Journal of a random game.

[TruePurple]

I've been struggling with my starts. My last game I found myself greatly outmatched with the AI having twice as many cities and many many more warriors then me. Plus it not being willing to give me anything close to a fair shake when it came to the two techs I did have. (nice techs too that I'm sure noone else had, like map making)

So I decided to replay the same game and document my progress for discussion and advice
Everything average, monarch level, random tribe and opponents. The tribe I did get was British, a commercial seafaring folk with a great special ship unit at the end of the middle ages.

I'll put it in several posts so that I can pair journal with each pic.

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First tech I aim for is writing with science at 10% (so I can get philosophy first and get free map making) Started out working a forest till I could get a mine on a grassland.
(2 shield 1 food instead of 2 food, means able to get a warrior out exploring earlier for planning city placement, claiming barb villages and clearing hostile barbs)

 

[TruePurple]

Figured I'd work on granary now since worker or settler would come before I'd have the population to support em. Another warrior would be interesting or a ship since I'm seafaring and get a extra movement (3 moves) for finding other civs, a tough call. I hope I made the right one. My workers working on a mine for a bonus grassland. I considered chopping a forest for to hurry up the grainery but I the bonus grassland is something that keeps giving.

BTW the village was 3 hostile barbs. Fortunately my warrior was on hill and won the initial attack, but the other two are on mountains. Guess Ill travel around them on the hills till they decide to attack. (worked like a charm)

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Granaries done. A second worker then a settler to claim that ivory for happy making. Second village also hostile barbs, warrior survived. Have meet the Aztecs and Maya They are willing to trade masonry for alphabet. Alphabet is a little more valuable but a trade is a trade, Decided to put off the trade for a few turns so that they can't get a jump on me on the race to philosophy though

 

[madviking]

This should be moved to Stories and Tales

 

[TruePurple]

Just about to expand and add another city, unfortunately Maya already has one and Aztecs have two.. I'm falling behind.. I wonder if any of those have granaries though.. maybe theres still hope. still 17 turns left till writing. Decided to do the tech trade for masonry now before they learn alphabet and I have nothing left to trade. Got quite a shock to find they are now willing to trade the wheel as well when they weren't before! (masonry and wheel 102, alphabet 138) Aztecs are also more generous now but not quite so much. I also found the Maya are willing to throw in warrior code too for 115 (couldn't get it for that much outside the trade, they sure suddenly want a alphabet)

Now that I traded to the Maya the Aztec are less generous with their trade. I can get bronze working and ceremonial burial for alphabet and 85 gold (all the rest of my gold) I decided to make the trade, even if its not the most even trade since otherwise they can just trade with each other for alphabet.

Interesting bit, seems the AI values bronze working more then warrior code even though they both require the same amount of science, must be because of the wonder (only the difference of 10 gold though)

Now that I have the settler I'm torn between a worker (4 turns to make & 4 turns to expand) a settler (not sure population would grow fast enough that I wont waste turns.) a warrior (those rival warriors trampling through make me nervous) or that curragh to explore coastline and find other civs.

What do you guys think, which should I go for next? What should I first start with in my second city? Do you guys see any mistakes I made/ or advice for a different way to start concerning build order/worker priorities etc?

 

[TruePurple]

@madviking No it should not. I'm discussing a game and looking for advice. Thats not what the forum of "stories and tales" is for AFAIK. I'm not telling a tale, I'm dissecting a game in attempts to improve how good I play. I've seen other posters do the same thing in these forums.

BTW how do I set picture attachments to spoiler hide?

 

[madviking]

you cant hide attachments, only through uploads.

Spoiler is:

Spoiler :

blah blah blah[/spoiler.] without the last dot

 

[Bede]

Get a boat or even two in the water. Your curragh will map the coastline 3x faster than your exploring warriors and will also give clues to safe passages to the other continents.

Send your next settler to the south and settle on the coastal hill. With the wheat and the coastal tiles for fishing you will have good population growth and commerce. It will be shield poor for a while, but shields don't really matter in the early game, food and commerce rule that phase.

As England is COM/SEA settle the coasts rather than inland. You can pick up the ivory anytime you want to and at least two of them will be inside borders in the next forty turns, anyway.

I might have popped a settler before the granary and after the second worker but the difference is stylistic rather than critical.

The more nations you know the better your trade position. So get out there and make more friends. Trade prices for technology are based only loosely on beaker cost, and beaker cost is the data you will get from CAII. Note that beaker cost goes down as soon as another nation has the knowledge. That means purchase cost goes down. If three nations all know each other and two of them share knoweldge of a tech than the price is lower to the third.

