GOTM23 Succession Game [civ3]

Yes I blame the lack of power for the date mix up. I was running off laptop power if you are wondering, had about 30 minutes left when the power came back.

What I was doing was just subtracting 50 years each turn in my notes and not taking notice of the actual date

Which reminds me to charge up the batteries as I have a 6 hour flight tomorrow. I feel sorry for the guy next to me. I actually look forward to a flight when I can play GOTM for 6 hours straight, with somebody bringing you food and drink.

NOw that sounds a great way to while away a six hour flight! I envy you on several counts:

1 When I was doing my long haul flying my Powerbook battery was good for two hours max.

2. When I was doing my long haul flying my cheap employers (later that was me ) bought me cattle-class seats where a modest Pismo would only open far enough to use if the guy in front had his seat back in take-off position, so it wasn't worth investing in spare batteries anyway.

3 Where was Civ3 when I needed it then?

Well played, Smack.
Must have been really a weird feeling, to play in those conditions.

I got the save, anyway. I won't be able to play at work today (now, that's strange ), so I expect to be able to post my log on Monday morning.

We can use the next hours to talk about city placement.

@MacBaldrick -no problems about your mentioning oil. We should not even get to the Industrial Age in this game, unless we want Ted to keep on chuckling forever...

I was thinking to build the next two cities to take advantage of the Flood Plains to the S; then the Olives and Goats to the North.
With three-four cities around Makkah we would be able to build some military units while popping settlers, and to start the FP without sacrificing too much production.

As a first site, I would like (distances from Makkah):
- 3SW+1S (has water, is not on FP and can use both FP and Olives right away)
- 3SE+1S (can use FP and is in the direction of 'our' horses, but has no running water and needs border expansion to use Olives).
After that, I can't say right now.
Since the first two spots are (not intentionally) 4.5 tiles from Makkah, some interesting places are:
- 3NW+1N for the olives (or 2W+1NW as Alan was saying, or both)
- 3N for the goats.

- 3E for the spices (?), but that needs some exploration.
The FP could be started in the area between the spices and the horses for what I can see here.
Actually, it doesn't seem feasible to build it anywhere else, but we will need to know the map in that region to be able to talk about it.


The first city site seems easier to develop in a short time, so I would go for it unless we want to discuss the issue a bit more. I won't be able to start playing before tomorrow anyway, so I will check the forum before I start playing.

Karasu, as you're taking your turn, please be thinking up suggestions for what I should do on mine.

Alweth, I'm sure you'll get some suggestions. Your problem will be deciding which ones to follow, if any

Originally posted by Karasu
I was thinking to build the next two cities to take advantage of the Flood Plains to the S; then the Olives and Goats to the North.
With three-four cities around Makkah we would be able to build some military units while popping settlers, and to start the FP without sacrificing too much production.

Click to expand...

Sounds good. I still think we have some unfinished business wrt our remote settler - do we settle near India, or try to get him a bit nearer home? In my experience the AI probably won't attack an unaccompanied settler, and we've seen no barbs yet that I'm aware of, so he could probably get back to build a core city if we thought that was a good idea.

As a first site, I would like (distances from Makkah):
- 3SW+1S (has water, is not on FP and can use both FP and Olives right away)
- 3SE+1S (can use FP and is in the direction of 'our' horses, but has no running water and needs border expansion to use Olives).
After that, I can't say right now.
Since the first two spots are (not intentionally) 4.5 tiles from Makkah, some interesting places are:
- 3NW+1N for the olives (or 2W+1NW as Alan was saying, or both)
- 3N for the goats.

- 3E for the spices (?), but that needs some exploration.
The FP could be started in the area between the spices and the horses for what I can see here.
Actually, it doesn't seem feasible to build it anywhere else, but we will need to know the map in that region to be able to talk about it.

Click to expand...

I don't think it will make any difference whether we build on or next to the flood plain. As far as I know, a city is vulnerable to disease whenever it is working flood plains. Disease can only hit at pop 2 or above, by which time we would be working a flood plain tile if it's in reach anyway.

Just to provide an aunt sally for debate, I have put together a map showing RCP distances of settlable tiles between 3 and 8 from Makkah, plus a possible dot map for five cities at distance 4 (or 4.5). Please don't consider this definitive. I wasn't looking for RCP, so much as a distribution of cities not too far from Makkah, with enough overlap for some tile sharing as they grow. It happens to give radius 4 for most of them, but there is one at radius 3 to get another fresh water city that wouldn't need an aquaduct. Fresh water cities can be specially useful if we want to get an early start on a wonder or forbidden palace and not have a pop 6 limit to cramp our style as it builds.

Feel free to tear it to pieces:

The first city site seems easier to develop in a short time, so I would go for it unless we want to discuss the issue a bit more. I won't be able to start playing before tomorrow anyway, so I will check the forum before I start playing.

