Fret - Emperor with Twin 3-6-9 RCP / Palace Jump

This is the first time I have tracked the progress of a game with a thread, its also my first HoF attempt using a version of Civ other than Vanilla Civ3, and its also my first HoF attempt at Emperor. So there you go, a trio of ‘firsts’ and we haven’t even started yet!

I normally wouldn’t dream of punishing everybody with one of my boringly-average HoF attempts, however, I started an Emperor game a few days ago, not intentionally a HoF game note, but after popping a settler at 3950BC coupled with initial exploration revealing an Archipelago map looking so good for a dual 3-6-9 RCP you’d think it was a made to measure Pangaea from Heaven.

I think the HoF Gods are with me on this one. I’ve just got to about 2000BC and on the whole progress is going very well, lets hope I can keep it up. Wish me luck! So without further ado, here is a synopsis of what has happened so far….


The Game Settings

Version: PTW 1.27
Map: Archipelago, Huge, Wet, Warm, 5 Billion
Difficulty: Emperor
Civilization: Ottomans
Opponents: 8, All random
Barbs: Sedentary


Starting Position

I start near a mountain, a river, and a cow - a nice start. First thing I do is plant the settler, founding Istanbul. This shows two things:

1 - a goody hut to the southwest
2 – N,E,S & W city sites available for RCP at distance 3

Very early days yet but because of the available RCP sites I decide that I will start my expansion with an RCP at distance 3 from the capital.

Now I do something that I would never normally have done if I initially intended this as a HoF attempt from the outset: instead of going to irrigate the cow I use my worker to pop the hut and boy-o-boy am I glad I did! – out pops a settler at 3950BC. Nice! [dance]

The bonus settler gets planted south of the capital making the first of our distance 3 RCP cities. Both cities then set to work pumping out 3 or 4 warriors for exploration and then set to work on churning out a settler each. The worker heads back to where he should have gone originally and waters the cow.

The first two Warriors are trained and sent out luxury-hunting, one goes due north, the other goes due west.


Deciding on the RCP / Palace Jump Stratagy

5 turns later a second pair of Warriors are complete and they set about exploring the locale around the palace: it quickly becomes apparent that I am settled in an excellent location for 3-6-9 RCP around the palace.

While exploring around the palace, the first two Warriors sent out on long-distance exploration duties have not come across any luxuries or other civs, but on a positive note, the warrior sent west has just gone and gone in a straight line and hasn’t seen any hint of a coastline anywhere. I send the two warriors currently exploring around the palace in that direction to investigate further…

It doesn’t take long for the 3 warriors gone-west to piece together a patchy-map that shows a vast expanse of land - an excellent, mostly grassland setting for twin-cores of cities side by side rarely seen on an Archipelago land mass This sets in stone my expansion strategy for the early game – Twin 3-6-9 RCP with a palace jump to the second core so I can get my FP online ASAP without wasting a leader on it.

The city created from the bonus settler is then designated as the future FP city and I set about building the first RCP ring centred on that city rather than the capital.

The only downside to this potentially explosive beginning is that my explorers haven’t so much as seen a sniff of a luxury anywhere, never mind hooked one up . This isnt a poblem at the moment because I'll be doing a semi-settler flood which will keep the city sizes down. I'm hopeful of finding some furs in the tundra down south or something, as long as there is at least a couple of luxuries on the landmass I'll be happy.

Anyway, I’m at work at the moment so I cant post any pics, and Ive just moved house and am waiting for DSL to be enabled at home: as soon as I’m back o-line at home (hopefully tonight) I’ll post some pics and another update.

Originally posted by fret
I think the HoF Gods are with me on this one. I’ve just got to about 2000BC and on the whole progress is going very well, lets hope I can keep it up. Wish me luck!

out pops a settler at 3950BC. Nice! [dance]

Click to expand...

Good luck fret!

Though I don't think I need to wish you luck, you seem to have plenty...

I want to wish you continued good luck because I think you will need all the luxuries you can find at this level. I hope you find at least 4 that you can hook up without fighting for them. In my last game (Monarch) I was able to hook up all 8 without having to fight for them and it made the game much easier.

I know what you mean Svar. I NEED them bad. The chances are finding all 8 on my landmass are pretty slim, 4 would be good like you say, you can do a lot in the early/early-mid game with 4 lux and a marketplace.

1000BC Update

Vital Statistics...

19 Cities

3 Settler
11 Worker

21 Warrior
5 Spearman
2 Swordman
5 Chariot



Whats Happened..

