GOTM23 Succession Game [civ3]

Originally posted by AlanH
For anyone unfamiliar with settler farming, we are already at five food per turn in Makkah, and so when our granary is built in five turns we shall expand every two turns, and we are nearly at pop 4 now. Makkah won't stop at 6 because it's on a river. But until we improve some plains and/or the goats we won't produce the 30 shields we need for a settler every four turns to keep the population under 7. However, while we have insufficient shields we can produce workers to keep the population under control. They only need 4 or 5 shields per turn. Most of us can slip up on this sort micromanagement occasionally, so in an emergency we should switch citizens from flood plains to plains tiles to slow down food production and avoid pop 7, but this is not best use of Makkah's good food resources.
You asked for advice, your going to get it.;)

If you do indeed "slip up" and let your population grow above 7, go with the flow. A large captial is extremely productive. Take this opportunity to build some higher ticket items (barracks, temple, even swords) Then build settlers. With the high shields of a large city, settlers build faster than you can grow. Your population will slowly drop back down. The food in your granary is used to fill the granary when you drop below size 6 so no waste there. MM to low food just because you want to avoid growing past size 6 is wasteful. You've already blown the settler every four turns, why not take advantage of the power rather than put a limit on your potential.

As far as RCP, it is very powerful but I still only use it to decide between two equal positions that grab the same resources. Note that the RCP route is in a large way negated by the City Rank Bug: A city that is closer to the FP than the closest city to the capital is given a first city ranking. I myself received a free town way away on the East. I built my FP near my Palace and if I had enough RL time, I would have used my first leader to move the Palace to the far away town. That have made my entire empire Rank 1! It just depends on how much you want to abuse the system.
 
Originally posted by ControlFreak
Note that it's bad form to do diplomacy on the last turn.
Whoops! :blush: I assumed I got twenty full turns to play, including any diplomacy actions. As I felt I'd worked hard for the trading opportunity afforded by the Wheel on my last turn, I did the deal with Carthage. I doubt if anyone would have done it differently, but I apologise to all, and especially to my successor MacBaldrick, the incumbent Sheik of Araby, if I stepped over the mark here.
 
AlanH actually I should have included a disclaimer: If you've been working your whole turn for a particular thing you want to get done feel free to: do the diplo on your last turn, play an extra turn or to, play a turn short. The ten turns is a guideline. Don't hog all the fun but don't short change yourself either. (thanks for that line Meldor)

If we fall off of a strict ten turns just be SURE YOU SAVE AT THE END OF 1000BC That's so I can do the comparison with the Quick Start Challenge scoring system.
 
Originally posted by ControlFreak

You asked for advice, your going to get it.;)

If you do indeed "slip up" and let your population grow above 7, go with the flow. A large captial is extremely productive. Take this opportunity to build some higher ticket items (barracks, temple, even swords) Then build settlers. With the high shields of a large city, settlers build faster than you can grow. Your population will slowly drop back down. The food in your granary is used to fill the granary when you drop below size 6 so no waste there. MM to low food just because you want to avoid growing past size 6 is wasteful. You've already blown the settler every four turns, why not take advantage of the power rather than put a limit on your potential.

I agree that large cities with lots of improved tiles to work are productive, but that will not be our position in the short term, during the phase before we even start pumping settlers. I'd rather we didn't blow or delay the 4-turn cycle early on if we can avoid it, but, as you say, it's not a disaster and we just have to get as much out of the city as possible if it happens, and get back to producing settlers as fast as possible. [A temple in the capital is useful for a cultural victory, but perhaps not in our situation. A barracks would be my first choice at this stage if we have to build something else].


Note that the RCP route is in a large way negated by the City Rank Bug: A city that is closer to the FP than the closest city to the capital is given a first city ranking.
It sounds like we agree. RCP does very little if you later want to move the Palace some distance, which is far more powerful than RCP anyway, and then RCP only has any effect prior to the move. Meanwhile you may be compromising resource management and other city placement considerations like defence, fresh water, or positioning relative to your rivals.
 
Have a look > here < for a very useful resource chart originally produced by ControlFreak.


Ted
 
Wow, you did put down "some comments", didn't you. ;)
Btw, I *love* discussing game plans...


Originally posted by AlanH

Check out the PTW timeline for an alternative approach that didn't look too clever to me, until they popped *two* techs from goodie huts, lucky B___s.

I didn't have time to check the other thread (but I will do that). One thing I tried to do in my GOTM attempt was to avoid Alphabet, acquire all the other first-layer techs and go hut-hunting hoping to speed up the path to Monarchy.
I didn't find any huts for a looooong time, so I ended up trading for Alphabet and trading again when I discovered Writing and Polytheism.
I managed to get to Monarchy reasonably early, but not enough to compete for a good finish date.

