Foundation and Empire #2

[VoiceOfUnreason]

And interesting follow up question is "is such careful selection of buildings simple?"

Not sure how I feel about that - I keep hoping to avoid adding city specialization to the simple pile, but trying to finesse cities like this without it is really skirting the line. And certainly I'm going to have cities that are sacrificing infrastructure to spam units.

 

[vranasm]

If your definition of weak is "has no hammers to spare"... I don't think I can convincingly refute that.

Well that's probably my line of thinking.

The "problem" here is, that you will want to get good land from neighbors and if you want to have quick classical war (catapults) you should stay "small", like 4-6 city empire.
Under this circumstance you need every city to produce.

At first you start with clearing forests (this city has 2) and then combination of whip and "limited" growth to get some good cycle.

i don't really think that in this city you will get good cycle (even if I didn't do any math on this!).

otoh this city can help with generating commerce after taking neighbors land ;-).

I think I will hold with my initial feeling in the sense that this city (or location general) can be very good 5th/6th city.

Btw since dalamb kind of stuffed this map with neighbors I think it's the most effective strategy to beeline cats and go for them.

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

At turn 60, and the first thing I see is that I'm offering some really #@!$@$#% demonstrations of city priorities.

General rule is "settle toward green" - green tiles mean food, and long term potential. Cities that are predominantly brown have a hard time growing (not always, of course, but all things being equal).

So my choice to settle Corinth, picking up a gold mine, is questionable at best....



Writing is one turn out from here, which means we've achieved all of our initial tech objectives

• Food
• Production
• Defense
• Land
• Research

So let's review the tech fork, and make a choice:

(a) Code of Laws - large open areas of land to be settled, and we have to worry about how to pay for it all
(b) Construction - when we've run out of "our fair share of land" too quickly.
(c) Calendar - when we are surrounded by plantation resources (this one often couples with Iron Working)
(d) Monarchy - when we need a happiness boost from Hereditary Rule.

Calendar is out - no jungles, no plantations. Code of Laws is going to be important eventually, but I don't have enough open land really.

Construction to stomp on neighbors, or Monarchy for happy? I decided to prioritize Monarchy, on the grounds that for a catapult war, I need attacking pieces, which means I need time to train them. Once construction comes in, I'll be producing 'pults en mass.

I don't feel strongly about which choice you make here - just be sure to make one, and be thinking about how it fits into everything else you are doing.



Doesn't look all that hot really - I only lead in Land, and that's the Creative trait as much as anything. This is fine: the idea is to claim the lead from a strong foundation, not to race to it and then watch it slip away when I can't sustain it.



Units. Units units units. Of course, given my tech path, there are only two buildings available at the point, so there hasn't been a lot of temptation.

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

Sparta, as seen at Turn 45.



So, how is this city going to go? My simple recommendation for tile development goes something like this:

1) If there's a resource, put the matching improvement on it
2) If it's a green hill, put a mine on it
3) If it's green and flat, put a cottage on it
4) If it's brown, leave it alone

This gives reasonable results at Noble. When city specialization kicks in, some of those rules go out the window. There are also riddles about optimizing for growth, and how to judge when you don't have the improvement that matches a resource, that can come later.

Here's where we're headed at T90.



The arrows are drawn to show how I usually think about food: the city tile works the best food tile (wheat), and that cancels out other tiles that need food. Other food tiles use their surplus to cancel out other interesting tiles.

So I can see pretty quickly that I have enough food to work all four mines, once I get big enough - perfect for hammers in a city with 6 happy.

The green circles are food neutral - so I can see that I can get up to size 10 without needing to do anything clever.

I'm working the cottage here, because so often growth first gets more return than hammers first. If you work through the math, ignoring the granary to simplify things, you'll find that working the cottage tiles gets you a few more turns total turns on the mines, AND the extra commerce that you get from working the cottages. So it's a small win - assuming that total hammers at the end is more important than hammers now!

(Of course, the correct calculation would account for the granary too. And here, if we are serious about constructing it, you definitely need to worry about the fact that hammers now! may mean that you get the granary sooner, and therefore get more food when we do grow. I haven't gone mining the code, but the governor does seem to be smart about upping the value of hammers when constructing the granary).