Okidokey, I'm sharing a pretty big landmass with the Zulu and the Americans, ive only just found the American territory which is about another 30 tiles through and north of the Zulub. Not sure if there is anything behind the Americans yet. The Zulu are miles away, about 40 tiles between Istanbul and Zimbabwe over land and the American border is approx 80 land tiles away from my capital . The good news is the Zulu got a pretty crappy starting location and at this stage I am continuing to out-expand the Expantionist They will make for good Tech-Givers in the future as I systematically beat the crap out of them

While on the subject of techs I'm allready three techs down, although Ive been researching at 10% and Writing lands next turn. God only knows how far in front the other 6 civs I havent met yet will be if they have made contact with each other.

Luxurys are a problem. So far Ive found three on my island, all of them light years away from my capital Ive hooked up Silks about 25 tiles away(near the Zulu) and also hooked up Incense(14 tiles away) on a Peninsular to the North, there is also Gems on this peninsular but Ive got to get through about 10 jungle tiles to reel them in.

Well if Luxurys arent doing too good at least my old friend Resource's isnt letting me down Both Iron and Horses in easy reach [dance]

Whats Happening...

Currently I'm working on building up an attack force near the Zulu, currently I have 15 warriors, 2 swords & 2 spears. As soon as the outpost town near the Zulu (placed at first to secure Silks) has enough citizens then the whip is coming out to build a barracks and its Impi's for breakfast!

I'm also working on hooking up the third luxury to the north.

I started production on the Forbidden Palace ~5 turns ago. ETA for this is 5-400BC


Whats Going to Happen....

I am going to Bash the Zulu

Now that production on the FP is underway I need to start make preperations for the move. I am torn between two possible locations. Both options give a full complement of 3-6-9 RCP cities except for 4 city sites which are in the drink. Also, when using either option, none of them requires a city to be placed on any resource whatsoever!!! The only downside to either option is that they will both lose 3 bonus grasslands.........WHO CARES!!!!!!!!! I'm sure I can live withoug the extra 3 shields differance this will make.

Option A allows me to interleave each core into each other, with the east-most city in ring-9 on the new palace core and the west-most city in ring 9 on the FP core being the same city.

Option B (my preffered option) gives the best grassland to plains ration by far. I think it will be Hey-Hoy to this option and &!*% Off to the other option.

.

390BC Update: The Palace Jump

Vital Statistics

34 Cities

3 Settler
34 Worker

3 Warrior
7 Spearmen
18 Swordmen
11 Horsemen
2 Galley

Whats Happened..

The Ritual Zulu Bashing has begun 1 city razed, 1 city captured, 1 city won for peace about 5 turns ago, along with Horseback Riding, some cash and their world map. The troops have now re-covered, re-gathered, and will mount a second offensive as soon as the Palace jump has taken place.

The Forbidden Palace was completed ahead of schedule in 510BC [dance]

However, preperations for the palace jump were behind schedule and it took an extra 6 turns to be in a position to move


The Palace Jump

Ive never attempted a controlled Palace jump with this many cities before. Time to sharpen the pencil, dig out the calculator and check DaveMcW's Free Palace Jump Stratagy in the War Academy, found >here< .

This is the situation at 390BC, and according to the formula, its a close call. Time to put faith in fellow HOF man Dave....

..And The Outcome...

Woohoo! Dave gets a beer!

Good job. I have been using the free palace jump for my 20 K culture fastest finish games but since the new palace is also the 20 K city the population is much higher than any other city and there are 8 cities in the 3 ring around the new palace when I try it.

Nice!

Thanks Guys! I was a bit worried before wiping the capital and I wanted to do it using as few workers as possible, as it transpired I managed it with only 1 worker being added to a city

I played to 10AD last night and will post a update later. One small disadvantage of this game with regard to going for maximum score is the tightness of the build that 369RCP is, there are so many cities in the two cores its slowing down my expansion territory-wise!

Each new city thats placed either only adds 5 or 6 tiles to my territory, or doesnt add any at all, this is bad for a high scoring game, but hopefully the resulting benefits of it will outway this.

10AD Update - Building the Empire & Bashing the Zulu

Number Crunching

63 City

8 Settler
38 Worker

2 Warrior
10 Spearmen
12 Swordsmen
4 Horsemen
9 Catapult
4 Galley

Empire Building

The Forbidden Palace core is now almost complete as far as this RCP will be. Rings 3 and 6 are complete, ring 9 just needs a couple more cities, this ring will overlap the Palace ring 9 so we are leaving few city sites empty. The Palace core has rings 3 and 6 complete, work has begun on ring 9.

There are only 3 luxuries on my landmass , all three are hooked up. There are no other luxeries available until we get Astronomy

We have all the Iron on the Island Both America and Zulu have Horses, but the Zulu will lose them next turn -



Zulu Bashing

We have 'liberated' 7 Zulu cities, including their capital which contained the Oracle, nice but pointless as I dont possess a single temple. The Zulu have just lost the ability and will to fight on and cities are dropping easily now, not without putting up a fight though, they've killed 8 or 9 of our finest Swordmen . Despite their fatal weakening I decided to make peace the next turn for an additional 3 cities

Other War Stuff

We took 1 city for peace from the Americans after a war during which we didnt trade blows at all. We have started a war against the English, who are a galley's journey to the North East of my FP core. So far we have destroyed 1 city, (and lost 5 Horsemen , which seems an awful lot at this stage of the game.)

