This is embarrassing.

Nathiri · Jul 27, 2016

Buttercup said:
You would not need that many workers @ Regent level.

You would not need 57 cities. If there's space after the second ring then fine, fill the space, but there's no huge race for city numbers, just for resource/luxury/strategic locations. Let the AI munch up the rubbish land and waste time building settlers while you maximise science and get quickly to Knights - who can then start taking cities for you (if you're doing conquest, if peaceful then Knights are a great defence force).

I would still argue lots of workers even at Regent level. Your civilization will become stronger and more prosperous so much quicker. Obviously, the player has to figure out the exact amount needed and what he can support, but more is usually better than too few. Later, you can disband some of the workers, or use them for another purpose.

justanick · Jul 27, 2016

Nathiri said:
Later, you can disband some of the workers,

Please add them to cities instead.

I donnot see how the amount of workers would depend on the difficulty setting. If it were to depend on it probably is the other way around as on higher settings more production may be needed in the short run. If however the focus is on food, than more workers are needed to keep up.

Buttercup said:
You would not need 57 cities.

Of course not. This was just to indicate an upper limit where the return on investment drops sharply due to 50% rank corruption.

At the lower difficulty settings corruption is very low, thus the reasonable amount of cities is high.

jkk · Aug 1, 2016

Okay. I spent some time last night reviewing this thread, codifying the primary guidance for the early game (mostly) on the logic that if the early game were done right, the rest of it would take care of itself (barring some spectacular self-mutilation on my part).

Stuff I should definitely do:

Research: make a beeline for Republic via Philosophy slingshot.
Keep an eye on city tile usage so that all population can use an improved square.
Leave hills and mountains for later improvement.
Tile usage: irrigate wheat, cow, or wine on grassland, even early.
Shoot for two workers per city.
Leave wonders for later.
Leave Barracks until Republic.
Early build priorities: Courthouses (especially farther from the capital) and Aqueducts.
Once one has a Republic, control some of the unhappiness through the luxury rate.
Seek a settler factory city, lots of surplus food (flood plains, wheat).
Seek a 10 spt city that can produce a lot of military units, put Barracks.
Aim for a research speed of four turns per tech.
Build Libraries and Universities in core towns, partly for culture, partly for research.

Questions I'm not fully clear on:

If I build my national culture up through libraries in my core, and lead in tech, does that mean I'm not likely to have culture flips? I reviewed the info about fatcross overlap, but let's suppose I end up with some; will I need libraries also in those frontier cities with fatcross overlap?

When we talk of buying research, as a concept, do we mean running up the research slider and living off our existing gold pile, or do we mean rushing research improvements?

The idea behind a very small military early on is that by putting the energy into expansion and the proper improvements, one will be sufficient far ahead in tech that one's small military will be able to deliver a brutal parry to aggression. Right?

I may have missed some key tactical moves, of course. That's why I'm posting about it--I think I can feel confident someone will point out those out. As a general rule, I like to play on huge 70% water maps with all civ slots randomly filled.

jkk · Aug 1, 2016

One other thing: last time I played this, Shift-P worked to automate pollution cleanup. For some reason, it does nothing on my current game. Any of you ever heard of this?

RFHolloway · Aug 1, 2016

have a read through this - over 10 years old now but still the best walkthrough

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=81351&highlight=training

justanick · Aug 1, 2016

jkk said:
Tile usage: irrigate wheat, cow, or wine on grassland, even early.

Especially before postdespotism. Later some of those irrigations may be overwritten with mines. You want each tile to produce at least 1 shield, so once you are in your golden age those tiles fully benefit from it. It also applies to mobilization.

jkk said:
Leave Barracks until Republic.

It may be convient to build (one or) a few barracks still in despotism, so they finish about once you enter anarchy. The end of the settling phase is always a bit crucial, a soft landing is needed. At some point the expansion via settlers needs to be backed up with some military, but also not too much of it as that may let your republic crumble under unit support.

One approach is to have your military to be slightly too weak. If needed barracks can help you to strenghten your military fast by upgrading existing units and cash rushing new ones if that proves necessary.

jkk said:
If I build my national culture up through libraries in my core, and lead in tech, does that mean I'm not likely to have culture flips? I reviewed the info about fatcross overlap, but let's suppose I end up with some; will I need libraries also in those frontier cities with fatcross overlap?

