Mayan Mayhem: A Huge Deity Histographic

Can you block access to the prison city instead?

@CKS I could, and thanks for the suggestion. However, since I run a Republic, keeping 8 units in Carthage's territory would, I think, lead to another level of war weariness. So, I don't intend on doing , since I'd have to cover it with ships also, and more units than 8.

710 continued: I recapture Prison number 1, and it has resistance. Happily it didn't autoraze. The resistance comes from a Persian citizen. I decide not to buy a bunch of settlers this turn, as I do want to upgrade my cannons and rifles basically as soon as I can. By the end of the turn (having over 290 native workers), my beachhead looks like this:



I hadn't figured out that I needed a harbor for trading with my home island before this turn, but fortunately as you can see I have two coastal cities. One will produce barracks, the other a harbor this turn. I believe Carthage's fast unit consists of horses, as that's all I've seen running around, and I know they haven't had iron when the got Steam Power (they DO have two sources of coal), and when I gifted them two sources of saltpeter, they only had one available for sale.

I found a screenshot I took of my initial stack of doom before I started my first war with the Hittites:



On the interturn not even a single Carthaginian unit creeps into my territory! They seem to generally head south towards England. I guess the military alliances did make for a good idea!

720-143 flips to Rome... 142 had flipped earlier. I had three rifles in the city:



Score up to 7302 and MapStat looks like this:



I'd usually "pay" a little more in gpt for techs, just so I don't have to spend time haggling, but just to show for those who don't know how much monopoly techs at this stage can cost, I haggle, and here's the deal:



Since the harbor has come online, the only luxury I don't have native anymore consists of wines, and soon enough I'll acquire a source from Carthage. I've payed some 300+ gpt for a while to Babylon for silks, and 300+ gpt to Germany for wines for a while. I consider for a bit who I want to buy the wines from. I decide on Babylon, since the military advisor has told I have a "strong" army to them and an "average" army to Germany. I capture New Sardis of Persia. They finally have only one city left. Research gets set to The Corporation via scientists only.

720 continued: I realized a small trick/technique I hadn't before. The slaves I had gained from razing last turn I had roading the last turn. Since I have so many of them, and had also placed regular workers on those spots, I can just wake them all, and use them elsewhere. Say I had three slaves roading on the turn immediately before I had picked up RP. If I wake them all, after learning RP, I can create the road with just two slaves instead of three, and free up the other slave for other work.

I use a lot of ship chaining this turn. In other words, loading units into a galleon in a city, then moving the galleon out to sea, and loading those units into another galleon with more movement, and then finally loading those units out from the galleon at a city.

Spoonwood, sorry for the late reply but I'm now responding to your post 71 in this thread. Thanks a lot for your explanation this could really be in the War Academy! I now understand how to use the trick on pangea maps and with other AI's on the same land mass. The golden rule is to only cut the road when a lux is involved, right? Otherwise, the human player will take the hit and will still pay gpt. That was what I didn't get in the first place. I don't know if I should ask you more here since this is all about your Mayan empire, but I'll take the chance. On archipalego maps I don't get this to work. If I cut the road to my capital I will still pay gpt because I have harbors. If I sell my harbors, I won't be able to do the next round of "ring-ups" to trade, because it says I don't have a trade route anymore. You say in top of post 71 that as long as you cut your roads you don't need a harbor. So how do you use this trick on archipalego maps? I have two more questions.

-How do you best use this trick when playing for 20K? Would you say that this trick is more powerful when going for con/dom victories?
-Your forest chopping. Which buildings and in what order recieve the chopped shields? Do you wait to put in libraries, unversities and markets until after engineering(so you can replant and chop)?

AnthonyIII said:

The golden rule is to only cut the road when a lux is involved, right?

Click to expand...

You can use a luxury, yes... coming from the AI, not from you. You import, they export. You can also use a resource (horses, iron, saltpeter, coal, even potentially rubber, aluminum, oil, and uranium).

