ALC Game #22 Take 2: Arabs/Saladin
- Thread starter Sisiutil
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DrJambo
Crash-test dummy
Mining Inc is too far away. I'd either use for a desirable wonder or I'd settle in the science city. The long term benefits of settling will outweigh bulbing Machinery, particularly as you have the Pyramids and are in Representation. Plus, 3 
is nothing to be sniffed at.
is nothing to be sniffed at.KrikkitTwo
Immortal
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well I think Machinery might be the best way to go, to access one of Saladin's multiple UU... I'm talking about Protective Crossbows... combine those with Elephants and Catapults.
You can use the Xbows as both City Attackers (add cover, and Cat weakened cities will fall) AND New city Defenders (they have City Garrison and defend well against everything but Elephants/H.A.)
After M.C./Machinery, I'd get Civil Service, Philosophy for A.W. and then Guilds and Engineering... you should be able to get ahead of the Khmerican region that way and get ready to unite your continent.
You can use the Xbows as both City Attackers (add cover, and Cat weakened cities will fall) AND New city Defenders (they have City Garrison and defend well against everything but Elephants/H.A.)
After M.C./Machinery, I'd get Civil Service, Philosophy for A.W. and then Guilds and Engineering... you should be able to get ahead of the Khmerican region that way and get ready to unite your continent.
whakamole
Artful Dodger
Good idea! I can picture the unit animation as a road crew with one guy digging and two or three other guys leaning on a backhoe, looking into the hole, drinking coffee. Add a final worker to turn the STOP/SLOW sign.
@Sis: Regarding your trade screen. Getting 2 gold from Zara by trading out 2 happy (gold plus forge) is certainly not optimal. If you like his cash, I'd say cancel that deal and just sell pigs to Zara for 2g and to sustain the "years you've supplied us" diplo bonus instead of the gold. Don't worry about losing the fish. It's not like your cities are in dire health straits, and your seafood will shortly be online.
As for keeping track of your split worker pairs, you could always name the individual units in each pair, to make them easier to find when one's finishing a job and the second is starting a new one (e.g. Thing 1 and Thing 2, Tweedle-dum and Tweedle-dumber, José and Hose B, etc.)
If you have any better ideas on how to get improvements done quickly without having to direct multiple individual Worker units separately on a single tile, feel free to share.Good idea! I can picture the unit animation as a road crew with one guy digging and two or three other guys leaning on a backhoe, looking into the hole, drinking coffee. Add a final worker to turn the STOP/SLOW sign.
Micromanaging worker turns is a pain, but I am too anal retentive not to do it. I find unit management in general to probably be the worst part of Civ's user interface: it really is terrible, considering the depth and sophistication of the game as a whole.
As for the game: I'd be interested to see the protective trait leveraged for early offense: I have never really done it myself.
For the GE: with representation settling seems more attractive to me than usual (I generally burn my GEs on wonders), but bulbing along the way to macemen is also a good idea: they will be very useful in the soon to begin continental mayhem that I have a feeling is on the way.
As for the game: I'd be interested to see the protective trait leveraged for early offense: I have never really done it myself.
For the GE: with representation settling seems more attractive to me than usual (I generally burn my GEs on wonders), but bulbing along the way to macemen is also a good idea: they will be very useful in the soon to begin continental mayhem that I have a feeling is on the way.
I think the nitpicking is going too far with these worker turns comments ... at this stage of the game (i.e. not in the early phase anymore), at epic speed, losing a turn because you move a pair instead of individual ones will not have any noticeable impact.
For me, the best way to simplify workers would be to improve their Automation. If you could trust the workers to get improvements right - or at least close to it - this wouldn't be a major problem.
As an example, the workers should pay attention to the city's priorities. You can already tell a city to focus on production or on gold - the workers should take heed of that and specialise city improvements. If they also took into account city size & growth to optimise which order to build improvements in, I think they should be able to automate every bit as well as most humans command them. In which case, problem solved.
As an example, the workers should pay attention to the city's priorities. You can already tell a city to focus on production or on gold - the workers should take heed of that and specialise city improvements. If they also took into account city size & growth to optimise which order to build improvements in, I think they should be able to automate every bit as well as most humans command them. In which case, problem solved.
TheMeInTeam
If A implies B...
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You can select, move, and order improvements to workers as a group pretty easily, very much like stack attack. It's inefficient to do this typically, but so would the 2x worker described. But yeah, one you make a group of units clicking on one will auto-select that group, so functionally it's the same thing.