The Masterplan

The FP core is feeding the war against English and is about to embark on settling the Peninsular to the noth and the Tundra to South. The Palace core is feeding the war against the Zulu, settling the 9 RCP ring and is about to embark on settling thu HUUUUUUGE Peninsular to the North. Workers have already begun work on two highways running up either side of it to speed up settlement, the road is about 30% complete.

fret, sorry for interrupting your very well planned game, but...

Doesn't the FP bug of PTW mean that the FP RCP will be far less effective?

I remember the correct way to do it is to put the palace in the middle of nowhere, (with no near city in, say, radius 30), and then all cities closer than 30 radius from the FP will act like a first ring.
This means you can stuff tons of cities in a 30 radius area, and they will all be very productive (only distance corruption).

Am I wrong, or is this intentional, or.. what?

Your not wrong Boogaboo, just confusing two differant exploits

I think what you are referring to is the Palance Rank exploit - >here< in the war academy and >here< in SirPleb's 3rd place Diety game.

In this game, I've just used the palace jump as a means of getting both the palace and FP cores up and running ASAP.

Here are examples of the corruption numbers a bit later in the game than this thread has so far covered. At this snapshot, the average total production of cities is about 17-18 per turn, except at the very center where it is slightly lower, and all the examples below are taken from cities of this size. This is during a GA as well, I dont know how(if?) this affects corruption, if it does i'll do the numbers for you again when its finsihed if you want...

Palace ring 3, 7 city's, curruption only 1 sheild from 17
Palace ring 6, 15 city's, corruption only 2 sheilds from 18
Palace ring 9, 21 city's, corruption only 5 sheilds from 18

The FP is slightly worse in the outermost ring...

FP ring 3, 7 city's, curruption only 1 sheild from 17
FP ring 6, 11 city's, corruption only 2 sheilds from 18 -see below
FP ring 9, 12 city's, corruption only 8 sheilds from 18

Its very nice, even in PTW

Edit, the FP ring 6 serves as a good example of WLTKD reducing corruption, all the city's in WLTKD with 18 production lose 2 sheilds to corruption, all the city's with 18 production not in WLTKD are about 5 corruption.

First, I was referring to the the links you gave, and I think you understood my point.

Second, GA helps a bit in hapiness (=1lux?), and increases every commerce and shield tile to +1 in both, which is great.
I'm not sure about corruption..

Third, once you do rings, you have this medium corruption, since most cities are not rank 1 (or even 2).
The SirPleb example shows the palace near the pole when no city is around it. Only one, GIANT core all around the FP.
So, ALL cities inside a LARGE radius from the FP are all treated as rank 1, so you would have get the same corruption from a 15-radius city from the FP as you might get in your 6 or 9 rings now.

I just don't understand why you would prefer 2 medium corrupted cores to a giant low corrupted one..

PS - WLTK is good for production, use it when you can, but it is irrelevant to the general corruption and city placing question..

Originally posted by boogaboo

I just don't understand why you would prefer 2 medium corrupted cores to a giant low corrupted one..

Click to expand...

I hear what your saying there Boogaboo, but there are a few things to consider, mainly, the example we are referring to was played out by SirPleb, therefore it was made to look very easy when in reality, to do it as well as he did at the higher levels is very difficult indeed. Also, his stratagy for that game was to use several jumps as required, this requires more work, planning etc.

The main reason for the choice of 2 medium corrupt cores was the 'curve' of grassland to the west of my starting location was as near to perfect for 369 RCP as you can expect on Archipelago, well, most maps really. It was just too tempting.

Also, I class myself as what I call a "Mid Game Lazy Player", IE I will put a lot of thought into the first ~150 turns but then my strategic thinking takes a vacation and I slip into 'Kill'em All regardless of anything' mode. Basically I just wanted to get both cores up and running ASAP and with the least amount of stress, then I could just leave them to turn out a neverending stream of 10 Sipahi a turn and destroy the world.

I agree, using Qitai's Palance Rank exploit would be more powerful, however using the palace jump to have your FP on-line by 500BC without the need for a leader is a poweful starting stratagy in its own right, and more than adequate for Emperor when used in conjuction with RCP
[/QUOTE]

OK.
I understand the urgency..
Perhaps in the next phazes u could use a leader and move the palace to nowhere..

In any case, luck 2 u!

