i am not very good

Now why would you need some Immortals Lee? :rolleyes:

I have assembled a force of warriors too, once I get the cash I'll upgrade them and probably go on a romp just to get my golden age started. That is, once I have settled all the land I still plan to claim. There is nothing like GA production to get all the planned marketplaces up and running :)

On a different note, I believe counting the free granaries overpowers the Pyramids in the scoring. The points for the shield cost, the improve growth rate and the reduced maintenance cost should be rewards enough. Otherwise, it is one of two wonders worth building under QSC, the other being Sun Tzu. Without the points for free granaries, some setups would call for an early Oracle or Hanging Gardens for happiness, other setups would call for the Great Library for free access to technology, and some setups might even call for the Great Lighthouse to create a brokering situation.

In any case, this is just my opinion. Giving too much weight to any wonders creates a false sense of 'I must have it'. Granted that on this map the Pyramids is THE wonder to build.

Edit: Oh and looking back at the mini maps, it looks like James, and maybe ControlFreak, are the only one to have secured the horses so far. Good move James, now get some workers out and build some roads :)
 
I am still running under the "get those settlers moving" routine. There was soo much land to be had I chose to build the second granary and move settlers from 2 locations. I think there is still more land to be had even at this stage.

This is the 3rd game I have been playing in where the capital could exclusively build settlers (LK33, and LK34 being the other), without too much MM and without dropping below size 4. That has been the key for my early expansion. The tough thing has been on how to get those cities that are being built actually productive. James that is where workers come in. I have found through guidance from Lee, Sirian and others that worker actions and city placement can really influence how things go.

On another note, is upgrading cheaper than building from scratch? In the case of the immortals what is the upgrade cost vs. the direct production costs. Also, Lee are you really going to upgrade all your "reg" warriors to "reg" immortals, a mass upgrade really needs SunZu to be effective or at least a few more barracks. In this game at Warlord the Sun is almost without doubt.

Hotrod

Just checked the charts, yep Lee has built 4 baracks already

Should the cost of the baracks be included in the upgrade costs?
 
One other question? How are luxuries handled, or resources? I am in position on with a few town expansions and workers to pull in ivory, incence, dyes, furs, horses and iron. I think ivory is already hooked up. In some games a quick lux or 2 can make the difference, particularly when happiness is a real problem. Having 3+ lux also makes those markets all the more attactive.

Hotrod
 
Hotrod, upgrading from warrior to Immortal cost 40 golds each. Under Republic it costs 80 golds to rush an immortal with 10 shields work on it. So in that regard it is cheaper to upgrade than to build from scratch. But you have to consider if cash or time is the biggest issue.

At this level, building from scratch probably makes more sense because there is no urgency to get a strong military. You don't need more than one barrack to upgrade, now that I have a spear in every town, all my warriors moved to the only city with a barrack and are waiting for the upgrade. I did not upgrade yet because I have no need to. Regular troops can still kill a 1 hp archer or spear quite easily and will quickly promote to veteran so upgrading regular still makes sense. If you are strap for cash it is better to upgrade veteran first.

As for luxuries, I believe higher happiness means faster research or more cash and a better growth curve since more people can be productive. So even though there is no specific score for luxury, they improve your score in other ways.

Resources is even more subtle. If you control resources, you have access to better military, which may result in expansion through war, thus increasing your score through more cities and population.
 
Listening to all the comments here makes me realize why I'm on the lower half of the scores.

Re: Immortals. Looking back I guess I really didn't think about the PURPOSE of immortals. They are great attackers and bad defenders. Since my towns still need defence I should be building more spearmen. I'm hoping that having offensive capability is a deterent to the AI from attacking me. If they do and I can use the Immortals, I'll get a golden age. But since I have no plan to attack the AI (yet) I'll probably focus on spears from now on.

Re: Settler factories. I'm behind in # of towns and # of settlers. My goal has been to crank out settler after settler in the capital. I think that the top players are doing this too. My problem is I can't maintain my population. Where others say they go from 4 - 6, I drop 6-4-5-3-4-2 then I must build something else to let my pop come back. Am I missing something here?

Re: Wealth/Tech how are the top players making so much more money and so much more tech than me? I'm only working improved tiles, all with roads. I tried to get as many tiles along rivers a possible. What else can I do. Did I choose the wrong city placement for early towns?

Just trying to get better.:confused: All suggestions welcome!
:love:
 
BTW

Looks like my avatar was a good choice. I'm the only one with a galley besides Cracker. I see from the minimaps that I better pickup some flowers on my way north. I wouldn't want to show up as a guest to two civs with no presents.;)

Cracker, did you trade your world map to (I'm guessing from color, Egypt and Rome)? I know you must have gotten theirs from the amount of exploration you have but I'm not sure I want them to know about the penisula of grassland NW of the dyes. I know that AI's start with the knowledge of resource location but will they know about territory on our continent if we don't sell them a map?

Edit: Hey, how come you still only have 4 contacts if you've got all a map of the two civs? Did you get this info from Babs or someone you knew already?
 
CFreak,

The contact count was just an error on my part in data entry. Glad you caught that, I have now fixed it.

