BTS 3.13: Infinite City Sprawl 01 - Manhattan Empire

[r_rolo1]

lurker's comment: I think that Ramesses would definitely have a diferent flavour than Asoka in this variant.... I suspect that it would involve heavy use of the priest slots of obelisks to generate money for the maintenance expenses ( directly or via religion/shrine/settled GP ). IMHO it would be definitely harder to leverage it ( but not impossible ) , but Ramesses/Immortal may be a big strech

And may I suggest a toroidal map ?

 

[mystyfly]

Attention, in this post I just wrote down my thouths as they came to my mind so it may be a bit hard to read...

shyuhe, you make some good points. But how I understand it, in any game, you have to balance expenses and income. Expenses are maintenance cost, usually. Income can be obtained in different ways. We 1) built an early shrine, and 2) we kept our expenses low with early cheap courthouses. What I suggested was to play a game where we can run as many priests as possible, so arabian and egypt are both possible. I know no other civ that has early priestslot-providing UBs. With those slots, we can generate those important GPs earlier and at a faster pace.
In fact, we shouldn't bypass the Oracle. This was a somewhat strange suggestion I think. If we play Ramsses, we could build the Oracle before the first settler. So we get both confucianism and buddhism/hinduism in our cap (which is way better than the second in the second city. We just had some bad luck there...). Then we run as many priests as possible while building settlers. Those priests could keep our research at a decent pace as every priest produces 1gold (not much but better than none...). The first two GPs build shrines and the third bulbs Theology. We should use the christian missionary to convert an AI that has no religion yet, to get every AI to hate him/her.
With this 'strategy', we would be pretty hammer-poor. But we have the great War Chariots. They do very well against barbs, and are also definitely capable of razing barb cities that pop up. So we would be defended sufficiently. Also I think we should not hook up copper that soon so we can build warriors for city defence. Most of our cities were garrisoned by an axeman. A axe costs 35 hammers while a warrior costs only 15. We can safe some hammers to get more settlers out.
The wonders you mentioned (and we built); oracle, AP, UoS, SM, cost 1650 together. We could save another 550 hammers (either the UoS or the SM for free - pick one!). However those hammers weren't that hard to come by at least with our capital. It was both hammer and food rich. We must hope for another one of those... Cheap forges surely won't really help.

I don't see how Ramesses is a better leader than Asoka for this variant. Organized is crucial to getting up courthouses in a reasonable amount of time. Spiritual is also necessary because the cost of changing civics goes up very fast with the number of cities that we run (I think). Industrious forges are not very useful but the wonder bonus helps for... oracle, AP, UoS, SM. And SoL if you make it that far. Without organized, I think you'll completely crap out your economy as you transition to the medieval era as you won't be able to land grab as fast with slower courthouses.

For the reasons mentioned above, I think we should survive the early and medieval game without cheap courthouses.

There are three weakness that I see in civ 4 ICS: one is that you have to finish the game before it hits the late game as I doubt you'll keep up with lategame cottages. The other is that it's really only possible on land heavy maps. If this were a continent game, I doubt ICS would work nearly as well. The third is that you can't do anything (other than a courthouse) to reduce the # of cities maintenance cost. That cost became really high towards the end of the game and may have actually crashed our economy if left unchecked (granted we were close to domination so that's part of the reason).

1) merc + SoL + rep surely will be generating so many beakers that we should do reasonnabely well in the lategame
2) we can choose our map as we want to
3) true

lurker's comment: I think that Ramesses would definitely have a diferent flavour than Asoka in this variant.... I suspect that it would involve heavy use of the priest slots of obelisks to generate money for the maintenance expenses ( directly or via religion/shrine/settled GP ). IMHO it would be definitely harder to leverage it ( but not impossible ) , but Ramesses/Immortal may be a big strech

And may I suggest a toroidal map ?

If we play Inland sea again (ooh please please... ), I'll also want to play torodial.

