Arabian Honeycomb

[S.K. Ren]

Given Arabia's economic boost with vast empires, I've been thinking about a new style of play for them which I call Honeycomb. Basically you plant an innumerable amount of cities, expecting them to only ever work their initial 6 tiles. Here are the Pros and Cons I have found with this Idea.

Pros:

• Many trade routes giving you +1 for each
• You save money on roads in a sense as the farthest a city will be from the next is 2 tiles and each city counts as a road.
• A fast growing population that caps at a low number due to low tiles to work making an explosive early population boost which stabilizes granting a edge

Cons:

• Cities have very low production stats.
• Beware Maritime states. With so many cities, should you start allying with Maritime CS your population will explode causing a happiness crash. Not to say they wont be useful when you do want to expand, but just be careful.
• Social Policies will be almost impossible to attain past the first five or so.

My concept goes something like this. Stick with one city until you have 5 social policies saved up. Go ahead and get Liberty, Citizenship and Meritocracy (The oracle doesn't count, with it you should have 6 saved at least if you take it) Now make as many settlers as you're current happiness can handle. Keep in mind that each city you connect will give an additional so for every two cities you place at this stage you can place a 3rd as well. Assuming 10 before you expand you should be able to place 15 Cities. The other 3 policies should be saved for Liberty and Rationalism. You should be able to pull out a 7th and 8th and maybe a 9th policy by the time they unlock. Grab Rationalism, Secularism, Humanism, Freedom, Civil Society and Democracy. You can drop Democracy and Humanism if need be. Eventually you might take Order, Socialism and Planned Economy but those will come much later.

Once you are ready to place your cities, settle them all as close to the same time as possible. This is so you have a better control over your population growth. Now just play like normal. You might make one or two cities that are normal with their own plots for production cities.

So any thoughts?

 

[aimlessgun]

I don't think Arabia's UA is very important or good enough to base a strategy around. Tons of cities that are expected to remain small is a waste of maritime food. If they all just chill in the first ring their production will probably also be terrible, and multiple small cities with few buildings is far worse than a large one with all the buildings.

I think Arabia is well suited to aggressive expansion, but toward every single free luxury resource, basing your strategy around the much much more powerful Bazaar. So far in 2 games this has given me a sprawling coastal empire connected via Harbors and given respectable production with the 2nd tier Commerce policy.

 

[R3dKnight]

Saving up for 5 policies with one city is already a costly loss for Arabians, who profit from having duplicate copies of luxury goods when Bazaars are built in that city.

Grab as many luxury tiles as possible with your settlers research currency and trade the extra copy away for gold or other luxuries as you need, sign research pacts and spend it on city states for culture/maritime and grabbing more resources! Just save up some gold for self defense. Spearmen are cheap and good for early defense.

 

[stii]

I think you would find it works better with china and paper makers, assuming you'd build libraries anway you end up +4 per city rather than +1.

 

[S.K. Ren]

I understand how to play a Mercantile game but that's gotten boring. And the cities aren't meant to stay small forever just that the population is controlled. In the early game they wont grow past 4-6 pop. Later in the game when you have Civil Society and access to Maritime states they will grow a ton but it wont run away from you. Recently I was playing a game as Egypt and was upset that my 16 cities were growing too much from my Maritime allies. I had to abuse the infinite Strategic Resource to get enough money to buy a Theater to keep my Happiness in the black and this was in the 300's on Standard speed. It took that long to hit my second Golden Age. I just wanted to find a strategy that utilized many 'small' cities and Arabia seemed the best to do it with.

 

[xcalibre0]

The strategy you are going for is called ICS by the CivFanatics and it stands for Infinity City Sprawl, the mechanics, pros and cons of which differ for each version of Civ. A lot of people seem to think it's bad in this version, but if you check some where in this this thread a fairly good player made a fantastic ICS game using the French on a high difficulty level. Arabia maybe even better, may be worse. The good thing is that in that thread there are a lot of discussion that you might find useful.

 

[S.K. Ren]

Thanks xcalibere0. Now I know what its called. Although stii made a good point. Chinese would be monsters with ICS

 

[Iwo Jima]

S.K. Ren, I've tried to do something similar. So, some my thoughts about.

Arabian Economics
attempt to exploit Arabian trade routes bonus

1. The Goal: clearly not culture win. So scores, diplomacy, domination and space race. Scores boring, diplomacy forces you to guard City-States, so Domination and Space Race are the most real.

