What is Zenning?

I heard vxma talking about something called zenning. Something about 2 camps next to your capital that make only military? I am curious to hear more about this.

Seems very dependant on terrain, and if the terrain is ideal for it, than it seems too obvious to have it's own name.

I've never heard of this term, but it sounds like he's just talking about having one or two of your best producing low food surplus cities just produce nothing but military units. It can really help in games, obviously in military-oriented games where having a constant stream of units no matter the time is useful, but it is also really helpful in peaceful games, because if you have 2 cities producing units while all other cities build improvements/wonders, you can properly defend those cities and keep other nations from attacking you.

Zenning just means using camps and RCP together. Here is what it could look like:

This was done for PTW, not C3C. You use a 4 or 4.5 ring and the camps are just temporary. Once you are done with them you abandon to give the tiles back to the core cities.

The idea was the camps make all the troops and workers and possibly settlers. The cap makes only settlers. This concept is great for large landmass at med or less levels, with good food and water.

Someone long ago someone posted a game on a large map at some low level like Regent and said it could not be won playing England. So I used Master Zens plan to spank the game by spamming out lots of workers and troops.

Never tried it above emperor or on a small map on PTW. I have used it on a large island at Sid. The camp that makes troops only gets a barracks and the one that makes settlers gets a granary only.

Anyway the concept was reported by Master Zen and that is his pix from a few years ago.

Hmmm thanks. Disbandable camps is a new idea to me.

Ahh! I have heard of camps, but I had to figure out what they were for and why waste settlers by myself. My plan is a little different:

That's a picture of OCP, where each city shares only 2 tiles, and hence uses resources from all but 0-2 tiles. I had been enjoying great early-game success with CxxC placement but I lacked a strong core later on. So I decided to try OCP (which sucks for civ3 in the early game) but to add camps in the very spots which my OCP cities overlap in. These would pump workers, settlers, and even units if I was militaristic (could afford barracks). The camps stay there for a LONG time. Instead of disbanding them when my cities get bigger, camps use fewer and fewer tiles, and when the cities finally reach pop 20, then I disband camps. Is this as effective? By the way, this is all C3C, not PTW, so I guess no ring city placement.