If you cut the road to your capital on an archipelago map it will work the same way, given that your capital isn't on a coast and does not have a harbor. My capital in my Iroquois game lay on a coast actually. Had I put a harbor there, after a while, cutting the roads there wouldn't have worked. So, on an archipelago map with your capital on a coast you can still cut the roads to your capital, so long as you don't put a harbor in your capital, since the trade route runs through the cities with harbors. I DO have harbors in this Mayan game... just not in my capital (which isn't on a coast).

Theoretically it comes as possible to use this in 20k games with your capital. You'd either want to have enough workers to rebuild every single turn around your capital every single turn (which come to think of it might come in around the number of workers you want to clean pollution every single turn near your capital once you have Shake's), or just deal with the decreased commerce. That said, if you play a 20k game on Sid, I highly recommend using your 2nd city (almost all of my 20k games on Sid have done this, and they've worked out much better this way in my opinion, because I can pre-build wonders... and with the high tech cost on Sid this becomes almost necessary at some point). So, you'd probably want to co-ordinate your second cities tiles such that it doesn't use any tiles directly around your capital.

That all said, I'm not sure if the potential benefits of this trick will work out all that well in many 20k games. If you need to pick up techs via this trick, instead of trading, then you'll probably have difficulties getting the high culture wonders. It might net you more gold earlier sure for cash-rushing buildings, but then you'll have fewer workers out to develop your lands... or have to pay more in unit support. This makes you doing research in a 20k game more difficult, and in basically any 20k game one of the best things you can do comes as to get techs yourself as fast as possible, get a lead over the AIs in techs, and then *push* your lead over the AIs in techs as much as you can for various reasons.

This isn't to say that it won't have any use in research-oriented games. For example, ignas's game basically used it pillaging at the borders in a spaceship game. That said, from what he said elsewhere, it seems fair to say that it disappointed him a bit towards the end, as the AIs started a nuclear war with each other, and he basically started to have to do his own research and forget about it (really, not too much of a problem by that point in the game... just a little nuisance from his plan, I'd think)... as I understand from what he told me elsewhere. I've also used the basic idea in a spaceship game at my borders. However, in a 20k game at any level, I wouldn't recommend it... or at least I have reservations about in a 20k game until proven otherwise, for any level.

One thing to keep in mind for a 20k game at a high level though, supposing that you play archipelago, comes as that if an AI lands units on your shores, they will declare on you next turn. So, if you can ask them to "leave or declare" (even with least aggressive AI), you can send them gpt for their techs/lump sums. Then you ask them to "leave or declare" and they'll declare on you, and you get to keep the techs/lump sums, without any reputation hit. In one or two Sid 20k games, I have also bought techs with gpt, and then declared war and just taken the reputation hit.

The disconnect-reconnect trick has use if 1. you don't want to do research for some reason 2. the AI has enough gold/gpt/techs to make it worth it 3. you can significantly benefit from war happiness 4. you need the AI to declare on you instead of you just declaring on them, 5. you want the AI to do faster research by funneling gpt to them, and you can't funnel gpt to a target AI another way. There may exist a few other conditions which make it worthwhile, but by and large it doesn't have much use if you can out-research the AI, since you can make a large portion of the gold you can get from it by selling techs for gpt and lump sums. For a HoF-type game, I can see it having some, though limited utility in some Deity games... and maybe some Demigod game... but even at both those levels, not all that much... and I don't think you'll find a single number 1 Deity or Demigod game that has intentionally used anything like it... only Sid games.

In general, I wouldn't recommend it for any 20k game... and I only recommend it for Sid non-20k games.

I don't recall when I did my forest choppings for which buildings. I know that I'll often change a city near the one I want the chop to go to, to the Palace, so that I can direct the shields towards the other city. I do know that in this Mayan game, I planted a lot of forests post-engineering to get my shield totals up once they hit or got near size 12. I did this before my golden age even, as I put in banks, and even though 17 shields isn't a great benefit over 15 shields when building horse-knights, or horse-calvary there exist some advantages... but first I'll digress to explain these terms, and how they work as I've used them enough in this game, and my other Sid military games, as well as my Deity histographic game...

