"bob rulz"
"I rather like temples. They expand borders and allow a city the potential to use any one of the 21 tiles it could use early on."
Yes temples expand borders, so do libs or any culture generating structure. The question is do you need those 21 tiles and the border expanding. Can you afford them here and now in this town?
I would submit that you do not, unless you are going for a culture win or some special conditions. As you may know, you can do nothing with those 21 tiles, unless you build a Hospital.
You may be better off not building one or even not researching sanitation. Let's say you do build one, you are more than half way through the game before that occurs, so you are not going to get much use from those tiles and probably do not need them.
You can get 14-18 tiles from your adjacent towns for cities that are really worth having a hospital.
"You make a lot of assumptions vmxa. Personally I find you saying that I make "no effort to evaluate what actions make sense" kind of offensive. Like you're offending my intelligence. More than likely you don't mean it this way, but that's the way it comes off."
Sorry to be tactless, but what assumptions are you talking about? Did you read what I said about many of those towns and what was in them? What I meant is players are just going ahead and building every structure in every town as soon as they can, this is what the AI does and it does not work for them.
It cost them time and resources and that will make it harder to win. A good plan is to evaluate every thing you decide to build in a town, not on well this will eventually make the place bigger.
Rather on does it make sense in the plan to win the game? Can I afford to do it now and in this place? What if I did not do that and build something else, say a worker or an attacker?
If it makes sense, then do it, don't just do it thinking I will grow this town sooner. Why do I care if my 33rd town that is otherwise 90 or 100% corrupt grows faster and get down to 70% corrupt?
Will it make that cav in 80 turns still or 70 turns? What is the point in having it get to size 12, if I build a temple/market/court/lib and what ever else I can and everyone is working?
I still get a 60 or more turn cav. I still get only a few gold or beakers. It takes many turns to get those things up, unless I spend even more to rush them.
What is my gain? How about I spend nothing and all those turns I make a few cannons or nothing or workers. I get to size 6 or larger if a river and put some pop up as specialist and get beakers for free.
It does not matter if I go warmonger or builder here, either way I am getting more from this place sooner.
Anyway what was done in those town and cities is the reason you have not gotten the game in hand by now. My points were not to make anyone feel bad, just to say consider what a town needs and what the empire needs and do only that.
To do more, only makes the empire weaker. As I said I see this in nearly every game posted, where the AI is stronger than the player on levels like Monarch and Emperor. I do not even need to load the game, I know that is what I will see.
"Size 3 towns can grow larger. Maybe they won't make use of all of their 27 tiles, but more than likely through the use of railroads, you can make them bigger. I'm not going to pretend that my city placement is perfect."
I am not real concerned about placement here, other than to take advantage of natural things like rivers and defense when it makes sense.
Size 3 towns may be able to grow bigger, but many of them will not do so without a large investment and will never pay back that investment. I am not interesting in making tundra towns grow larger, IF I have to build structures to do it.
I will just see if I can get 6 food for 1 or 2 citizens and let the 1 or 2 others be beakerheads. I start gaining very soon and pay no maint.
What you want to realize is maint will hurt you and force you to slow down research or support for troops.
Remember that rails are not available for much of the game and will not help you in tundra towns in terms of food. The extra shields are not typically of value as the place is corrupt anyway and small.
"Granaries help it grow larger. The only way it would be useless in this city is if it didn't have a hospital, which, btw, it does. Selling off the granary would hinder its growth."
I don't remember the layout of Akkad, but It will grow anyway and yes you could make a case that holding the gran is of some value. If it was 18 or better as I think it was, it will not get much larger anyway.
I think it did not have that much free food to get much bigger, but I could be wrong. Admittedly it is not a big deal. I do not mean to imply that all my moves are golden, they are not. They are mainly what seemed to make sense, but I did not have any knowledge of what has transpired.
Most of the changes are worth doing, but as always some and could have gone either way.
"Something I just haven't changed since I was trying to control rioting after I captured it. Fixed."
Not uncommon for anyone to over look things in an empire that is getting large.
"I'll admit that I probably built a lot of universities and a few libraries in places they were not needed. I'd be okay with selling some of those off. However, I'm going to have to beg to differ on not researching sanitation. How is it a bad thing to let your cities grow past size 12? Also, the AI takes forever to research sanitation on its own and it was very useful as a bargaining chip to keep up in the tech race."
This is a point that is valid in what I call low level games like Monarch. You can do as you wish, but it rarely a good plan in tougher games, even AWM I would probably not research Sanitation.
I am doing a test on AWM with 20 civs on a 200x200 continents map now to see what the cost factor should be in a 200 map. I choose an easier game level as I did not want to color the research too much.
Anyway I still elected to skip sanitation, even though I am crushing them and have cleared most on my continent.
