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[Lanzelot]

Sorry Lanzelot, but no -- look at your food-map again, or this screenshot. In my zoomed-out screenie, the Warrior is fortified on Spot4, and City4 will only get the 2 iGrass directly adjacent to Spot4 -- at least until its borders have popped and the Forest near Bergen is chopped (assuming there's Grass not Plains underneath -- a good bet given its proximity to all that Jungle/Marsh, which is always on Grass).

Oops, I guess you are right. I must have abstracted in my head already "jungle = grassland", as is indicated by the "3 food" in my food distribution map. On that map both spots have access to exactly five grassland tiles (some still covered by jungle at the moment), so I thought, there's no difference.
But anyway, I do think the access to the floodplain is very powerful. Don't underestimate that, choxorn. And moving 1NE does not give any benefit that would compensate for the loss of that possibility.

Take another look at my food map in #124. In the long run, city #4 would in both cases work exactly the same 12 tiles: 7 hills and 5 grasslands. (It would lose one grassland in the SW and gain one in the NE.) So there's no difference.
Königsberg doesn't need the hill on which #4 is going to be founded. It has already all the hills and mountains it can support with 4 floodplains. So for Königsberg it doesn't make a difference as well. ==> We gain nothing by moving 1NE, so why deprive ourselves of the excellent opportunity for fast growth due to the already improved floodplain?

This point is far more relevant, however -- if we're going to raze/abandon C'hagen, then it makes even more sense to move City4 1NE, to grab more territory in our first ring.

We can't use that territory anyway. All first-ring cities already have the 12 tiles they need. So let's leave the territory for the second ring.
And here is one more argument against moving 1NE: On that spot we would block a very good second-ring spot on the river, close enough to the pallace for not having too much corruption and with access to the floodplain wheat. I can make a screenshot tonight. I mean the spot 2NE of the current #4. (1S of Copenhagen.) Do you see what I mean? A city on that spot would be able to work the wheat floodplain (6 food) and consequently would be able to work all the hills and mountains in the Copenhagen area, which #4 and #5 currently can't work because of lack of food. (Including the iron mountain!)
I would really hate to block that position by moving #4 1NE.

 

[choxorn]

It's tonight, are you going to show us that screenshot you said you would make of your cities around 4?

I guess you could give city #4 the fp tile, but that would temporarily disrupt either the worker factory in Konigsberg or the settler factory in Oasenstadt. (I have gotten both of them set up now, BTW)

The 2 NE tile you speak of looks like it would be more of a first ring or 1-and-a-half ring city than a second ring, it's only 4 tiles from Oasenstadt, and it would be really cramped with spot #4, spot #5, and Konigsberg. A better second-ring city location might be on the river by the wheat, if you want to grab the wheat.

Anyway, I've played 13 turns so far, just finished the Colossus. Some other highlights:

-As mentioned above, got the worker and settler factories running. I've so far built one settler, and ended up sending it to spot #5 rather than 4, both to try to get Copenhagen's Iron faster (It is hooked up now, BTW) and avoid losing the spot to the Vikings in case of border expansion. I was briefly worried they were going to build a city in that area, but they ended up settling more to the Northeast (which does mean we've lost spot #6)
-That landmass to the east was just a small island with nobody on it- but it was close to another landmass, which has at least two civilizations on it.
-The Vikings declared war on England, which should hopefully mean they'll keep each other busy for a while.

 

[choxorn]

Done now, will post turnset shortly.

 

[choxorn]

1000 BC (Turn 0):
-At the moment, our weakest two units are stationed in the city closest to the threatening Vikings, while our strong ones are guarding our coastal cities that aren’t under any real threat, or our capitol, under less threat. This doesn’t seem like the best idea. I send the archer and spear in Oasenstadt to Konigsberg and the Warriors in Konigsberg to Oasenstadt, and I also send a Chariot in Hamburg, which has three military units, towards Konigsberg. I also send the Warrior guarding spot #4 towards Konigsberg. We might need him there.
-Tinker with some things. Switch Konigsberg from Granary to Walls, and set it so that it will both grow and finish the Walls in 2 turns, so I can start the Worker factory up again.
-To keep Hamburg from Rioting, set Lux rate up to 40%., and reassign a tile so it can no longer grow larger. In the future, I’d like to just put a scientist there to prevent the riots rather than use the Lux Slider, but that doesn’t seem to be possible at the moment.
-Opt to wait a bit before deciding whether or not I want to trade for Horseback Riding or Mysticism.

IBT:
-The Scandinavian Archer and Warrior head South, away from us.

975 BC (Turn 1):
-Send a Warrior South to reveal some of the Black area around Oslo. I’m not building a Settler for quite a while, he doesn’t really need to hold spot #4.