By a horse-knight build, or horse-calvary build... I let the horse build finish, then I zoom to the city, and upgrade to a knight or calvary. I do this by first disconnecting any iron or saltpeter sources, either by pillaging the source in my territory with enough workers standing on the tile ready to reconnect (so industrious workers work best), or if I acquire iron or saltpeter from the AIs (both of which cost a significant amount, though they do come as worth it) I cut the trade route with the AIs, then make sure I have horses connected... I might also purchase horses for gpt, at least initially... I know I did in this Mayan game. Then I change all my relevant builds to horseman (if a city builds a bank or marketplace, I won't change that, of course).

I also make sure to acquire any techs, if not doing any research, before doing the next step (if I will learn a tech the next turn via research of my own, it would change the horse build to a knight/calvary build). Then I reconnect the iron or saltpeter, or both one way or another. Then on the inter-turn, I zoom to the city and upgrade the horse to a knight, knight-type unit, calvary, or calvary-type unit (though I haven't played with Russia or the Ottomans doing this, it should work in principle). The knight/calvary then sits ready to go on the next turn... without having lost any time in the upgrade process. Of course, horse-knights and horse-calvary won't work for India, and I doubt for Japan (though I haven't tested them).

Ideally, of course, you'd want to combine horse-knights or horse-calvary builds with an early capture of Leo's in your first war... as I did in the China Large Sid game which should appear in the update, and I've written a little about in posts 189 and 190 of my general HoF thread. If you can acquire Invention, and time the Sun Tzu's cascade just right, this can work out very well... though this seems to depend a large amount on other things in the game that you can't really control. Or perhaps (and I have not tried it) it might even come as worth it to carefully pre-build and build Leo's yourself... though it might come as far too tricky to execute that.

In this Mayan game I put in horse-knights and horse-calvaries in cities that had at least 10 shields and barracks up (which I short-rushed mostly) until the turn before the Greek war. The Greeks had two large stacks of units roaming around during the wars I had allied them into (and they actually started coming towards me before I started any wars, and I had planned them as my first opponent... but then I realized they just wanted to fight the Hittites, not me), and I knew I wanted a huge surge of units to deal with them after I finished off Portugal (who really came as easy). So, the turn before I started the Greek war, *every* city that had barracks (many left over from the Hittites) either short-rushed or cash-rushed a worker-horse-calvary if necessary except my city of armies (MGLed in a rather corrupt area), which cash-rushed a worker-army. I may have also done this a little more on the second turn of the war. After that I think I've only cashed rushed armies and upgraded other units, as well as bought some settlers and a few temples and granaries. My war weariness did jump a lot during the Greek war, and I even did put up the luxury slider to 90% for happiness purposes at one point.

In more detail (and this will get back to forestry and I think it relates enough... stay with me), before the Greek war, in 10-14 (uncorrupted) shield cities the first turn I would just let the city start on the horse... at least once I felt I had enough trebuchets... and I actually ended up cash-rushing some of these in the south for the Hittite war. On the second turn, I would short-rush the horse by changing the build to either a spear or explorer, buying up to twenty shields. Then I would change the build back to the horse, and finally upgrade to a knight/calvary. 15-19 shield cities would just complete a horse-knight or horse-calvary every two turns without cash-rushing. 20 shield cities would either train spear-muskets (I might have had a few spear-pikes before this, though not many) or horse-knights/calvary whichever seemed better. I did something a little different with my 15-19 shield cities in my China and I think Iroquois game buying a worker, then a spear/explorer, letting the horse complete via shields, and then upgrading to the knight/calvary.

So, how does this all relate to forests, since most cities won't get 5 extra shields without losing a population eventually via starvation? Well,

1. I built banks, so forests helped to get these in a bit faster.

2. At size 12 (which most of my cities grew to quickly enough, as I cash-rushed granaries in basically every city of my core), a city will have say three extra food playing as agricultural if you mine green/irrigate brown. So, if it makes 15 shields per turn, you can increase it 18 shields per turn (without losing any population), which on the surface might look totally insignificant of an increase when training horse-knights or horse-calvary, but it's not for three reasons:

A. My first war triggered my Golden Age. A 15 shield, size 12 city, at the very best, becomes a 28 shield city during your GA. You could perhaps cash-rush a worker, then switch to the horse every turn... but if you have enough forests in place on regular grassland spots, you might just hit 30 shield production in that city. This means you can train a horse-knight or horse-calvary every single turn without cash-rushing at all. I believe I had 4 or 5 cities which did this every turn of my golden age, and a 5th or 6th which took one or two turns to get to 30 shields.