The reason is that I know it can cost me in a tougher game. I spent lots of beakers to gain the optional tech with no other tech needing it. I gain hospitals.
I have to stop production in my best places to build this structure that cost a lot of shields. I forget how many as I seldom build them. I miss out on several cavs form these places that I may need badly.
I have no cities with lots of tiles anyway, all tiles are being worked and have been for nearly the whole game. If I did build one, I would come back and steal tiles until my best 3-5 cities had 16 or so tiles and that would help me later, but the loss of all those units may cost me a great deal.
Now I grant you, most players will not be facing as much 200 battles in a single turn and not need to worry about needing lots of lost units or filling several armies, but even on a smaller scale the idea is the same.
Am I better off hitting my enemies with those extra units now or having a few more pop in a few more places?
Anyway I rarely trade with the AI after the middle ages. Either I am so far behind, they do not want any techs or I am pulling ahead and have no interest in giving them anything.
Uni's are a fine thing as are libs, all I want to consider is, will I be researching much longer and if so will this place benefit from an expensive uni?
If it will, I will squeeze one in when I can. I want to have maybe 8 or 10 beakers raw for a uni and the place still not at max size (12 for me). If max size I want more than 10 beakers or I won't spend the shields most of the time.
"Maybe a harbor wasn't needed here specifically, since it already has plenty of food, but harbors are good in most coastal cities, regardless of whether you're going to build a navy or not, because otherwise a lot of them would have stagnant growth."
Harbors are like all things, do I need it here and do I need it now and can I afford it now? If it is going to take me 60 turns to build it, not sure I want it. I may need it and I may build it, but I am not going to just put one up, because this is a coastal town.
"The fact that it's a mountaintop town with little food production is a better reason than any other to build a granary there. That helps it grow much faster than it otherwise would. If you have good reasoning to counter that argument than I'd be glad to reconsider that strategy. Also, it's a border city, why wouldn't I build a temple?"
Lets ask this question. Do you think if your plan was working real well, you would have posted about your situation? No, that means some things are not being done as well as they could be. Now which things?
I have posted some things for you to think about, you can reject them or not. I will say that you would not be in any trouble if you followed some of these concepts.
Growth is a good thing, in the first 100 or so turns. Later it not so important. You cannot go around build granaries every where. I would build 2 maybe three.
I have little interest in growth in those towns after the core is up, let them do what they can.
It is a dead place, get one or two pop and let it go. I do not remember the location, but I am not going to have a border with anyone for long, they are going up in smoke, long before I would build a temple.
"Since Vilcas is no longer a border town, selling the temple is fine, but selling the granary? Again, the whole growth thing here. I like cities that grow."
It is killing you. You cannot afford them.
"
vmxa said:
Arnhem why would you build an aqua in a desert town? Now this is a plan at work, build rax/temple/market/court/walls/aqua and then stop growth at size 3.[/QUOTE}
Arnhem was a city I captured from the computer, so the only one of these I built was a temple."
Them sell off some off that stuff. You still have to pay maint on them.
"Now here's where I'm going to have to get mad. Are you saying veteran units are bad? Also, if they shouldn't be building units, and there's very few improvements that would be of use, then just what the hell do you expect them to build?"
I am saying you cannot build structure every where. If you let a few strong cities make all the troops, they need a rax, the rest do not.
"Smaller things such as exactly what tiles were being worked and for what benefit is something I was trying to focus on during my time of peace, but the Iroquois only gave me about 10 turns of it between when I finished off the Dutch and they declared on me. Until I build a mine on that saltpeter tile, and I'm sure it's something I would've spotted eventually, it's more productive to use the 3 irrigated desert tiles; with the saltpeter tile it would produce 1 less food and 1 less commerce. Personally, I'll take +1 food in a small city with lots of potential for growth over +1 commerce and less food any day, unless I am struggling to produce money, which I'm not."
You need gold for troop support and research more than growth now.
"Maastricht is a city I just barely captured from the Dutch. Every improvement (except for the temple) that's there was already there when I captured it. Again, you're making a lot of assumptions here. Also, I would take the factory over no factory any day. It makes that city much more productive and is easily worth the 2 commerce lost from maintenance, AND I didn't have to spend the shields to build it."
Alright I did not have the time to determine which places were captured, if the shoe does not fit, forget it. I would not make factories in places other than my troop cities, the rest are not going to need shields.
"It's only 1 turn from a barracks, why switch? Every barracks is useful, because every city will at some point be producing military units."
Why will they. I can crush them with 4 or 5 cities making troops. This place will make arties and they do not need a rax as they have no vet status. I save the maint cost of rax and got that arty out sooner.
No matter what tone I may use my only point in posting was to try to help. If I did not do that, I am sorry. Just disregard my input.
