BLA1 - Mystical Monarch

[Blasphemous]

I'll play my set later today...
Now, about your set alerum, 15 rivals means this map is Huge. Brace yerselves for a long game. =X
About mining bg vs irrigating, irrigating any grassland is useless in despotism because of the tile penalty. So mine grasslands for now, we'll irrigate instead later on...

 

[Smellincoffee]

Oh dear. I've never played a huge game before, just large. And then, diplomacy drove me insane.

 

[Blasphemous]

Oh dear. I've never played a huge game before, just large. And then, diplomacy drove me insane.

Ah, Huge is fine, I used to play it all the time... It just takes a really long time to finish...

 

[alerum68]

Standard/Large is my normal fare in a game... Played Huge and like SC said, it's a pain in the ass doing diplo later in the game... we better make sure that we wipe out a civ before we contact more then 7.

The mine/irigatation question was for a cow, not a BG Blas. When you irigate a cow in despotism you get +4 food +1 shields. When you mine a cow you get 3 food, 2 shields. When we go to republic we'll have +5 food from an irigate cow or an automatic settler factory.

 

[Smellincoffee]

Engh. I was going to try to play a huge game on the Earth map to see how it was, but it took too long. I guess I'm just a standard/large guy.

 

[Blasphemous]

Bleh, I was sure you said it was a BG...
Anyway, I'll have to play tomorrow... This morning I got a bit carried away with my current solo game (going for Domination with Communist England ) and then had to go out for a few hours and now I'm too tired... First thing tomorrow, hopefully.

 

[Smellincoffee]

Blasphemous, do any of your games ever wind up with you NOT in communism?

 

[Blasphemous]

Blasphemous, do any of your games ever wind up with you NOT in communism?

Since C3C I always end up either in Democracy, or Communism, or in one or two cases, Fascism, which has this amazing ability to allow a moderately-sized nation to go and nab Domination quickly.
But yeah, I'm starting to feel Communism is the best no matter what as long as I'm big enough to make it superior to Fasc and Dem...

In the case of my current solo, Democracy (or was it Republic?) was just becoming a burden after I conquered all of Russia and a bit of Egypt, so I decided to go Commie to spread the load evenly... I'm currently wiping up the leftovers of Egypt right after a successful world war against Fascist America... That war got me most of the second continent, this one's gonna get me past the domination limit. =D

 

[Blasphemous]

Initital observations and adjustments:
All seems good... Should probably try and populate the southern coastline where all the forests are (and a wheat!!!!)...

IBT:
Nothing
2510bc (1):
Beijing: Barracks -> Spearman (due in 4); queued Settler due in a further 6, perfectly timed for growth to size 3 in 10 turns. =D
Accidentally press Ctrl-E instead of Ctrl-R on worker, argh. I never knew Ctrl-E moved you NE. =\ EDIT: Later notice it was actually NW. I. Hate. Mornings. ><
Send eastern warrior on a course to check out the eastern end of our peninsula.
Move western warrior and find a volcano.

IBT:
zzz
2470bc (2):
Shanghai: Warrior -> Spearman
Start exploring with new Warrior.
ARRRGHH!!!!! Ctrl-E (or rather, E) is auto-explore. Gosh, I am so freakin' stupid... Sorry about this, hopefully these wasted worker turns won't cause too much damage.

IBT:
Mongol Warrior comes into view at our eastern border.
2430bc (3):
Warriors continue to move, western warrior find some nice lands just across the little natural harbor thingy near Beijing.

IBT:
Mongol Warrior moves north, Mongol Scout comes into view a bit further north along our border.
And then my game crashes to desktop. Just great. Restart computer and load auto-save. =\
2390bc (4):
Set worker to road just outside Shanghai's borders, since it'll get the cities connected quicker this way.
Those new lands across the water look *very* promising... Two Incense, forsets, hills, a cow, and some fish near the shore.
Switch Science to 10% which will net us more gold and not change the time till research is complete.

IBT:
Mongols keep moving north along our borders.
2350bc (5):
Beijing: Spearman -> Settler
Fortify Spearman at Beijing.
A river and some plains come into view in the new land to the west.

IBT:
Mongols keep moving around our northern borders.
2310bc (6):
Move worker (now done roading) onto mined cow and realize it would have been quicker to road here in the first place. Argh.
Tobacco sighted on the hills in the west.

IBT:
Mongols found Kazan north of Shanghai, on the coast. =\
2270bc (7):
Worker starts roading the mined cow.
Continue to explore in the west, and find some wheat on the planes!

IBT:
Spanish warrior comes into view in the north.
2230bc (8):
Shanghai: Spearman -> Temple
NEWS FLASH: The Maya are building The Pyramids.
Fortify spear at Shanghai and mobilize warrior.
Find Spain south of the new lands.