IBT:
-Elizabeth is annoyed that our southern Warrior is passing through English territory. I tell her he’ll leave soon.
-Konigsberg: Walls -> Worker

950 BC (Turn 2):
-Warrior exits English territory.

IBT:
-Hamburg: Chariot -> Harbor

925 BC (Turn 3):
-F3 says we’re weak compared to Scandinavia again. Decide to check prices on Horseback Riding again. England will give it to us for 166 gold, or 9 gpt + 4 gold, Vikings for 171 gold, or 9 gpt + 10 gold. I decide a little extra gold is worth it to try to get Ragnar to play nice, so get HBR from him for 9 gpt + 10 gold.
-Upgrade 3 of our 4 chariots to Horsemen, and will get the 4th as soon as it gets to Hamburg.

IBT:
Zzz

900 BC (Turn 4):
-Curragh finds another Iron source to the south of England. They have plenty of land and plenty of resources all to themselves…

IBT:
-Oasenstadt: Granary -> Settler

875 BC (Turn 5):
Zzz

IBT:
-Oasenstadt hits size 7. Growth in 10 turns, Settler in 4. Not sure exactly how this will work out…

850 BC (Turn 6):
-That landmass to the east is looking a lot like it’s an island.

IBT:
-Konigsberg: Worker -> Worker

825 BC (Turn 7):
-The Northern of our two exploring Warriors goes up on a Mountain and sees the Vikings have a large number of units converging on the English city of Liverpool, including 3 Warriors and an Archer right outside the city. Interesting…
-Curragh confirms that the Eastern landmass is an island. However, upon closer inspection, I notice some light blue borders a few tiles off the Southeast edge that were within my view last turn but that I missed; The curragh can even reach the borders in one turn, though it will as a result spend one turn with a chance of sinking. I’ll send the Curragh back that way next turn and then go meet the Light Blue people.

IBT:
-The Vikings declare war on England! That has to be good for us; hopefully they’ll weaken each other a bit by fighting each other.
-I watch as 2 Viking Warriors and an Archer attack the defenders of Liverpool and die.
-A Viking Settler pair appears on a hill 1 NW of spot #5.

800 BC (Turn 8):
-If the Military advisor is anything to go by, England is stronger than Scandinavia (we’re weak compared to England, average compared to Scandinavia), which makes me wonder why the Vikings declared war.

IBT:
-The Viking settler pair heads Northwest, towards spot #6. Ugh. If it settles where it is now, it will put both spot 5 and 6 in Viking territory!
-Oasenstadt: Settler -> Settler. It shrank to size 5 with 10 food in the Granary but nothing else. I think I can get it to a 6-turn Settler factory without too much difficulty.
-Hamburg: Harbor -> Horseman

775 (Turn 9):
-Since the Harbor allows me to, I set a citizen in Hamburg to be a scientist and set the luxury rate down to 20%. I might have to increase it again when Oasenstadt hits size 6, but for now it can stay at 20%.
-The curragh crosses the Sea on the other side of the Eastern island, and hits the Light Blue borders. It’s the Chinese. They currently have 5 cities. They’re up Mysticism and Mathematics on us, but lack Writing.
-Trade Writing for Mysticism and all 33 of their gold, as they seem to highly value Mathematics and found Writing for Math “insulting.”
-Build an embassy in Beijing for 48 gold. It’s small and has a lot of jungle around it.
-Send the Settler with an escort to a hill 2 NE of Konigsberg- depending on where the Viking settler pair settles, it will head either to spot #5 or the hill NE of spot #4.

IBT:
-The Curragh doesn’t sink!
-The Viking settler pair heads north.

750 BC (Turn 10):
-Our settler can go to either 5 or 4 now. I decide that gaining control of Copenhagen’s Iron is more important and we’re in more danger of losing spot 5 than spot 4, so I send the Settler to spot #5. Going there, I see that the Vikings have hooked up the Iron.
-I send the Curragh to explore the Chinese island. I see some city ruins on the edge of my view- I wonder why?

IBT:
-The Vikings build the city of Aarhus 1 NE of spot #6.
-England researches Republic, and goes into Anarchy! Silly AI, going into Anarchy in the middle of a war…

730 BC (Turn 11):
-Curragh gets closer to the ruins on China’s landmass, and sees Gray borders. Perhaps there’s a war going on over there?

IBT:
-The Vikings tell my Warrior to leave their territory. Just passing through, Ragnar…
-Konigsberg: Worker->Worker

710 BC (Turn 12):
-As expected, I have to set the Lux slider to 30% to keep now size 6 Oasenstadt from rioting.
-Found Frankfurt in spot #5. Immediately set it to work on a temple for culture, will switch to a Library if I get Literature from somewhere before the Temple finishes.
-Passing by Oslo, our Warrior notices the Iron outside the city isn’t hooked up yet.
-Curragh reaches the Gray borders, which belong to India. They have 8 cities and they’re up Math and Polytheism. Won’t trade either one for Writing straight up (and won’t trade Polytheism for anything), but will trade Math for Writing and 54 gold. I accept.
-A quick look at F4 shows that China and India are at war.

IBT:
-Kolossusstadt finishes the Colossus, and gets to work on a Harbor.

