aCK-1 Behaving Ourselves

[S.ilver]

Hmm, ok S.ilver was ing. Liq and DE are right, the settler overflow needs to go directly into a worker for one turn. THEN switch to a granary so we can grow pop while building the granary. We need another worker and the Granary done here before we dive into the Great Wall. This should be plenty of time for us to get the the stone hooked up etc...

---

Some micro on the Great Wall...

When building the Great Wall, it is safe to let our population go up to 6. Even though one person is unhappy, we will be able to spend 3 population at once that way on a 3-pop whip to finish the wall. So only let this happen about halfway through the wall build. We suffer a hammer penalty on whipping wonders. I don't know what it is so I asked Liq, and he just said ugly. So assume it's 50% less hammers. So 3 citizens getting whipped translated into 22.5 x 3 = 67.5 hammers. 66 x 2 (double production for stone) is 135 hammers. Having the stone makes citizens going into the wall basically like a normal whip.

135 hammers is absolutely staggering. Keep in mind that I don't know if this is the actual value, because I don't know how whip mechanics work in regards to wonders, but I'm assuming it is. It's over half the wall.

This gives us a unique opportunity to exploit the high food production of Moscow. Basically, we can grow Moscow to size 6 (which is above our happy cap), and then abuse 3-pop into the wall. This is basically stockpiling food for conversion into production. If we have more than 90 hammers left in the wall when we hit 6 pop, we'll be able to do this to maximum efficiency.


Keep in mind, we don't have to do it this way. Having the stone makes the wall trivial to build straight. The 3-pop whip will require quite a bit of micromanagement as well, to ensure we don't have 90 or less hammers remaining when we hit 6 pop. But it is doable, as we can stall by working our two lovely silk tiles.

---

Once the wall is done, we can get back to REXing, as our capital will be heavily tricked out to spam settlers and escort units.

Meanwhile, we need to be researching Masonry. Writing does not help us at all at the moment. Open Borders is obviously not what we want, and new cities need a Granary before we can even think of plopping down a Library.

We MIGHT possibly want to delay Writing until we've snagged Priesthood. Getting Priesthood would discount it, and open up the straight shot for CoL (would have to be hard teching it though, as Oracle is fairly popular, although we could possibly do it through chops at St. Petes.). CoL is fairly obvious to help sustain the REXing. Something to be discussed of course.

While all this is happening, St. Petes needs to be able to get itself up on its own two feet. Why we are building another warrior there is somewhat confusing (we already have 4), but since there are no hammers put into it, we can swap it out and ignore it for a while. What we need is to start a Granary. However, when the city reaches size 2, swap it to a worker (which will be 15 turns by then). Obviously, when we can whip this worker, do so immediately so we can improve the tiles instead of working shoddy ones. Then we finish the Granary and the city takes off (and we start having to pile culture into it).

EDIT2: Ignore that first edit about taking Green Dot. Did some maintenance calculations, and it will kill us. Rather have Red or Magenta dots. Please explore the Red area before settling it though.

 

[Arlborn]

I am learning a lot about micro managing reading this SG!

 

[sturick]

alrighty...thanks for the tweaks to the plan...seems like I had the right ideas for builds...just not the right way to get there. Do we need to be teaming a warrior with the worker in St. Pete? Or do we not have to worry about it.

I don't want to be the victim of a reverse worker punt.

 

[S.ilver]

Thinking about it a bit further...

I'm really liking the Masonry->Myst->Poly/Med->Priest->Writing path. I think we have enough trees in St. Petes to conceivably chop the Oracle. We will certainly have enough workers in that area through food + whips and regrowth cycles. This would win us Code of Laws, and allow us to keep going, AND win us the Confuci holy city in our smallest city (probably will be one of the REXed border cities). We'd also pick up Writing for Libraries just around the time our REX is starting to really hurt our science.

The whole plan is contingent on when the Oracle usually falls though. I don't know this, so someone more well versed in wonders will have to let me know. We DO need the culture in St. Petes now though...

EDIT: Uh, I don't think the AI is smart enough to do worker punts. So long as Rammy doesn't go into We Have Enough On Our Hands (WHEOOH) mode, we should be fine. And if he does, we'll be in for some fun...

 

[Liquidated]

one of the reasons bug is so powerful is the leader outlooks tacked onto the score area... to take from boff-05 where everyone loves Izzy Wizzy!!...

The red box has the little angry person marker.. that means the civ considers you their worst enemy. Izzy is as popular as ever!!!

The Yellow box just to the right contains red fists which signify "We have too much on our hands" (WHTMOOH) as if you asked the leader to go to war with civ x. This means one main thing, the civ is busy in BUILDUP mode and about to smack someone.

If they are at war, the red fist is normal as even gandhi will start building military units if being attacked =p

If a Civ is not at war, especially if they are one of the known nutcases (alex, monty, toku, shaka, rags, baudica, nappy, khan, charlie, izzy, joao, and cathy come to mind), that means they are in build up mode to roll someone over.'

in terms of Boff-05,France was in WHTMOOH mode for several centuries when he Finally DOW'd on carthage. Hannibal bribed Alex to DOW on France (who is about to lay some serious hurt down on purple box hannibal) so that explains their red fists.

Zara on the other hand is in no war so he's in build up mode.. we only hope he attacks us.

Our one friend on the map is England due to shared religion and we only DOW'd on his buddy zara once .

All the way on the Left in the blue box are the enforced peace icons. In this case we had just gotten done beating down alex and took 10 turns of peace. The Orange box cartel of sally and his colony Raggy just exped our bored ironclads so they just signed peace as well.