2. The Strength: lot of money. How to achieve? Trade routes and resources for sell.

Resources strategy: to grab all possible resources. Note, rare resources are of the most value for Arabian, because you couldn't sell recourse, that all other players already have. So, you should strive for recourse monopoly. 1 rare resource is better than 2-3 common resources.

1 rare recourse could bring you 250 gold every 30 turns, or 8 golds per turn (assuming your opponents have money)​

Trade Routes(TR) strategy: TR income depends on city size. So, average city with size 6 will give 7-8 golds + 1 for arabian. But you should pay for routes. Harbours are expensive, and cost 3 gold for every city plus one. Roads are cheaper and if you build cities like honey cells, your expenses are twice lower: 1,5 gold for each city. (3 roads could connect 2 cities and the capital)​

But here we see some contradiction with these strategies. At one side, you should settle in right places near rare resources, on the other side, you should settle as close as you can. What is the balance?​

3. The Problem: It seems, that Resources strategy gives more money, but hard to achieve - you depend on many factors, such as place or amount of money your opponents have. Trade Routes give less, but more stable.

So,
4. the Idea is - Build the Hive and Expand: in the beginning you form the Hive, honey cell(honeycomb) for fast and stable money growth. After that, you start expansion for rare resources. At first, you conquer or ally city-states with rare resources. After that you can fight for rare resources with opponents.

The Hive:

Improvements in the Hive: How to improve the Hive - Farms or Trading Posts? Farms make you city grow faster, while TPosts give you pure commerce. Clearly, 2 TPosts (4 gold before bonuses) could compensate the difference in 3 pops. So, you could build farms only for fast growth, but after that you should change them for TPosts.

Buildings in the Hive: It could seem a good idea to build Granary and Water Mill, since they give you food, increase city size and increase your profit from TRs. But in fact they have a maintenance 1+2 gold, and it makes them almost unprofitable. So, you should build (or purchase!) only "money" buildings - bazaar, bank and stock exchange. Maybe later you could build there some science, culture or military buildings.

The Mathematics for the Hive:

One city with size 6 and 6 TPosts generates: 2(3 on river)*6+3(central cell) = 15-20 gold on tiles. +83% for city buildings gives 27-37 gold totally.
Plus 6*1,25 gold for TR, minus 1,5 for roads, plus 1 for Arabian gives additional 7 golds.
The total profit is 34-44 gold from one city.
If we assume 7 happy faces we need to zero-balance, than we should build Colosseum and Theatre (+8 Happy Faces) with total maintenance 8 gold.
So, the real balanced profit is about 26-36 golds for one city.
If you have some special resources in city radius, than your total profit will be a little bit more, about 30-40.

4 cities could easily give you about 100-150 golds per turn.
​

Observations:

Obviously, additional "arabian" gold gives less than 3% of total income in such approach (assuming average city size 6 specialized on commerce). So, such Hive-strategy gives a minimal advantage to Arabian in comparison with other nations.

Another approach, where Arabian Hive could shine more, is production-oriented Hive. (build mines and limber-mills instead of trading posts). In such approach Trade Routes make more contribution and "arabian" gold will give you about 10% or even 20% of net gold income.​

PS: Also cons for Hive(honeycomb) strategy is difficulty to build national wonders.

 

[aimlessgun]

Observations:

Obviously, additional "arabian" gold gives less than 3% of total income in such approach (assuming average city size 6 specialized on commerce). So, such Hive-strategy gives a minimal advantage to Arabian in comparison with other nations.

Another approach, where Arabian Hive could shine more, is production-oriented Hive. (build mines and limber-mills instead of trading posts). In such approach Trade Routes make more contribution and "arabian" gold will give you about 10% or even 20% of net gold income.[/INDENT][/INDENT]

Interesting analysis. A production oriented hive would be intriguing but very situational: you'd need hills galore, or have to hold off until Machinery (not good).

I wonder why the made the Arabian UA so crappy

 

[Lyoncet]

Because the other half of the UA (double oil) is very good if you get to early modern (meaning it's not good if you go horseman cheese, but nothing matters if that's what you do), the UU is excellent, and the UB is excellent. Civs are balanced as a package, not item-for-item.