Click to expand...

I agree with going for your olives site - it gets an immediate extra shield and would fit into most city plans I've tried. I think it's a toss up whether we build the other flood plains city or the northern goats next. They both point at our neighbors, but I like the the flood plains one, as it also moves us in the direction of the horses. It can also make better use of shared tiles as Makkah's pop grows and falls as it produces settlers.

Originally posted by AlanH

Sounds good. I still think we have some unfinished business wrt our remote settler - do we settle near India, or try to get him a bit nearer home? In my experience the AI probably won't attack an unaccompanied settler, and we've seen no barbs yet that I'm aware of, so he could probably get back to build a core city if we thought that was a good idea.

Click to expand...

I don't like a city that far from home at all, but it surely is a long way back...
I thought the general consensus was on settling there, but if there is a possibility to start the 'pilgrimage', I would like to consider it.

I like the dotmap -the SE city just has no obvious site for us to pick. I'll explore a bit more the area.

Sorry for the rushed post, but connecting from home is not the same as connecting from work...

Originally posted by Karasu


I don't like a city that far from home at all, but it surely is a long way back...
I thought the general consensus was on settling there, but if there is a possibility to start the 'pilgrimage', I would like to consider it.

Click to expand...

Check my first post after we started the debate about where he should settle. Sure, I contributed to the discussion of the options near Delhi, but I also raised the question of the value and productivity and vulnerability of a remote city this early.

I've checked. He's actually 29 turns away from Makkah. In that time we should be able to get most of our first rank cities settled unless we suffer anouther disease hit, so if we brought him back towards Makkah he could found a city in about 22 turns to contribute to a second ring in the east or north east. He could walk back through the big black area to do some exploring on the way. That would add value to our map, and we could send out a warrior or spear to meet him and to found a new city site around seven or eight turns away from Makkah.

I like the dotmap -the SE city just has no obvious site for us to pick. I'll explore a bit more the area.

Click to expand...

That's our best-explored direction, as it happens. I think we can see all we need in that area already, certainly within core city range of Makkah. That was one of my reasons for adding the distance markers to the map. There's only one isolated black tile in the region within reasonable core city distance from Makkah. Your proposed olives/lake city is a must-have, and that limits the options for another southern location.

There are only two alternatives for Firaxis distance 4 in that direction - one tile SE or one tile E from my dot. Either way we lose the river and that costs us 100 shields for an aquaduct. The move E has nothing else to commend it, so we can discard it. That leaves the SE move. A city there can reach the olives, but only after we build a temple for 30 shields. They would give us an extra shield per turn, but we can also get to them later with a second ring city and without a 130-shield expense. So the one shield per turn bonus is only effective between the time we build the city and its temple and the time we build the next SE city. As the south east is a priority direction for us (horses, Ottomans), that time is unlikely to be more than 30 turns, so the olives wouldn't even repay the cost of reaching them before that time.

So the key question is what would be the benefit of putting this city at Firaxis distance 4 and going RCP?

I thought this would be worth studying, if only to test the effect of RCP in a real situation. I've used Alexman's formula to estimate the effect on the other four towns of changing their rank from 1 to 2. I've put the results in a spreadsheet here for anyone who's interested.

[EDIT: In the interests of avoiding misleading the innocent future generations who may find their way to this post - the rest of this paragraph was rubbish, as a result of a misreading of the relevant formula, so I have faded it to pale grey and inserted the true situation afterwards. The above link also points to a corrected spreadsheet.

It looks as if it will make a difference of one or two shields and gold per turn in each of these four cities. This difference starts once their production gets to around 7 spt or 7 gpt, and lasts until we succeed in building the Forbidden Palace plus a new Palace elsewhere, when they should all become rank one anyway, so long as the nearest city to our new palace is at least at distance four. If this period lasts 100 turns, we can gain up to a total of 400 shields and 400 gold in waste/corruption from the four cities during that time by using strict RCP in the first ring. This is an interesting result, and does make a good selling pitch for RCP in this situation. It means an Aqueduct in that city would be more than paid for by the RCP benefits of putting it one tile SE of my dot, and it would probably still be cost effective even if we were to build a new palace in less than 50 turns or so from now. So here's my revised dot map.
The true story is that there is little-to-no difference in performance for these four cities if the SE city is placed at Firaxis distance 3 instead of 4. This is because at rank one or two the rank corruption effect is minimal. A few specific production rates suffer a hit of one extra corruption/waste unit per turn as rounding errors do their worst, but the difference is unlkely to pay for an aquaduct during the time it would exist.



Note also that there are two flood plain tiles and one NW olives tile that we can only work if we expand our borders, either by settling cities in a second ring or by building temples.