Since you get to see that map in advance it could definately save you a turn or two on contacts. I actually went the wrong way up there because I was distracted a bit.

I traded for their world map but did not give them mine.

The AI knowledge of the World Map is coded sort of flaky in some ways. They sort of have total knowledge of the map even without exploring or without you giving them your map. Selling them a map just seems to kick them up a notch in settler spewing.
 
I had the same questions about crackers map. With a granary in the capital and my second city both are able to build settlers and grow to size 6 on the same turns thus only dropping to 4 and starting over. It takes some MM but it does happen. The growth is the key, growing a city means more workers and in the city and overall more shields. Staying with High food and MM allows the balance to grow exactly at the same time the settler is built.

Hotrod

JaxonCa: moving the warriors out as spears come in is a good tip I usually wait too long and by the time I decide to move them I really need the MP duty. Albeit a regular warrior.
 
Hotrod can you detail the micromanagement? My capital is working grassland and wheat. Every tile I have has two food except irrigated wheat which has four. The mines on BGs have two sheilds each. I can't micromanage for any more food. only for fewer sheilds. Am I building sheilds too fast? How many turns does it take for you to go from 4 to 6? I only irrigated the wheat, all other tiles are mined. Is this correct?
 
I will check this out tonight. I do remember that I have to change from a bonus grass to a regular unmined grass for 1 turn to avoid completing the settler too soon. If I left it alone I would grow to 6 in 3 and complete the settler in 2, by MM to slow the shields I can still grow in 3 and slow the settler to be completed in 3. Is this better I am not sure but it seems to be working for me?

I will check it out tonight for more specific information.

Hotrod

I checked my reports and I am getting a settler every 6 turns out of the capital and Paresegarde(sp)
 
Here's a thread that you guys may find useful in your talks about granaries.
The early game build out
And here's a quote by Cartouche Bee on how much extra food is needed to produce settlers at a certain pace with or without granaries.
It all depend on the situation.

The best you can hope for is a situation where you can produce 5 extra food per turn and have a granary. Assuming that there is enough shield production you can pop a settler every 4 turns. You need either a haystack on a flood plain or two bonus squares (haystack, cattle, game, floodplain) to have a shot at this.

The next best situation is producing 4 extra food with granary then you can only produce a settler every 6 turns.

The next best situation is producing 5 extra food then you can only produce a settler every 8 turns.
The next best situation is producing 3 extra food with granary then you can only produce a settler every 8 turns.

The next best situation is producing 4 extra food then you can only produce a settler every 10 turns.
The next best situation is producing 2 extra food with granary then you can only produce a settler every 10 turns.

The next best situation is producing 3 extra food then you can only produce a settler every 14 turns.

The next best situation is producing 2 extra food then you can only produce a settler every 20 turns.
 
Looking at the reports, one big difference I can see in the minimap comparison is city layout. All the players at the top have gone for a denser city placement that while overlapping allows for max shield use in cities for most of the early to midgame. I can't really salvage that quickly- any 'fill-ins' I'll have to make will probably occur after I get the Pyramids as I need to claim the territory in the northern dye peninsula- but afterwards I may be able to regain some production. As it is, I'll never catch up at this point- having an early FP will help me not fall completely behind, but my infrastructure will suffer from not having those early extra cities, as they have to focus on settler production at the moment.
I don't usually play on larger maps, and having all that territory to sprawl over made me lazy- usually I'm much more efficient in ekeing every last dab of productivity out of the terrain.
 
This discussion is good, and my best lesson so far : MORE WORKERS!! I now realise about the whole reason behind this. Also Jaxom I think said how I got the horses along with Control. Well, I had to build next to the border of an Iroquois city, but that doesn't matter, maybe I'll culture flip him or capture him!!

I just like getting settlers out like mad, then when all land has been aquired, build tons of workers (put the cities on autobuild and put 'Build workers' on always, you'll get a ton!!
 
I am not fond of Governors or Automated workers. Choosing what's best at that time I have found to be more productive. Workers are great to have but don't neglect the infrastructure or military. I find that if a city is only producing 1 or 2 shields and can grow to 2 in time for a worker to pop at the same time then a worker it is. That worker is usually put to task in that city but not on auto, particularly in a SG. The early worker will help that city grow that much faster.

Hotrod

Bam. good info on the settlers!
 
Here's an image of a micromanagement example:



This composite image is actually from my Persepolis circa 1790bc and it shows a case when micromanagement is almost required.

The Persepolis site had the wheat on grass which when irrigated under despostism gave a net of 4 extra food per turn. With a granary in place, only 10 food is required to grow a new person but 3 turns of the wheat square would be 12 with 2 wasted.

Every third turn, I would have to micromanage the citizen assignment to move the citizen off of the wheat square and onto the next best square with 2/2/2 food/shields/gold instead of the four food units from the wheat. This way I could take the two food units and convert them to two extra shield units as shown by the numbers that I labeled in the food bins and the shield bin. The magenta colored shields are the shields I gained through micromanagement and effectively this reduced the number of turns required to produce each settler by 1 turn. This site was in perfect equilibrium at pop numbers between 2 and 4 without any military police or luxury expenses.