B. When I learned Steam Power and had coal, I could more quickly get my cities to 20 or in some cases 27 shields for 3/4 turn calvary without paying anything for them (other than unit support, of course), since a planted forest on a grassland gives the same amount of shields as a railroaded mined square on grassland.

C. The forests could, and did get chopped for some shield boosts (though I wasn't careful to track which squares had gotten chopped).

Natural forests basically got chopped for infrastructure, when it seemed like I wouldn't waste shields by chopping. Planted forests have basically gotten chopped for calvary. I know I haven't maximized my shield output in this respect, but I already have so much to do in this game, I don't mind missing a few things here and there.

If my first opponent had built Leo's for me (or had I pre-built and then built it myself... which I haven't tried yet.. and perhaps would have done better to do so), this game, no doubt, could have gone significantly better.

So, as I've kept on playing this, I've come with another (perhaps not all so great method) of picking city spots. Say you have a city on or near a coast. Given that the city has decent terrain figure out if moving deeper into the coastal area would work better, or if moving it farther out towards the inland would work better. In other words, figure the number of sea squares less the number of coastal squares in both spots. Whichever spot has the higher of (sea-coastal) squares, go for that spot. In terms of food potential, 1 coast plus 1 ocean equals 1 grassland, and both take one tile away from the domination limit.

In terms of food potential, 1 coast plus 1 ocean equals 1 grassland, and both take one tile away from the domination limit.

Asuming all citizens happy, 1 coast plus 1 sea/ocean = 4 points, 1 grassland 4fpt = 3 points.

del62 said:

In terms of food potential, 1 coast plus 1 ocean equals 1 grassland, and both take one tile away from the domination limit.

Asuming all citizens happy, 1 coast plus 1 sea/ocean = 4 points, 1 grassland 4fpt = 3 points.

Click to expand...

Oh wait, I see... the extra citizens increase score more. Does it then follow that the only advantage to settling in towards the coast, in general, would be when you can find other grassland (as opposed to plains or desert) that you won't end up using?

Looking at Moonsinger's and one of Eman's save cursorily, it seems that there doesn't exist all that much open land that ends up with good food potential.

720-score to 7302.

730-score to 7538. My score increase had started to outpace the 2nd and 3rd histographic games on the table. But, now they've started to outpace me in terms of score increase... even though I kind of doubt neither of them had Replacable Parts by this point (but, I do NOT have any way to discern this!) There exist at least three possible reasons for this:

1. All the settlers I bought decreased my population. This might not have affected things all that much, as I think Moonsinger and Kuningas has a lot of settlers floating around at this point, but I don't really know.

2. I hit the too many cities point a few turns ago. They don't seem to have had this problem, since they don't seem to abandon cities until a few turns later. I probably wouldn't have had this problem on a large map.

3. Persia isn't dead yet. Actually, they threw a rifle into my territory last turn near the city I had recently captured. I didn't want to abandon it, and my 8/13 army that attacked the 4/4 rifle in a forest lost. But, I digress. Since Persia isn't dead yet, in addition to war weariness from them, I've got this issue:



I had avoided clearing marsh and jungle, but upon learning RP, I've tried to place one native worker on every marsh and jungle square (clearing it by itself), one slave on a forest square (to chop, then road), as well as place a native worker on any square that doesn't have a road. Finding a native worker and a slave to irrigate also feels a lot easier than finding two native workers and two slaves to irrigate, so I think I've started to use my workers more efficiently now.

Spoonwood said:

Oh wait, I see... the extra citizens increase score more. Does it then follow that the only advantage to settling in towards the coast, in general, would be when you can find other grassland (as opposed to plains or desert) that you won't end up using?

Looking at Moonsinger's and one of Eman's save cursorily, it seems that there doesn't exist all that much open land that ends up with good food potential.

Click to expand...

