SGOTM 01 - Fifth Element

It sounds as we are set for confrontation with the Russians. It seems that it is just the two of us, we and Catherine, who share this landmass. Need to hurry for there is no one else to war with her, to our advantage.

It’s tempting to get the proposed location (re: #75, 4th screenshot). Yet it is too far, in my opinion, and is not as important any longer, with us getting into war with them. Besides, we might not make it anyway. I suggest to settle by the horses in the North. Build Pasture on Horses tile, connect to Thebes with roads (that’s where we will be building the chariots). The second worker (see below)will help building the connecting roads.

I suggest the spot for the second city to be 4N2E from Thebes (just E of horses). This location covers the horses (immediately after settling!), the two cows, and 3 plain hills (great production potential) and also a few flood plains (5 of them?). One or two of those should be Irrigated (if only to be converted to hamlets later on) to speed up this city growth.

Production queue at Thebes: finish the Warrior/ Settler/ second Worker/ finish Barracks/ Chariot/ Chariot/ Chariot… /

Any thoughts on Chariots’ promotion? Shock (+25% vs. melee units), Flanking I (+10% withdrawal chance), or just Combat I (+10% strength)?

Shock promotion is good vs. Spearman, making defensive combat odds almost even. With 20% withdrawal chances our chariots have, we should do just fine here, just move in stacks of, say, 3 chariots or more. The good news, nay, the better news is that it takes 37H for a chariot and 52H for a spearman. We will easily outproduce the Russians if need be.

Research:
Masonry becomes very important to boost H-production in the capital.
1. finish Mining. Build a mine in the capital.
2. Masonry. Build the quarry in the capital.
3. BW. After that it will depend on where copper is.

Farm Rice, and maybe a flood plain tile, to support the Hammers from the mine and the quarry.

Catherine has Archers (the cost is 37H, just like that of Chariots). We cannot reasonably hope to take walled cities full of archers and a few spearmen with chariots. Not until we can build axmen/swordsmen with City Raider promotion, and those we’ll need 2:1 against archers. If Moscow is on a hill and walled—there is not a chance until we have catapults. So the goal is to contain: outproduce militarily, pillage, intercept, disconnect… Any new settlement can be taken by Chariots, but not Moscow.

These is the core of our plan, the way I see it. Comments? Disagreements? What’s your reasoning on this, my teammates?

Just a couple of things for the record...

1. In a fit of paranoia, I checked to see if Catherine was who we were locked in peace with... she doesn't appear to be.

2. It's 10 moves from Thebes to my proposed city site. It's entirely possible that we might get beat to it. However, until we do, we should consider it.

If we do get beat to it, I pretty much agree with the second proposed site... it has a lot of potential, and it looks like it could crank out the chariots.

If we're planning to go after Russia, then seizing horses is paramount. We have an easy one to the N (agree with 1SE of horses for city location). I would think that building a city close to Russia in the hopes of outculturing her for the horses is very risky; she is also creative, so that part is a wash, and her capital has the advantage over our second city.

Trying to place a city next to moscow right away is risky at best (IMHO). To me the better bet is to get the horses that are close by, get the worker to hook them up asap, then build chariots and head south. If they've hooked up their horses, then that's the first pillaging job for the chariot. If/when we capture Moscow, then we are way ahead of where we would be by building the city S of the choke point this early.

Greg

@#81-83

Agreed - I was going to drop lobbying for that city site, but if you lot agree ...

Definitely shock to deal with spearmen. Does anyone know how our chariots are likely to cope against archers?

Got the save opened it with no problems.

I ll play couple of turns tonight and post the process for further suggestions.

AlanH said:

put [spoiler ] ..... [/spoiler] tags round it without the space in the first one.

Click to expand...

@Alan, Thanks from me too, I always wondered how to do that.

@Merum I like using a spoiler for the turnlog, I'll go back and edit my post tonight and include the combat stuff.

Has anyone checked whether we can go to war with Russia. I didn't try during my turn set. [edit #82] Ah Merum you too had the same fit of panic. That'll teach me to post before reading the thread to the end. It looks like we can fight Cathy.

Overall I am fully in agreement with the current thinking as summarised @#81-83.

gskuy #81 said:

... Shock promotion is good vs. Spearman, making defensive combat odds almost even. With 20% withdrawal chances our chariots have, we should do just fine here, just move in stacks of, say, 3 chariots or more...

Click to expand...