The exact fatcross overlap depends on culture in those frontier towns. The chances per tile of overlap are proportional to the ratio of the total culture values mainly produced in your core cities. If your total culture is as good as the enemy, than one unit per overlaping tile is needed to prevent culture flip. If you are 3 times as good one unit per 3 overlapping tiles does suffice. In your own cities you should be able to prevent culturflips, in cities taken from the enemy it is a wee bit harder.

jkk said:
When we talk of buying research, as a concept, do we mean running up the research slider and living off our existing gold pile, or do we mean rushing research improvements?

Where have you heard of "buying research"? That term makes no sense. Buying techs makes much more sense, it refers to tech trade. Still, you are usually better of selling techs than buying them.

Cash rushing of most buildings is not sensible. Using money gained from selling techs to finance research at high rates of 100% - luxus rate is often a good idea.

jkk said:
The idea behind a very small military early on is that by putting the energy into expansion and the proper improvements, one will be sufficient far ahead in tech that one's small military will be able to deliver a brutal parry to aggression. Right?

The idea is to build up your economic base first. First settle, second improve the land, third give the cities crucial building, fourth research towards military tradition while building up your military and fifth upgrade your knights to cavalry in a mass upgrade so your can conquer the world.

The idea is not that the military is small, in fact the opposite would likely be true once you have the military. The idea is to wait for that till it is convenient. When it will be convenient depends on circumstances, but cavalry is often a good choice.

You donnot want to be weak forever. Also you should not overestimate your ability to outpace AI at research. The higher the difficulty, the more AI may outpace you. :crazyeye:

jkk said:
I may have missed some key tactical moves, of course. That's why I'm posting about it--I think I can feel confident someone will point out those out. As a general rule, I like to play on huge 70% water maps with all civ slots randomly filled.

Huge maps favour waiting till cavalry or even longer. If you postpone world war till tanks you might want to play the germans. The 3 moves of the panzer are really convenient for warfare.

jkk · Aug 1, 2016

justanick said:
One approach is to have your military to be slightly too weak. If needed barracks can help you to strenghten your military fast by upgrading existing units and cash rushing new ones if that proves necessary.

Also, one is going to need at least one barracks simply to be able to upgrade any unit, if I understand correctly. So as a general rule of thumb, for a slightly weak military, is there a ratio of units to cities under the Republic that you would suggest, just as a general guideline?

justanick said:
The exact fatcross overlap depends on culture in those frontier towns. The chances per tile of overlap are proportional to the ratio of the total culture values mainly produced in your core cities. If your total culture is as good as the enemy, than one unit per overlaping tile is needed to prevent culture flip. If you are 3 times as good one unit per 3 overlapping tiles does suffice. In your own cities you should be able to prevent culturflips, in cities taken from the enemy it is a wee bit harder.

One thing I used to do is rush settlers from newly captured cities, on the logic that it would knock the population of unhappy enemy nationals down, to be replaced with my own as it grew back. The settlers could be stashed somewhere if not yet needed, and when used to start a city, as it grew, the minority members would be swamped and eventually assimilated. Do you like this tactic?

justanick said:
Where have you heard of "buying research"? That term makes no sense. Buying techs makes much more sense, it refers to tech trade. Still, you are usually better of selling techs than buying them.

It is a slight paraphrase of a view you presented in post #8: "Better spend it on research, building up stockpiles of gold for expensive research in the industrial age and if it needs to be you can spend it on upgrading outdated units. I am not a big fan of the later, but i understand it can help a lot under certain circumstances."

justanick said:
Cash rushing of most buildings is not sensible. Using money gained from selling techs to finance research at high rates of 100% - luxus rate is often a good idea.

So by financing research that simply means having a big enough heap of gold that one can jack the research up as near 100% as possible, and not have to worry about income? Which I assume would explain why you don't support early marketplaces; if you do not plan to have cash income, clearly, there is not much point in building something that magnifies it, since what one is multiplying is small to begin with...right?

justanick said:
The idea is to build up your economic base first. First settle, second improve the land, third give the cities crucial building, fourth research towards military tradition while building up your military and fifth upgrade your knights to cavalry in a mass upgrade so your can conquer the world.