The AI also does sweetheart deals. I'm not sure what the factors are but they always trade with each other at lower prices than they will offer the human player. And they will charge the human more than beaker cost for monopoly knowledge while giving a discount to their electronic buddies.

You are well on your way. Get to know all the neighbors quickly and keep your eyes open for opportunities to broker your way to the Middle Ages.

 

[TruePurple]

Get a boat or even two in the water. Your curragh will map the coastline 3x faster than your exploring warriors and will also give clues to safe passages to the other continents.

Well I really want to get a boat out on the water but don't want to slow my early expansion to do so (it slows down expansion when half your towns build anything other then granaries settlers or workers)

Plus the boat is mostly only useful for making warrior exploration more effective/getting a lay/outline of the land and finding more civs.

A boat can't defend towns when hostiles come by or claim villages or defeat camps for 25 gold. And while I want to mostly plant near the coast, it helps to know what lays inland for towns planted on that cost but a boat can't find out information like that.

Safe passage to other continents? I'd settler for fast expansion in the immediate area.

But still you may be right, maybe the next item to build in London should be a boat.(that is what your advising right?)

Send your next settler to the south and settle on the coastal hill. With the wheat and the coastal tiles for fishing you will have good population growth and commerce. It will be shield poor for a while, but shields don't really matter in the early game, food and commerce rule that phase.

Shields matter in early games, you need shields to build settlers and granaries.(not to mention needed warriors and the occasional ship) Also I plan to build my town on that hill to the south. So the wheat wouldn't be available till London's next expansion.

Coastal tiles don't help population growth at this stage, no harbors yet and its not fresh water. Grassland provides more food then sea tiles.

As England is COM/SEA settle the coasts rather than inland. You can pick up the ivory anytime you want to and at least two of them will be inside borders in the next forty turns, anyway.

The single bonus energy from coast cities isn't much of a reason to exclusively settle on coasts (just mostly settle on coasts)

I can pick up ivory "any time" but I want to benefit from it ASAP. The sooner I get it the sooner I can reduce the happiness slider for more gold and research. Plus the bonus commerce from the ivory of course. And with the many grass tiles means good growth.

I might have popped a settler before the granary and after the second worker but the difference is stylistic rather than critical.

Well that is generally my preferred method but like I said, the settler would have been done before the town could grow to 3.

 

[TruePurple]

Hmm, the aztec have 3 times as many cities as me. The other two don't because I think they have been at war.

I ended up going for a settler I think. Even with continuos expansion the AI still outstrips me in cities and yet has time to be working on 3 wonders at once! What am I doing wrong! Well at least through trading I'm doing pretty good with techs.

 

[Turner]

Moderator Action: Thread moved to stories and tales.

Despite your request for help, this kind of thread goes in S&T.

 

[shumble]

Well I really want to get a boat out on the water but don't want to slow my early expansion to do so (it slows down expansion when half your towns build anything other then granaries settlers or workers)

Plus the boat is mostly only useful for making warrior exploration more effective/getting a lay/outline of the land and finding more civs.

A boat can't defend towns when hostiles come by or claim villages or defeat camps for 25 gold. And while I want to mostly plant near the coast, it helps to know what lays inland for towns planted on that cost but a boat can't find out information like that.

Safe passage to other continents? I'd settler for fast expansion in the immediate area.

But still you may be right, maybe the next item to build in London should be a boat.(that is what your advising right?)

You are right, a boat can't defend, but since you are researching at 10%, you are counting on getting your trades by bartering. To do this effectively, you need to know civilizations that nobody else knows. Plus, it appears to me that right now your city is totally unprotected. I think you are going to need at least a warrior there for protection and then a ship to begin meeting other civilizations. After that you can continue the expansion. Not sure what size map you are playing or how many other civs there are, but I'm assuming standard map; 7 rivals. It appears that you still have plenty of room to expand in and if not, you can always start an early war to clear your nearest rival out of the way.

 

[shumble]

Also, I would settle to the north, not the south. There is only water to the south of you and you will probably pick that up anytime you want. To the north of you though is plenty of good territory and you do not want to lose that area. I would go north first and try to get in 4-5 cities up there before expanding south or west.

What type of Victory are you going for?

 

[TruePurple]

I was researching at 10% because at that point going for writing would have taken 48 turns with research at 90%. I figured that would be the most efficient use. Is it worth it to research at 70 or 80 instead of 10 if it still takes you 25 turns?