690 BC (Turn 13):
-Scandinavia now also has Polytheism, China has Construction, and India has Map Making. Trade Math to Scandinavia for Polytheism and 102 gold.

IBT:
-Gandhi is annoyed our curragh is in his territory. It won’t be there long, Gandhi.

670 BC (Turn 14):
ZZZ

IBT:
-Oasenstadt: Settler -> Settler

650 BC (Turn 15):
-Send the Settler towards the spot 1 NE of spot #4.

IBT:
-Hamburg: Horseman -> Horseman
-Some workers finish building a road to Frankfurt, which in turn gives us a trade route with the Vikings.

630 BC (Turn 16):


IBT:
-Konigsberg: Worker->Worker

610 BC (Turn 17):
-Build Munich in the spot 1 NE of spot #4, set it to work on a Catapult (Really, you could build anything here)

IBT:
Zzz

590 BC (Turn 18):
Zzz

IBT:
-Kolossusstadt: Harbor - > Catapult

570 BC (Turn 19):
Zzz

IBT:
Zzz

550 BC (Turn 20):
-India just got Currency, and China has had Construction for a while. They both lack a few techs we have, so I decide to see what they’ll offer:
-China will only part with Construction for three techs (Philo, CoL, MM) and a ton of gold. I don’t think so.
-India’s asking price is a bit lower, but they’ll still only part with Currency for 2 techs (Philo, CoL) and 249 gold.
-I’ll leave the decision about these deals to the next player.


Handoff notes:
-The workers are currently building roads to try to improve the area around Frankfurt and Munich. They could probably later go clear jungle, or maybe chop forests to get Frankfurt that temple faster.
-Oasenstadt's running a 6-turn Settler Factory, Konigsberg a 5-turn Worker factory. Trying to get military units from the other cities, but they could really build anything.
-Lastly, our current empire, plus a simple dotmap:

 

[Lanzelot]

It's tonight, are you going to show us that screenshot you said you would make of your cities around 4?

Ok, here is the updated food map. The site 1S of Copenhagen indeed has not enough food. We could get it only up to size 9. So the best way if we want to use the iron mountain, would be as indicated in black, but unfortunately that site is not on the river. Guess we can't have everything.

So the argument, that we should not block the tile 1S of C'hagen, is not valid. (But the others still are...)

I guess you could give city #4 the fp tile, but that would temporarily disrupt either the worker factory in Konigsberg or the settler factory in Oasenstadt.

No, when building its granary, Königsberg doesn't need the floodplain. So we could give it to #4 during that time to get it up to size quickly. Otherwise it will take forever in that hilly region.
Also, once we are in Republic, Königsberg only needs 2 floodplains for +6fpt, so then we can give that fp to #4 for quite some time! At least until Königsberg stops being a worker pump and grows to size 12, so it needs the fp back.

Anyway, the majority now has to decide. I tried to make my arguments clear:
- the ability for early quick growth is quite strong
- moving 1NE does (as far as I can see) not give any benefit that would compensate for the above ability
- in the long run (once the core is fully grown to 12), there is no difference between the two sites. Both would use the exact same 13 tiles (8 hills, 5 grasslands).

I've so far built one settler, and ended up sending it to spot #5 rather than 4, both to try to get Copenhagen's Iron faster (It is hooked up now, BTW) and avoid losing the spot to the Vikings in case of border expansion.

Excellent idea!

 

[tjs282]

Nice turns, Choxorn. Kind of resentful that you got all the fun, though...

-Oasenstadt: Settler -> Settler. It shrank to size 5 with 10 food in the Granary but nothing else. I think I can get it to a 6-turn Settler factory without too much difficulty

Please could you briefly explain turn-by-turn how you did that, for this n00b's benefit?

650 BC (Turn 15):
-Send the Settler towards the spot 1 NE of spot #4.

I knew you were going to do that... Don't flame him, Lanzelot...

Incidentally, Lanzelot, regarding your food map: although it would take some more turns, if we cleared the Marsh NE of the bananas, and founded the southern second-ring city there -- rather than on your yellow dot -- it would get many more shields, and have much less overlap with Spot 8. What do you think?

To get the fish, how about settling on the southern peninsula, on the hills 1-2NW or jungle 1W-1NW of the fish? Although it would have no road access for a long time, we could use a marine transport(s) shuttling back and forth from City7 for unit transport, and (later) a transport and/or sea-power unit permanently stationed in the lagoon entrance, both to block the AIs' access and to act as a 'bridge'. With all those hills, in the later phases of the game we could also use such a city as a naval base/shipyard, kind of like Norfolk, VA -- or Kiel, come to that -- and with a pile of Cannon/Arty in the hills overlooking the inlet, any hostiles which actually managed to get in, wouldn't get out again... That lagoon could end up containing more sunken metalwork than Bikini Atoll...