Rammy is pretty laid back such that if we manage to have the same religion, it's doubtful he will attack us even with the super close borders.

Wang is a spineless pos techer and pretty far away so hopefully he gets tangled with someone other than us.

For micro, you have time to mine the hill the worker is on then road the two tiles (not the mine) leading to the stone. Masonry should be finished about the time the worker finishes the road on the stone. After that is done we need that copper online posthaste.


Cheers!
-Liq

 

[sturick]

And away we go....

Surveying the empire: Everything looks good...

(1)-2375 BC:
St. Pete switches to a granary...44 turns!!! yuk. continue working the farm for max growth so we can whip sooner.

Moscow does the whip with the overflow into the worker. Working cows and FP.
Worker starts to mine the hill.

Preparing warriors to escort to blue dot.

(2)-2350 BC:
Boris finds Fredericks borders...Ramesses has quite the squeeze put on him it appears.

Total job here...i forgot to switch the tech to masonry. It will fall in 11 turns.

(3)-2325 BC:
Switch Moscow to the granary...23 turns...blech.
Maybe it happened last turn but our culture has taken the wine tile back from Ramesses.

(4)-2300 BC:
Meh.

(5)-2275 BC:
Forest grows in 2NW of Moscow...chop chop!

(6)-2250 BC:
Stonehenge is BIADL.
Frederick adopts Slavery.
We can add rice to the BFC of Red Dot.
Unless Ramesses is a moron...we have lost the goodie hut. No Barbs please!

(7)-2225 BC:
Wang Kon gets a bad research event.
St. Pete grows to size 2. I hem and haw over what tile to work...

wine would allow a 1 pop whip in 11 turns with little overflow but 2 extra commerce for those turns which would shave a turn off of masonry.
cows would allow growth in 9 so a two pop whip would be available yielding more overflow...32 i think so i choose that route. We will see if my whip math is right.

Novgorod is founded on Blue Dot...i work the FP tile and i queue up a granary.

Added maintenance costs bring us to -5gpt at 100% or -2 at 80% with the loss of 3 beakers. We have the money for now so i choose the 100% option for a while at least.

(8)-2200 BC:
Meh.

(9)-2175 BC:
Trying to bait a lion into attack a warrior me in the cover of a forest for the free xp.
78.9% if I attack it so we have good odds on the defensive.

Moscow grows to size 3 and I think it is better to switch back to the worker(it will only take 4 more turns)as we can't finish the granary before we grow to size 4 so why not get the worker going that much faster. Maxed worker production by working one flood and one mine instead of two floods. Two mines caused shrinkage...nobody likes that!

Oh another forest grew in Moscow...yay! I missed where it ended up though...probably to the north again.

(10)-2150 BC:
Our warrior was minorly inconvienced by the lion and wins with 1.6 left.

(11)-2125 BC:
Not a whole lot...masonry in next turn.

(12)-2100 BC:
Masonry comes in...

I dial up a 5 turn Mysticism looking towards the Oracle...fingers crossed.

(13)-2075 BC:
Moscow finishes the worker and resumes the granary. I get him started on hooking up the copper. Our original Moscow worker will finish the quarry in 9 turns. I work the 2 fps for maximum growth.

(14)-2050 BC:
Wang Kon must have researched writing as he will sign OB with us now.

(15)-2025 BC:
Novgorods borders expand.
DeGaulle adopts Slavery
Someone receives a Great Prophet...I assume it is whoever built Stonehenge.
St. Pete will grow next turn....is my math right?????

(16)-2000 BC
Temple of Solomon is built far away....well not really...right next door in fact. Sounds like we will have a religion spreading our way pretty darn soon.

Major
As many of you probably figured out already...you can't two pop whip at size 3. Told you I was a slavery noob.
Oh well...so I work the wine tile now and I think we can whip in 5 turns...real sorry gang...i think there was a better way.

(17)-1975 BC:
Mysticism comes in...

meditation up in 8 at 100% or 10 at 80%. We still have 164 gold so I keep it at 100%
. Our coffers will be bolstered if we don't make the Great Wall.

Boris determines that Frederick has copper and pigs in his BFC.

(18)-1950 BC:
Novgorod grows to size 2...work another flood plain.
Moscow up for growth next turn.

(19)-1925 BC:
Moscow grows and works a mine...granary due in 5 growth in 8.

(20)-1900 BC:
DeGaulle gets a really good event...he has improved axes now...glad we are far away from him.

(21)-1875 BC:
St. Pete can finally whip its granary...unfortunately we only get 5 overflow
I do so thinking of what could have been.

(22)-1850 BC:
Quarry finishes in Moscow...what is better?
The mine tile with 4H/1C or the quarry tile with 1F/4H that will speed growth by one turn. I choose the quarry tile as it doesn't slow research any.

(23)-1825 BC:
I send the quarry worker to prechop a grassland forest tile for the Great Wall.
I think I have found France.

(24)-1800 BC:
I contemplate starting a monument in St. Pete while we take 4 turns to grow to size 3.
I think its the right move...but I have been wrong before.
I do it...try and stop me.

(25)-1775 BC:
Moscow finishes its Granary so I begin the Great Wall...14 turns.
I move the copper miner to neighboring forested hill for a chop/prechop...we don't need the copper right now...it needs two more turns btw.

Boris meet Charlemagne founder of the Buddhist religion...
And DeGaulles bestest buddy.

I spot a warrior barb moving towards St. Pete...I send a nearby warrior to intercept.

(26)-1750 BC:
Meditation arrives

I put Priesthood in the queue
I spam sign as the barb cowers into the fog.