One difficulty we'll be facing with ramsses is that he doesn't start with Mysticism... So we'll either have to work some 2C-tile in the first 10-20 turns to get either buddhism or hinduism. We might want to flip a coin which one to try...

 

[Zherak_Khan]

I won't have any time for an SG until the end of this week, at least. I have three midterms coming up.

I strongly disagree with using any other leader than Asoka - well, it could of course be fun, but there's no other leader half as suitable. We absolutely need Org (courthouses it only half the fun, Civic upkeep is a killer). Early religion is helpful, though I suppose Christianity/Confucianism is good enough. (Egypt starts with Agri/Wheel, unless I'm mistaken).

Now, Spi/Fast Worker/Mausoleum is possibly debatable - Org/Ind comes with a crappy leader, though. Org/Imp might make sense if we limit Anarchy and use a GAge or two to switch. Spi gives cheap Temples, and we built about 30 Temples last game.

I think our actual challenge in an Immortal/Deity game would be to get early game economy working and to win Oracle/AP/UoS/SM. We will be more vulnerable pre-draft, and post-draft it will be harder to manage economy.

PS: Toroidal is probably not a good idea. Unless it has been changed, World Wrap comes with a DistanceUpkeep multiplier. Toroidal essentially means Distance Upkeep gets a lot larger.

PPS: Regarding economical collapse: I'm not sure how this is actually a problem. When I posted my last save, we were doing around +150gpt (I think), and our economy was growing because of Conf Missionaries, Market/Grocer/Banks and we were setting up for Wall Street, which by itself would make about 60GPT. (50 base from Budd Shrine). Sure, if we went real draft heavy and built military, we may manage to crash our economy, but we don't need 10 times AI power.

PPPS: In an eventual regame, I would have liked to up the difficulty (probably Immortal, unless people have faith in straight Deity - at Deity, we would have to limit our weed), stick with most other settings and remove our variant rule while keeping the strategy. It was essentially meant to showcase the ICS - not having to snake towards resources, found crappy desert cities, get screwed over by peaks and raze all enemy cities would make a certain difference.

 

[mystyfly]

I won't have any time for an SG until the end of this week, at least. I have three midterms coming up.

no problem. more time for us to discuss

I strongly disagree with using any other leader than Asoka - well, it could of course be fun, but there's no other leader half as suitable. We absolutely need Org (courthouses it only half the fun, Civic upkeep is a killer). Early religion is helpful, though I suppose Christianity/Confucianism is good enough. (Egypt starts with Agri/Wheel, unless I'm mistaken).

All org leaders:
Asoka Spi Fast Worker Mausoleum
Darius Fin Immortal Apothecary
Frederik Philo Panzer Assembly Plant
Hammurabi Agg Bowman Garden
Julius Caesar Imp Praetorian Forum
Mehmed II Exp Janissary Hammam
Napoleon Cha Musketman Salon
Roosevelt Ind Navy SEAL Mall
Zara Yaqob Cre Stele Oromo Warrior

I think Asoka might be best-suited. But if we play Ramsses we could try to play in a slightly different way (meaing more religions and earlier shrines).

Spi gives cheap Temples, and we built about 30 Temples last game.

This is exactly the reason why I'd stick to Spi

I think our actual challenge in an Immortal/Deity game would be to get early game economy working and to win Oracle/AP/UoS/SM. We will be more vulnerable pre-draft, and post-draft it will be harder to manage economy.

We talked about an Immortal-game
Its crucial we get Oracle/AP/UoS/SM. Ind can mean the difference between victory and defeat. If we miss some of those wonders, we'll be screwed.

PS: Toroidal is probably not a good idea. Unless it has been changed, World Wrap comes with a DistanceUpkeep multiplier. Toroidal essentially means Distance Upkeep gets a lot larger.

I didn't know that. But Torodial is more fun

 

[shyuhe]

On immortal, all four of those wonders can be easily obtained as long as you beeline them. It will stall your growth rate but they're not hard to get.