Not recommended though. I intentionally play games fast and this isn't micro even I would recommend shunning, at least not in the early to mid game.
Edit:
@ oldsaxon:
Workers do make improvements based on governor specialization. This is especially apparent when selecting to emphasize food or hammers (you'll see a lot of farms and workshops). Automated worker programming is hard though because it's a canned formula by default and sometimes improvement decisions can be dynamic. Nevertheless, I do exactly this late game when I don't care anymore. I haven't followed this game at all really, but I saw above that we're talking about bulbing machinery...that's way too early to be relying on automated workers...worker turns matter in the early game. Even if the improvements are close to correct, the computer seems to waste turns.
You seem to be a bit indecisive about where to go with this game, so I'd advise against lightbulbing. In my experience, lightbulbs are best done with a specific goal in mind, and you've been hesitant to commit to a particular strategy. If you do go for a machinery lightbulb, make sure you're ready to take advantage of it right away.
I'd settle the GE in Mecca myself. It's 3 hammers, 3 beakers, +3 more beakers under representation.
Mecca is already your best science city (44
/turn in your screenshot) and if you head for CS/Bureacracy those hammers will be multiplied as well.
If you do go down the Machinery route, I would look to pick up Feudalism and Guilds ASAP, then use Serfdom + your improved worker micromanagement to get some improved workshops going where appropriate.
Finally, if you can't see a clear way to victory yet, it may not be a failing of ours; It might simply be unclear at this point. You don't have a tech lead but you do have a lot of land, you're protective, you have stone and the Pyramids. I know that attacking early often has the best rewards, but maybe a later push with drafted protective rifles would be the right move in this case. I'm not positive about that, but it might be worth considering unless you're confident that you can take out (eliminate or sufficiently cripple) Zara in one stroke.
It might not be an ideal situation, but I see your advantage lying in the amount of land you have compared to your neighbors, and the number of cities you can get before Rifles. All you need are Granaries, Madrassas, Courthouses, Walls and Castles.
Running a spy specialist in each city will give you 1+3 plus 4 espionage points. Madrassas give +25% for 5 and cheap walls+castles give +25% espionage for 5 espionage per Spy Specialist. That ought to give you respectable research on your own while also giving you excellent intel and the ability to steal a few choice techs.
That would let you build up your economy right now, while slow-building an army of siege, adding camels to the mix when you get them, then quickly drafting an army of rifles.
I'd settle the GE in Mecca myself. It's 3 hammers, 3 beakers, +3 more beakers under representation.
Mecca is already your best science city (44
/turn in your screenshot) and if you head for CS/Bureacracy those hammers will be multiplied as well.If you do go down the Machinery route, I would look to pick up Feudalism and Guilds ASAP, then use Serfdom + your improved worker micromanagement to get some improved workshops going where appropriate.
Finally, if you can't see a clear way to victory yet, it may not be a failing of ours; It might simply be unclear at this point. You don't have a tech lead but you do have a lot of land, you're protective, you have stone and the Pyramids. I know that attacking early often has the best rewards, but maybe a later push with drafted protective rifles would be the right move in this case. I'm not positive about that, but it might be worth considering unless you're confident that you can take out (eliminate or sufficiently cripple) Zara in one stroke.
It might not be an ideal situation, but I see your advantage lying in the amount of land you have compared to your neighbors, and the number of cities you can get before Rifles. All you need are Granaries, Madrassas, Courthouses, Walls and Castles.
Running a spy specialist in each city will give you 1+3
plus 4 espionage points. Madrassas give +25% for 5 and cheap walls+castles give +25% espionage for 5 espionage per Spy Specialist. That ought to give you respectable research on your own while also giving you excellent intel and the ability to steal a few choice techs.That would let you build up your economy right now, while slow-building an army of siege, adding camels to the mix when you get them, then quickly drafting an army of rifles.
whakamole
Artful Dodger
I fully agree! Of course, there's no way you can trust current automation. I mean, how many times have you seen a pair of AI workers in the same BFC, where one is building a mine over a windmill, and another is building a windmill over a mine?
@kazapp - I hope I didn't offend. My description of the "road crew" was not a mockery of your idea (which I think is a great idea, btw), but just a visual I got when thinking of "grouped workers" as I see them in my everyday life.
Thinking about it a little further, I think you ought to delay war.