I am not quite sure what you mean here, working citizens that are happy score two points per turn where a specialist only one. The fewer cities you have the better for the same area also helps increase final score, but I guess you already know this, if you can get a number of sea / ocean tiles in a cultural expansion then that helps.

A lot of it depends on how much you want to move things around, and is it worth waiting untill you have all you markets and hospitals built and most of your worker actions are complete before you start restructuring your cities,

I'd think you'd want to move cities around before you have infrastructure up, that way you don't build the infrastructure twice. I'm looking for a general guideline as to how to best place cities (I know use as much grassland as you can in general, 2 cities covering the same number of squares works out better than 3)... especially in coastal spots, without having to do a lot of calculations for each possible city spot. Does it come as worth it to jam cities into the coast as much as you can, so that you can maximize sea square usage... or does this not come as so advantageous since, even though you have the "free" sea squares, you have more ocean squares that you'll use? Where's EMan when you need him?

Some examples:

1:

I have 191 jammed into the coast right now. I had planned to put in a temple and use a few sea squares, abandoning Trebizond and placing a city on the hill where the mine lies right now, and another city where I have my settler right now. However, the number of coast tiles I end up using by having 191 seems significant. So, I could abandon 191 and place a city on the hill where the black X lays instead of having 191, and forget about those sea squares... that is, if I could pick up nice tiles elsewhere. Which works better and why? Also, what about New Salonika?

2:

I have 140 jammed into the coast, and it can pick up 3 sea squares. But, again the number of coastal tiles I gain from doing that seems high in comparison to the number of sea squares. So, should I leave 140 where it lies, or re-plant another city on the black X, and why does one work better than the other exactly?

3:

I feel fairly confident that Lagash works out better on the green X since it can grab more sea squares that way (I plan on buying a lot of settlers in temporary cities to move my most of my population around out of temporary cities at least a fair amount, once I've completed my upgrades... how I wish I had Leo's earlier! Infrastructure will work strictly on a civil engineer basis for a while. This might not work as the best plan on Sid, since the AIs do get you some nice buildings... some hospitals in this game even... but since the game plays to 2050 I believe it worth it to find ideal city spots, unless someone shows me otherwise). With that in mind, both Lagartero and Agade don't seem quite right (along with the surrounding cities... I hadn't seen the better site for Lagash before when I tagged Lagartero with the Keep tag). I could found the replacement city on the black X and pick up two sea squares, and thus I grab a fair amount of coastal tiles also. Or, I could plant on the orange X, forget the temple, and use fewer coastal tiles.

How do I go about evaluating nearby possible city sites like this in general? How do I do this without using a calculator? How do I develop an intuition as to a good general pattern for these city sites?

Thoughts? Suggestions? Criticisms?

Thanks for your PM Spoonwood. As I mentioned, I didn't even know you had A Big Game going.

I don't have time to study your stuff at the moment but I do have a Rule Of Thumb for placing cities, albeit at a lower level. But I think the same principle applies at any level.

I only consider a city to be "Permanent" if it's City-Average-Tile-Value, normally based on the 9 or 21 tiles that it occupies, is greater than or equal to -0.40, assuming all possible tiles are irrigated and railroaded, where:

1. Grassland tile has a value of 0.00 (Par)
2. Plains: -0.50
3. Coast: -1.00
4. Sea: +2.00
5. Hill: -1.50
6. Mountain/Volcano: -2.00
7. City Center Tile: -1.50 (Note: Same as Hill)
8. Cow: +1.00
9. Flood Plains: +1.00
10. Game: +1.00
11. Wine: +0.50
12. Desert: -0.50
13. Wheat: +1.00
14. Fur: +0.50
15. Fish: +0.50
16. Whale: +1.00
17. Oasis: +0.50
18. Banana: +0.50
(I may be missing some because I am going from memory.....Don't have a game open....But you get the general idea.)

So, you add up the values of all the tiles in the city's radius and divide by the number of "Domination-Limit-Applicable" tiles (viz. Sea tiles are not applicable to the DL.). If the answer is => -0.40, I consider the city to be permanent, else I designate it as temporary and it will be Abandoned later. Incidentally, I do use an Open Office spreadsheet to calculate the City-Average-Tile-Value, which I could upload if someone wants to use it.