I think your approach was better, but I would really make an effort to rush to Monarchy -we can't think to do all the research on our own (besides, we need money for the upgrades...).



I'm still in two minds about RCP...

I agree with what you say. I personally prefer to place cities in 'strategic' locations, rather than in pre-determined tiles around the Capital.

But the key point relates to the FP. When and where to build it depends a lot on geography. In general, I started liking the 'safer' approach of building it close to the Capital and the moving the Palace (which, indeed, goes against 'hard-core RCP').

With the landscape I see here, this approach does not look too attractive -it would really be nice to get a GL soon, but when I last ended up depending on a leader, it came in 1750 AD...
We will surely need to discuss our approach to the FP and any possible Palace movements.


That's the other way to get to the horses...

A city right there would not be very productive, I fear. I'd rather have closer cities to share improved tiles and make the best use of our worker.
Besides, I like bashing our neighbours... :D

Also:
1. Yes, but I am confindent that we will be able to trade for Iron Working in a reasonable time.

2. With three or four core cities, it will be easy to build up to ten warriors in a short time. Besides, with good settler production we won't have too much to build other than Barracks, units and some temples for border expansion... (Two notable exceptions are pre-builds for wonders and the FP, depending on what we decide to do. I would really like Leonardo and Sun-Tzu...).

The gamble is our having it within close reach. If we don't, then we should make it our #1 priority to get it (with Archers, Chariots, culture, whatever) as we would really be too weak otherwise.

3. This is tough. The upgrade cost is 40. We can't self-research all the way to Monarchy, but need at least one 40-turns gamble and good trading to keep on par in tech and grow rich.
Plus, at some time we will *have* to go at max science if we want to acquire Monarchy (or Rep) in a short time.

4. This is very correct. We must avoid Makkah to grow to size 7 before it can produce 30 shields in four turns, and building workers is a good way to achieve that. We need a couple more workers quickly anyway.
 
I think we need to make a decision on whether to do a palace jump soon, that way we know that RCP round the capital will only have an effect in the early game. Personally I would still do RCP round that as you get so many location choices for cities with RCP and any bonus sheilds in the early game is a great help. Given that we have a couple of days before my turn I'll take the time to calculate our best city placement and compare with an RCP placement (once I can see enough of the map that is).

Then we should decide on our FP site and provide a close ring round the FP, that ring will likely be the first level corruption (after we jump) as the new palace is likely to be further away from its first level cities as the AI is likely to have built them.

Peronally again, I hate palace jumps, in Medal 5-6 my inner cities had built up so much that I had to build settlers everywhere to allow my FP site to become the next palace candidate after the jump. I ended up with about 30 settlers wandering around before I could make the jump. I vowed never to do it again after that. But in this game with slower growth should be easier to do.

Bottom line is lets decide if we do the palace jump now.

Smackster
 
My Ancient Age threw up just a couple of warriors from huts, and I lost as many to barbs - a net loss, swapping regulars for conscripts :(

Palace Jump. Another of my prejudices hits the streets - I've never done a palace jump, mainly because it goes against the grain to disband the capital I've come to regard as "home", and devoted so much time and attention to :). Also I have no confidence in my ability to apply the formulae that determine where the destination will be, and I don't much like reducing population to ensure it will work. I fully understand these are all bad reasons for not doing it, and I'd be interested to watch it being done at close quarters by an accomplished expert.

As you say, the Palace rebuild or jump usually happens in someone else's capital, so inevitably there will have been a bit of pointy stick work leading up to it. My preference is to get a leader to build the palace during the fighting, but I've never had to suffer a wait until 1700-plus for a leader :eek:. Since we are planning on a few skirmishes :D we all ought to check out SirPleb's leader farming thread in the Strategy Articles forum. The odds of leaders appearing are given in there, along with lots of suggestions on how to maximise the number of elites you get and when to use them to maximum effect.
 
Well I certainly agree with not doing the palace jump.

There is no doubt we need to get the FP up ASAP however, and as we will clearly be doing a little bit of fighting in this game it should come through that method. What helps is to farm the elites. Helps to identify our warrior farm builder and build a barraks . Then one method is to surround a barb camp, don't attack the camp, give them a space to move out, and then attack with your favorite unit. If we have the camp surrouded before the end of Ancient age then we should have great fun with 32 horses. Really helps to get the barb camp near the sea. Also if our unit is attacked by the AI and wins if that same unit attacks on our turn guaranteed promotion.