 

[Lanzelot]

Solid turnset, indeed. I especially liked your thoughtful reaction in the "spot #5 affair"! So before I go into the details, let my emphasize: everything that I don't comment on explicitly, was well played!
(I'm not repeating the error I made with tjs282, right? )

I decide a little extra gold is worth it to try to get Ragnar to play nice, so get HBR from him for 9 gpt + 10 gold.

But this is not good for two reasons:
a) why pay almost 200g for something that we can get for free later?
b) and now we are no longer able to build chariots!! So when we will finally be able to attack, we will attack with only 66% of the force that we could have had! Why is that? Because for every 2 horsemen we can now build, we could have built 3 chariots. And the gold we just tossed over to Ragnar (plus more gold we will get from the AI) could have been used to upgrade those chariots!

-Oasenstadt: Settler -> Settler. It shrank to size 5 with 10 food in the Granary but nothing else. I think I can get it to a 6-turn Settler factory without too much difficulty.

Well, I already described in quite detail how the 5-turn settler factory works in post #124! If that description wasn't clear to you, why didn't you pause now and ask?

-Trade Writing for Mysticism and all 33 of their gold

Very good! That's they way to make tech trades. We need to get their techs plus their gold!

They have 8 cities and they’re up Math and Polytheism. Won’t trade either one for Writing straight up (and won’t trade Polytheism for anything), but will trade Math for Writing and 54 gold. I accept.

Not good. Why give them our gold? You could have given them Writing for any gold they might have (or even for free), and then could have traded Math for CoL. (Or even for CoL+Phil, if necessary. But usually CoL should be enough for Math.)

Trade Math to Scandinavia for Polytheism and 102 gold.

Tech-brokering like this is really essential during the ancient age, as this is the time when we can benefit the most from the AI. I usually check CivAssist every turn for possible "two-fers" during this phase.

-Send the Settler towards the spot 1 NE of spot #4.

Ok, but I have to comment on this. I spent three posts and several hours of my spare time explaining my arguments of why I think spot #4 is much better. And I refuted the arguments you brought up in favor of 1NE quite convincingly I think. But still you just go ahead and do it anyway. You could at least have waited for the team-vote that I demanded to have on this question. I honestly don't understand it.

"The benefit of letting city #4 grow a little faster isn't enough to make up for the fact that Konigsberg really needs that tile for itself."
Well, first of all, the benefit of letting cities grow a little faster is very powerful, and secondly Königsberg doesn't need that tile at all, as can be seen in my food map!

Usually, if I feel and argue so strongly about something, you can trust me that I have a good reason for it. Our empire will now again be a little less powerful than it could have been.

 

[Lanzelot]

Ok, just took a quick look at the MM in Oasenstadt in order to see, how the 6-turn settler factory would work.

You are wasting 5 shields and 2 food on the settler!! (And in the first half of those 6 turns probably another 2 food?) And this after I already explained the exact tile assignment necessary for the 5-turn settler factory...
(And btw: if you use the river hill instead of the unimproved forest, we would get an extra 2gpt.

)

What is especially bitter about this: this wasted food could easily have been used by Munich, if you only would have planted it on the correct #4 spot! In three out of five turns, Oasenstadt can give one of its floodplains to Königsberg, and Königsberg in turn could give the floodplain in question to Munich/#4!
You see now, how powerful that spot would have been? Growth every 8 turns instead of every 10 turns, plus an additional 8 gold per cycle for as long as the Munich grasslands are still un-roaded!

(BTW: why is a worker already irrigating a grassland at Munich? We still have 16-20 turns before we are a Republic (14T research, 2-6T anarchy). During that time that improvement is completely wasted due to Despotism penalty! Our workers do have more urgent work to do...)

 

[Lanzelot]

I knew you were going to do that... Don't flame him, Lanzelot...

Did I flame too much already?


Regarding your suggestion on how to use the fish: yes, looks like a good alternative.

 

[tjs282]

And this after I already explained the exact tile assignment necessary for the 5-turn settler factory...

Yes you did, but with all due respect for the effort you put into it, it was not really a 'game-efficient' plan (although Choxorn, sorry, but your version is worse!). Not because of the shield overrun (I can live with that), but because (if I understood it correctly, anyway) it requires the player to (remember to) reassign citizens on every one of those 5 turns, otherwise it won't work. Now speaking personally, that's exactly the kind of thing that I can easily forget to do in the heat of the moment in a solo game, but this requirement will be even more complicated by the passing of savegames between players (best worst case -- we lose a turn on every fourth settler we build, because the new player forgets to do a rearrangement sometime during their first, 'inherited' settler-production cycle; worst worst case -- every settler takes 6 turns instead of 5).

That said, I haven't got any better concrete ideas right now -- as I understand it, a Settler-factory should ideally be set up in such a way as to run itself with minimal to zero interference from the player, i.e. from Pop5, taking 5fpt for 4 turns, and 14s on the first and 16s on the second pair of turns (preferably including the IBT shields for ultimate efficiency). So would mining one or both Desert tiles, for 0f+2s, or mining a Plains for 1fpt+2spt (does that work under Despotism?) help make that target easier to achieve? (The latter might waste some food though...)?