As you pointed out, Zara already has crossbows available to him (good vs your potential maces) and he will likely have Engineering for pikes while you're still making Horse Archers and Elephants, let alone Camel Archers.
You've got a settled Great Spy and Zara has only 1 source on Iron, in your SouthEast. You could continually sabotage it, preventing him from building either Pikes or Crossbows. He would essentially cease being a military threat at that point, although his Culture Creep will continue to be a concern.
You have 8 cities now, but only ~5 are capable of building troops. With 10-12 all running a single spy you would pull in
5 and 7 espionage per city, before any commerce from tiles or trade routes is factored in.
While it's not stunning, that's 50-60 per turn and 70-84 Espionage, per turn.
I don't see you being in a good position to muster an attack force just yet, but you are in a good place to utilize your traits + pyramids to get a mixed economy going based off of spies under representation. As a guess, you'd probably need 12 or more catapults to assault Aksum, which will have cheap walls, maybe cheap castles, and a LOT of culture already. You're talking about going in with single promotion catapults. If you wait, you may be able to go in with double-promoted Trebuchets (which are much better at both bombing defenses and attacking directly).
If you do plan on building up next round for an attack the following round, could you lay out an estimate for how many troops you'd like? I'd be curious to see how many troops you think you would need.
As you pointed out, Zara already has crossbows available to him (good vs your potential maces) and he will likely have Engineering for pikes while you're still making Horse Archers and Elephants, let alone Camel Archers.
You've got a settled Great Spy and Zara has only 1 source on Iron, in your SouthEast. You could continually sabotage it, preventing him from building either Pikes or Crossbows. He would essentially cease being a military threat at that point, although his Culture Creep will continue to be a concern.
You have 8 cities now, but only ~5 are capable of building troops. With 10-12 all running a single spy you would pull in
5
and 7 espionage per city, before any commerce from tiles or trade routes is factored in.While it's not stunning, that's 50-60
per turn and 70-84 Espionage, per turn.I don't see you being in a good position to muster an attack force just yet, but you are in a good place to utilize your traits + pyramids to get a mixed economy going based off of spies under representation. As a guess, you'd probably need 12 or more catapults to assault Aksum, which will have cheap walls, maybe cheap castles, and a LOT of culture already. You're talking about going in with single promotion catapults. If you wait, you may be able to go in with double-promoted Trebuchets (which are much better at both bombing defenses and attacking directly).
If you do plan on building up next round for an attack the following round, could you lay out an estimate for how many troops you'd like? I'd be curious to see how many troops you think you would need.
Now *this* would be an interesting play! I have done it a time or two, but never as part of an extended campaign to weaken their military in preparation for a war later... Doing this while building up an army/teching to macemen would at the very least give the game a short to mid term goal to work towards!
Kev
Hired Goon
I like the MC/Machinery road that is being considered - whether it's stealing, bulbing, or in combination with your own research. I wonder if it might be an interesting play to consider optics at that point and search for the remaining AI's before our neighbors. I've found this to be handy in continental games and it would allow for the possibility of utilizing tech trades not available to your nearby future foes (assuming your continent is keeping up in techs and the other is not so far behind as to be useless). Considering we do not have a religion, we would not get any immediate diplo penalties with newly-met civs - and it may encourage one to spread to us.
I do like to pillage with spies, but at this point it may be too early to go after the iron - especially if we decide to push back a possible attack date. I think I'd rather use the EP's to get a key tech or to instantly drop the culture defense for a quick strike.
With regard to warring in general, I think a lot depends on how the local AI's react to each other over the next round our so. If Surly and Roos go at it, I'd be more apt to go after Zara quickly as the other two are tied up. Same goes for a potential dogpile if Zara gets involved somewhere. For this reason I'd be a bit quicker with military if possible - if only to be opportunistic. I'd be worried about the potential situation if Surly takes a fair chunk of Roosevelt and takes him as a vassal. He'd be quite a beast at that point.
All this being said, I'm only a Monarch player, so salt as needed.
I do like to pillage with spies, but at this point it may be too early to go after the iron - especially if we decide to push back a possible attack date. I think I'd rather use the EP's to get a key tech or to instantly drop the culture defense for a quick strike.
With regard to warring in general, I think a lot depends on how the local AI's react to each other over the next round our so. If Surly and Roos go at it, I'd be more apt to go after Zara quickly as the other two are tied up. Same goes for a potential dogpile if Zara gets involved somewhere. For this reason I'd be a bit quicker with military if possible - if only to be opportunistic. I'd be worried about the potential situation if Surly takes a fair chunk of Roosevelt and takes him as a vassal. He'd be quite a beast at that point.