Incidentally, the numbers are based on the amount of points that can be scored due to the number of citizens a tile can support. (I.e. A grassland tile can produce 4 food and thus support 2 citizens for a base of 3 points [Viz. 1 Happy + 1 Content]; A plains tile produces 3 food for 1.5 citizens, or 2.5 points, so is 0.5 points less than par.)

So, lets say you have a non-expanded city of 8 grassland tiles + City Center tile. That would have a value of:
((8 X 0.00) + (1 x -1.50))/9 = -0.17
So, since it's greater than -0.40, it's a Permanent City.

I can explain this further if necessary.

Good Luck in The Game!

P.s. Remember that Ocean tiles are never included in a city's radius, so are Not Applicable to any calculations.

730 continued-I now have all luxuries within my territory. I actually end up cutting the trade route two extra times (I only needed one, but I didn't figure it out the first time) to figure out who has what resources and luxuries. I'll basically now need to pillage or gift away cities to make any deals involving resources or luxuries. Carthage should get kicked off their homeland for good next turn, and I don't quite have as much military over on the new continent yet to take on Babylon, so I'll probably go at England next. I forgot to cycle through my cities this turn. Oh well.

740-Score to 7781. I noticed a few Persian galleys and frigates moving near my prison spots in old Persian lands. So, I scout with a worker:



Xerxes might be singing "I'm on a boat", I think (maybe this isn't correct), as I hadn't gotten the "too many cities" message until after or late during the Persian war. So, I actually move artillery proper to this continent to shell out these units.

Another thing I've done somewhat throughout this game once I've had rails... I've tried to place units of a certain type into stacks (in land locked areas... NOT on coasts, in case any enemy frigates lay nearby), as in this screenshot:



I have a settler stack, a cannon stack, a small infantry stack, a spot for calvary stack, and a few armies there. With cannon stacks especially, I've tried to keep them large, but under the 40 or so units that makes the stack longer than the screen if you right-click on them. This makes it easier to move units around in a few ways. Say I want to transport an army... I just click on the army stack. Say I want to upgrade a bunch of cannons. I click on a cannon stack, move that stack into a city and use "shift-u" to try and upgrade all those cannons in the stack. Say I want to shell out some target. I click on the cannon stack, use the "j" button, so long as the target spot where I want to move reads "0" when I use j, and proceed to shell out the target.

Thanks Eman!

I have a question. How do you deal with overlapping squares (which I'm sure you try to minimize, but nonetheless will come to exist)? Do you assign which tiles a city will/would work before you do any of those calculations? Also, how did you come up with -0.40 as the threshold value?

It doesn't matter if city tiles overlap, although obviously the score for that tile can only be used for one city.

What I do in that case is take the higher scoring city and assign the tile to that city. Then if, the other city doesn't make the -0.40 "cut", it gets razed (eventually).

How do I come up with the number "-0.40"?......Good Question. In my last HOF Histographic Regent-level game, I calculated the value of every city that you can see in the 2050AD.sav. I determined that no remaining city should produce a score of less than -0.40. (Viz. None of the cities left standing at 2050AD were valued at less than -0.40.....There are some situations where you have to value 2, 3 or 4 adjoining cities as if they were 1 city! [Viz. Those cities are interdependent on each other.])

Thus I figured that I would use that number in future games as my "Cut Line" to provisionally determine whether a city was Permanent or Temporary. Now, it is possible that the "Cut Line" could be raised or lowered.......But, that doesn't need to be determined until you've identified all the good city placements and you're getting ready to "Run Out The Clock".

And, in that HOF Regent-level game, I managed to make some cities Permanent when they would have otherwise been Temporary by setting up the AI's "Exile City" in the exact location so as to increase the value of my city because the AI is "controlling" some sub-par tiles.....I only did this with the AI's Capital City as I didn't want to run the risk of the city "Flipping" to me and thus triggering a Domination Victory. [Viz. Capital cities can't Flip.]

Spoonwood, You are playing on Sid or on Deity level?

This is SID