Priests will not compensate for the mid-game cities that we found as they cost about 10-15 gpt in maintenance. Assuming you get 4 gold in the shrine (market + grocer + bank for a two shrine city) + a priest in the city + 4 gold from temple + monastery, you're still short gold without the courthouse. The courthouse alone saves 5-7 gpt, as compared to the early priest that saves 1-2 gpt.

The economy crash was partly due to drafting, and also partly due to spamming cities faraway without time to build courthouses. Since we were pushing for domination in the last 2 turn sets, I don't think we really bothered thinking about the consequences of planting so many cities. That definitely accounts for the economic collapse. If we had stopped at around 30% of the land, we would still have been in a strong position.

Spiritual for cheap temples is pretty big. I prefer that over industrious... You can always use oracle on theology - you just need to tech writing + monotheism first. I use this for an AP sling and it's pretty reliable on immortal. As long as you get the oracle, I think the 3 religious wonders are fairly easy to get as the AI doesn't beeline any of them.

 

[Zherak_Khan]

Doesn't the AI start beelining if you snag their Religions?

 

[mystyfly]

Doesn't the AI start beelining if you snag their Religions?

In my games some leaders like Isabella, Justinian, Saladin, ... beeline CoL/Theo/DR if they haven't founded any religion yet. Some beeline those anyway (Issy isn't happy if she hasen't her double-holy madrid ).

The economy crash was partly due to drafting, and also partly due to spamming cities faraway without time to build courthouses. Since we were pushing for domination in the last 2 turn sets, I don't think we really bothered thinking about the consequences of planting so many cities. That definitely accounts for the economic collapse. If we had stopped at around 30% of the land, we would still have been in a strong position.

Spiritual for cheap temples is pretty big. I prefer that over industrious... You can always use oracle on theology - you just need to tech writing + monotheism first. I use this for an AP sling and it's pretty reliable on immortal. As long as you get the oracle, I think the 3 religious wonders are fairly easy to get as the AI doesn't beeline any of them.

If we'll find us in the same position (rifles and nationhood before the ai has it) we can focus on war mainly and destroy 1-3 civs whil teching steel and assembly line. Once we hit infantry we should be able to capture another 1-3 civs (CR-3 Infantry rocks!). This will be just a mop up again.
But if our drafted Rifles face rifles, things will be harder. But still I think we'll find some AI that hasn't got rifling and we'll steamroll over them. If our empire is 40-50% of the world, and we still fall back in techs (despite no more warring but ICS not competing with cottages), we can beeline MM for UN.
I agree that drafting somewhat stagnated our economy but still the most influence on our economy at that time was the army upkeep. Without that, we should be able to tech at a decent pace (sol + merc + rep). We probabely would even be able to win space but we just need a big empire.

Considering traits, I think Spiritual is somewhat given. We can start by building temples in our newly founded cities. Once they're finished, the city already pays from itself and has a production boost (and has already grown), so we'll be able to whip those courts fast.
Organized is also huge. The reason I brought up counterarguments mainly is that I don't want to play Asoka again. I prefer another civ.
Industrious still can make a difference in getting those wonders. It wouldn't have such a boost on our game as spi or org has but still.
Also the egyptians fit our game very well as they have an early UB that 100% helps our plans. We could try founding buddh/hindu, conf (oracle) and christianity (gp) in the cap for max benefit and start spamming settler then. Also they have a great UU for barb protection. And immortal barbs definitely are toughter then emperor barbs. Admittedly, if we wait founding a second city until theo, barbs wouldn't be that much of a problem. But we could also found only one city, hope for a natural spread of the early religion (which is quite likely as it is close to the cap and has a trade route) and then use the conf missionary there so both cities have the same amount of religions present and thus get better odds to found christianity in the cap. 3 religions in cap and market, grocer, bank and finally WS will make accumulating money for upgrades piece of a cake.