All this being said, I'm only a Monarch player, so salt as needed.
To give you an idea of just how popular this thread is. It is the second most viewed thread in this subforum and the 2nd most preplied to thread. the only one with more in either category is the Condensed tips for beginners that has been around for almost three years and is stickied.
DMOC
Mathematician
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- Aug 23, 2007
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Even surpassing previous ALC's? WoW...
Gliese 581
Your average civ junkie
Erm, I think you forgot to set the list to include all threads from the beginning. Quite a lot of the ALCs (and an Immortal Challenge) have more views, and a fair few have more replies as well.
There's a long way still to go in this game, though...
Sisiutil
All Leader Challenger
I would definitely agree, and Krikkitone brought this up earlier. I'm reflecting on it because I find myself increasingly reluctant to return to the game, which is why there's such a long wait between updates.
I think I have, frankly, something of a mental block with the Protective trait. I play off-line games with leaders who have all the other traits, but never with Protective leaders. Not even Tokugawa, with whom I had a successful ALC a while back. I've made my disdain for the trait no secret in the past, and I'm finding it difficult to get past that on several levels.
Many of you argued in favour of its ability to allow you to settle back and absorb what the AI throws at you, but I'm realizing how that runs counter to the way I play this game at any other time. I never play defensively; the best defense is a good offense, to my mind. I mean, I built walls in this game. I almost never build walls! Very rarely, usually only in a "point" city that will be an obvious target for AI attack--or I'll whip them when an AI SOD is closing in on a city. Other than that, never... but not in this game!
As a result, my instincts have been thrown off and this seems to be affecting my conscious decision-making about how to proceed. I've been playing some off-line games as Rome, I think because I've been missing the certainty of how to proceed which I experience when I have a nice stack of Praets marching around the map.
But even if I'd been playing on this map as Elizabeth (another favourite leader of mine, but without an early UU or UB), I would have killed at least one of the little buggers surrounding me by now. But that hasn't happened, and as a result, I've kind of allowed myself to be blown this way and that by the different opinions here, since I'm feeling unusually rudderless on my own. I think I need a good war to feel comfortable again.
Don't ever let me get elected to a position of real power.
patagonia
Emperor
- Joined
- Aug 19, 2006
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- 1,025
I think you often play as if early war is inevitable, when that isn't always the case.
(Of course, some times it's the stronger of two options to rush a neighbour than to peacefully coexist)
Saladin's got one top-tier trait (spiritual) and protective, which isn't as bad as you might think. You've got a chunk of prime real estate here and although the others may seem reasonably advanced, it's only Sury who poses a long-term threat. One thing you may have overlooked is that you can draft some pretty nasty gunpowder units. Not as nasty as Toku's I'll grant you, but decent enough if you're able to run theocracy at the same time.
The ALC peanut gallery loves a rush/romp, but you're actually well placed here for a renaissance draft war. If you put HE in Etruscan and Globe in Gaul, those two cities alone can produce the bulk of your army in double-quick time. A combination of rifles, trebs and spies (to knock down defences while the trebs inflict collateral) will cut through one or two of the neighbours in next to no time. If you play on with that mid-long term goal in mind, it may help you focus more.
There's likely to be some sort of intercontinental warfare to look forward to before the end of this one too, since whoever's whoring religions is likely to go cultural on you later in the game.
(Of course, some times it's the stronger of two options to rush a neighbour than to peacefully coexist)
Saladin's got one top-tier trait (spiritual) and protective, which isn't as bad as you might think. You've got a chunk of prime real estate here and although the others may seem reasonably advanced, it's only Sury who poses a long-term threat. One thing you may have overlooked is that you can draft some pretty nasty gunpowder units. Not as nasty as Toku's I'll grant you, but decent enough if you're able to run theocracy at the same time.
The ALC peanut gallery loves a rush/romp, but you're actually well placed here for a renaissance draft war. If you put HE in Etruscan and Globe in Gaul, those two cities alone can produce the bulk of your army in double-quick time. A combination of rifles, trebs and spies (to knock down defences while the trebs inflict collateral) will cut through one or two of the neighbours in next to no time. If you play on with that mid-long term goal in mind, it may help you focus more.
There's likely to be some sort of intercontinental warfare to look forward to before the end of this one too, since whoever's whoring religions is likely to go cultural on you later in the game.