(And btw: if you use the river hill instead of the unimproved forest, we would get an extra 2gpt.)

No argument there

 

[Lanzelot]

Yes you did, but with all due respect for the effort you put into it, it was not really a 'game-efficient' plan [...]. Not because of the shield overrun (I can live with that), but because (if I understood it correctly, anyway) it requires the player to (remember to) reassign citizens on every one of those 5 turns, otherwise it won't work. Now speaking personally, that's exactly the kind of thing that I can easily forget to do in the heat of the moment in a solo game,

Ok, but then I have to tell you, this is exactly the kind of thing you have to do, if you want to be successful at the higher difficulty levels. (At least in the important first 80-100 turns.) You have to play every turn very precisely and fully concentrated.
Or, to use a picture from chess: if you want to beat a Grandmaster, you have to calculate every move very carefully. One careless move, and the game is lost.

So I guess, we need to "manage our expectations" here. Do we want to shoot for an optimized, top-notch game, even if it is difficult, inconvenient and takes a lot of effort, or do we just want to play a relaxed game, have some fun and eventually score a victory over the Emperor AI? If this were a Deity game, I would say we have no choice: clench your teeth, don't whine and march on, even if it hurts... Otherwise the game will be over with quickly. But on Emperor we can surely go for both options, the highly optimized game or the relaxed game for fun and still win. (Though personally, for me working out things like this 5-turn MM-cycle, or a food map where every city has exactly 12 tiles with 24 food, or mathematical puzzles like this is "fun". But I realize that people are different and for others these things might be boring, exhausting and "un-fun"...)

I realize, that at the moment I'm pretty tough on you guys... But I do put quite some time and effort into it, try to explain things etc. and I do hope that you'll learn a thing or two from it, even if it hurts...
Just think of me as your drill sergeant. While in boot camp, you will curse your sergeant, but once you get into battle, you may owe your life to him.

So what do you say? Go for some tough stuff, even if it's hard work, or relax a bit? I can then also cut back a bit on my time and effort, if I know.

Back to your question about an "easy" cycle for Oasenstadt: as I said, I've been thinking about this start position quite a bit (I often think about my current games when riding my bike back home from work through the fields and forests - blows some fresh air through my head...), but couldn't come up with any. No use denying, this is a very difficult start position (like most floodplain starts). If someone has an idea, let it hear. But at the moment, that 5-turner is the best I can see. (And it's not that bad 'efficiency-wise': it requires changing the tile assignment only on 3 out of 5 turns... ) And what do we have hand-over notes for? The current player just needs to write something like "settler-pump currently in turn 3, remember to set it up for turn 4 on your first turn", and we can't make any mistake. Everyone just has to write down the 5 tile assignments on a piece of paper and put it next to his keyboard. (Or under the pillow at night...)

Edit: If you want, I can make 5 screenshots for every turn.

 

[choxorn]

On the putting the citizen to work in the forest rather than the hill- yeah, I just brain-farted there. My bad.

I'm still really not sure how exactly the 5-turn Settler factory is supposed to work, but maybe I'm just missing something. The 6-turn factory works by giving Oasenstadt +4 fpt and +5 spt at size 5, and +4 fpt and +5 or +6 spt at size 6, which really doesn't take much difficulty (though it does sometimes require reassigning the 6th citizen)

As to the trades, yeah, perhaps some of them weren't the best moves, I just figured the tech was more valuable than the gold in a few instances.

 

[CommandoBob]

Got it. Strategy post tomorrow night.

Not because of the shield overrun (I can live with that), but because (if I understood it correctly, anyway) it requires the player to (remember to) reassign citizens on every one of those 5 turns, otherwise it won't work. Now speaking personally, that's exactly the kind of thing that I can easily forget to do in the heat of the moment in a solo game...

Micromanaging can be a real buzz kill.

All micromanaging begins at warfare. When it is time to declare war, we make good and sure that we are primed, pumped and ready. We spend time analyzing the best way to attack the city/civ in question. Placement of the jump-off attacks, blocking possible counter-attacks, how to forc the enemy to move onto flat ground with fewer defensive bonuses; we scheme and plan to make things happen the way we want. And to make the war run on plan, we need to have roads/rails for faster movement. And to do that we must plan our worker turns to get those roads built and cities connected in a timely manner. And our cities must be productive and we must make sure our cities are at peak/efficient production capacity. None of that is easy to do. And if you haven't done it before, or really considered it, it is a lot to take. It appears to be an impossible task.

But it is not. And with tools like CivAssist and MapStat, some things are actually pretty easy. Both tools will check alert you about cranky cities that are about to riot. And any new trade deals. Those are two great timesavers.

At this stage of the game it is good idea to cycle through all the cities before going on to the next turn. We don't have very many cities and it won't take long. If we pause a bit at each city we can briefly look at where the citizens are working and determine if that the best place for them. If they are fine, move on. If not, fix them.