Once we have some elites then give them the easy kills. Imagine we attack a city with 2 regular, and 2 elite, first attack with regular so that the elite will attack the weaker defenders. I'm convinced this is the way to do it, but when I do it normally the regular wins against a vet defender and then the elite dies on the regular defender, crazy RNG. Also never attack with the elite into open space undefended, always have backup defence for the elite (a minder).

Finally as a contingency we should start a totally corrupt, or nearly totally corrupt FP ASAP (this is a 100 or 200 turn FP). So we identify our best place for it, take that city ASAP (or build it) and then start the FP. If we really get no luck on leaders we will actually get that FP in time. I usually forget and when its too late start the FP.
 
Originally posted by smackster
Well I certainly agree with not doing the palace jump.

There is no doubt we need to get the FP up ASAP however, and as we will clearly be doing a little bit of fighting in this game it should come through that method. What helps is to farm the elites. Helps to identify our warrior farm builder and build a barraks . Then one method is to surround a barb camp, don't attack the camp, give them a space to move out, and then attack with your favorite unit. If we have the camp surrouded before the end of Ancient age then we should have great fun with 32 horses. Really helps to get the barb camp near the sea. Also if our unit is attacked by the AI and wins if that same unit attacks on our turn guaranteed promotion.
All good stuff. I suspect ;) that there might be some useful barb farming territory to the south, where the south coast *might* be reasonably close and we *might* find a coastal camp.

Finally as a contingency we should start a totally corrupt, or nearly totally corrupt FP ASAP (this is a 100 or 200 turn FP). So we identify our best place for it, take that city ASAP (or build it) and then start the FP. If we really get no luck on leaders we will actually get that FP in time. I usually forget and when its too late start the FP.
Interesting ... I'm not sure I understand this bit. I would expect to build an FP somewhere where it will be surrounded by a local core of productive cities once it is complete, and hand build it fairly fast using a Palace pre-build as I grow the city count to the required level. That usually means it's one of my early core cities so that the core remains productive after I move the Palace. It sounds like you are suggesting we earmark a captured or built city further out from our core? Doesn't that result in higher distance corruption for our core cities once we move the palace? If this is a good plan, then one option that comes back on the table is to build my early city on the river bend near the horses and incense, and start the FP prebuild there.
 
Originally posted by Karasu
Wow, you did put down "some comments", didn't you. ;)
Btw, I *love* discussing game plans...
....
A city right there would not be very productive, I fear. I'd rather have closer cities to share improved tiles and make the best use of our worker.


On with the discussion then ...

I went back to my original post,and I *did* say the next town should be "towards the horses". The horses/river tiles are at radius 6 or 7 from Makkah, so horse city will be a second tier city when it arrives. I would actually build one at a closer distance first, radius 4-ish, for tile sharing with Makkah, but pointing in that approximate direction. For example, a city at S, SE, SE, or S, S, SE would be on the river, with access to flood plains for food and mountains for shields, and is moving in the right general direction. That way we get some roads going the right way, whether we are going to grab the horses ourselves or fight for them. My point was that the horses give us a strategic priority for the general direction of one early city. As has been suggested, we may choose to ignore that and go for the best food/shield resources we can find first.

You're right, we need to use our current worker carefully, and he will be fully occupied for a while on getting Makkah irrigated and roaded just to the settler farm level we need. We need road and irrigation on three more tiles, a mine somewhere, and we need to get the wool tile roaded. That's over 30 worker-turns by my reckoning, so we'll want a couple more workers as soon as the granary is done ... see the discussion about popping a few out during the settler farm build-up.
 
Originally posted by AlanH


Interesting ... I'm not sure I understand this bit. I would expect to build an FP somewhere where it will be surrounded by a local core of productive cities once it is complete, and hand build it fairly fast using a Palace pre-build as I grow the city count to the required level. That usually means it's one of my early core cities so that the core remains productive after I move the Palace. It sounds like you are suggesting we earmark a captured or built city further out from our core? Doesn't that result in higher distance corruption for our core cities once we move the palace? If this is a good plan, then one option that comes back on the table is to build my early city on the river bend near the horses and incense, and start the FP prebuild there.

Forget it my idea is crazy, I've been too into palace jumps, and leaders building FP. Actually building the FP somewhere distant is fine and you never move the palace, but that only really works with the jump or leader. To actually build it one sheild at a time, completely mad.

What I think you are saying makes a lot of sense.

So we build the FP (for example) a couple of cities west of the palace in a city that gets a reasonable amount of shields so it doesn't take too long. Then we rebuild the palace in a city a couple of cities east of the original palace and then our two cores are well spaced out and were easy to build. Brilliant.
If that is not what you are saying then its even more Brilliant, as its my idea :lol:

Smackster
 
Originally posted by smackster
Brilliant.
If that is not what you are saying then its even more Brilliant, as its my idea :lol:

Smackster
You get the credit for that one, as I was thinking of a new palace in a foreign capital, built with a leader that arises from the aquisition of said capital ... that's how we got onto leader farming. In my scheme I'd put the FP within one or two cities of Makkah so that it takes over the first core when the palace moves.
 