Much more important than learning to optimize your tile yield? Learning to project what the city is going to look like before you actually settle it.

 

[MarigoldRan]

I was playing this on Immortal. Kind of uh, forgot to build a settler till like the ADs. Or pretty late BCs. Skipped "step 1."

Worked reasonably well. The biggest problem was econ crash.

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

Recommended reading: Parson Gotti on Planning

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

Thebes is settled in the North, because I'm trying to seal Hannibal in from both sides. The settler from Athens could have come south, but I worried that the settler in Sparta would be too slow to get back north.



Still lagging in Soldiers....

 

[JammerUno]

Good city placement isn't a question of green or brown land. It's an algorithm that compares every site on the merit of its foodsurplus, production, and commerce at certain sizes.

If you want to play better, you need to consider the numerical aspect of the game as well. In that regard, explaining concepts is good and handing people rules of thumb is bad. This thread is doing great at the former, and it shouldn't get stuck on the latter.

e.g. A city with 2 wet corns and mostly plains is better than one with one wet corn and mostly grassland for most of the game. Although your reasoning would say otherwise.

 

[AndiD]

Although IMO this is leading back to city specialization...

Two corn+plains => production city candidate (w/ hills). Or at least worker/settler spam/whip factory, freeing the capital to grow and the hammer city to make military units.

(This kind of city specialization helped my early game tremendously recently; otherwise I usually went vertical too early)

One corn+grassland => cottage city candidate (going to pay its own bills rather soon during expansion, not stifling your research)

Combined with the question: What do you need more right now / within the next turns in your fledgling empire?

Green > Brown is a "good enough" heuristics IMO. (Ofc you can cottage brown and feed it with food surplus, but in a pinch, I'd rather grab green and leave the AI the brown stuff to usually farm it .)

 

[vanatteveldt]

Basic city specialization is actually sort of easy.

Most cities should do what they're good at. Existing resources, hills, rivers, and grass should point towards food, hammers, or beakers. After the cities "natural" tiles are used, the other tiles should support the primary function as good as they can. Buildings should also support the primary function of the city.

 

[Um the Muse]

Recommended reading: Parson Gotti on Planning

That comic is amazingly good. Thanks for that recommendation; I stayed up late reading that

In the spirit of Lord Hamster, would you think it might help if we changed all the rules for micro? For example, using a Fantasy map script, so that we can't recognize automatically whether a tile is good or not. Would that help? The thing is, you often say one thing, then change your mind as you play. Given your experience in the game, I'd rather trust your instincts while playing than the rules you give.

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

Decided to combine a few ides in this post.

Tech path went up to Monarchy, then toward Construction (Math at T90, Construction at T100); along the way, I've decided to attack India. So how does that go?



Here's turn 90 - I've met most of my performance targets already, but I'm clearly behind in Soldiers. Does that violate my rules? Not really, in so far as the plan has me building troops right now, so I'm actively correcting that.



By turn 100, all is right with the world, but I'm not stopping, because I've plans to use these troops





Note the appearance of the barracks - I'm gearing up for WAR! and therefore building lots of extra units right now. As a very rough approximation: if a barracks makes troops 25% stronger, and costs 50 hammers, the break even point must be about 250 hammers. Cities training fewer troops than that don't need a barracks yet, those training more definitely do.

Turn 105...





Turn 110, war has begun





That's enough to produce this initial stack



The basic game plan: I expect the Phalaxen to live, and the catapults to die softening up the cities for them. The attacking pieces gain experience as we go, and serve to ensure that no horse archer comes along and shreads my stacks. Some of the catapults will survive, and gain experience, so attacking will get easier as we go along.

The battle plan is straight forward: reduce defenses, soften garrison with catapults and collateral damage, kill garrison with attack troops.

Note that as a matter of technique, the units are not promoted until necessary. As the targets are all cities here, the primary promotion I'm using is City Raider. One or two Phalanx will get a Medic Promotion. If I was worried about counter attack, I might pre-promote some Phalanxes with defensive promotions

In the back lines, I continue to train more catapults...

 

[Zx Zero Zx]

You should have just axe rushed on noble. The dumb AI with out their bonus units and techs on that level just can't handle 8 axes mighty quick taking all of their cities.