As far as what kind of victory I was going for, doesn't really matter. You got to beat your foes into submission with any kind of victory. If you can get one victory, you usually can get all of them.

As far as claiming the stuff to the north first.. doesn't matter I think, I mean the AI's more then happy to plant cities in any spot.

Well like I said, despite continuous expansion from nearly the beginning the Aztec AI shortly had many more cities then me. Imagine how even more dramatic the difference if I had stopped expansion to build a number of warriors or boats. Just trying to keep up with the AI's expansion is why I was so defenseless.

The two boats I did eventually make only netted me a single extra communication and that took a good number of turns. (1 boat would have done about the same in the same time because they both traveled up the sides of a narrow continent)

I kept playing through the game and at one point I decided that the Aztec were crowding me out too much. I saw their cities weren't connected allot yet but mine were and to metal. I figured I'd use the swordman advantage and piled a bunch of them by the borders and declared war (I had to during the AI's turn else the swordsman would have been automoved)

I did pretty good at first taking out two of its cities but then it overwhelmed me. I got the zues temple wonder and then switched to monarchy (risky during war but so was staying in despotism) Either the switch took less then 9 turns or even Zeus temple doesn't produce during anarchy.

That games trashed, I think I'll replay that random world and try like hell to figure out why I'm failing behind the AI's (that aren't at war) so bad. If any of you have some ideas I'd love to hear it.

Should I have skipped building roads and went straight to chopping for the grainery? Should I have produced 3 or 4 workers (alternating with warrior so that population can keep up) before starting on granary? Or produced a few warriors then a settler before granary?

@turner
I've seen several threads in civ3 general and civ conquest forums discussing game progress and strategy. None of those were moved to "stories and tales" probably because they (and this too) weren't stories or tales! The only reason I can think of that mine was moved is because I used the word "journal" in the title.

 

[tR1cKy]

It's difficult to say what you did wrong considering the info you gave. But the reason you're falling behind is simple: the AS meet each other and trade each other. You didn't.

The Aztecs out-REX you? Well, they probably have better terrain and they pay less shields for building a settler. Nothing to worry about, the initial disadvantage is ok. In monarch level, you can be the strongest player before the Ancient Age is finished. You lost the war because you were overconfident (and probably suffered a bit of bad RNG rolls). Next time use some catapults. They're quite effective against weak AA units.

Your initial building sequence looks ok. It's wrong to not road tiles, roads mean gold and fast communication lines between cities. It's good to have 1.5 worker per cities in the initial phase. If you fail to improve your tiles you will fall hopelessly behind.

@turner: probably the guy is right...

 

[Tribute]

Actually, one worker per town is alright if you have a very food poor start or build very closely. I tend to only build one using OCP and my workers work about until a few techs before steam power. Enough for a few forest plant and chop rounds for tundra towns. Of course, if my start is full of jungle. . . .

Sadly, I tend to go expand away from the coast even if seafaring. I would have built my second city on the hills near the sugar. The next one would have been on the bonus grassland near the northern river.

But war is most definitely not the only way to win. Catapults are very useful. They will upgrade to artillery at Replacable Parts and can help you win any industrial age war. (Except one where the opponents use 100 bombers, but that's besides the point.)

Actually, OCP wouldn't have been bad for this game as England is the best researcher (most commerce produced). And if you look at the terrain, such placement would have been very inviting.

 

[tR1cKy]

Actually, one worker per town is alright if you have a very food poor start or build very closely. I tend to only build one using OCP and my workers work about until a few techs before steam power. Enough for a few forest plant and chop rounds for tundra towns. Of course, if my start is full of jungle. . . .

Sorry man, but this isn't exactly a good advice. With cities placed in OCP, he's going to have a good half of uncorrupted tiles wasted until Sanitation. And a worker ratio of one per city is really too few, unless the choosen tribe is industrious (and England isn't). Regardless if you want to play a peaceful game of be an hard-core warmonger until conquest, in the early part of the game you must have your active tiles roaded and worked ASAP. Obviously, once your territory is for the most part improved, some workers could be rejoined into cities, although in the industrial age they could be quite useful for railroading your territory quickly and cleaning off pollution.

 

[killercane]

A good opening sequence would certainly have included a boat as one of the first two builds. Working the forest rather than the bonus grass was not optimal, the food is more important, and youre popping out a warrior in 4 turns rather than 5? A warrior is not that necessary. I would have roaded and then mined the BG for the 2nd build of a curragh. Chopping the forests for the granary help would have been nice. Max research on writing since the research time will drop significantly with roads built. Listen to Bedes advice.

