Manco Capac
Friday,13 June,I Collapse
- Joined
- Mar 1, 2010
- Messages
- 8,051
The cake is a lie. Sorry.
Quick speed certainly decreases the value of chops in an indirect manner. Given chops consume more worker turn in parallel to a slower gamespeed (turn loss to go on the forest AND the actual action takes as much as normal speed), it certainly lowers a bit the power of chops. Nonetheless, lacking BW, still misses slavery...but again the gain is far weaker as organic production takes huge parts in low cost builds. For instance, a chariot "factory" exists well with a good production city even without help of chops.
I think quick speed favors his strategy a bit.
I wouldn't bother responding to anyone posting dismissive comments in your thread, without any solid reasoning or facts to back them up. It takes your valuable time to respond to troll-like posts from players that seem to make a point of including half-thought out comments in every thread of S&T. They are usually brilliant players, but they spread themselves too thin by responding to strategies that they have apparently not given critical thought to. They do themselves and readers of strategy articles like this one a disservice.
Your strategy would be best tested by someone who hasn't taken sides and thus would probably more fairly judge whether a BW or delayed BW strategy is best for a given map.
I will keep your strategy in mind as I continue to play some Quick and Normal speed Deity Domination games for the HoF tables.
I mentioned that I would play Deity game with Zara Yaqob on a Small map and Quick speed avoiding Bronze Working. I avoided Bronze Working until turn 60 (BC 600). Until I was building Universities in preparation for building Oxford University, I chopped Forests only on Hills to mine them. I chopped all 5 forests in my Capital's BFC to shorten the OU build by 6t. I rushed only one settler out to claim a Horse plot. I was able to peacefully settle six more cities in about the third ring of my capital. The AI could not settle close to my capital, because my Culture expanded rapidly due to the Creative trait, Stele +25% Culure and especially Quick speed where the culture pops at 5 (turn 2; ring 2) and 50 (turn 13; ring 3). The AI's only chance to settle close is with its second settler, since the first settler is usually settled in place. The AI's third settler comes out after turn 13 which is already too late for it to settle in the capital's third ring, since it can only settle in its own culture or neutral land.
As of turn 122 (AD 1240), I'm second in score right behind Washington. The other leaders are Lincoln, Mehmed II and Napoleon. If I can get to Steel soon enough, I can dominate the map with Cannons and Oromo Warriors. I'm building 7 XP (Barracks, Vassalage & Theocracy) Oromo Warriors now and promoting them to Drill IV. There is also a possibility to upgrade some of the Drill IV Oromo Warriors to Grenadiers or Riflemen to protect the Canons from mounted flanking attacks or the random Rifleman attack. EDIT: Drill II Oromo Warriors can take Formation, so maybe Combat I and Formation would be better promotions for defense against mounted units.
This is my first attempt at using Zara Yaqob with the goal of Domination and made some rather costly mistakes, but there is still a good chance to win. From my current position, a Cultural Victory may be the easiest, though it won't be a very good date, since I was totally focused on a Domination Victory.
Sun Tzu Wu
You could also use the free GE from Fusion to bulb... HBR? I don't think you can delay Pottery for that long...
I have no idea what strategy I'd employ without seeing the map.
Why don't you post the saves or some screenshots?
BTW, in my opinion, avoiding Pottery costs too much just to be able to bulb Gunpowder. I would slowly build up research rate with developing cottages plus progressively bigger Great Scientist Farms, so that Gunpowder can be completed in 5-10t. Not being able to build Cottages will likely cause much more than just 10 turns of delay.
Sun Tzu Wu
You might be able to cottage this capital, but there isn't really a good alternative Great Person farm location nearby. So I decided to run specialists in the capital early and therefore giving up pottery was only a matter of the granaries, not cottages. I am now sitting on 2 Great Engineers (only 10% Great Engineer chance!) and will be happy to use them in some meaningful way towards the end techs. Nevertheless, I am confident that you will finish this map more efficiently than I am and look forward to seeing how you accomplish that.
Very good point about chopping being nerfed by Quick speed which takes three turns for a Worker to chop a forest which is no different than Normal speed, but the Hammer is only 2/3 that of Normal speed. I've always thought that a Quick speed chop should be only 2/3 to scale with the # of hammers the chop provides. Unfortunately, Civ IV computes this # as 201/100 which rounds up to the nearest integer value which is 3, even though 2 would be much closer to being "correct".
Excellent point about organic hammers being more important for Quick speed. As you suggest, a city can eventually generate enough organic hammers to build a Chariot, Immortal or War Chariot in a single turn (20 Hpt).
Sun Wu Tzu
It should be noted that while chops are nerfed on Quick speed, whips are buffed.
Not only is the whip anger timer rounded down to 6 turns (60% of 10 turns), but the food growth thresholds is also rounded down. So hell no will I avoid slavery if I can't get away with it.
I could see delaying BW a few dozen turns becoming useful in some cases, but delaying it until Liberalism? Maybe I'm underestimating the tech pace of Diety games, but it sounds absurd. I could have built a half dozen more workers or settlers using BW (all of whom will snowball and pay back the investment beyond that of a mere 20-30 hammers), or entire wonders, using BW. It's not like other things have better opportunity costs.