IBT:
Spanish and Mongol warriors move around a bit near Shanghai.
2190bc (9):
Worker is done roading the cow and moves north.
Exploration continues.

IBT:
Spanish warrior moves south, now touching the border of Beijing, Mongol warrior moves north.
2150bc (10):
Worker starts road 1 tile SW of Shanghai.
Warriors explore.

Okay... The Mongols must be destroyed. And we have to quickly settle.

I also prepared a little dotmap...
Numbers signify order in which they should be settled. I know I'm an OCP freak, but I figure if you build a city you may as well maxmize it's potential...

 

[SesnOfWthr]

Blas, good turns.

Couple things off the top of my head:

I always try to fully improve a tile before moving the worker, unless you're just roading to somewhere, or have a specific task in mind. It's not a big deal, but it's a couple wasted worker turns, which is one of the places humans have a huge advantage over the AI: efficient movements. I'm sure you already know that, but I wanted to voice it JIC.

No offense, but you're wasting large amounts of space with your dotmap. I know you like OCP, but I think you're wasting tiles even with an OCP approach. I generally try to space cities between 3 and 4 tiles apart. This gives some overlap, but not so much that things become prohibitive. Remember that under OCP, fully 40% of your tiles will be wasted until the Mid IA. We all know that the beginning of the game is far more important at the end. I'll try to whip up a dotmap when I get home, and perhaps we can sort of meld the two.

 

[Blasphemous]

Yeah, I usually hold the same policy about worker moves, I was just totally out of it this morning... Next time I'll delay my set by a few hours rather than play when I'm drowsy and screw up like I did this time...
About the dotmap and OCP, I really don't mind placing filler cities in between those, but I think we've got some very very pretty sites available and I'd hate to see three small cities share what two huge metropoli could have maximized.

 

[alerum68]

Look at it this way Blas... the largest any city will get until the modern age is size 12. Even with a TIGHT build, there should be more then enough tiles to be worked, and overlap can be worked around... Once we get to the modern age, we can always get rid of a city or two, or even 10. But it's alot harder to make one appear that is fully formed, and ready to pump out units, even if they are mainly stuck at size 6 or if they're lucky size 12. This was a trick I heard about and tried it... it really helped my game play. Now, if we don't have a city which can belt out settlers for us, we may want to go with a hybrid OCP, keeping most cities somewhat loose, with just a few tiles overlaping, but if I can get cities that only have 9-12 tiles to work, I'd be very happy until the Modern Ages... besides, by that time, you can pretty much resettle your whole empire if you had to... I actually did something like that one time from boredom.

 

[SesnOfWthr]

This is more how I saw it.
The two spots w/ red dots can both be 4-turn factories (the southern one w/expansion) and should be given priority.
The blue dot is the current Mongol city that wastes the wheat. I'd hope for an autoraze (or not auto ...) and resettle.
The spots with a green dot would have to be cleared first.

EDIT: nope the southern factory would have to go 1 NE.

 

[Smellincoffee]

Look at it this way Blas... the largest any city will get until the modern age is size 12.

That would be Industrial. Sanitation is a second-tier Industrial tech.

 

[Blasphemous]

Dunno, I love the modern age, and I hate seeing my cities stuck around size 20 because of lack of tiles...
Sesn, about the city site on the little peninsula near the capital (number 6 on my dotmap), why put it where you did, when you could put it on the tip and have it fully utilize the land there without sharing it with Beijing? The place where you put it autoclears a forest along with stealing tiles from Beijing... =\

 

[Vizurok]

Is it my turn?
I think that, will play tomorrow...

 

[SesnOfWthr]

Dunno, I love the modern age, and I hate seeing my cities stuck around size 20 because of lack of tiles...
Sesn, about the city site on the little peninsula near the capital (number 6 on my dotmap), why put it where you did, when you could put it on the tip and have it fully utilize the land there without sharing it with Beijing? The place where you put it autoclears a forest along with stealing tiles from Beijing... =\

The most important part of the game is the Ancient and Medieval ages. In those times, two or three more cities can be the difference between conquering or being conquered. But we could go round and round on this all day ....

As far as that particular location: With my spot, I share only 1 tile and can work 8 grassland and 1 forest. With your spot you share 0 tiles and can only work 5 grassland and 1 forest. You also waste a forest and BG tile.

 

[Blasphemous]

As far as that particular location: With my spot, I share only 1 tile and can work 8 grassland and 1 forest. With your spot you share 0 tiles and can only work 5 grassland and 1 forest. You also waste a forest and BG tile.

Touche.

 

[alerum68]

Keep it tight I'd think. You can always take away if you have to much... is very hard to make a city pop out of thin air in 1 turn.

 

[Vizurok]

Update in two hours.