 

[TruePurple]

First of all, for me to follow some of your advice your going to need to tell me what OCP stands for. "out-REX"?

A warrior or two is much more important then boats at first. (for all the reasons given earlier) building a boat just to get an additional communication or two 40 turns latter?(even at 3 turns boats are slow because they have to hug complicated coastline) Pfft, that can wait. I mean you usually get a few communications from other warriors since the AI wanders far and wide.

I will consider working on a boat at first as well but still seems to me that building a warrior (you really need at least one very soon, claiming those goody huts before the AI and expanding your map view to plan your next city placement, plus barb defence) a worker and a boat before you even start on a granary or a settler in your sole town makes for a really slow expansion start. Certainly not two boat builds in the opening round. Second boat doesn't speed up finding civs any I find plus the cost of two boats is half the cost of a granary.

Max research on writing since the research time will drop significantly with roads built.

Well my first build choice is mines, even if my second is road (in the opening round) mines take 6 turns. Even with a couple of roads my research speed won't drop to less then 25-20 turns and it will take a number of turns to reach that point. When going for a higher end tech like writing so early in the game its good to go the 10% I find. The gold for tech trading when I took that route last time was a nice help.

As far as bedes advice, I've already responded to it. Some of it I may consider for the next game other parts I won't. I of course appreciate the advice but that doesn't mean I'll take it.

One problem I've found with hugging the coast is that when the AI expands it pushes me flat up against that coast *ugh* Plus travel time sending settlers to the far end of a coast expansion.

 

[Bede]

First of all, for me to follow some of your advice your going to need to tell me what OCP stands for. "out-REX"?

OCP stands for Optimal City Placement where you build towns with no overlap. It is a discredited strategy for the reasons referred to by tRicky.

Out-REX is shorthand for expanding faster than the other nations.

A warrior or two is much more important then boats at first. (for all the reasons given earlier) building a boat just to get an additional communication or two 40 turns latter?(even at 3 turns boats are slow because they have to hug complicated coastline) Pfft, that can wait. I mean you usually get a few communications from other warriors since the AI wanders far and wide.

If you are SEA a curragh is 3x faster at exploration than a warrior. Take advantage of that. Placed where you were in the first game I would have built one immediately and sailed north. And yes, the AI wanders far and wide but only 1 tile at a time. With a single curragh sailing north you would have met the Aztecs musch faster than you did.

I will consider working on a boat at first as well but still seems to me that building a warrior (you really need at least one very soon, claiming those goody huts before the AI and expanding your map view to plan your next city placement, plus barb defence)

Forget about the goody huts, they are no more than a distraction. Think about it for a minute. Popping a goody hut has only a one in three chance of producing something worthwhile unless you are an EXP nation.

And yes you need a warrior soon, but only for the purpose of expanding your inland map view. If you don't pop huts you don't neeed to worry about barbs. The AI will do that for you and take care of them for you too.

Well my first build choice is mines, even if my second is road (in the opening round) mines take 6 turns. Even with a couple of roads my research speed won't drop to less then 25-20 turns and it will take a number of turns to reach that point. When going for a higher end tech like writing so early in the game its good to go the 10% I find. The gold for tech trading when I took that route last time was a nice help.

As I prefer to run 100% research (or the maximum allowable by the contentment of the citizens) I choose to road first. Spending the minimum on research is generally a less than optimal choice. Either full bore or none at all.
There is a risk attached to accumulating gold in the early stages, however. It will increase the risk of AI demands for tribute.

I am baffled why you feel the last game was "trashed". You had a decent start going for you from the screen shots I saw.

If you could post a save maybe I couold get a better feel for what happened.

 

[TruePurple]

And yes you need a warrior soon, but only for the purpose of expanding your inland map view. If you don't pop huts you don't need to worry about barbs.

What are you talking about? Barbs come from places other then goody huts.

As I prefer to run 100% research (or the maximum allowable by the contentment of the citizens) I choose to road first. Spending the minimum on research is generally a less than optimal choice. Either full bore or none at all.

Full bore or none at all? What are you talking about? You need at least some research in order get the guaranteed tech in 50 turns thing. You should never completely turn off tech.

Look, lets assume an average of 6 gold a turn for having tech at 10% (a low ball number, probably higher then 6) 50 turns of this... thats 300 gold. You can buy about two techs with that much gold. If I set my research as high as I could for writing I might have it done in roughly 35 turns instead of 50. In the 15 left over turns I could produce another tech. My way of setting tech at 10% leaves me at the minimum.. one tech ahead.