For a settler pump city, we are looking at the amount of surplus food and the net shields. When a new citizen is added, we need to make sure those goals are still met. For a city producing units, we would like it to produce units with no sheilds lost to overruns.

Later in the game, depending on how it goes, cycling through the cities may need to be done just three times on a turnset; the turn you get it, halfway through the turns and the last turn you have it.

After a while, cycling through the cities becomes a habit and you make minor corrections/reallocations only one or twice per turn.

But initially it is hard to remember and can feel very tedious.

Just think of me as your drill sergeant. While in boot camp, you will curse your sergeant, but once you get into battle, you may owe your life to him.

That makes sense. But I thiink some of the squad are focused on just surviving at Emperor. Your lessons are focused on how to make plans that allow the human to treat the AI like a second class citizen (think ) and some of the squad are not sure that such a thing can even be done and they do not expect themselves to be able to do that. Not yet, anyway.

 

[Lanzelot]

The 6-turn factory works by giving Oasenstadt +4 fpt and +5 spt at size 5, and +4 fpt and +5 or +6 spt at size 6, which really doesn't take much difficulty (though it does sometimes require reassigning the 6th citizen)

Yes, this cycle is "easy-care", as one can let it run almost unattended. But it uses 6 x 4 = 24 food for two citizens, instead of 20 food. The extra 4 food every 6 turns could be given to Munich/#4 (if founded in the correct spot) or to Hamburg (which unfortunately doesn't really need it until we have an aqueduct).
To some of you, this may seem like nit-pitting. "4 food every 6 turns, so what? That's peanuts." But believe me, in the early phase of empire development, this difference is huge! "Everything in the early phase propagates exponentially." So it may mean the difference between setting up our empire on growth curve A or growth curve B:

In comparison, paying 190g for a tech we can get for free, is peanuts compared to these 4f. When still in Despotism, the AI has no way of spending that gold (they usually don't do deficit research, and they usually either don't have the necessary resource or the necessary barracks for upgrading their units in the early stages of a game), so we can often get our gold back.

By the way: I didn't check, how we are currently doing military-wise, but if we are about average against Vikings and England, we could already start an aqueduct-prebuild in Hamburg? We can expect to be able to trade Construction when we get Republic in 14 turns, so Hamburg's aqueduct could already finish shortly after that? Then we could make good use of the spare food from Oasenstadt, and let Hamburg grow to 6 already now.
Especially with the England-Viking war going on, we could probably relax a bit on military now and rather focus on developing or empire quickly.

For reference, here is the tile assignment for the 5-turner again. We start at size 5 with a half full granary and empty shield-box.

T1: 3 floodplains, 1 mined oasis, 1 irrigated plain, city center: --> 4s, 5f
T2: same as T1: --> 4s, 5f -> grows to size 6, so gets an additional 2s from forest on growth
T3: 1 floodplain, 1 mined oasis, 4 irrigated plains, city center: --> 7s, 3f
T4: same as T3: 7s, 3f
T5: 2 floodplains, 1 mined oasis, 3 irrigated plains, city center: --> 6s, 4f -> grows to size 7, so gets an additional 2s from forest on growth -> completes settler ->drops back to size 5, granary half full, shield-box empty.

Another point: we also need to concentrate on getting Kolossusstadt up to size! It's on the river, so should grow quickly to make the most out of our Colossus.

 

[tjs282]

And the Answer is... is... IS... 42!

I was thinking about the Settler-pump problem again last night, and away from my laptop (wife's b'day, so we were in a restaurant), and it occurred to me that right now, we need Workers more than Settlers -- and O'stadt can very easily be set up as a 2-turn Worker-pump:

T1: City, 3iFlood, mOasis, iPlain = +5f,4s
T2: as in T1 = +5f,4s
[IBT: Hills] = +2s on growth

This works best at Pop5 -- at Pop6, there would be a lot of overrun (both food and shields), or the 6th citizen would have to become a Scientist (for more beakers) or Taxman (for upgrade-gold).

I also came up with 2 alternative 5-turn Settler-pump plans (Pop5 to Pop7). Again, assuming I've calculated correctly, both have advantages and disadvantages over Lanzelot's and over each other. Here's the first:

T1: City, iFlood, mOasis, 3iPlain = +3f,6s
T2: as in T1 = +3f,6s
T3: 2iFlood, mOasis, 2iPlain = +4f,5s
[IBT:Hills] = +2s on growth
T4: City, 3iFlood, mOasis, 2iPlain = +5f,5s
T5: as in T4 = +5f,5s
[IBT:Hills] = +2s on growth, Settler completed

This is 'better' than Lanzelot's plan in that it requires less MM (1 reassignment on T3, iPlain --> iFlood, and then a second reassignment after growth, Hills --> iFlood). It's worse in that it has 1s overrun, and O'stadt spends 3 turns at Pop5, and (I think) does not exploit the riverside tiles for as many 'tile-turns', so gives (much?) less commerce in total than Lanzelot's plan -- I have not yet calculated how much less.

