Strategy of Productivity - 650 BC

We face the question of Temples.

MonkE, I and others have been discussing our Long Term Strategy. MonkE refers us to the inspirational Andu Indorin .

I believe an effective Long Term Strategy (to conquor all AI) is to utilize Caravans for Trade & Science bonus, to build several particular wonders, form a Republic, then WLTK to magnify our population essentially overnight.

I believe our Short Term Strategy (to maximize productivity) is for each Settler to build only one or two roads, then found another city. Shortly all roads will be connected, but to do so all at once now would be wasteful. Another continuous strategy is IPRB, spending gold smoothly to complete priority construction quickly and without waste. Third, Settler Charging.

Some cities, Civvium and Marl Downs in particular, could be selected for growth. They have terrific land (as do most other cities, lots of Green), so with a Temple could manage more serfs.

I now understand Andu Indorin built no Temples, but I think a few will help us to get to Mike's. Clearly, he WLTK tremendously, as well as having excellent starting luck. But we NUF people have also had terrific starting luck: no Barbs, free Dellham City, plenty of None units, a lineage of Good Presidents, and we are alone on our continent without an expensive war.

I know you ALL want to comment, so let's hear your "I believe" statements on Strategy of Productivity!

I belive that temples should be built to allow units to explore at this stage, and fight (if need be, and it will) later on.
Furthermore, I believe bulbs do not emit light, but suck darkness...
but dont let that cloud your opinion of my views

I'm glad the subject of overall strategy has been given its own thread.

To the long term strategy, I would add the establishment of domestic trade routes with the Colossus city. There is a tradeoff between domestic routes and foreign routes.

Foreign routes definitely give the best one-time bonuses, but in my (limited) experience following Andu Indorin's strategy, I noticed that the domestic routes provide the best ongoing trade return, due to the power of the Colossus city trade. The AI cities didn't grow nearly as fast.

The other drawbacks of foreign routes are longer delivery times (solved by pipelining and railroads) and the trade boost given to the AI.

In Andu Indorin's example game, he made most of the foreign deliveries shortly before crushing his new trading partner, eliminating the negative effects.

I'm OK with temples when a clear benefit exists, but trade + lux-rate + republic/democracy + marketplace/bank are much preferable for happiness since the trade also provides gold and science. Temples may be quite useful before the infrastructure is built, but will be less important later.

The short term tactics mentioned are all useful.

Civ2 is sufficiently versatile and complex so that there are many winning lines of play. Much of the value of this Demo game for me is the opportunity to hear how others approach the various game challenges. So please speak up!

Looks good to me. I believe in the Stategy of Productivity!

I believe in equality for everyone, except reporters and photographers!

err.. I mean I believe in whatever Nemo says!


First to name the quoted wins a shiny penny!

Here I am trying to forge policy that will simplify future decision making, and I am at the same time making things more complicated. That's me!

I have never slurred reporters nor photographers.

A Library here, but not there. A Temple here, but not there. And not later either. Well, we'll just have to take the decisions one at a time!

Here's another important tactic, like Charging Settlers, the duke just mentioned in another thread:
Whenever we do deliver a caravan from RC to Elysium, then remember to put the workers to the max trade possible (gems, wine, ocean), in both cities, and then return them once the (larger) pay-off has been made and the extra trade calculated.

This is an excellent topic to raise at this juncture I definitely support GN's long-term strategy, and his short-term strategy in concerning settlers seems very good, too. IPRB is also a great idea, as long as our cash reserves can be saved for emergencies, and probably slowly increased over the years as emergencies will get more expensive in future eras.

I was unsure what "settler charging" is, however.

While I wait as long as possible before building temples, I've not found a way to avoid them, and the vast majority of my cities end up with one. Trade routes and marketplaces will go a long ways towards controlling unhappiness, but not having temples will limit the growth potential in my limited Deity experience. If troops and building settlers can keep unhappiness under control, avoid building a temple. but at some point I think any city of any significant size will need one.

Settler charging (aka settler speedup) is described here .

Originally posted by Rout
I belive that temples should be built to allow units to explore at this stage, and fight (if need be, and it will) later on.

Click to expand...