Yeah, it seems to be that if one can build or upgrade a bunch of cavalry, while the enemy's defense units are still pre-riflemen, one could deliver the enemy a blow that would make him reel.

justanick said:
You donnot want to be weak forever. Also you should not overestimate your ability to outpace AI at research. The higher the difficulty, the more AI may outpace you.

Of that I have no doubt. I suspect I'll know firsthand when I reach that level.

justanick said:
Huge maps favour waiting till cavalry or even longer. If you postpone world war till tanks you might want to play the germans. The 3 moves of the panzer are really convenient for warfare.

I played them once and had a lot of fun with panzers. I would think, though, that the panzer era is way late to trigger a GA, and one would want to have that happen much sooner. I've always had the idea that the medieval era is real good for a GA, when one is building some useful wonders, but I could be wrong there.

Do you think conscription is ever worth while, or is that simply creating a bunch of fragile units that cost support, create unhappiness, and probably won't much change the outcome of war? One thing I used to do, and maybe it was a bad idea, was conscript new garrisons for core cities, freeing higher skilled garrison units to go off to war.

Also, as the modern era comes, what do you think of switching to fascism for a serious world war?

justanick · Aug 1, 2016

jkk said:
So as a general rule of thumb, for a slightly weak military, is there a ratio of units to cities under the Republic that you would suggest, just as a general guideline?

No.

As rule of thumb having a military worth 20 turns of your total production in order to start a major war seems sensible, but that does not really depend on being a republic. On small maps that would be around 50 cavalry, on huge maps more like 100 cavalry. In the industrial age it goes up to 300 panzers. Well, i suppose less might do the trick, too.

jkk said:
One thing I used to do is rush settlers from newly captured cities, on the logic that it would knock the population of unhappy enemy nationals down, to be replaced with my own as it grew back. The settlers could be stashed somewhere if not yet needed, and when used to start a city, as it grew, the minority members would be swamped and eventually assimilated. Do you like this tactic?

I love it. But it might be excesive on anything below Demigod. At Sid however rushing Settler by disbanding unneeded military seems quite alright. Those foreign settlers donnot cost any unit support.

jkk said:
It is a slight paraphrase of a view you presented in post #8: "Better spend it on research, building up stockpiles of gold for expensive research in the industrial age and if it needs to be you can spend it on upgrading outdated units. I am not a big fan of the later, but i understand it can help a lot under certain circumstances."

I see. In the industrial age gold needed for army and more importantly buildings increases by quite a margin. Having an ample gold stockpile helps to deal with that. Later you can build wealth to generate the needed money, but that is a somewhat long term approach. Spending shield into the military to win the game leads to much earlier victories.

jkk said:
So by financing research that simply means having a big enough heap of gold that one can jack the research up as near 100% as possible, and not have to worry about income? Which I assume would explain why you don't support early marketplaces; if you do not plan to have cash income, clearly, there is not much point in building something that magnifies it, since what one is multiplying is small to begin with...right?

Maybe. But having market places is still a priority once you can aquire luxuries a proper amont of luxuries and doing so is a paramount concern. Wars have been started for less.

jkk said:
Also, as the modern era comes, what do you think of switching to fascism for a serious world war?

Nothing. Communism is the way to go. Much better production and no loss of population. Losing 3 citizens per metropolis increases the cost of facism too much.

jkk said:
Do you think conscription is ever worth while, or is that simply creating a bunch of fragile units that cost support, create unhappiness, and probably won't much change the outcome of war? One thing I used to do, and maybe it was a bad idea, was conscript new garrisons for core cities, freeing higher skilled garrison units to go off to war.

In the industrial age production soon reaches levels where conscription seems like a very bad idea. If you have excessive food and excessive happyness conscription for the purpose for disbanding a unit can create a few shields, up to 30 of them.

jkk said:
I played them once and had a lot of fun with panzers. I would think, though, that the panzer era is way late to trigger a GA, and one would want to have that happen much sooner. I've always had the idea that the medieval era is real good for a GA, when one is building some useful wonders, but I could be wrong there.