Wrapup:
Question on procedure...is it preferable to finish your current turn and let the next guy whack enter or leave all of the moves available for them?

You have two workers in Moscow working on chops currently...we can discuss how we want to handle them...use them or save them as prechops. Don't forget that the copper still needs 2 turns of mining to be hooked.

Novgorod and St. Pete are slowly growing and in need of workers sooooo badly. Please let me know...should I have just beelined for the worker in Novgorod. In hindsight, I feel I should have.

Boris is alive! Here is his progress this turn:

Spoiler :

 

[Liquidated]

ok well book incoming from silver hehe, nice turns though mate.

Shocking boris is still alive!

anyway the mantra for this round is....

Let the Good Lord allow us to remain religion free,
and Provide us with Peaceful Expansion.

Will play in a few hours.


Cheers!
-Liq

 

[sturick]

should I be concerned about said upcoming book???

 

[sturick]

Ramesses seems to have a nice location for his second town 1S of the banana to his north.
Hopefully he settles there so we can grab the sugar site and complete the blockade.

 

[S.ilver]

Ok, in general a good job on the turnset sturick, considering I did spam up a wall of text that was probably not too interesting to read.

Blue Dot is properly placed, we're on our way towards an Oracle attempt, and the Wall is started in Moscow. Things are looking good in that respect. You also did an excellent job in scouting, considering the barb dodging that usually goes on in this part of the game.

That said, S.ilver will now take a look into the micromanagement and drop some critique down.

S.ilver's Micromanagement Lesson of the Day

Ok, so the name of the game today is working improved tiles. That's, essentially, the idea of training a worker first when starting off games.

So let's take a look at St. Petes and Novgorod.

Both towns are at size 2 and have no tiles improvements. The idea with these towns was, upon reaching size 2, to immediately switch to a worker. These workers would be built via food. BUT, workers are only 90 hammers. A 1-pop whip yields 45 hammers.

So the St. Pete's worker, which would have taken 15 turns to build normally at size 2, could have been whipped after 8 turns. This gives us a worker on the 9th turn, and we are back to size 1 to grow, build the granary, and improve our tiles all at the same time.

Similarly, Novgorod builds a worker in 18 turns. So after 9 turns, we can 1-pop whip for 45 hammers, completing the worker in 10 turns.

Summary

St. Petes

-Growth to size 2 in 11 turns (working the Flood Plain)
-Start worker and run for 8 turns (6 converted hammers per turn) after we grow to size 2.
-Whip to completion for the 9th turn.

Novgorod

-Growth to size 2 in 11 turns (working flood plains)
-Start worker and run for 9 turns (5 converted hammers per turn) after we grow to size 2.
-Whip to completion for the 10th turn.


So now each size 1 city has a worker in about 20 turns, and can begin getting improved tiles up while growing and building a granary.

The idea behind this is that working unimproved tiles is very inefficient, so getting the worker out ASAP to get tile improvements up is very important. Also, since we are working all food tiles, it is the fastest way to convert the food to production (since the second population costs 33 food, and the whip gives us 45 hammers, it is also a very efficient conversion).


So in summary, that's what I meant by "build the granary in St. Petes until we reach size 2". That basically allowed us to build a worker in 9 turns, if it was taken advantage of. Total time is 20 turns for the worker. To answer your question sturick, if we had built it straight after founding it would have taken 23 turns. We save 3 turns, not huge, but that is an extra 3 turns to grow the city, and an extra 3 turns improving tiles.

For Novgorod, the process would have been found the town and build the granary for 11 turns. At that point it would have popped to size 2, and we could have started the worker right then and there, for a worker to complete in 10 turns. 21 turns total for a worker. Again, building it straight from founding would have been 30 turns. In this case we save 9 turns, which is even better than the St. Petes situation.

Since there was a tentative plan to chop the Oracle in St. Petes, this would have gotten us workers up north to do it, without having to walk one of the Moscow workers up there and risk it getting killed. There's also a TON of work to be done up there (getting Gold, Wheat, and Cows online), and getting a road set up between Novgorod and St. Petes, for an eventual run down through Saladin Green Dot area.

As a side note, BUG is great for this, as it gives you an alert the turn before a city grows, and the turn it does grow. It also gives you whipping alerts too. All alerts are optional of course, so you may need to enable them.

----


Ok, as for other minor critique... We don't need to chop any forests in Moscow to finish the Great Wall. We can do it through a 3-pop whip, or just straight build the thing as Liq tells me that it will take something like SIX whole turns once the city grows to size 5 next turn. So let's save the forest for the Mids or something else like that.

Forgetting to switch to Masonry until the second turn is just a minor brainfart, no need to dwell on that too long.

Not sure why a monument is going at St. Petes. We are Creative remember? And it won't help a huge amount against Rammy's capital, considering we are fighting against 2+5+4+1=12 culture per turn (palace, holy city, shrine, obelisk) at least, and it will take an ugly long time to finish and not actually help us in improving this city. Again, we needed a worker here, so that relates back to the big Micro section.

Other than that, we're looking good.


To answer your procedure question; it is typical to move all units and such, leaving the turn ready to be ended for the next player (of course, the next player usually does a spot check of the empire to ensure everything is ok).

 

[sturick]

Thanks teach!

I figured the worker situation was my major malfunction and knew it...after my set was over of course.

I only put the monument up to try and battle Rams culture...yeah its a drop in the bucket though.

At least I didn't DOW on Ramesses and Wang Kon and vanish in a cloud of smoke...TADA!
Nothing that a Liq can't clean up right?

EDIT: Of course now I see clearly where you outline the build plan for St. Pete. DOH!