Exploration should concentrate on expanding our map to make it more valuable and to start planning our next ring of cities. We should have the best world map when Map Making comes around, as we and the Zulus are the only civs with scouts, and the Zulus are at one end of the continent. In the QSC I was able to trade my comprehensive map for Map Making, then corner all other known techs and cash and complete my map, all in a single turn. We also still need to meet Rome, I think. When Writing arrives we want to have all the contacts in case the others haven't met or traded them all yet.

Pre-turn
Everything looks fine.

Makkah is already at 5 food per turn, but a bit low on shields. I'm not sure we can make a 4-turns Settler Factory in Despotism.


Turn 1 - 2550 BC
Pop growth in Makkah means Mysticism next turn.

The faraway settler.
Hhmmmm...
I know it may be unpopular, but I will move it towards Makkah, with the Scout scouting ahead of him. It is going to take around 20 to reach the mountains east of Makkah. Not too much.
Of course, we can always build a city along the road, if necessary.

Stupid Gandhi must have got Mysticism from a stupid hut.


Turn 2 - 2510 BC
Mysticism. Polytheism in 40 turns (to be reassessed in the future).

No trades possible. Looks like Ottomans have Mysticism too.
Gift CB to France and Alphabet to Egypt, lest they lag too much in tech.


Turn 3 - 2470 BC
A scout ends its turn right in front of a Barbarian. Typical...
Makkah reaches pop 6; Settler in two turns.


Turn 4 - 2430 BC
Some scouting. There seems not to be too much room to the East.


Turn 5 - 2390 BC
Makkah: Settler - Worker


Turn 6 - 2350 BC
Goats are on the tile we had chosen for the next city.
I decide to settle in the desert 1NE, closer to Makkah (but as long as we keep building settlers, overlap will not be a problem).
The city will need an Aqueduct, though. And a Temple.

Settler moves in position. Worker is on Flood Plains.

Xerxes has found 25 gps, which he gladly gives us for The Wheel.


Turn 7 - 2310 BC
Madinah founded (at last): Warrior.

No trading opportunities.


Turn 8 - 2270 BC
Not much. Still no new techs around.

Workers on the Goats next to Madinah.

The second warrior from Makkah has been scouting to the NE. He'll be waiting for the Settler to come.


Turn 9 - 2230 BC
Still not much. No trades, some exploration.


Turn 10 - 2190 BC
Shaka had 28 gps, which we gladly receive for The Wheel.

The situation:




We need to reassess our city placements. Those goats forced a different distance from Makkah. It looks like the second city could go where Alan was originally suggesting (much as I don't like building on Flood Plains).
The northern cities can also be brought a little closer to the capital (sorry, I didn't have time to prepare a dotmap).

If we want to start building the FP, it could go in the area between Spices and Horses (3E of Makkah? 3E+1NE?).

I would have Makkah build another worker after the next settler (taking some care in managing the worked tiles).

Madinah could build a Granary to help with Settlers and workers, as it has both food and shields (plus a Temple sometie in between).
The next couple of cities could go for Barracks and Warriors (maybe the Temple for border expansion), and nothing else for some time.
Of course, this is just an idea -and maybe not even a good one.

One more point: no new techs came out during these turns, so I would expect IW and Writing to come out fairly soon. It would be nice to use Mysticism (and some money) for a good trading round, so remember to check the Diplo screen every turn.

Ops, almost forgot THE SAVE!

AlanH
smackster
Karasu
Alweth (Up Now)
MacBaldrick (Ondeck)

As my nick implies...

File names should be SG23C_BCXXXX.zip or .SAV
This is to avoid trying to open save games and having alternating 10AD,10BC,1000AD,1000BC...Really gets my goat for some reason. I wish Civ just used a regular open file dialog box where I could sort by date modified.

Alweth, open the save, make a plan and post questions if you have any.

Sorry, mates.
The uploaded files seem to have a 0-bytes size (which is not encouraging).
I will try with the attachments.

And the save (properly renamed... ).

After downloading Karasu's file I realize my tirade was misdirected. You can name the zip file anything you want. But please make sure the save game file has the above syntax. An note the capitalization. (OK, enough controlfreakout.)

Karasu, you can get a four turn settler factory. The key is to mine one of the plains tiles and MM every turn.

Here's how:
Size 5, empty food, empty shields:
Goat(+0F,+2S),Wool(+1F,+2S),FP(+1F)x2,Mined Plains(-1F,+2S)
That gives +4F,+7S on turn 1.

Size5, 4F, 7S:
Goat(+0F,+2S),Wool(+1F,+2S),FP(+1F)x3
That gives +6F which grows from size 5 to 6. The governer assigns the new worker to the Mined Plains(-1F,+2S) but since food is already calculated, the -1F is has no effect, you just get the +2S, resulting in +7S this turn.