Here's the second, which I'm not sure whether I like more or less (it starts off like the Worker-pump above, and -- I've just noticed, since he re-posted his plan above while I was writing this -- also like Lanzelot's):

T1: City, 3iFlood, mOasis, iPlain = +5f,4s
T2: as in T1 = +5f,4s
[IBT: Hills] = +2s on growth
T3: City, 2iFlood, mOasis, 3iPlain = +4f,6s
T4: as in T3 = +4f,6s
T5: as in T3 = +4f,6s
[IBT: Hills] = +2s (builds Settler)

It's better than my first plan in that it uses the riverbanks more, needs only 1 set of reassignments (after growth, Hills+iFlood --> 2iPlain), and has 0s overrun, but worse in that it wastes 2f on the Pop6 turns.

Finally, a third idea occurred to me this morning, which I've worked out on the fly here: a '6T Settler+Warrior factory' (if that's still possible once we've got Iron hooked up?), starting at Pop6:

T1: City, 3iFlood, mOasis, 2iPlain = +5f,5s
T2: as in T1 = +5f,5s
[IBT: Hills] = +2s on growth
T3: City, 2iFlood, mOasis, 2iPlain, Hills, Forest = +2f,9s
T4: as in T3 = +2f,9s (Settler completed)

That will drop it down to Pop5 (with 10f stored?), so we would then need to build a 2T Warrior, using the 'Worker' plan above, while it grows back to Pop6, and then we start another Settler. It's 100% efficient of food/shields, but will not produce Settlers as fast as a 'pure' 4- or 5-turner.

Of course, all this will be academic once we get Republic, since we won't have to worry about the Despot-penalty after we've switched govs...

 

[choxorn]

Those are actually all brilliant plans, and I'm kind of mad at myself now for being too lazy to notice any of them.

Spending more time at size 5 rather than 6 actually doesn't hurt much- We need 20% lux to keep the city happy at size 5, but 30% to keep it happy at size 6.

Military- at the moment, I believe we have 5 Warriors, 1 Archer, 1 Spear, 6 Horsemen, 2 Curraghs, and 6 Workers.

We're currently average to Vikings and weak to England (I think), but we drifted to weak compared to the Vikings briefly. I don't think we're doing bad on military, but it's not like we couldn't get any stronger.

 

[tjs282]

Ok, but then I have to tell you, this is exactly the kind of thing you have to do, if you want to be successful at the higher difficulty levels. (At least in the important first 80-100 turns.) You have to play every turn very precisely and fully concentrated.

I do appreciate that -- and your sharing your knowledge/time/experience -- but this is still 'just' an Emperor game, not Demigod/Deity/Sid. And it's also the first Emp game I've ever played (and I think also MRG's, if he's still around) -- I certainly don't feel like I'm ready to play at any of the higher levels any time soon.

Or, to use a picture from chess: if you want to beat a Grandmaster, you have to calculate every move very carefully. One careless move, and the game is lost.

Actually, I much prefer 'skill+luck' games like Civ (and Backgammon, and Cribbage) to 'pure' games like Chess, precisely because of this factor. If I know for sure that I am going to win (or lose!) any game, I find it much less 'fun' to play.

Even in Civ, once I know the game is won (i.e. no-one is going to beat me to the Spaceship, or 100K, or whatever), those last few (dozen) turns marking time to completion sometimes feel more like a chore than 'fun'. In those situations, I almost welcome silly suicide attacks by the AI (so long as they don't nuke my capital! ), just because they give me something to do...

 

[Lanzelot]

And the Answer is... is... IS... 42!

Ok, so, well... what was the question again...?

But anyway, I do like all l of these answers! Some pretty good ideas here

The 2T-workers from Oasenstadt would be very strong, and we'll certainly do that at some point, though at the moment I would prefer 2-3 more settlers, before we are completely fenced in. (Already lost spot #6, should try and get the others asap. In the "reference game" I managed to kick off the 5-turn cycle in 1525 BC, which helped a lot for staking our claims compared to the current game, where settlers started to roll off the assembly line only around 600 BC.)

Your second cycle is pretty similar to mine, with the difference that it wastes 2f, whereas mine wastes 2s. In general I would say that food is more valuable, as "more food" means "more everything". But in the current case, where Hamburg is already size 5 and can't grow much bigger, and Munich is misplaced and can't access the excess food (sorry, won't mention it again...), there's not much we can do with the extra food anyway. Perhaps we can at least use it to get Hamburg to 6 a bit quicker.