 

[S.ilver]

Not a problem sturick. That's the point of this game . If there was no , everyone else in the roster and all the lurkers wouldn't have anything to read on how to save turns building workers .

Anyways, Liq up next so I won't have to write a book this time (I hope ). Of course, turnaround time with Liq at the helm is fast enough that I might as well not bother taking a break .

 

[goblinmarine]

just want to drop another note here to let eveyone know i'm still around lol.
that explanation of worker building was extremely educational. it all seems so obvious after it's explained even though i wouldn't have thought of it without having it shown to me.

 

[Liquidated]

Seems half the screens a liq took never took... so um yeah instead of 25ish screens there would have been lots more... SCARY.

Preturn:1775 BC
Omg walls and Oracle + Code of Laws + Holy Town in Pete's... WTH indeed! This sounds like a plan for Captain Micro! er.. wait, he quit and went back to Civ3 didn;t he.... ok well, Liq gets to do it.

That's the plan then ! . .. .. .. .. . and moan about yellow dot's Location and move on!

well ok no northern workers and the area needs help bad. sigh. Silver already covered all that so uh ...wtfever he said.

See we have chops going on so stop that 'nonsense' now . Cathy's "Chagrin" is going to head north to help out pete and nova while "Foible" in the south gets to mining the copper.. honestly why road it then not mine it? Copper = axes and this early in the game you never ever ever know when you must drop everything to push out axes or even spears!

I see people are confused about worker names so here's the skinny on the The Boff-0 Worker naming scheme. You manage to lose one of these workers to inattentive border chops and you'll NEVER live it down!!!

How to name Workers:
Basic Worker Names follow the same Basic pattern depending on if they are stolen or built.

Nickname's "X"

Where Nickname is the shortest nick of all your beloved nutcases like... Toku's, Izzy's, Alex's, Kahn's, burgerKing's, you get the picture. Sid's for the coveted Barbarian worker punt.

X is some contrived version of the root name initially chosen.
Stolen Workers have the Root name of "Donation" (obviously silver started this nonsense)

Toku's "Donation" was the first worker punted in the all-punted-worker SG of boff-03 on account Sally wasn;t about to make one of his loyal followers build roads and polar canals.

When the worker is self built, the root word is "Chagrin" (obviously liq started the domestic worker naming scheme eh?)

If you aren;t a veritable font of overwhelming pedantism such as a Liq is wont to be, you can always cheat and just go put the root word into an online thesaurus and search for a few new names. Keep in mind though that blindly grabbing words out of a thesaurus may have unintended results!!!!!

Another way is just try and hide a gaggle of naked workers in some newly razed town and hand the turns off. Worked for Silver!

So anyway, the towns are all growing in the next two turns so keep them building whatever. Plan here was to 3 pop whip the great wall in Moscow but well those two active hills plains mines + stone + cows + floodplains farms =

The key here that was so well performed btw was not only to improve the tiles you want to work now, but also to tiles improved in order give options for when you need to stagnate growth or get growing into new and improved happy cappage.

keep in mind the Worker Naming scheme will be in full swing this turn set!

Also seems half the screen shots didn;t take... grrrrr.

[1]1750 BC
Barb warrior pops out of the fog labeled barb here hehe.. "Chagrin" will run around it.

Moscow pops size 5 and it's microFunTime(TM)

Ok here's the deal we want the wall done and fast.. not with a chop though!

38/225 hammers are sunk into the wall already so deal is "To whip or not To Whip"

Before rushing off with some contrived plan, Lets do the math here shall we?

Max Food is taking work off the stone and moving both population onto the silk.
At max food we have 12 hammers into wall and growth to an unhappy 6 population in 5 turns...
38 hammer + 5 times 12 hammers + 3 population whipped time 45basehammers multiplied by 2 for stone and divided by two for whiping a wonder.
38+5(12)+3(45*2/2)= 233
233>225 so whip on turn 5 mean wall comes in turn 6 and we are back down to size 3 with a happy cap of 4 for 15 turns... right that's pretty ugly.

So lets try all hammers.

Ooo sweet! Working the two mined hills + stone + 1 floodfarm + crap cows stagnates our growth(solving happy cap issues) and gives us a whopping 16x2 = 32 hammers per turn. best part is both hills are riverbased so get a free commerce.

Ok screw whipping moscow! We have found Food/Hammer Nirvana!

wall in 6

[2]1725 BC
Barb walks back into the "Barb here" fog area so a warrior is heading down to look.

Mine finishes on copper so foible heads north to road on over to nova while Chagrin is in nova's BFC proper, heading over to pete to start chopping that oracle.

pete and nova grow to 3 and I move the SERIOUSLY LATE worker on queue. This makes it 5 turns til I can 1 pop whip the worker and leave pete pissed for a while.

petes location seriously sucks ass btw. Would of had 3 fp's to grow into , all gathering commerce instead of this bs Cow tile of 3 food and nothing else.


[3]1700 BC
So barbs north of cows again whee, warrior on the way.

Foible starts the long road north and liq purposely roaded the FP so movement out of moscow isn;t cutting over two rivers.

Here's a screen later on in the turnset about what liq is talking about, spoilered as to not give the wall away!!

Spoiler :

Notice the path liq took threads the floodplains first despit the road taking twice as long to build.
had the road started in redbox it would have cut off road bonus movement entering the red tile as well as leaving to the north... bad. Going from floodplains to yellow box would have been fine btw even though it looks like it crosses the river, it really doesn't.

The path chosen was decided upon because Liq knew damn well there was going to be a trooper standing on the hill just above the number 2 and the barbs were all over this area when the road was started.