Size6, 0F, 14S:
Size 5, empty food, empty shields:
Goat(+0F,+2S),Wool(+1F,+2S),FP(+1F)x2,Mined Plains(-1F,+2S) {same as size 5} plus 1 irrigated plains (+0F, +1S).
That gives +4F,+8S on turn 3.

Size 6, 4F, 22S:
Goat(+0F,+2S),Wool(+1F,+2S),FP(+1F)x3 {same as size 5} plus 1 irrigated plains (+0F, +1S).
Again, grow to size 7 the governer should put the new citizen on the mined plain giving +8S on turn 4.
22+8=30 -> Settler is done, and pop falls back to 5, 0F, 0S. Do it again.

So you will need a mined plain and an irrigated plain. You may also need to set the governer to prioritize shields. You will definitely need to check MicroManagement every turn to make sure you are on the right emphasis. The idea is if your food bin is empty, you work the mined plains, if its got 4food, you work the Flood Plains. That means you should never had a Grow in 2 indicated when you hit enter. The empty bin should have Grow in 3, the MM'd 4food bin should have Grow in 1. So if the capitol every has grow in 3 you're doing something wrong.

Not for those who are not into MM, you are going to miss this once in a while. Therefore you should not move all the workers away from the capitol but rather improve EVERY Tile. Mostly irrigate the plains but one or two mines won't hurt. They will be used if you miss the MM and the city grows past 6 without finishing the settler. Don't panic, let it finish and use the extra pop to build a higher ticket item like temple/spear. Then, as the food bin fills up, build settlers and workers to drop back down to your settler factory size

I HAD capitalized my file, I swear!

About the Settler factory, thanks for the solution: I thought it would work that way, even though I've been too lazy to work it out myself...

But I agree with you that it's worth, even if I personally hate micromanaging (Warning: restricted information).

Besides, we will need some mines for the SE city.

EDIT: talking about save files, it is safer if we zip them. In MB1 a probably corrupt upload caused some trouble. Zipping them won't prevent the problem, but will warn us in time.

EDIT2: Ops. Removed classified information from the post... I hope Cracker hasn't noticed

Karasu@ Although I am very impressed with your MM efforts in the current GOTM, please avoid discussing anything about GOTM24 in this non-spoiler thread. (Could you edit it out maybe.) I know it seems like a harmless comment but I'm forced to keep very strict rules to stay with this grey area SG. Thank you for your understanding.

Bad luck about the lost scout, and losing the race for Mysticism. We're really not getting the run of the ball, are we!

Good job getting the sattler back towards the core. We need all the local production we can get. No problems with me on that decision.

I would have settled Madinah one tile further south to get immediate access to the olives and fresh water. I don''t understand your fear of settling on flood plains. As I understand it disease probability is not affected by whether you are built on them or not, just whether you have a citizen working them, which would always be the case regardless where you build.

I just rechecked my RCP calculations, and they were rubbish. Ignore them and everything I said concerning the benfit of RCP in this situation, as I misinterpreted one of the formulae. My recalculation indicates that there would be a one shield or gold per turn benefit at a small number of specific production levels in the radius 4 cities. So I recommend that we settle the next four core cities according to my first dot map to avoid the cost of an aquaduct in the SE one.

I'm not sure why both workers are on Madinah duties. We still don't have the wool hooked up (my fault), and we should really have another irrigated plains tile for when Makkah grows to size 6 next turn.

Re. Makkah's shields. No point mining the goats while we are despotic of course - we would still be at 2 spt there. So if we sustain 5 fpt we can't do better than 6 spt at size 5 and 7 spt at size 6. To do that we need that irrigated plain SW of Makkah. That gives us 26 shields in the normal production sequence. Can we get 2 bonus shields on each pop growth turn? With a mined plain and governor set to emphasise production, the new pop each time should go for the mined plain and get an extra 2 shields as we go from 5 to 6 and again as we go from 6 to 7 and pop the settler. We would need to make sure that we revert to the 5 fpt configuration every two turns. Would that get us 30 shields every four turns?

Have fun, Alweth

Alan

Originally posted by AlanH
Can we get 2 bonus shields on each pop growth turn? With a mined plain and governor set to emphasise production, the new pop each time should go for the mined plain and get an extra 2 shields as we go from 5 to 6 and again as we go from 6 to 7 and pop the settler. We would need to make sure that we revert to the 5 fpt configuration every two turns. Would that get us 30 shields every four turns?

Click to expand...

Scroll up three (four counting yours) posts. I highlighted how to get a 4 turn settler factory in my second to last post (third to last counting this one).

BTW Happy Belated Birthday, Karasu. Sorry I missed it with being offline during the weekends. Hope it was fun.