For now I would favor the 6T settler/warrior-combo. However, it also does have some disadvantages:
- It's not 100% efficient of food/shields: like choxorn's cycle it wastes 4f in every cycle. (As I saw in the test I mentioned earlier, the foodbox is indeed reset to "half full granary" (10f) when dropping from 7 to 5. So the 2f earned in the two turns at size 7 simply get "dropped" - foodbox goes from 14/40 to 10/20.) But again, that's a mute point now as Hamburg blablabla and Munich nagnagnag...
- The two turns where it runs at size 7, require a higher lux rate! (In the cycles, where size 7 is reached only "virtually" IBT, no increased lux is necessary: the calculation of whether a town riots or not, takes place at the beginning of the turn, when the town still has size 6. Then the town goes to 7, completes settler, drops back to 5 immediately and at the next "happiness check" it's now size 5... Quite neat trick, actually.)

BTW: do we really want catapults? With horsemen we don't need them (at least on Emperor). K'stadt could already start pre-building for a library or marketplace. (Multiplier for the extra Colossus-gold!) Also make sure to finally bring it to +2f instead of +1f, now that it has a harbor! That town ought to reach size 7 quickly now, we didn't build the Colossus for fun

 

[tjs282]

Ok, so, well... what was the question again...?

We'll never know, will we? The Golgafrinchams bugged the program, and then the Vogons blew up the planet just after Fenchurch figured it out anyway. Although the mice decided that 'How many roads must a man walk down?' would be a good bluff... (And the first time I heard 'Blowin' in the Wind' -- a long time after first reading THHGttG -- I laughed my a- erm, butt off!).

The 2T-workers from Oasenstadt would be very strong, and we'll certainly do that at some point, though at the moment I would prefer 2-3 more settlers, before we are completely fenced in.

I would argue that we have already been fenced in -- but if we treat Aarhus as 'our' City6 (iiiit... will beee), then we really only need 2 more Settlers to complete our first ring. But City7 can't be founded until the Marsh is cleared, and City8 won't grow until the Jungle is cleared. So my preference would be to build 2 or 3 two-turn Workers, then a 5-turn Settler, repeat. The Workers would be sent to clear the Marsh+Jungle ASAP while each Settler is building -- and as soon as each city is founded, we could add 1-2 of those Workers to double/triple its size in 1T (would need MP?) and save on gpt.

- It's not 100% efficient of food/shields: like choxorn's cycle it wastes 4f in every cycle. (As I saw in the test I mentioned earlier, the foodbox is indeed reset to "half full granary" (10f) when dropping from 7 to 5. So the 2f earned in the two turns at size 7 simply get "dropped" - foodbox goes from 14/40 to 10/20.)

Well, I mean, it's 100% efficient while it's growing -- any fpt at Pop7 would inevitably be lost when the Settler completed. But if that really bugs you, would mining the 2 Deserts give us 0fpt,4spt under Despotism? If so, then instead of working the mHills+Forest for 2fpt,4spt and wasting that 4f, we could work the mDeserts instead, and pass the mHills permanently to K'stadt and the Forest to (scrolls up quickly to check the map!) Frankfurt. (Our Pop6-7 IBT shields would come from one of the mDeserts, too)

The two turns where it runs at size 7, require a higher lux rate!

If we did this, what if we started the cycle at Pop5, and built the Warrior first -- wouldn't we then have MP to keep the 7th citizen content? And as soon as the Settler builds, we could send the Warrior along with it to the intended site, giving us instant MP in the new city. Alternatively, we could maybe get some Wines from the Vikings (it would probably have to be a per-turn deal to keep the Vikings sweet, but it doesn't have to go on longer than 20T -- and by that time we could be ready to roll over them anyway, right?...)?

 

[Lanzelot]

and as soon as each city is founded, we could add 1-2 of those Workers to double/triple its size in 1T (would need MP?) and save on gpt.

I usually do this, but only after a town has reached size 7. A town can usually grow to 7 at sufficient speed, and during that time workers usually still have enough work to do, but growing from 7 to 8 and so requires twice as much food, so I start joining workers at that time. In a worker pump, creating a new citizen only takes two turns (and in Republic almost any town can be made a 2-turn worker pump), while most cities usually don't have a granary and only like +2 food (if you want to have decent production), so collecting the 40f for a new citizen takes 20 turns. This means, pumping up your core cities from 7 to 12 via worker pumps can be done about 10 times faster as via "natural growth". The little investment of 10s is more than compensated for by the additional commerce and production of the bigger cities.

But if that really bugs you, would mining the 2 Deserts give us 0fpt,4spt under Despotism? If so, then instead of working the mHills+Forest for 2fpt,4spt and wasting that 4f, we could work the mDeserts instead, and pass the mHills permanently to K'stadt and the Forest to (scrolls up quickly to check the map!) Frankfurt.

It doesn't help, as long as we don't have a way to pass that "saved" food on to another town which can use it for faster growth during that time. Or in other words: "avoiding" food overrun is not an objective in itself, channeling that food into other towns is what is generating the benefit.

If we did this, what if we started the cycle at Pop5, and built the Warrior first -- wouldn't we then have MP to keep the 7th citizen content?

Max MP in Despotism is 2, and we already have 2 MP in O'stadt.
Perhaps we can send another settler down to the Viking dyes town and "steal" that resource like we are currently doing it with the iron?!