The early medieval age is often a good time. Either trigger the GA once your cities reach the preliminary maximum of size 12 or trigger it once they reach their actual maximum in the industrial age. The later is better in theory, but Panzer come too late for that and even if it they came earlier in practise the medieval golden age will still be preferable as it omes when you need it most instead of when the total gain is greatest. If the later would be deemed paramount one should probably wait till future techs are being researched by your gigantic communist empire.

At higher levels chances are that a golden age during despotism is the best choice because it is simply needed for survival and for stemming the huge cost of researching the republic or monarchy. But i suppose i am drifting away from topic once more. :crazyeye:

jkk · Aug 3, 2016

Do you ever deliberately starve captured cities down? Some of it seems to happen just as a side effect of struggling to keep order there.

You're absolutely right about culture flips. I haven't had one for ages in my current game.

I'm finding that a good use for captured workers is to grow smallish cities. Since their work is less efficient (slavery being unfun), using them to work a tile sooner seems more efficient than sending them about building railroads and cleaning up pollution.

justanick · Aug 3, 2016

jkk said:
Do you ever deliberately starve captured cities down?

It is a common practise. I prefer to avoid it. Ideally a war is a fought a few turns without intruding enemy territory just to be followed by deep intrusions that either are being followed by (preferably) annexation of the enemy or a peacy treaty to secure substancial territorial gains against the discontent from war against home civilisation.

What fits the circumstances does of course greatly depend on circumstances. Market places with 8 luxuries are a powerful tool. Disbanding 5 cavalry or 4 tanks can rush 100 shields needed for market place immediatly when captured. Rushing for money however does not work while resisters are still left, nor does it work during civil unrest.

Also 3 units military police from monarchy or 4 from communism help greatly. This is one of the more subtle effects of different governments.

Also be aware what railroads can do. If you combine railroads with fast units you can capture an entire empire in one turn, a real blitzkrieg so to speak. This is a very efficient means to completely avoid culture flips, completely avoid war against home civilisation and to calm down resisters at the highest rate of 1 per turn per unit capable of military police. Obviously you need a great deal of military unit to calm all resisters in just one turn, but taking all cities of a civilization in just one turn is probably the bigger challenge. It being preceeded by letting the enemy wear itself down a few turns helps with that.

jkk said:
I'm finding that a good use for captured workers is to grow smallish cities. Since their work is less efficient (slavery being unfun), using them to work a tile sooner seems more efficient than sending them about building railroads and cleaning up pollution.

Small cities usually grow fast. Adding workers or settlers to very small towns can help to increase the food surpluss to at least 5 at usually size 3. Adding workers or settlers to cities or metropolises may be convenient, as food required for grow will be double or triple.

Slaves are only half as effective at their work, but they cost no money. It is a trade off one should be aware off. Being a communist adding them to cities my be convenient, in other governments keeping them as slaves tends to be preferable.

tjs282 · Aug 3, 2016

Justanick posted while I was writing this. But I've spent time on it, so I'm going to post it anyway!

jkk said:
Do you ever deliberately starve captured cities down? Some of it seems to happen just as a side effect of struggling to keep order there.

Not if I can avoid it. That's valuable potential Workers/combat-Settlers that I'd be wasting*. Resistors need no food, and rioting cities won't starve. So at least while you're still at war, it's often more practical not even to try and quell a resisting city.

What I've started doing is to simply stop worrying about back-flips as long as the war progresses. [EDIT (added after I saw Justanick's post): Most of my major wars are fought in the late game anyway, when most AI cities have popped their borders at least twice, so 1T genocides become much more difficult to execute -- I refuse on principle to use the 'Settler-creep' exploit]. After I capture a city, I move every spare unit into it and tell the Governator to 'Manage moods' (to prevent it from rioting in the unlikely event that the resistance is quelled). If I haven't quelled it during the 1T grace period after capture (which is usual, since I don't tend to prioritise global culture), I switch the Governator off, move my most modern troops out, and send them on to the next target(s). I'll perhaps leave a cheap/expendable defender in place, and 1-2 decent attackers outside the town to recapture it if necessary. If I still have some obsolete-ish units (e.g. LBMs/ Maces in the age of Cavs, or Cavs in the age of Tanks), I might leave them garrisoned as resistance-quellers, but probably won't.