Update: The Early Middle Ages

It was 30AD when we discovered Monarchy and after 4 turns of anarchy the new government was in place. 3 turns later we traded this for Construction and Currency and the mighty Ottomans heralded a new era, The Middle Ages

Tired from 1000 years of war and wary after losses aginst the English I decide to calm things down for a while, concentrate on expansion, of which there is still lots to do, and do some work on laying the foundation for the main conquest push that will start towards the end of the Middle Ages.


The First Leader(s)

Things were uneventful until we restarted the war aginst the Zulu and we got our first leader sometime between 250AD and 400AD. We used it to build a Sword Army which began rampaging through the remaining Zulu. Construction of a prebuild wonder was switched to Herioc Epic and it was completed in 490BC. Our second Leader came sometime between 400AD and 450AD, this was again used to build a Sword Army. Before finally being destroyed in 540AD, the evil Zulu destroyed my first Sword Army, A moment of silence for the brave men please


Wonder Double

Around this time a Palace pre-build and work in progress on SunTzu's were well underway, I switched the Palace prebuild to Leonardo's and thought I might just manage to grab the Leo/SunTzu wonder-marraige. At 500AD we were 21 Turns from Leo's and 6 Turns from SunTzu's.

Nobody else in the world had Invention, the only other wonder not yet constructed was Hanging Gardens, I gambled that the other Civs wouldnt learn Invention by then because only Korea had Theology, 1 turn ago, and the AI tends to value Theology highly so I bet most research around the world had gone on this. I hoped 6 turns would be quick enough for SunTzu and that the only cascading would be to Hanging Gardens.

Everything went according to plan and in 550AD SunTzu's was completed, nobody else had Invention, and fret was a very happy bunny Leonardo's was consequently completed in 700AD.


Educational Slowdown

The tech pace in this game is going very slow, which has been a problem - I need Astronomy to hook up the critical 4th luxury(which we must fight for), most of the core city's now have Marketplaces and this would make all the differance. I tried my best to speed things up by trading but this isnt the best of my abilities, in fact its probably my biggest weakness.

I have been researching just ahead of the AI with the occasional trade since entering the middle ages.


Ready for War, War, and maybe some more WAR!

Things remained uneventful until 680AD, at this time the Settler expansion phase was more or less complete, I had about 190 city's and 90% of my terrritoy has been pre-railroad milked(in terms of terrain improvement, still lots of population growth to do). Preperations for the first non-stop blitz of the AI was also ready, and in 690AD we declared war on the Americans and English as we now had Astronomy and the English had spices tantalizingly close. We then embarked on what was likely to be a long, long war, maybe not ever ceasing until all the AI have been elimated. The conquest begins..

The World at 690AD.....

Originally posted by boogaboo

Perhaps in the next phazes u could use a leader and move the palace to nowhere..

Click to expand...

It didnt cross my mind to do this- when the RCP machine started kicking in any impetus there was had been completey irradicated

The Anglo-American War

680AD - Declare war on Americans and English

710AD - Get 3rd Leader - saved for JS Bach's

770AD - Build JS Bach's with Leader - much needed happiness relief *phew*

780AD - Make peace with English for 4 city's.

820AD - Declare war on English

830AD - Washington falls to our mighty army.

850AD - 4th Luxery hooked up. We rightfully take what we deserve from the English.

880AD? - London falls to our mighty army.

910AD - Make peace with America for 1 city, only 4 American city's remain.

950AD - Trade 1 tech(cant remember which and my handwriting is terrible) for Economics/PrintPress/WM/ 119gpt

970AD - Declare war on English


The Public Vote - ATTACK THE MONGOLS!

990AD - Declare war on Mongols

1020AD - THE AMERICANS HAVE BEEN DEFEATED

1050AD - The Golden Age begins, we will be using a few worker tricks to ensure this doesnt end until the world is ours...bwa ha ha Mwa Ha HAHA!
- Hooked up 5th luxury as the first Mongol city falls

1070AD - Make peace with Mongols

1090AD - Declare war on Mongols

The Public Vote - ATTACK THE IROQUOIS!

1120AD - Declare war on Iroquois.

1150AD - THE ENGLISH HAVE BEEN DEFEATED

1150AD - get 5th Leader - Build army

1160AD - get 6th Leader - Build army

1170AD - Make peace with Iroquois for 5 city's

1190AD - Enter Industrial Age with Koreans, everyone else is 2 techs behind
- Declare war on Iroquois
- We have Natiolism as free tech, making beachead landings a lot more do-able
- Begin preparing a Persian invasion force
- Get 7th Leader - Build army

1200AD
- Get 8th Leader - build army
- Get 9th Leader - build army
- Get 10th Leader - build army
- Get 11th Leader - build army

Thats a new personal best, never had more than 2 in 1 turn before

IBT - Salamance flips to the pathetic Iroquis!

1210AD - Persian invasion force of 3 Rifles, 11 Sipahi and 1 Settler begin their short journey to the north.

The world at 1210AD -