Not sure what you meant here. Our troops on martial law are mostly warriors and phalanxes and therefore won't be any use to attack another civ anyway. We won't get happiness penalties for quite a few troops per city under Monarchy either. If we need troops to fight and explore then we can build them on top of the ones we already have because we don't pay much shield support, will get the chance to choose which kinds of troops are best suited to the task we have in mind, and can then rehome these units to cities they capture abroad.
If we can get away without temples until Adam Smith's then that would be great because we'll get them without upkeep costs. We'll need tham if we want to celebrate our cities up though.

Certain cities are close to our capital RC, hence have low corruption. And they may have terrific land. Elysium is clear, Civvium has the 2 Whales, and Marl Downs has beautiful Green Shields. One by one, we choose such a city, and stop making Settlers long enough to build a Temple. In the end, not all cities will have Temples because we'll build Mike's. For example, Fillers should probably never build a Temple.

When we get to Republic and want to really Celebrate, all of the little Warrior and Phalanx guards will be a drain. The Temples will be a Celebration asset. A few Temples will be only a small fraction of our revenue, 15-20%, later a smaller% . They boost both production and science (due to more serfs). Mike's and Republic are right around the corner, around 1AD .

Regarding Settler Charging, in addition to the definition mentioned by MonkE above, I use this Settler Bible . It's so informative, I've edited a Text SaveAs on my own hard disk for use as reference. When a Settler is moving along a Road to the end point to extend the Road, we can move 2 and charge the Settler -- thus building the roads in fewer turns.

Btw, we've nearly completed the Road from RC to Elysium.

GaryNemo, what is your view on Domestic Trade Routes?

Like yours, I'd guess. Once we have Trade, we can access the Supply / Demand situation, and the game will become more complex. We will want to bend every effort to deliver a demanded caravan, rehomed as necessary from Elysium to Regia Civitas or vice versa. The interconnect road will be complete. That, or something similar, will be the start of a constant process.

MonkE, what is your view of the Chryshe Province? Please post in Turn 650BC, and hopefully soon, a poll. It seems Dellham is building the Phalanx we need to found Iron City, but I haven't studied that, or the other cities. And Serutan, Boreum?

Okay, I was aware of Settler Charging, just forgot that was what it was called. I did learn some things from the link you supplied, Gary. thanks Sometimes it all just gets to be too much micromanaging for me, however

Trade: Good routes to SSC is imporant, obviously. I tend to not do strictly foreign or domestic, but mix the two. One trick with foreign routes is to find a good foreign trading city (different contintent, good trade, easy to get to) and do all or most of your foreign trading with that one city. If it is a civ that is falling behind all the better. This limits the advantage you've giving the other civ (they can only make use of 3 of the routes you establish, plus they're behind anyway) while keeping the advantages of foreign trading (higher payoff, higher per-turn payoff IIRC). Trade routes between domestic cities at opposite ends of the empire, on different land masses if possible, can be very lucrative as well (distance increases the payoff, plus both cities benefit from the route). I've not personally experimented with lots of routes to the SSC, or any other domestic city, as it can only use three routes anyway. Unless I'm establishing a route I know will be significantly better then something already there, I'd rather connect cities with two or less routes than with one that already has all three full.

my $.02, but I'm still learning

I agree that we should use demanded goods when practical, as that gives the best bonus. However, any goods for which there isn't already a trade route will do for estabishing a desired route, so lack of demanded goods shouldn't deter us too much.

Here is a map of the routes to road for maximum bonus between RC and Elysium:



The yellow route is from RC to Elysium. The blue/yellow route is from Elysium to RC.

These routes were derived from this pattern posted at Apolyton (the center square is the destination). Note that if the path is interrupted by water, the path goes around the water until the route can be recalculated according to the pattern.

Ummm...

Gary, that's a Mandala you posted there

- edit: And the Settler Bible link you supplied gives me an empty page at Apolyton. Does it still work for you? Maybe it's just my browser? endedit -

- 2nd edit: Link *does* work. Nevermind! end2ndedit -

Hey, that was me that posted the mandala ...

You can re-home caravans? I diddnt know that.
You cant do it on the PS.

Nice path-picture
If you move the caravan to a city and press 'H', nothing happens, but if you open the city window, click on the caravan and choose 'support from this city' it'll work. I don't usually use it, the game was designed to not make it possible to rehome caravans.

Funxus, you're right. It might even work on PS2. It is standard procedure in Gotm, and we're going to do it here too. You know, such 'cheating' is paltry compared to the what the AI does ... I don't really even want to talk about that!