The flip-probability goes down as a city's BFC tiles come completely under my control, so the further forward I can push the front, the 'safer' I'll be from back-flips in cities closer to my original border, and once the war is over, assuming I met my objectives, culture flips become less of a concern. If my enemy is dead, the town won't flip at all (at least, not to its original owner!). Even if he's still hanging on somewhere, huddled in his last Tundra-island city, so long as my new border is far enough from the captured town, and/or my capital is now closer to the captured town than his, its flip-prob will be low. My remaining units can then pacify any remaining resistors city-by-city, which also seems to happen much quicker during peacetime (especially if those towns are now also enjoying the benefits of my Luxes, LUX%-spending, etc.).

*

Spoiler :

You're absolutely right about culture flips. I haven't had one for ages in my current game.

Culture flips in your favour really only happen reliably at the lower levels, when you can much more easily out-produce and hence out-Culture your opponents. At the higher levels (Emp+), forget it. Your cities are more likely to flip to the AICivs, because of their much cheaper Wonders and Culture-buildings.

I'm finding that a good use for captured workers is to grow smallish cities. Since their work is less efficient (slavery being unfun), using them to work a tile sooner seems more efficient than sending them about building railroads and cleaning up pollution.

That's true to a point, but unless you have a massive Culture lead, and/or are in a government with a high assimilation probability (Communism has the highest, at 4%; Republic is only 2% IIRC), you should try to avoid adding Slaves captured from a live Civ to any cities, because when (not if!) you go to war with that civ -- or they DoW you (again) -- all those unassimilated foreign citizens will become unhappy that much sooner ("Stop the aggression against our mother country!"). Also, think about it this way: Slaves (and foreign Settlers) don't add to your unit-costs, so (under Republic) 2 Slaves = 1 Worker = 2 gpt you don't have to pay for unit-maintenance. This can be especially valuable in early Republics -- for every 2 Slaves you capture, you can add 1 native Worker back to a Pop7+ city, thus decreasing your expenditure, and increasing your income by at least 2 cpt (before corruption).

justanick · Aug 3, 2016

tjs282 said:
Even if he's still hanging on somewhere, huddled in his last Tundra-island city, so long as my new border is far enough from the captured town, and/or my capital is now closer to the captured town than his, its flip-prob will be low.

Still it might be too high. The amount of military police required to avoid flips does not depend on distance and while the probability of flips does depend on distance, this factor does not leave the interval [0.25;4].

Completely eliminating a civ has a high priority. It can be reasonable to make peace for few turns just to break the peace once your troops are in position to take out the remains of the enemy.

tjs282 said:
My remaining units can then pacify any remaining resistors city-by-city, which also seems to happen much quicker during peacetime (especially if those towns are now also enjoying the benefits of my Luxes, LUX%-spending, etc.).

I doubt it depends on the later. It may depend on peace alone. Once a civ has been eliminated resistors are calmed down at 1 per turn per military police. During peace it may be the same while during war the is much lower depending on the ratio of the total culture values, but anything better 3 does not help any further. It only depends on the step, say being fascinated etc..

tjs282 said:
When a town reaches Pop1, it will either be Settler-disbanded (e.g. if it's badly placed, or if I want to destroy the AI-built Duct/ Hospital in what is now a hopelessly corrupt area),

Please note that abandoning a city within 20 turns after taking counts as burning it down on capture in terms of AI attitude.

Burning a city down on capture is an efficient means to elimnate culture flips by eliminating the city. Half of the population is lost, the other half is rounded down and converted into slaves. The effect on AI-attitude will be severe if you continuously genocide your way through history.

tjs282 said:
That's true to a point, but unless you have a massive Culture lead, and/or are in a government with a high assimilation probability (Communism has the highest, at 4%; Republic is only 2% IIRC), you should try to avoid adding Slaves captured from a live Civ to any cities, because when (not if!) you go to war with that civ -- or they DoW you (again) -- all those unassimilated foreign citizens will become unhappy that much sooner ("Stop the aggression against our mother country!").