Move work in Nova on over to a worker in 15ish.. 8 turns til whippable. Should have changed to that last turn.. too busy doing the math on the worker in pete's


[4]1675 BC
Try and bait the barb warrior just north of Moscow to attack the wooded warrior who hasn;t earned a name yet..

[5]1650 BC
ok so barb side steps hehe. warrior yet to be named gets to fortify then.

in other news, Boris is still alive somehow.

[6]1625 BC
Priesthood comes in so move to writing in... 7 turns at -6 gold per turn 100% science.

Seems missing a few screen shots =/

The newly named Franky beats off the warrior with .6 health left and about 4 barbs appear around our borders hehe. Moving frank into culture to heal faster.

The downside to having vast expanses of land to settle means the bards are going to be thick and heavy... well unless you are a wimp and turn barbs off. Lets hope we get that effing wall eh?

[7]1600 BC
Big turn!

First off, we meet the scout of the last leader...

Sexah!... wow Cathy AND baud, The psycho chicks are always Hawt and both are red heads! Good thing we are the Cathy this time around though as both on the same continent is always a bit too much. hahahaha.

Got us a new toy.

So barbs can go eff off with the new and improved wallz. Oh and lets hope people walk to US to get beat down

Barracks in 5, Axe in 4 and mids in 1600 BC would only take 24 turns ROFL. WTH, this is epic speed, so Broken. Barracks wins as the wall will allow us to stall 5 turns before pushing a few axes.

So can whip petes worker and so I do!
3 hammers going into a criminally long oracle.
Well with 2 workers in the BFC proper, things should speed up finally.

Oh and it seems wang's town is off green dot one tile, you guys know what that means!!!! That pos gets razed!

[8]1575 BC
More barbs pop out of the fog in the north.. ugly.

Well workers are safe so long as they never leave cultural borders so Move disquietude over to pasture the cows.

[9]1550 BC
Chop completes into oracle so move to next riverside forest hehe. Micro pete to work food as its first whip anger is almost done.

[10]1525 BC
Thankfully quiet..

[11]1500 BC
Wang comes looking to trade archery for masonry.. eff you wang. means he has alphabet though!

Nova's worker is whippable this turn so I do just that...
It's important to have more population in pete's than nova if we win Oracle and are first to Code of Laws. We want the holy city of Code of laws to be in petes to help culture. I'll steer the game to win/loss of oracle.

[12]1475 BC BC

Yep, your Creative imperial traits hard at work!! Keep in mind we haven;t founded any new towns for a while!

Mortification is Born in Nova so get her cottaging a flood. This town is total cottage cheese heaven with hills hammers and forests to balance the health out.

Barracks finishes in Moscow so onto a 3 turn axe. Aiming to clear that forest of barb warriors.

France and Burger king both found new towns this turn as well.

[13]1450 BC

Writing comes in so I slot in a slow Iron Working as we need to locate iron and chop jungles in the near future. We have copper for axes though so we don;t need IW NOW...

Turning science to 0% for +12 gold a turn because it's useless to waste cash while Moscow doesn't have a half priced library yet.

Oracle is uh... yeah right.

Boris is still alive though he's prolly getting eaten soon.

[14]1425 BC
Holy cow! finally get pete's pasture done =/ so late. well growth in 2 so I will move disquietude over to mine the bare grass hill. We are going to need that gold online soon as well.

Unnamed warrior braces for barb punk!

Nova gains a forest uh hmm somewhere near nova hehe... oh ok zooomed in real close then click the event in the log and boom! tile revealed! the lone south hill tile that didn;t have a forest hehe.. only a few tiles left to spread to.

[15]1400 BC
newly Named Sally easily wipes out that warrior and Moscow pushes our first axes out of the door.. awww so cute.
main deal is we want to protect our road to nova so going to station the axe on the hill over looking them, least till borders pop.
put Moscow on a double speed library (thanks creative) due in 5 turns.

chop goes into oracle meh.

[16]1375 BC
Meh screens didn;t take so these are from a few turns later hehe.

More mind numbing microFunTime(TM) with your Questionable Host Liq'd!

Ok so whip anger in pete's ends in 10 so go hammer heavy with growth in 11. Oracle is a nominal 16 turns meh, that late worker really hurt hehe but no issue!!!

Also micro Nova to stall growth for rather convoluted reasoning's..

The plan.
What we *want* to accomplish here is oracle being built in 10ish turns and grab Code of laws first. This nets us the religion of confusion (liq's favorite!) and we want the holy town to go into pete's to make up for its horrible location. Really horrible horrible horrible location. These dot maps are not tossed about to be ignored.

later game religions normally go into the highest population town which
1. Isn't the capital,

2. Isn't the holy town of another religion.

That means offyellow dot, twice cursed and now with RealBeef(C) needs to be bigger than nova when Oracle maybe completes. That means Nova suffers for Pete's Sins.

Pete is only size 3 due to double whip happy cap issues(yay!) so really, stalling nov's growth at two allows the town to remove itself from the need to watch it's food and steal the holy town. This means nova gets working on it's granary and lets pete's concentrate on working hammers.

Is all this wonderful and happy? Poor Nova.

We could easily lose confusion to tech crazy wang and oracle to industrial France btw. This is prince tho, so who knows!!

So anyway lets cover the great wall now. This wonder is really nice but understand how it really makes sense for our situation.

1. Cathy is imperial and +300% GG generation when attacked is just funnyz. like roll around on the floor drooling funny. Ok maybe that's at liq's place.
2. Zomg, We have STONEZ!!!!
3. The land around us is impossible to defog without massed units. Already there's like 3 effing barbs in the fog north 2 more in the south and just got done punking the one from the east. They are only getting worse. There are advantages to starting closeish to other civs.
4. Our Capital is a really scary nest of poisonous Hammers that can spit out the mids in 24 effing turns at 1600 BC.
5. Early Great Spy points are awesome as well when we know all the civs.

