probably will not build everything there and besides you will not be able to determine which kind of specialist you will produce?

First of all, when you are forced to switch into Emancipation you shouldn't be reliant on GPs too much anymore. As you might or might not know, GPs are most important in the midgame, where you try to reach any kind of advantage that gets you to victory - differs a little bit from VC to VC, but the idea is pretty much always the same. Either you bulb your way to some military or to Liberalism, and with Lib you either take military, strategical or economical techs to proceed.

So, in the lategame GPs usually are best used for GAs, and here it really doesn't matter what kind you get, as long as you don't get 5 GSs in a row. Even then, you can settle them in your Oxford city for ~30 BPT in your Oxford city (and a hammer), which is nice. If you're planning on things like Corporations, well, then you have to plan carefully or have to depend on luck.

But to be honest: when i plan a military VC i really don't need a certain kind of specialist, i just take what i get. If it happens that i go for space without war, it's ALOT easier to plan ahead for things like Corps, i might even get things like the free merchant from Economics and save him for later. You see: it's somewhat more about planning ahead and maybe just deal with what you get. Also note that with permanent war you'll slow down the teching speed of the whole game to a point where the AI might not even get to Emancipation at all.

And when worse comes to worse, you can still switch into Caste System temporarily and starve a single city down for a certain GP. It's not like ~10 turns of unhappiness will kill you, just use the culture slider meanwhile.

[Handel]

Originally Posted by Seraiel

Huge Marathon Deity.

I am dumb and deaf.
Would it be too much to ask for a savegame please (if unmodded BTS besides BUG and Blue Marble mods)?

[ahcos]

He plays HoF, he can't provide savegames.

[Seraiel]

Originally Posted by ahcos

He plays HoF, he can't provide savegames.

Correct me again if I'm wrong, but I thought I could handout any savegame I don't plan on playing further / cannot submit to HoF due to various reasons / have played till the end and submitted to HoF.

The screen is from one of my Incan rounds 1-2 months ago, was an amazing round where I managed to rush 5 Civs, but somehow I loaded the wrong save once, therefor the game became invalid for HoF. It's funny to look at those games now, because I've learned so much about Civ since then. I would never place the cities again like I did then, anyhow, they weren't so bad like one would think.

Here are 2 different ones from 1 AD which both have Corps aswell as Oxford at 1 AD. You can also look at "Replay #3" in my Signature, they were all played very similiar. I wouldn't go for Oxford again today, as Universities cost too many pop when slaving them, and give too little benefit if one doesn't go for Space-Race:

Don't forget, that you need the newes BUFFY Mod to open them. I can provide further saves from those rounds if you're interessted as I save every turn and store old saves for comparison reasons.

[Handel]

Originally Posted by Seraiel

...as Universities cost too many pop when slaving them, and give too little benefit if one doesn't go for Space-Race:

Thank you.
So universities and still going with slavery? Or switching to slavery only to rush the buildings and switching back again?

[Seraiel]

I go for Slavery the whole game, as long as I'm not forced to switch into Emancipation. Only occasion where I switch to CS is when I start a GA or even the GA-Chain, then I need those Specialist slots. Slaving the Universities imo is mandatory, because they come so late, that if one wants to get benefit of Oxford, one has to build it immediately after Education. Having Oxford in a super-science-city usually makes up for the lost pop in the other cities. Running OR is heavily recommended for the whips, as they're so huge.

If one is SPI of course, one has more freedom in choice of Civics. One can run CS + Pacifism and Slavery + OR / Theo only when it's needed.

[Heathcliff]

I think you need to settle your first cities alot closer to your capital to speed up your earlygame.
Id place my first cities:
1NE of cows (west of Rome)
1E of iron (south of Rome)
1N of copper (east of Rome)

just my 2 cents.