Culture has nothing to do with assimiliation or war against home civilization discontent. It is only relevant for the amount of military units required to savely avoid flips. At Emperor and below being on par at culture is quite possible, than safely avoiding culture flips is possible with any mid sized military police.

tjs282 said:
Also, think about it this way: Slaves (and foreign Settlers) don't add to your unit-costs, so (under Republic) 2 Slaves = 1 Worker = 2 gpt you don't have to pay for unit-maintenance. This can be especially valuable in early Republics -- for every 2 Slaves you capture, you can add 1 native Worker back to a Pop7+ city, thus decreasing your expenditure, and increasing your income by at least 2 cpt (before corruption).

There is a strong counterargument: Instead of adding 1 worker you can add 2 slaves. While corruption is low that will be preferable unless discontent or culture flip risk outbalance it.

Lanzelot · Aug 3, 2016

As unit upkeep is often a problem in my games, I usually add the natives (in the core) and keep the slaves. Free worker power is always needed, even if no tile needs to be improved at the moment: e.g. while waiting for railways to become available, the workers can gain extra shields via forrestry operations, speeding up buildings in the core or settlers/units in the fringes.

tjs282 · Aug 3, 2016

justanick said:
Still it might be too high. The amount of military police required to avoid flips does not depend on distance and while the probability of flips does depend on distance, this factor does not leave the interval [0.25;4].

How high is too high? If I can get the flip-risk for a captured down to <2% by simply pushing the front further forward and enSlaving AI-citizens, I'm happy to risk that the city will (not) flip over the next 20T before the next (last?) war is started. And the number of units required to bring flip-risk all the way to zero is frequently ludicrous: if I haven't got that many units to spare, I'm certainly not going to leave them in a captured town and risk losing them to a flip; and if I have got that many spare units, then why on earth would I have ended the war already...?

Completely eliminating a civ has a high priority. It can be reasonable to make peace for few turns just to break the peace once your troops are in position to take out the remains of the enemy.

Are you advocating RoP-abuse, and/or PT-breakage here? Well that's fine if you no longer need any trade-partners, but what if you do...? Because breaking a 20T-PT will kill your trade-rep, so is really only an option if that Civ hasn't contacted anyone else yet (and you can be sure of killing them before they do), or if it's one of the last civs on the map (when you've got so big that you no longer care what anyone thinks of you), i.e. right at the begining, or in the last stages of the game. For the majority of the game-turns though, losing your trade-rep is about as sensible as shooting yourself in both feet.

I doubt it depends on the later.

Conflated 2 things there, sorry. What I meant was, after the PT is signed, the garrison-units quell any remaining resistors in 1T (before moving on to the next resisting town), then the Luxes+LUX% keep the AI-citizens happy while they're getting enSlaved.

It may depend on peace alone. Once a civ has been eliminated resistors are calmed down at 1 per turn per military police. During peace it may be the same

Pretty sure that this is the case.

Please note that abandoning a city within 20 turns after taking counts as burning it down on capture in terms of AI attitude.

Already know this. AFAIK, even after 20T, the attitude-hit for abandonment also applies if the city is still >50% foreign citizens (more likely under Republic). Obviously that would apply to a captured-and-enSlaved Pop1 town, but there is then an argument for adding a native Worker just before completing/rushing a Settler. The town would then be 50% 'yours', but the resulting Settler would be foreign, thus requiring no further upkeep. But since I don't routinely use forest-chops or unit-disbands to build those Slaves, rather the more-expensive-but-simpler 'put some shields in the box, rush the balance' method, it quite frequently takes me >20T to shrink a Pop12 town down to Pop1 anyway. Post RepParts, cheating with CivEng specialists is something I'm willing to do in corrupt towns, and damn my principles...

Burning a city down on capture is an efficient means to elimnate culture flips by eliminating the city. Half of the population is lost, the other half is rounded down and converted into slaves. The effect on AI-attitude will be severe if you continuously genocide your way through history.

Which is why I don't do it routinely -- you're the only person advocating mass-razing here...

There is a strong counterargument: Instead of adding 1 worker you can add 2 slaves. While corruption is low that will be preferable unless discontent or culture flip risk outbalance it.