The focus of this example is only on shields and food, but it is important not to lose sight of the third part of the equation that impacts gold/commerce production. Fortunately, in this example all the powerful terrain squares (except for square labeled 5 in the righthand image) were located next to rivers and with roads in place would have the same 2 commerce per turn output.

Note also that I did not bother to mine tile 6 in the image because it would have produced 1 extra shield which would have been wasted and then the population would have dropped back down to where the tile would not have been used.

General Disdainful Comment: This is definately one of those tedious thing that the governors ought to be able to do based on the settings currently available. It would not be that difficult for a competent programming approach to use the terrain power assessment to determine when the citizen assignements should be rearranged. Not only would this make the game less tedious and more fun, it would also result in a more competent AI and this would reduce the need to rely on imbalanced cost factors and other kluges that we see a great deal.
 
Originally posted by cracker


General Disdainful Comment: This is definately one of those tedious thing that the governors ought to be able to do based on the settings currently available. It would not be that difficult for a competent programming approach to use the terrain power assessment to determine when the citizen assignements should be rearranged. Not only would this make the game less tedious and more fun, it would also result in a more competent AI and this would reduce the need to rely on imbalanced cost factors and other kluges that we see a great deal.

Improving the governors would indeed be one of the easiest ways to get a better performance out of the AI. When I play a game without all the exploits and dastardly cheap shots, I use the governors to play with the same handicap as the AI. :)
 
If I can just insert a quick note from a lurker. what you guys have going here is nothing less than amazing. I read the first page, and only got a glimpse of page NINE(!) Before I say anything, I want to promise all participants that I will read EVERY post in this amazing thread. THIS is what I wanted out of CFC. Thumbs way the hell up to you guys!

It seems a bit late to join the festivities, but please let me know if this goes down again. I'd very much like to join in.

@cracker: please forgive any previous outbursts on my part against you. I had no idea. the work you're doing here is amazing. these people have quite the mentor.:goodjob:

I'm going back to page two. excuse me if i vanish for a while, as i have a lot of catching up to do.
 
OK, so the only condition to micromanage persepolis is when setters go from pop4 to pop2 every six turns. I tried to let persepolis grow to 6 and then bounce 6 to 4. The problem is that I have more sheild per turn than extra food per turn. So my settler will always get built in in three turns and it takes three turns to grow 1 pop. So starting at 6 I end up with 6-4-5-3-4-2 and then I end up building something else to come back up in population. I haven't done the math to see which way produces more settlers. I do think that I get more gold per turn this way though since each square worked gets at least 1gpt, and three get 2gpt. Going this way also eliminates the micromanagement except selecting what to build next. I'm guessing the math will show that micromanagement from 4 to 2 will give an extra settler every sixth settler?

Since I'm at the bottom, maybe this is one of the many reasons why I'm not doing as well as I could.:confused:

EDIT: so what I should do is road but not mine the river squares. Then I could still run the micromanagement of a settler per 6 turns but do it from 6 to 4 instead, gaining the extra gold. Is that right?
 
If the governers could do what cracker and all you good players do then the key would be to provide the governor with the right combination of worked tiles. I can handle the micromanagement but I think where I'm really lacking is what the right combination of worked tiles are.

I learned from LK that I should never leave a tile without roading it first. And I know that I should have an improved tile for every citizen in my town. I also know that in despotism, never make an improvement that raises what your improving from 2 to 3 because the despot penalty will reduce it back to 2. (Exception: bonus that would be three and has already been reduced to 2 can become 3 with improvement.) Each tile has a starting strength and an improved strength. I know how to prioritize the strongest tiles and improve them first. I think that my problem might be overkill on improvements and wasted worker turns (useless) before their moved to the next town.

What should I look for when deciding to improve? When is it ok to use 2 or 3 worker MOVES (on roads of course) to get to the next town? I hate to leave a city with a potential size of 12 with only a few improved tiles and then have to come back later. But in the case of Persepolis, this could have been the right move.
 
Originally posted by ControlFreak
...
The problem is that I have more sheild per turn than extra food per turn. So my settler will always get built in in three turns and it takes three turns to grow 1 pop. So starting at 6 I end up with 6-4-5-3-4-2 and then I end up building something else to come back up in population.
...

You needed to build something else that took 3 turns in between.
In my case, I was starting a spear at size 4 and a settler at size 5 so my capitol was oscillating between size 6 and 4. This gave me better research overall. I never had more than one town producing settlers. Population is power, but only close to your capitol. So my most corrupt city was the only one producing workers. My least corrupt city was supposed to supply military but it turned out I was better off building spears in the capitol, so that city started on a wonder instead. Every other city went straight into building improvement, no workers, no military.

I opened up your save file and you are in a decent position. You are holding the key land positions except for one iron and your tiles have sensible improvements. You are lacking in workers, and have too many of them bunched together but that is something that can easily be fixed. I try to have 1 worker for each city, 2 in high food cities, and then 2-3 groups of 2 to build roads between cities. So in that regard I also am lacking workers :)

Hand in there, I think you have the basics well covered.
 
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