Not sure from the above but I'm pretty sure our chariots can only withdraw when attacking. Also don't think they can be Medics so we should slip a warrior into the chariot build queue. From 4XP were only one fight away from Medic I and we should pick that +1XP up from the barbs.

Looking forward to your progress Doom_Train...

@gskur 81: I agree with your suggestion to put our second city near the northern horses . The southern horses are at a very nice location, but if we're going to take out Catherine, they'll be ours anyway soon. The northern city will get us chariots quicker and safer.

Doom Train said:

Got the save opened it with no problems.

I ll play couple of turns tonight and post the process for further suggestions.

Click to expand...

You probably know this but just in case you didn't and for the benefit of any lurkers.....

....When the worker is built the first job is going to be to pasturise the cows. As that is two movement points away on flatlands, our first worker turn will be wasted on just movement if the worker moves there all in one go.

Therefore the trick is move only one tile south the first turn and order the worker to farm the FP (you could choose to road instead). Then IMMEDIATELY cancel the worker action by reselecting it the same turn and either 1) ordering it to move to the cows or 2) pressing the cancel order icon (red circle with a cross in it).

On the second turn the worker completes the move to the cows and as it has a spare movement point still gets to start pasturising the cows and when we later go back to the FP there is one turn less to complete the road or farm.

I completed 5 turns. Here is the process so far.

Turn 1 3130BC : Moved Tefnut to the hill(New sugar source discovered two tiles away from the hill) and Anhur is going to rest for 2 turns. Worker move points already finished when i got the save.

Turn 2 3100BC: A russian archer spotted by Tefnut. Worker started to build pasture. Tefnut will continue to scout russian border see if he can get inside information.



Turn 3 3070BC: Buddihisim founded on distant lands. Tefnut moved to new sugar source and from there she can clearly see the defenses of Moscow. 2 Archers are guarding Moscow( So far we have spotted 3 archers ). Also there iis a worker building pasture. Anhur is ready for action again, his new mission is to explore the land down the river.


Turn 4 3040BC: Nothing interesting

Turn 5 3010BC: Mining researched. next masonry. But i didnt ended the turn just in case.

I will continue tommorow night so post your further suggestions for worker BO, research and city BO.

i am planning build a mine after pasture finishes, city will work on barracks until size grows to 3 (I think everybody agrees with this). When size hits 3 i ll switch it to settler. Tefnut will continue to scout Russian border and Anhur will explore the land down the river.

Perugia thanks for the tip but worker was already on cows (and movement points finished) when i got the save.

A question: How many turns do i have to play 10 or 20?

I agree about a mine next as mines are the quickest improvement, I propose this is the grassland hill directly south of moscow from where the worker move in any direction.

Also agree on barracks until grow to size 3 but be ready to put at least some hammers into another warrior if barbs show up.

Not sure about Masonry just yet as it will take a while for the worker to get to the stone. If we are building a settler then the rice farm is as good as the stone and we already have the tech for that.

How many turns until pasture completes 7? + 1 to move to hill 6 to mine + 1 to move to rice and start farm which takes 8 turns AFIR. After that we can quarry the stone to make Thebes really rock as a production powerhouse and while the quarry is being built the rice should allow rapid growth to size 4.

You should play 10 turns. When you upload the save you will be given a turn log to paste to your post. This should be for turns 31 to 40.

I still think it is better to mine SW of Thebes, not S. Yes, it is an extra turn to move, but it is an extra Hammer each turn thereafter.

As for the worker getting to the stone, I thought he might have time for connecting that tile to the capital while the settler is being built.

Also, if we decide firmly where the next city is going to be, the worker can start building roads to connect that site with our capital, ahead of time.

Bad news: Ouch! Catherine's capital in on the hill... Does anybody know how it can be taken without catapults?
Good news: Russians are backed by the ocean, it seams. If so, we stand a great chance of ******ing their development with our chariots.

Perugia said:

Therefore the trick is move only one tile south the first turn and order the worker to farm the FP (you could choose to road instead). Then IMMEDIATELY cancel the worker action by reselecting it the same turn and either 1) ordering it to move to the cows or 2) pressing the cancel order icon (red circle with a cross in it).

On the second turn the worker completes the move to the cows and as it has a spare movement point still gets to start pasturising the cows and when we later go back to the FP there is one turn less to complete the road or farm.

Click to expand...

This is good to know, but it seems like an exploit to me...

I moved the worker to the pasture on turn 10 of my set. I didn't know about this little feature. My bad.