I get that it makes sense to get 2 citizens working 2 non-corrupted tiles and get double the CPT (and hence more easily support the native Worker in the field), but that does indeed only apply if unhappiness / flip-risk is no longer a concern. However, I would argue that, especially for an early Republic, those 2 concerns almost always do apply.

Especially on Arch/Cont-maps, one may not yet have access to sufficient Luxes to make Markets a useful build, and extracting more raw CPT is only useful if it can then be slider-converted (and ideally building-multiplied) to gold or beakers; if the LUX% happyfaces have to be increased (or, heaven forfend, the new citizen converted to a Specialist) to prevent a riot, then doesn't that rather defeat the purpose of joining the Slave? And total-defeat of a neighbour is also not always on the cards during the early game, so those bloomin' foreigners are hanging around in your growing town, refusing to assimilate, muttering to themselves about how much better off they were under Xerxes (or whoever) -- and then starting to complain that much sooner when (not if) the next war starts.

justanick · Aug 3, 2016

tjs282 said:
How high is too high? If I can get the flip-risk for a captured down to <2% by simply pushing the front further forward and enSlaving AI-citizens, I'm happy to risk that the city will (not) flip over the next 20T before the next (last?) war is started.

Well, 10 towns ready to flip at 2% each turn is too high. What is too high does of course depend on the ability to do something about it.

tjs282 said:
and if I have got that many spare units, then why on earth would I have ended the war already...?

Usually because of a lack of mobility, or because getting a few techs out of the peace treaty is deemed important.

tjs282 said:
Are you advocating RoP-abuse, and/or PT-breakage here?

The later. The only price to pay for that is a drop in AI attitude equivalent to 2 DoWs. There is no negative effect on reputation, so better be done with it ASAP.

And of course there is the option to leave the burdon of breaking the peace treaty to AI, but that in all likelyhood might not work.

tjs282 said:
Already know this. AFAIK, even after 20T, the attitude-hit for abandonment also applies if the city is still >50% foreign citizens (more likely under Republic). Obviously that would apply to a captured-and-enSlaved Pop1 town, but there is then an argument for adding a native Worker just before completing/rushing a Settler. The town would then be 50% 'yours', but the resulting Settler would be foreign, thus requiring no further upkeep.

I doubt that this is the case. Are we talking about the drop in AI attitude of any third Civ? Killing citizens of Civ A does worsen relation with that Civ, but no other one.

tjs282 said:
Which is why I don't do it routinely -- you're the only person advocating mass-razing here...

I only mentioned the option. I rather keep cities and citizens alive.

tjs282 said:
I get that it makes sense to get 2 citizens working 2 non-corrupted tiles and get double the CPT (and hence more easily support the native Worker in the field), but that does indeed only apply if unhappiness / flip-risk is no longer a concern. However, I would argue that, especially for an early Republic, those 2 concerns almost always do apply.

And i argue that as an early republic having slaves in the first place does not happen. Meaningful wars are best delayed till a republic is no longer an early republic. Then however chances are that core cities are at size 12, therefore lacking the ability to add slaves where corruption is low. It only changes with hospitals, that practically speaking is the one case of relevance. But there are exceptions for every rule. :crazyeye:

jkk · Aug 3, 2016

So, when in initial start turns, does one want at least 1-2 warriors to explore the surrounding area and pick up goody huts? (Are they still called that?)

tjs282 · Aug 4, 2016

jkk said:
So, when in initial start turns, does one want at least 1-2 warriors to explore the surrounding area and pick up goody huts? (Are they still called that?)

(Yes they are, and) I generally start building Warriors (or Scouts, if EXP -- unless I'm the Inca!) for exploration straight away, and also for MP (not so important at Regent-Monarch, but likely necessary at Emp, since only the town's founder will be content: all others will be born unhappy).

As I said upthread, other than Map-size (which I set at Standard or less), I usually Randomise most aspects of my games: but regardless of what the pRNGods have dealt me (and assuming non-AGRI Civ, no Bonus- or LuxRes), the majority of starting-points can usually be massaged to give at least +2 FPT, 2 SPT straight away (exceptions: all-Plains, or Floodplain-starts). My first two Warriors will therefore each take 5T to build, and the town will reach Pop2 in 10T (which is also when the Capital's borders will pop): Warrior1 will therefore go out to explore in one direction, Warrior2 will stay home for MP.