Best not to rely on early game wonders unless they help you out measurably and can be done in a rather shortish amount of time btw in this case wall and oracle make perfect sense for us. Mids are just plain wonderwhoring tho as our traits do not leverage the spec economy well , Bad silver, Bad liq.

[17]1350 BC
move the fog busters around.

[18]1325 BC
Holy hell. Barbs placed a town exactly where I placed the no town here sign on the very first effing turn.

Effing barbs, they are doing this just to further piss a liq off eh.

Also seems fred's scout beat off a barb so he's healing out in the open... That's boris btw, still alive!!!

So this is the late fog bust situation.. axe center and warriors on the flanks to make sure no fog close to those roads.

[19]1300 BC
Wang will trade sailing with us hehe.

And omg, a cottage finishes in nova! get to work on another.

[20]1275 BC
Big turn!
Moscow finishes library and Liq is offered these choices...

yeah, that's just sick.
go axe in 3 as that pos barb town may have archers in it... settler and mids are not too far away Though!!!

Science back to 100%, IW in 17ish tho stuff is beginning to speed up after some well deserved worker attention. Oh wait no. Nova is getting pownened so we can prop up pete's orcale/hly town chances.

Nova pops ANOTHER FOREST in its bfc, man people only uh 3 more possible places for nova to pop more forests hehe.

Oracle in a nominal 12 turns and silver is screaming at liq to finish this bit of micro hell off so as to not scare the next guy up. So a Confused Oracle or bust, eff wang eh?

Oh Fred popped another town as well. he's all alone as hindu... ugly.

[21]1250 BC
So wang goes jew for nice contiguous religious borders hehe.

Spoiler :

This is how it stands, goldish box is the jew block of wang and rammy
Cyan is freddy and his lonesome hindu, maybe baud will join him.
Blue is the bud lite block of boxed in burger king and degaul. poor old man crazy, he never had a shot in this game.
Yellow in the corner is baud who doesn;t need a religous excuse to start a war. Wild lass she is but once a friend always a friend well... unless you don;t go dumpster diving into every single war she asks you to help her with.

So yes... these bastards all hate each other and here we are just hoping to be confused and not convert.

Final Chop for oracle finishes (4 trees sacrificed I think) as well as the grass hill mine so the workers will move onto hooking that gold up for the much needed happy. If we win confusion in pete or nova, the river alone will link the trade route, want to finish the roads though so we can shuffle troops about like ninnys.

[22]1225 BC
Boris still going.. man this is the longest lived exploring scout ever in the history of uh whatever!

[23]1200 BC
Moscow pushes out another axe and consider pushing out a super fast 6 turn settler since we are full hammers and happy cap is 5, meaning we lose nothing. Another axe would be nice as well though and uh gold needs a road going so can stall on settler a bit. Well, meh ok another axe in 3 as silver says "can never go wrong with more EFFING AXESW@@@#" or Something like that.

Baud has Ponys for sure and they are all systems go! No fists up yet tho!

Oh and look into petes to make sure all is going well and am greeted with this bit of Microed Heaven....

3 turns on whip anger 4 turns on growth 5 turns on profit!


[24]1175 BC
Liq shamelessly wastes a worker turn moving to the incorrect flood to road to pete hehe.. SHAME liq SHAME

Nova is hooked up to trade now tho!

[25]1150 BC
Fred converts to a late slavery... not sure WTH is going on there.

[26]1125 BC
Baud pops another town right next to boris who is south westish of France.... getting to the end of scouting.

Moscow pops an axe and so go for another axe in 3 need more axes if that pos barb town is archer based.

[27]1100 BC
Pete grows to a happy size 5 and works the wine tile on account need to slow growth down.

I whip nova down to size one just to help pete out in landing the shrine. That town will grow back super fast and no longer be persecuted.

Deep Breath!!!
[27]1075 BC
Big Turn!!!!!!

Oracle completes (note where the confused Holy town is..)

yay send the confused miss over to Moscow as it needs the happy bad.

oh and look at the sexah new culture pete's is spitting out! pop in 2 ROFL.

Going to play to 1000 BC as I need to clean up the mess I made trying to land confusion where we needed it most, lord knows no one wants to see what remains of nova....

[28]1050 BC
Moscow finishes another axe and goes for a 7 turn settler. All these troops are busy heading north to the pos barb town as it may have archers on a hill in it by now... Shudder... Total auto raze pos and good riddance. Replant in the proper dotmap location for a land rich costal town of Heroic Proportions.

[29]1025 BC

The borders of Pete pop due to the holy town + oracle combination so the town is officially hooked up to trade via the river to nova and the road to Moscow.

Normally one needs sailing to use rivers and coasts to link trade routes but if the river/cost path is entirely inside your culture, it's a freebee. Also note that if there's a river next to a resource, you don;t actually need a road on the resource tile in order to link it to the rest of the civ (provided the water path links to the main trade network within contiguous culture borders).

We want the road to finish though because it facilitates troop movement.

[30]1000 BC
Okie so axe finally makes it up to that pos barb town that just screams RAZE ME and yay, warriors!

Yeah 99.3% odds without promo so kill those barbs now and use the promo to heal. Unneeded backup is filtering north for some barb hunting as well so spread them out in pairs to cover eachother.