If we bulb theo, we definitely should be able to get the AP, with or without ind. But if we only get GPs at the pace we had in the last game, we'll need to found the shrine first and hope our second GP arrives in time to be first to theo. Keep in mind that immortal ais also tech faster than the stoneage-AIs we got in the last game (has anyone an idea why they were so slow?).
Most difficult to get will be UoS as many AIs prioritize it as it is on the way to lib.
Well, that opens another possibility: Run priests AND scientists in cap. This will speed up GP-generation considerabely and a GS could found us Taoism, so we'll have another Religion (which we do not REALLY need thoug...).

I think we were very lucky that GK took out izzy. She certainly would've founded Islam and probabely even built the SM.
We must just locate stone soon with our exploring warrior/scout and expand in that direction.

 

[Betruger]

I'm up for the immortal challange, but I really don't think it'll be possible without Organized. We won't come out of the early game in a good shape without that trait.
Now, spiritual is debatable. It's not as crucial as organized in my opinion, but very strong nevertheless. In this variant we rely heavily on religion and temples, also free civic changes are great in a succession game.
That being said, I think Asoka is by far the most apropriate leader for this kind of challenge. I myself have nothing against playing as him again.
Immortal will be damn hard anyway.

 

[JeWnS]

Congratulations.

I also tried this out whith Ashoka, and as soon as I reached rifles, "the game was eaten", as we say here.

Would be nice to see how this works on Immortal. As for that, i would favor Dareios. Concerning the economy: Maybe softening the rule that cities that are not fitting into the grid shall be destroyed would help?

 

[mystyfly]

Would be nice to see how this works on Immortal. As for that, i would favor Dareios. Concerning the economy: Maybe softening the rule that cities that are not fitting into the grid shall be destroyed would help?

Darius' Financial is pretty much useless for our variant, as is his UB. Our early-game research was funded by shrine + some cottages.
Then we went on to SM + Usak to get us to Rep + Merc (+ SoL). So fin wouldn't really make a difference. Cheap building pay off when you build them in every of your (99999) cities.

I don't know what you mean by your suggestion to changing the rule. I'm ok with the rules we've set us. Also we don't need to move up a level because the old one was easy and make it easier again.. Then we might just as well play emperor again...

 

[shyuhe]

I agree with Betruger: organized is much more critical than spiritual for this variant. You can work around expensive temples - just build monastery --> temple instead of vice versa. The anarchy may be painful but you can use GA to work around them to an extent.

I think running this variant on immortal will be hard as well - it depends on how much land you can block off while settling in a grid pattern. If you get an IMP civ next to you, we may find ourselves limited in cities.

That being said, I'd be up for an immortal game. An interesting thing that occurred to me is that you could convert the economy into a full fledged spy economy late game too. If each city builds a courthouse (2), jail (4), and one of the spy buildings - I forgot which (8), that's 14 base EP per city together with the 100% base multiplier that it comes with. So that makes a total of 28 EP per city. Multiply that by say... 30 cities and you're looking at almost 900 EP without touching the slider.

 

[mystyfly]

I agree with Betruger: organized is much more critical than spiritual for this variant. You can work around expensive temples - just build monastery --> temple instead of vice versa. The anarchy may be painful but you can use GA to work around them to an extent.

I think running this variant on immortal will be hard as well - it depends on how much land you can block off while settling in a grid pattern. If you get an IMP civ next to you, we may find ourselves limited in cities.

That being said, I'd be up for an immortal game. An interesting thing that occurred to me is that you could convert the economy into a full fledged spy economy late game too. If each city builds a courthouse (2), jail (4), and one of the spy buildings - I forgot which (8), that's 14 base EP per city together with the 100% base multiplier that it comes with. So that makes a total of 28 EP per city. Multiply that by say... 30 cities and you're looking at almost 900 EP without touching the slider.