Assuming that Pop2 is now giving me +2FPT, 3SPT, Warrior3 will complete in the next 3T (if I switch some food for 4 SPT partway), and can go exploring in the opposite direction to Warrior1. Warriors 1+3 will be sent outwards in expanding spirals, to look for decent 1st-ring town-sites -- and goody-huts (though I may hold off on popping any which are close to my core, and/or not on D-bonus terrain, in case of Barbs -- and I won't pop any huts without temporarily switching off any Settler-builds in progress).

Spoiler :

Adjust the above as necessary to take account of Bonus-/LuxRes, or Floodplains-/Plains-starts, or if AGRI (easier to get >2FPT), or if EXP (all huts will be popped on discovery), or...

agonistes · Aug 9, 2016

Don't think this has been mentioned yet, but there is quite a bit of discussion on mining/roading/clearing etc, so thought I would add:

When a worker moves onto a tile, mine/irrigate first, then road. And always road. Don't leave the tile and then come back. When you do, you've just wasted 2 full turns with that worker. That wastage adds up. 100s (if not thousands) of tiles? 100s of turns x2 wasted. If I mine a bonus grassland, then road, and then have to move 2 tiles to the next bonus grassland, I will road my way there. Probably this is just a weird thing for me, I guess, because it would seem to slow down early shield burst, but that's what I do, and it works.

I also strongly agree with the tip: clear first, then road. However, I also strongly agree with the (combined) advice, don't waste shields on building early granaries. When/if you do build granaries, try to clear some forests to speed it up. Granaries are very shield intensive. So sometimes it is in fact better to road a forest, in order to save the forest for later shields. Sometimes.

And unless you are roading to a resource and desperate for smiley faces.

Generally, I wouldn't waste time clearing a forest early on, though, and certainly wouldn't waste time clearing marsh/jungle - if you were unfortunate enough to build a city in a rainforest, work the clear tiles that there are, let the rest sit (til you have some spare time **see exception below). I also would only irrigate wheat/cattle, and those tiles I need to irrigate to get to the wheat/cattle to irrigate them. Don't bother irrigating regular grassland until you get or are close to getting a government upgrade.

edited out some stuff because it had been mentioned.

Other folks tend to hate barracks. I love them, and build them in every city. I HATE having short bar units. I delete them. So before I send out my spear/settler teams, I build a barracks. Maybe chop a forest to speed this up.

As for my walls... its rare that I build them. But sometimes you just know an AI is going to want to hit a city, so then I would wall it. I also would wall a city that is out in the frontier areas far from home, like a city you built on a resource that is 20+ turns from your civ heartland.

In short... make your civ as big as you can as fast you can.

** the rainforest exception:
Once in a blue moon, you see an exceptional spot for a city (either to build a wonder, or because of its potential to be a shield monster), but that spot is presently covered in jungle. Well, get started. It ain't gonna clear itself. Dedicate some workers, the more the better, into clearing it and working it. I think jungle asks for 4 workers, if I recall. So maybe 12 workers working 3 tiles at a time?

Republic is for nerds. Monarch is for heroes. My sciencing tends to differ by game, I try to get Monarchy asap, but I always worry I am missing out an iron resource, so sometimes I pick that up on the way. Early war can be a real chore if you don't have iron. I used to also always get knights and aim for some solid conquest when I get them, but lately my game has changed to where I view chivalry as just a wasted tech. But then, I'm not planning on conquering the world, either, and I'm wonder racing instead.

agonistes · Aug 9, 2016

(Yes they are, and) I generally start building Warriors (or Scouts, if EXP -- unless I'm the Inca!) for exploration straight away

There was actually a post not too far back about a Russian start and spamming scouts to pick up goodie huts, and how well it worked.

I don't usually play with goodies huts, but there is no question that they are highly valuable.

agonistes · Aug 9, 2016

What's the best way to irritate some hapless neighbor of my choice into being fool enough to declare war on me?

Spam demands for a city. Later on, you can try using submarines.

edited: I talk too much
:undecide:

This is embarrassing.

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