The capitol should be building warrior until growth, not barracks. We need the extra warrior. With the cows, growth and warrior build should be almost even.

I'm not married to my city selection, I just like it. The North site is fine with me.

I've taken cities like this with just chariots. It's doable, but it's expensive and painful. Need to bring at least a 2-1 advantage.

The hills a major annoyance, but it is the capital so we'll be happy to take it. The good thing is those archers don't have promotions, yet. The important thing is to bring enough chariots to overwhelm them in one turn, or they're going to pick up city garrison, at which point we're in trouble. I'd say 4/5 chariots, and bring the warriors in case we have to finish off weakened archers.

Goodenuf said:

This is good to know, but it seems like an exploit to me...

Click to expand...

It's not an exploit and I bet all the top teams are doing it.

If an enemy or barb moved next to the worker it would halt it's orders automatically. If the player saw a barb or enemy approach and wanted to run away with the worker then the cancel order button would allow this. It the player just started to improve one tile and then changed their mind and went to an adjacent tile as well then this would also apply.

Besides if you read the Designer Notes at the back of the manual, they gave the worker an extra move in Civ$ so they could be moved and ordered in the same turn and that is all we are doing here. Note also that this only applies to flat terrain.

This is a competition so anything that's not on the official GOTM exploit list is fine by me.

For what it's worth I just found out by mistake that you can post a quick reply and edit an existing post at the same time. Not sure if that's at all useful?.!

Maintenance Forum

I'm sure you've all been keeping up with developments there. Some salient points if you haven't...

# You can make a note in the turn log using the 'Chat to All' feature of Civ4.

# Anyone not 'UP' can look at the current save but don't carry out any actions that could reveal more information than we currently have eg move units, found city etc.

# You should set the ini file autosave option=1 to autosave every turn. That way if the game crashes you only have to replay one turn. Reloading for any other reason is forbidden.

# You do not have to play all your turns in one go and saving for security is fine (it's rumoured there is some life beyond Civ4, so eating, sleeping, working are all within the rules although highly discouraged of course). One caveat, you should avoid manually saving every turn to avert moderator suspicion.

This post can be deleted

one question

How do you add those yellow notes squares?

Some comments/questions from someone who's played for awhile, but still learning the finer points of the game...

Perugia said:

It's not an exploit and I bet all the top teams are doing it.

Click to expand...

Oh ya... don't get me wrong; if it's not stated specifically as an exploit then by all means lets take advantage of it. I will have to remember that one in future games.

It just seems like an exploit to me, since I'm not sure this was the intended behaviour. I would have thought that the worker's activity would be credited (so to speak) at the end of its turn to avoid this type of thing. So, to take this further, can a worker start a road, then cancel this order, start a farm, cancel this order, then move to the next square... and then move back to this square later and have both/either 1 unit of work already done for both/either the road and farm?

Doom Train said:

How do you add those yellow notes squares?

Click to expand...

Ya, I'd like to know this one as well.

edit: I see it now... Alt+S

RE: Turn log...

How does one get the turn log from the game (i.e. after I play my 10 turns, how do I get the turn log that is generated so I can post it if necessary)? The 'Chat To All' feature is handy... if I can get the log later. I'm used to using the popular AutoLog mod, but if this also works, then perhaps the AutoLog is not as necessary... outside of its formatting options I suppose.

Thx in advance for indulging me on these.

lurker's comment: The turn log is output as part of the feedback that you'll get when you submit the save at the end of your turn set.

My turns are completed i have uploaded the file. Also worker has ben renamed to "Leonardo".

Here is the process

Turn 6 2980BC: There is nothing down the river. So Anhur is returning to home.


Turn 7 2950BC: Leonardo completed the pasture.

Turn 8 2920BC: Leonardo moved to 2nd hill S of Thebes. Shu(Warrior) has born in thebes. 3 turns for growth so i started extra warrior production as majority of you suggested.

Turn 9 2890BC: Leonardo started the construction of mine.

Turn 10 2860BC: Nothing interesting.

Borders expanded and city reached to size 3 after i finished my last turn. So be sure change the production to settler. I think Russian scout has killed by lion, one of our warriors can kill him with no problem for xp.

Here is a latest map of our continent.


And turn log


Next:BrainS. good luck!

BrianS
Dolphan
gskur
Groin_Apologist
Goodenuf (skip on May 19-22)
Perugia
Merum
Doom Train