 

[JammerUno]

Although IMO this is leading back to city specialization...

Two corn+plains => production city candidate (w/ hills). Or at least worker/settler spam/whip factory, freeing the capital to grow and the hammer city to make military units.

(This kind of city specialization helped my early game tremendously recently; otherwise I usually went vertical too early)

One corn+grassland => cottage city candidate (going to pay its own bills rather soon during expansion, not stifling your research)

Combined with the question: What do you need more right now / within the next turns in your fledgling empire?

Green > Brown is a "good enough" heuristics IMO. (Ofc you can cottage brown and feed it with food surplus, but in a pinch, I'd rather grab green and leave the AI the brown stuff to usually farm it .)

No, the two corn city will be better at everything. Plains just switch a food with a hammer. Having another wet corn means you have a 3F advantage over a city with one. Assuming you want to have some production in both cities the 2C city will be superior up to size 6, adding one to that size for every grassland in the BFC. So with a measly 4 grasslands, it will be better up to size 10, at everything. And that's not even considering the inflation of earlier gains due to faster early growth. Green > brown just doesn't cut it as a heuristic.

 

[Mantic0re]

You should have just axe rushed on noble. The dumb AI with out their bonus units and techs on that level just can't handle 8 axes mighty quick taking all of their cities.

The problems with this strategy are:
1) a new player doesn't learn a lot from it. If you know how to do it good for you, if not then your unlikely to find this a winning strategy.

2) It doesn't work as well against certain AI's ,etc,. The point of this thread is to teach some universally applicable principles.

3) It violates one of his starting guidelines in that it calls for war when peaceful expansion is still a strong option. It has it's place, but for people struggling with the game, expansion by warfare should come after peacefull expansion is done.


Sidenote:
@ VOU
Enjoying this thread greatly, I hope you continue this work.

Would teaching the game principle be easier if the number of choices were limited? If so, why not lean toward automating workers? Decisions are then reduced to maintaining enough workers (big point) and recognizing city specialization choices (food, hammers, commerce) and clicking the appropriate button. This frees up attention and energy to focus on other areas (ie:build barracks question or city placement).

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

Would teaching the game principle be easier if the number of choices were limited? If so, why not lean toward automating workers? Decisions are then reduced to maintaining enough workers (big point) and recognizing city specialization choices (food, hammers, commerce) and clicking the appropriate button. This frees up attention and energy to focus on other areas (ie:build barracks question or city placement).

Hmm... that's a harder question to answer than I expected.

The vision I have in mind is more about removing clutter so that new players can see the game and learn it. Obsession with micromanagement aside, I think managing workers by hand is an important part of the latter.

Put another way, I'm deliberately avoiding the advice of "follow the computer recommendations" -- not just because the computer is weak, but because the player needs to learn to be comfortable with those decisions.

There is a good question to be raised: is there a real difference between following a computer generated plan, and following a tutorial like this one? I think if I do it right, yes; but that's not so clear.

 

[yatta77]

There is a good question to be raised: is there a real difference between following a computer generated plan, and following a tutorial like this one? I think if I do it right, yes; but that's not so clear.

In my humble opinion there is not even the risk:
(a) not everything you explain is gonna be understood;
(b) not everything is gonna be understood is gonna be considered true/wise/fun to do;
(c) not everything is gonna be considered true/wise/fun to do is always going to be remembered and executed under the "pressure" of the challenge of playing the next game.

So it likely will remain only a little bit of this tutorial in the next game the reader will play.

But if this little bit it is what will make the difference between winning the next game or not, you did your job excellently. In my case the little bit was "worker first" instead of "start with a settler"; and it really improved my games.

I'm saying the above because, even if I'm not a computer expert and neither a teacher, I had to teach to senior people the basic use of Windows and I was a little embarrassed to have to tell 30-40 years older than me people what to do; but then I quickly realized that teaching was far away from that: somebody learns Ctrl-C and say "thanks for that", somebody else think you are crazy saying that "it is easier and faster than right-click with the mouse". You just learn (weird huh? you are the teacher and you learn!) to accept both as good students, and help both to get the best they can achieve, in whichever way then can do their best. If you have people willing to learn, it is actually kind of an enjoyable challenge!