Okay. Thanks for your help guys. I was able to load the game, but I didn't do anything. I'm going to have to get used to some of the changes, like the new resources.

By the way, if anyone feels like explaining it, I would like to know why it is that sometimes bonus resources don't seem to give the bonus they're supposed to. An example is wheat which the Civilopedia says are supposed to give +2 food, but sometimes it seems like it's just giving plus 1.
 
Originally posted by AlanH

You get the credit for that one, as I was thinking of a new palace in a foreign capital, built with a leader that arises from the aquisition of said capital ... that's how we got onto leader farming. In my scheme I'd put the FP within one or two cities of Makkah so that it takes over the first core when the palace moves.

Sorry I was describing the contingency plan in case we don't get a leader. If we get a leader then just build the FP where ever we want, don't need to pre-build anything. But if we don't get a leader what do we do? What I was suggesting is that we start pre-building the FP in a totally corrupt foreign city as soon as we take it. Then if the leader does not work we still get the FP at a reasonable time.
 
Originally posted by Alweth
By the way, if anyone feels like explaining it, I would like to know why it is that sometimes bonus resources don't seem to give the bonus they're supposed to. An example is wheat which the Civilopedia says are supposed to give +2 food, but sometimes it seems like it's just giving plus 1.
In Despot any square that produces more than 2 food, shields or commerce get each reduced by 1. So wheat on grass (not irrigated) would be 2+2 =4 food, less 1 for despot = 3, and +1 = 4 if irrigated.

Here is a cheat sheet for the new resources.

Lambs:
Hills-2/1/0 default
2/2/0 if mined
Plains-2/1/0 default
2/2/0 if mined
3/1/0 if irrigate
Irrigate lambs on plains!

Sheep:
Hills-2/2/0 default
2/3/0 if mined
Plains-2/2/0 default
2/2/0 if mined
3/2/0 if irrigated
Irrigate Sheep on plains!

Wool:
Hills-2/2/1 default
2/3/1 if mined
Plains- 2/2/1 default
2/2/1 if mined
3/2/1 if irrigated
Irrigate wool on plains!

Oysters:
2/0/2 default
3/0/2 with harbor

Pearls:
2/0/4 default
3/0/4 with harbor

Coastal Rocks:
1/1/2 default
2/1/2 with harbor

Goats:
Desert-2/2/0 default
2/2/0 if mined
2/2/0 if irrigated
Hills-2/2/0 default
2/3/0 if mined
Mountains-
2/2/0 default
2/3/0 if mined
Just slap a road on those goats in desert!

Menudo (young goats):
Desert-2/1/0 default
2/2/0 if mined
2/1/0 if irrigated
Hills-2/1/0 default
2/2/0 if mined
Mountains-2/1/0 default
2/2/0 if mined
Mine those young goats in desert!

Olives:
Desert-2/1/1 default
2/2/1 if mined
2/1/1 if irrigated
Hills-2/1/1 default
2/2/1 if mined
Mountains-2/1/1 default
2/2/1 if mined
Mine those olives on desert!

Cotton:
Desert-0/2/2 default
0/2/2 if mined
1/2/2 if irrigated
Plains-1/2/2 default
1/2/2 if mined
2/2/2 if irrigated
irrigate that cotton!
 
Originally posted by Alweth
Thanks. I took the time to find the info in the manual.
Funny, but that is where I got it from too. However, it is worth noting that most information we discuss is not in the Civ manual so don't be afraid to ask again. All the goats and wool info came from a GOTM post (don't remember who).
 
@Alweth,
You should be able to find info on the new units and resources in the Civilopedia if you open the game (the 'pedia was edited for this purpose).

Regarding the FP placement, I agree on the approach(es) we have been discussing.
Given that getting a leader at the right time is what we all hope, building the FP on a reasonably (but not too) productive city in the Capital area is the safe approach: if we don't get the leader to relocate the Capital and we decide against 'the jump', then we will have a larger high-production core.
Not the best option, but certainly better than no FP at all: we will need to decide the location of this city as soon as we have more information on the local geography.
I have no clues about that (of course... ;) ), but it may not be an easy choice if we have little valuable land around Makkah.
 
MacBaldrick@ You are past your 24hr GOT IT period. Are you around?

Team@ I'm going to PM MacBaldrick. I will give him a grace period of another 24hr since this is the first round. I'd hate to drop to a three person roster but maybe he's just on vacation and will get it soon or at the end of the roster.
 
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