Marked out where we eventually need a road going. Red dot (NOT where the bloody barb town is) will be hooked up to the capital the moment it is founded but having a worker up thre as it pops is good as the rice needs to be dejungled/farmed and the hill the barbs so kindly cleared of jungle for us needs to be mined.

Since the Axe there can take that pos barb town out by himself, Do so hehe and Name him once he actually wins a fight. Run that axe west to beat down the many barb warriors popping in and out of view all these turns.

Once red dot is founded it will seal directly with nova the moment is it born, no need to wait for culture bounce. Have an axe in the area though before running the settler outside of our culture. The barbs are just crazy thick up there and losing a settler is not an option.

The rest of the axes btw should pair up and fan out all over the north as there's a metric TON of barbs up there and we have yet to see anything more fearsome than a warrior. Try and get one axe to 10 exp then get him/her safe as that unit will allow us to build the heroic epic.

A good promo path for these roaming axes is combat 1 then cover for punking archers. Once a unit gets 10 exp though just save the promo and run on back home to garrison moscow.

Oh also please clean up silver's smoke and bust that final fog by the dyes in the NE corner seems on that crap bit of land east of magenta as well can use some looking into. Might be a fishies waiting to be found!

So lots of FUN to be had as barb punking is always entertaining.

On the boring Home front the name of the game here is to keep under the happy cap.

So the exhaustive Micro for Moscow (our most important town) is as follows...

Moscow is 100% stable at size 5 but is going to be in flux again once gold is hooked up and happy cap goes to 6.

The nice thing though about all this is that a temple will take the cap to 7 and from there's it's easily made stable again.

As you build the settler Moscow looks like so...

Spoiler :

Once settler is done, flip one of the plains hill mines and work the spare floodplains, that's growth in 8ish (to size 6)

Spoiler :

At size 6, work a silk for extra growth to size 7 and try and make sure the temple comes in before the town grows to size 7

Spoiler :

Once at size 7, Food stable workload for Moscow would be..

Spoiler :

1xStone
1xCows
2xFarmed Floodplains
2xRiverside plains hill mines
1x new plainshill mine which needs to be built. the one with the road leading to the copper is the fastest

Build queue btw would be
Settler-> Confused Temple -> The Pyramids! (viva la Wonder Whoring!!!!!!)

Yeah the mids on account we have stone and a KICK ASS capital and this is prince hehe. Do as we spam not as we do regarding wonder whoring mk?


Great people wise, this is the master plan.
Moscow will concentrate on Great Spies and Engineers only. No random wonder/specs here to pollute the GP pool!
Pete's will concentrate on a Great Profit (priest) for its shrine. This is why Liq queued a temple after the monument finishes so pete can curb growth running a priest spec.
Nova will try and concentrate on Scientists and will be hosting The Great Library.
Magenta dot will be our spec based GP farm and for maximum flexibility, best to not put any wonders in here.

Too early to call nationals as off yellow dot is so gimped it would suck to be forced to place wall street in there. rammy's town will always be lightly defended and close by too tho!

ironworks+ Red Cross are so going into Moscow.
Heroic epic + West point definitely going into Red dot, Coastal town of only 3 water tiles and a peak rofl. That snaking river is just SICKSICKSICK plus the place just got free irrigated rice hehe.

IW is soon where we get to see which marginal dot contains our iron.

Liq's seldom wrong predictions are.. crap desert tiles we either didn;t dot map or were for dots we were spamming just to fill tiles.

Next tech is Math for sure then either currency to prop our sagging economy (likely) or aes+ lit for um more wonder whoring.

Town order is red orange black but to be honest if iron pops in a . .. .. .. . location like just east of sally dot .... which maybe should be moved around to suck up some of those WASTED floods near off yellow.

Whatever.

20ish til AD then 15ish. Always ish never exact.

Cheers!
-Liq

 

[sturick]

See I told you liq could fix it...illiterate barbs...boy boris is quite the ninja stealth mode all the way

So you have covered worker naming...when do you name the military units?

I think since you mentioned the national wonders...maybe it's time to recap your combos and what types of townsget which national wonders and why you pair them together the way you do. I know a previous boff has some of this info but seems like a good time to talk about it

 

[PeteyP]

Ok, got it. Thanks for all the instructions Liq. Really answers a lot of my questions before I even asked them . So looks pretty clear what I'll be doing (get to clear out some barbs and place a city or 2). Also thanks for all the detailed discussion guys, I really think I'm learning a lot. I'll play either tonight or tomorrow morning.

 

[Liquidated]

Well crap early units like warriors and axes just get named when they actually kill something. Whatever names, male or female. Keep in mind titled are earned.

Depending on how bored one is building up a big push, naming the units in the stack of death is good too because honestly would you rather see

crossbow beats longbow with 90% odds.

or

The xbow Latisha wipes the floor with the remaining hapless Lbow.

Traditionally in Vanilla, any units that earned City Raider 3 were titled Bigman (Bigmen Todd and Cecil where the first!!) but what with Great Generals laying about passing out free beer... er exp, well getting to 10/8(cha) exp out the gate is pretty effing easy.

So now we generally don't pass out Bigmen titles to just any cr3 troops who never saw a fight. Bigmen have to earn their promotions like the old days!

Also you'll note all the axes running about are glowing blue. Unless a unit needs the promos don;t spend them as a promotion in the pocket is much better than say all maces being city raid before even getting to the fight.

About National wonders...

The classic military pairings in vanilla were HE+WP(coastal) and IW+RC.

Why Heroic Epic + West Point for the best coastal production city you can get your hands on (provided you need ships)?

The reason for this pairing was to get the vaunted 10 xp transport to prop up its absolutely pathetic base 5 movement.