So, just my 2 here, I think you are doing an excellent job and shouldn't have to many doubts about it: it will be an useful reading in any case, and the reader will pick up what is the best for him/her. It is a very respectable effort.

Again, just my opinion based on my experience, I'm not an expert (neither of Civ IV, neither of teaching ).

Greetings,
yatta.

 

[Mantic0re]

There is a good question to be raised: is there a real difference between following a computer generated plan, and following a tutorial like this one? I think if I do it right, yes; but that's not so clear.

Absolutely, there is a difference. In the quote I put what I feel is a key word in bold face. Plan. I still struggle with this and I'm a Prince/Monarch player. Both systems can lead a new player astray, however I think blindly following minor suggestions (such as settle in place) allows for more focus on the important thing; Planning.


Your format and snapshots are great in that they outline the priorities and how these priorities guide tech choices. I moved up a level after finding a list and explanation of the priorities for early game last year. Maintaining the top down approach (your foundation goals and then Victory Conditions) is what makes this so helpful. Priorities and goals are the problem solving tools needed to answer the question: Ok so now what?

(incidentally, now what? You've prepped for war, but do you take 2 cities for peace, or go for the kill? I have my own answers but before force is applied we should identify clear goals for it's use.)


There are plenty of times in games where I don't have any clue what to do or what my immediate and long term priorities should be. I can fake (emulate solid players) it until I stumble on some good luck or find some direction. (I even narrate my choices and pretend I'm doing my own Lets Play; it really forces me to slow down and think.) These times remind me of the early phase of a chess game where good play involves maximizing degrees of freedom with power pieces and keeping pressure on the center. Only in later phases do we focus our pieces on a particular point and trade some of that freedom for zugzwang and/or material. I guess that is just part of the game and experience will allow me to recognize new opportunities and do a better job of faking it until I see something juicy.

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

(incidentally, now what? You've prepped for war, but do you take 2 cities for peace, or go for the kill? I have my own answers but before force is applied we should identify clear goals for it's use.)

My usual choice (which worked for me in this game), it to go for the kill....



Showing the warpath my troops have been taking. Delhi's location isn't all that great, but the goodies inside the city mean it's a keeper. Which in turn means that I need to do something to relieve the cultural pressure on the city.

One important thing to learn about fighting wars is that they tend to get much easier as they go. At least two factors play into this (a) as you take cities from the enemy, his ability to produce more troops falls and (b) his mobile defenses - the garrisons that can shift from place to place - usually shift to fight you early, rather than late. Which means that once you have killed them off, the remaining garrisons are pretty weak.



There's the stack in Delhi. If you look carefully at the XP, you'll notice that some of the units attacked the city without getting promoted first. The garrison was so weak that I held off on the promotion in case I wanted to heal with it afterwards.

But the stack in Delhi is clearly capable of capturing more cities, so that option is still available. If it were not, I'd probably sue for peace to get some other concessions. The worst possible outcome is to lose a bunch of veteran troops failing to capture an objective, but using all of those troops to capture an objective is not much better.

The question will usually simplify to: do I have enough catapults to turn the battle to a rout? Which is why there is still a supply chain of catapults approaching from the east.

The other possibility is that you start running into the next generation of defenders. Here, I'm prepared to fight archers/axes/swords, but if Longbows start appearing the in the enemy cities, I may want to reconsider.

I'm not sure why I had Petaliputra building wealth here. The usual answer in a war is for the newly captured cities to train garrison troops to hold the line. Or to whip away unhappy citizens to get some infrastructure in place.



Tally in the war thus far: 4 lost catapults, one lost attacking piece. That's what disposapults are for. I can sustain the attack because my good pieces get stronger.

I don't usually start to think about preserving catapults until they are over 5XP, and even then I might trade a to promotion catapult to go after a single difficult defensive piece (assuming I can't get better odds from an attacking piece).

Eventually, veteran catapults + gold -> veteran cannon.



War trades troops for land/food/GNP; if you are going to stay #1 in military, you have to keep training troops to replace the ones you lose.

 

[ABCDPuppies]

That's a cute stack VoU, but why don't you have a medic in it? That should be straightforward enough for the beginners to get.