AZ-07: A Tale of Not That Many Cities

azaris

azaris

King
Joined
Apr 6, 2007
Messages
690
Location
Finland
Version: 1.0.0.621 (or whatever Steam hoists on us)
Mods: NO (Babylon disabled)
Leader: Gandhi (India)
Difficulty: Immortal
Map: Pangaea
Size: Standard
Era: Ancient
Speed: Normal

Special rules:

  • No abusing trades with AI + immediate DOW.

Variant rules:

  • We're trying to play without resorting to ICS. I'm not sure if playing India is sufficient to negate that strategy, but if not we just have to make a house rule banning city spamming.

Turnsets are 20/15/10 turns at suitable moments. 24 hours got it, 48 hours to play. All reliable SGers welcome to join.

Roster:

azaris
TegasTiger
Habanerius
jammerjun
 
As an occasional observer, may I suggest a One City Challenge? "Play without resorting to ICS" is a vague objective - either you're settling or you're not. And if you intend to settle without applying ICS strategies, then surely you are just playing sub-optimally? Instead, cap your empire size at 1 (or maybe 3) cities total, *forcing* consideration of other strategies.
 
Another simple/good rule to express the idea would be to require cities to be X hexes apart... X = 5 maybe?
 
Yeah I was trying to think of simple rules to prevent ICS, but what I finally decided was ICS cities are usually pretty clear. I guess a "rule" would be you must state *why* you are settling a particular city, e.g. to grab a luxury or because it should have great production capabilities. If there are reasons to settle a city aside from just gaining 4 maritime fed specialists, then I don't consider it ICSing.

Oh and I don't want a hex limit because there are times when I settle sub optimal cities for strategic reasons without really intending any ICS abuse at all. Aggressive war time cities come to mind.
 
I'd like to play this one, will be interesting to see the effects of non ICS on immortal.

Do you intend to puppet captured cities or raze and resettle?

azaris said:
I'm not sure if playing India is sufficient to negate that strategy, but if not we just have to make
Click to expand...

I've never played as India but i don't think their special ability has much impact on ICS. I think the (unmodified) break even point is at city size of 6, which is about the size the ICS filler cities usually are.
 
Might want to give a try to SG.

But as a disclaimer I'd say I never experience Immortal diff yet. The highest I've tested was King.
 
OK, let's try and see if this one works:



Sea to the west, desert to the east. We could move 1 SE to get a bit more food. Despite the marble being tempting, I doubt we will get any early wonders (especially if we spend one turn moving). Personally, I would go Animal Husbandry > Mining. I will let the team discuss, however, and will play 20 turns tomorrow.

Also - I've attached the save. Just in case, check that you can open it properly (in case you have no Deluxe DLC).
 
I can't open the save :( I tried that convert script again, without any luck. What now?

This is a good spot, i wouldn't move around. Marble and gems are two of the better resources and the river will provide us with plenty of food soon enough.

Early wonders are overrated in my opinion. Founding one or two cities to control resources or strategic points and some military is far more useful. If we're lucky someone close to us will build the pyramids and then we can kindly ask them to let us have them ;)
 
It seems we are on the right side of the river, it will be easier to defend against infantry units.
And moving SE is definitely ok as it will give acces to three hills. It'll also cover more inland/river tiles. However it's not a must if we aim a fast wonder.

Checking the save right now.

edit: "Required DLC is not available". I verified my game file integrity so don't know what to do (except buying the DLC ;D).
 
Hmm... I hand-picked the opponents to avoid Babylon and ran the converter. It went through but took only seconds (I think it should take several minutes). Methinks one of the patches has broken the converter. Of course the save has to be compressed to make things more infuriating to debug.

I don't know what to do except to have one of you non-deluxe guys roll another start. Apparently Firaxis felt this one piece of DLC was so awesome it was worth screwing up save compatibility for all time.
 
Well assuming we can get the DLC issue fixed, I like moving 1 to the SE, though I don't feel too strongly about it. Given that we aren't aiming for ICS, we must assume that our cities will be working close to the 3 tile radii. If our capital does indeed end up working the full radius, then moving one spot to the SE will prevent too many coastal tiles, which appear to be to the NW.

And about puppets, I see no reason to raze the cities unless we are pressed for happiness. In all of my games the puppets are what supports my economy. I see nothing exploitive about puppetting most cities and then spamming trade posts. Though I'm not a huge fan of the puppetting system, in my experience that is clearly the most effective way to play.
 
I fear the problem goes far deeper than Babylon. If this problem isn't fixed it will get only worse as more DLC is available.

I'm not sure if we should move the settler towards the sugar, we'd loose the hills in the SE and who knows whats out there but it would give the city access to the second river.

 

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Holy grasslands batman! I find myself never being satisfied with my own capital placements, so I will offer more brainstorming ideas as opposed to concrete suggestions. I vote we either move W to one hex N of the warrior, as that puts both sugars close, as well as both rivers and we still have a few hills. Or we could move E and try to make a production monster with all those hills in the fog.

It's kind of a bummer that we can only see one luxury resource, though hopefully being India and with less of a focus on city spamming happiness won't be as big an issue as it usually is.

I suppose if I had to give my vote I would say move SWW for a nice coin rich capital and then leave the eastern hills open for a nice military factory
 
Well having never played with India nor with an effort to make big cities, I'm not the most qualified when it comes to city layout in this scenario. However, shouldn't more space between cities be the goal so they can work a full complement of tiles? Or will they not get that large until it is so late in the game to matter? Because if we want *huge* cities, wouldn't having three cities in that little triangle be a bit much?
 
You mean moving to the east side of the river? If we move one tile SE we are closer to the hills and don't loose a turn. I think there are enough hills there, cities don't grow big until late in the game when you build a hospital and medical lab (although i never really tried for big cities). With lots of maritime food and Tradition the capital might be a different story.

Which brings up the question what we intend to do policy wise? I usually go for Liberty (faster workers, +1 happiness/city) first, but if we intend to make a big production capital Tradition might be worth it.
 
Well the real question at hand is what do we plan to do long term? Are we trying for a cultural victory? A science victory? Or domination? The way I see it, though I could be wrong, is that if we are trying for a science or cultural victory, then we need to lay out our cities for optimum performance late in the game which would require a full 6 hexes in between cities. However if we are going for a domination victory, we need to optimize the best terrain available to us as soon as possible.

My vote would be to plan for a stronger late game and assume that our cities will actually be quite large. In my mind that's kind of the point of this particular variant, but that is just my opinion. I suppose realistically we just need to capture the best land possible with as few cities possible and then rearrange and micro the cities accordingly.

Oh and my 2 cents for starting is to move one tile SE and found the city on turn one.
 
So long for the couple marble + diamond, we won't be the bling bling people on this setting.

Two rivers, hills and some lux res, it seems to be quite a good settlement.
Going for the production city should be a good idea as moving E will allow lumbermil in one more forest tile later on.

AH > Mining is ok as those resource might pop in the surroundings.

Any plan for an early warmongering or shall we go scout and wait to see our neighbours?
 
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