Flank1 + nav1 +nav2 = a transport that's 5+2= 7 moves +1 if you nailed circum +1 if you have refrigeration.

Thing here is though that after warlords, exp is much easier to get. Theo adds +2 xp and each settled GG does as well and lets not even get into Charismatic leaders.

None of these toys were in Vanilla and getting to 10 exp from a passive naval unit was ugly. You had 4 from the dry doc +2 from vass +2 for the pentagon and that's still only 8 exp. Back in the days, West point was required to nail 10 xp transports and not be forced into vassalage just to get decent speed effing transports!

Nowadays you have
4 drydock
+2 vass
+2 theo
+2 per embedded great general
+2 pentagon
+4 westpoint

In Bts, it's fun to see if you can abuse a leader's special traits to try and push out units with as many promos as possible.

West point really starts to sag when you consider just how many hammers are needed to push this crap out. Stone and industrial help but if you nave neither, often just easier to say eff it.



Iron works + Red Cross for the biggest baddest levee assisted hammer monster that's preferably inland. Rivers are major for this choice as water mills and farms can be spammed and you can easily opt for clean hydro power. Santiago in boff5 is the epitome of the ultra scary IW town and well it doesn;t even have a factory yet!

If you are playing around with late game military, Red Cross is a boatload of fun. Innate medic 1 to all viable units built in the town means march is only one promo away! A pack of Medic/March+cr2 Artillery rampaging around is just funny.

Also, with Red Cross, A late game super medic only needs 26 total exp for medic3+woods3.

The rest of the wonders are pretty obvious.

Wall street should have high base commerce and a holy town or 3 =) Wallstreet comes late enough where it's generally preferred to place wall street into someone else's capital start unless you have a super balanced holy town site like yellow dot would have been.

In this game, St. pete's is no longer a contender for wall street but rammy's holy town is right next door so that will most likely do.

oxford is normally in the biggest beaker whore around. specced scientists/ cottages normally do the heavy lifting here.

In our game, Nova fits the bill of Oxford town easily as it has massed flood plains to cottage and massed forests to balance the health. Nova also has up to 4 hills to chop/mine (doubt we need all 4). Also What with 3 + forests growing in Nova's BFC my turnset alone that town might just get a late national park hehe.

National epic is a toss up as it adds great artist pollution and you want it to go into the town with all the extra gfood. In our game, magenta dot would prolly get National epic if anyone does.

Rushmore needs to go into a marginal town of no importance as it pollutes places with great artist points and takes up a national wonder slot while not benefiting the town that hosts it directly.

Globe theatre is great for that high food enemy capital where you can draft every turn and not care!

Moai stones are overrated unless you are on a 90% water map and no towns have hammers... in that case just play as William=p Fun to plunk this wonder in some TankTimeRodeo island with fishies just for giggles.

Cheers!
-Liq

 

[sturick]

Thanks for that Liq.

Santiago in Boff-5 is ridiculous considering its lack of a factory...

To be honest...I am thankful for the placement of Yellow Dot.
It keeps me out of the spotlight for my workerless set.
Now if I could just stop randomly bringing it up people might actually forget about it.

Good luck Petey!

 

[PeteyP]

Just checking in. I'll play tomorrow morning and should have it posted before noon PST

 

[PeteyP]

Turn 120 (0)
move scouts, look over empire, hit enter


121 (1)
Rameses asks for OB

Spoiler :

no thanks

Axe attacks Barb town with 99.5% odds. Gets taken down to 2.4 str. Earns the name Anton
Gold gets hooked up to capital


122 (2)
Confusionism spreads to Novo
Anton has only 55% odds for the last warrior, so he'll wait a couple turns to get the next axe up to the area.


123 (3)
IW in, dial up Math

Spoiler :

Axe, now named Rasputin razes city with no damage taken

Iron has popped just west of the Sally dot. Since it is well within our settling area, and we have copper, I think we can wait a little on settling that city. There is also another iron near our east coast.


124 (4)
Moscow: Settler->Temple


125 (5)
Settle continues his way to red dot
Rasputin gets ready to pair up with yet unnamed axe


126 (6)
Just as the 2 axes pair up... look what we have here!

127 (7)
Unnamed axe gets attacked and takes down a barb warrior with no damage. Now its his turn as he kills a warrior and earns the name Trotsky.


128 (8)
Ras and Trotsky spot the last barb running


129 (9)
Rostov founded, starts work on granary

Corner fleeing barb


130 (10)
Kill last of (I think) the barbs in our NW territory


131 (11)
Not much, stop Trotsky and Ras 2 turns to heal


132 (12)
zzz more scouting


133 (13)
St. Petes finishes temple, will allow it to grow in 1 turn to size 5 and then stagnate growth and run priest spec


134 (14)
Moscow: Temple->Pyramids. lets see if we can win the race for this one
Barb axeman spotted by our axe SW of Moscow. Lets see if we can bait him to attack

135 (15)
Axeman (now named Vlad) kills attacking barb axe with little damage. Spot a barb spear to the east


136 (16)
Rostov borders expand
zzz

137 (17)
Vlad kills attacking spear

138 (18)
zzz

139 (19)
Math in. Choose currency for now
St. Pete's: Library ->Courthouse
Nov: Library->Temple. I'm sorry but I messed up on this one . Didn't pay attention to see that Novo was going to go over its happy cap. Its now size 6 and unhappy. I set it to stagnate growth (actually slowly shrinking).

So I'll end my turn here since it looks like a good place to end. Our economy is doing a little better in part because of the stagnated growth that lets us work both gold mines near St. Pete's. We are also going to need to start building some more military whether or not we want to go to war.