 

[Dai]

The Arabian UA is sufficiently marginal that I wouldn't alter my strategy around it. It works out to basically one gold/city, assuming you connect the city to a trade route. One gold/turn is basically irrelevant compared to the other costs and benefits associated with adding an additional city. Arabia's real defining feature is tucked into their UB, which allows you to reap massive profits by aggressively seeking out special resources.

 

[delra]

All that ability can do is paying for Monuments.

Real deal is doubling amount of luxuries for sales.

 

[Celevin]

You're much better off doing this with China. You'll see much better returns with the Paper Maker.

Or, even better, France. It lets you grab the policies needed for this much more easily.

 

[Iwo Jima]

Or, even better, France. It lets you grab the policies needed for this much more easily.

No.
Because your rate rises +2, but the cap rises +25%

 

[lissenber]

You are not the only one who has came up with this idea. I have a similar strategy.

Honeycomb, but with 1 pop cities. My opening move is a warrior. As soon as capitol gets 2 pop it produces settlers nonstop. 1 pop cities produce warriors/archers. I go for liberty, then piety, then order (Order`s last policy gives 5 hammers per city !!!). If i play Arabia, i build as little roads as i can. A capitol and a city can be connected with 2 roads. But a capitol and TWO cities can be connected with 3 roads. If i play some other country, i just don`t road.

No buildings aside from no maintenance buildings are built. I used to rush for Stone Henge but now that I`m on Deity i prefer to make 3 warriors instead. Once i build bazaars i usually assign some of the cities that have bad tiles around them to work on merchant specialists. This strategy is basically building only units during early game to overcome the AI attacks and then later a micture of commerce/quality units.

 

[S.K. Ren]

From the looks of things, China is better on a per city basis (+3GPT Papermill vs +1GPT Traderoute) but loses on the ability to trade a ton of resources. As for the Watermill and Granary. I find the Granary is acceptable in some cases when running a Specialist/Production city but for these Honeycombs 1 Gold = 2 Food = 1 Pop = 1 Worked Tile= 2Gold, so yes its worth it for the Honeycomb in cities with low growth potential but Watermills are only worth it for Specialist/Production Heavy Cities as 2 Gold=...= 2Gold, its just a waste of hammers otherwise.

Now thinking about national wonders, I don't think they are really necessary. It might be worth it to go with one or two cities to nab Oxford asap then bloom. But most of your tech will come from raw population and Research Agreements.
National College? Working so few tiles per city with low pop really lowers the effectiveness. Assuming 6 Pop, 6 TP and Free Thought you will get 31.5 Beakers ([6 Pop+3 Library]x1.5) from the city with the National College. While the others produce 21 each
National Epic? Not a Specialist Economy.
Oxford University? Maybe but it comes a little late and causes a great money sink or delay in expansion to get.
Iron Works? Not really building a lot of buildings so workshops will be few in number anyways.
Hermitage? Pfftt... ahahahahaha
Heroic Epic? *Dies of asphyxiation*

So that's not a concern at all.

Another issue is Arabia's start bias. You do not want to be expanding into desert. Early in the game they will not grow without Maritime CS. This is where China and France would outshine Arabia.

 

[madscientist]

I have played the Arabians quite a bit and thionk the trade caravan bonus is pretty decent, although large empires where it would help more seams to contradict the need for the BAzaar which gives you much more trade fodder. Also large empires will trigger more wars due to close borders, thus negating the trades.

 

[S.K. Ren]

Something else to think about is the use of Macchu Pichu. Every 5 Cities you place generates an additional gold from Arabia's UA.

 

[alpaca]

See the ICS thread. I started doing the same to maximize the impact of the Arabian UA.

Done that. The most important point is actually the Bazaar. Since the Bazaar is programmed poorly, you can not only get one extra copy of each resource but two or three: one for each city that has the resource in its two-tile radius. Sell them to the AI and you'll roll in money.

Other excellent nations for this are China and France. Egypt, Persia and Songhai are also nice.

 

[S.K. Ren]

Persia and Songhai I can see. Persia for its GA boost and Songhai can make a killing raiding his lands for Barbs reducing dependence on trades or even adding extra to them. Egypt not so much. Sure its Burial Tombs are nice but I just don't see it rising above the others in potential placing it at the bottom of the pile.

Edit: Also, It turns out you can connect 3 Cities with 4 Roads further increasing efficiency.