I think we should stuck to Asoka as he seems to be the most powerful. I don't know what to expect from ICS on immortal - we'll see.

I think if we play Inland Sea again, we won't have any problems with # of cities we can settle peacefully (except if one neighbour is Joao and the other Cathy...). We should probabely expand in one direction until we hit a natural border like some 5-10 tiles of desert and mountains. The AI is less likely to expand there first and we can focus on expanding the other way.

I also thought about what to do with all those EPs but didn't write anything yet. As the city govenor likes assigning spy specialists especially if they're free specialists AND MM is nightmare, we migh as well focus on stealing some techs later. But mainly, EPs still should be used for revolts after the draftels-era. Don't forget nationhoods +25% espionage


If we need a real challenge, we can also play on a continents map, capture our continent and tech to space... but that might too much...

edit: Khan, you said you can't start the SG atm. Could you probabely open a thread and post a starting location so we can focus our discussion more on what we got?

 

[JeWnS]

Darius' Financial is pretty much useless for our variant, as is his UB. Our early-game research was funded by shrine + some cottages.
Then we went on to SM + Usak to get us to Rep + Merc (+ SoL). So fin wouldn't really make a difference. Cheap building pay off when you build them in every of your (99999) cities.

I was just thinking of choosing another Civ than Ashoka as a kind of additional handicap, not necessarily an improvement. I agree that A. is the best leader for that kind of strategy. I am just not sure how this will effect the game when going up to Immortal.

 

[Zherak_Khan]

I think we should stuck to Asoka as he seems to be the most powerful. I don't know what to expect from ICS on immortal - we'll see.

I think if we play Inland Sea again, we won't have any problems with # of cities we can settle peacefully (except if one neighbour is Joao and the other Cathy...). We should probabely expand in one direction until we hit a natural border like some 5-10 tiles of desert and mountains. The AI is less likely to expand there first and we can focus on expanding the other way.

I also thought about what to do with all those EPs but didn't write anything yet. As the city govenor likes assigning spy specialists especially if they're free specialists AND MM is nightmare, we migh as well focus on stealing some techs later. But mainly, EPs still should be used for revolts after the draftels-era. Don't forget nationhoods +25% espionage


If we need a real challenge, we can also play on a continents map, capture our continent and tech to space... but that might too much...

edit: Khan, you said you can't start the SG atm. Could you probabely open a thread and post a starting location so we can focus our discussion more on what we got?

I'd rather not risk giving in to my abstinence .

I would be happy if anybody else wanted to open the thread and roll a start.

 

[Winth]

Nice game, although I still will not switch to ICS. I think that every time you are expanding, you are weaker for the time being until the city starts working for itself. And given how much defense units are needed to supply that much cities... well, I think it could get pretty ugly.

For the next game, maybe to try something different, go with Julius Caesar (faster settlers = more time for other things ^^ The other things mean of course more settlers.), Roosevelt (fast Forbidden Palace?) or some unrestricted leaders fun with Sumer?

 

[mystyfly]

For the next game, maybe to try something different, go with Julius Caesar (faster settlers = more time for other things ^^ The other things mean of course more settlers.), Roosevelt (fast Forbidden Palace?) or some unrestricted leaders fun with Sumer?

As I already posted once, if we move up one difficulty (and we will ) we want a greater challenge. So we shouldn't make the game even easier again in turn.
I too like to play another leader and thus suggested Ramsses. However, org seems to be too much of a factor to leave out. JC isn't fun, we don't need another roman game. Also FDR looks quite weak to me. We don't need to make it extra-hard. We can achieve that by playing Deity org + sumer is way overpowered. We can almost finish the zig with one chop. Also Vultures are very strong.

 

[ungy]

I'd be up for trying this on immortal.

I don't think it will be that easy--we had a favorable map for our variant.
We had decent options for our early expansion--that will not always be the case.
I'd say stick with Asoka--there is a big difference between emp and immortal and he's likely the strongest.