Harv
Emperor
- Joined
- Dec 16, 2008
- Messages
- 1,945
Here is my thread from two years ago:
https://forums.civfanatics.com/thre...-while-since-i-played-and-posted-here.654377/
I was checking where I was at at certain time periods and it was painful to watch. Every so often there were posts with sensible and relevant advice, but I did not understand, because I had some mentality blocks. I do not know how else to describe it.
It also did not help that I was about 100 turns in by the time I posted pictures and saves and could start getting feedback. The result of the initial war was a combination of very good and very lucky. We had a lucky Carro numero uno that kept winning at 20% to 30% odds. We were also able to take the Persians and Arabs completely by surprise and they only had one or two defenders, instead of three or four. So at T88, we were still in a very strong position with 5 cities and two AI down.
Then came the Zombie Apocalypse, also known as Barbarian Warriors. They came by the dozens. I called it the Zombie Apocalypse because while they were very easy to defeat, there were so many of them. At the same time, I switched to building stuff instead of attacking. Oddly enough, when I was looking at 600AD pictures, we were still attacking with Elephants and Swords.
I believe we can do a lot better! So here is the scenario reloaded and the start conditions:
1. Start Position:
a. SIP has 11 FP, 2 Plains, 4 Desert, 1 Hills, and 2 Coast. It also has Wheat, Marble, Horse, Stone, and Incense. It also starts with a healthy cap of 0 and we would SIP with a penalty of 1. The initial worker comes at an initial rate of 23 Turns.
b. 1NE loses the Stone and Incense. It has 6 FP, 2 Plains, 2 Desert, 2 Hills, and 8 Coast. The healthy cap is 2, similar to a normal city with no fresh water. The initial worker comes at a faster rate in 18 Turns.
c. 2N was shown at the end of my earlier thread, along with a Warrior Rush of Greece. This has the same resources as b, plus a Wine tile, and 6 FP, 4 Plains, 2 Desert, 1 Hills, and 7 Coast. The healthy cap is 2 and the initial worker comes in 18 turns, plus 1 turn for moving.
d. 2N1E has the same resources as b. It has 4 FP, 4 Plains, 1 Desert, 1 Hills, and 10 Coast. This is thrown in as an idea, because it connects the Red and Mediterranean Seas.
Right now, I favor option b. It has a 1 turn edge over c and an extra mine if we need it. Option c is very interesting, because it leaves us with the option of building ships to continue the invasion into Europe. There is a time drawback, in that we lose 1 turn moving the settler - and we also lose 3 worker turns connecting the horses to the capital. Option d is not being considered right now, because we lose too many flood plains and we have options later in the game to connect the Red and Mediterranean Seas.
2. Research Path:
a. Same as before. I was obsessed with Hunting before Animal Husbandry, because I thought I could squeeze it in the start, and we needed it later, and we save about 28 gp which gets rolled into another project. This might amount to 2 turns in the early game. However in the same part of the game, we are delayed about 8 turns on all of the tech we were planning to get as well, such as Bronze Working.
I was also obsessed with getting Masonry, so that we could quarry the marble tile. The alternative is to farm it. The difference is 1 hammer and 2 commerce compared to 1 food. My conversion of food to hammers in this situation and this stage of the game is 1 to 1, so the net difference is a little more than 2 commerce per turn.
I was also obsessed with Pottery before Bronze Working and Slavery. There was something holy and sacred about whipping a granary first. The issue is the granary still costs 90 hammers and that is still equal to 2 war chariots, and we still have to convert those hammers to food in order to regain the population we lost. After that, we are able to recover from 1 population chariot whips and convert the food we save into hammers at the 1 to 1 rate I mentioned earlier. So it's a question of if we can recover those 2 War Chariots by the time we need them.
b.
b.
b. We focus our research on things we need.
At this stage of the game, we need Animal Husbandry. That's it.
Mining is also useful. We have 2 nearby hills we can mine. This gives us a conversion of 3 food into 3 hammers at a cost of 1gp. We will need lots of hammers.
Bronze working gives us slavery. This will give us a slight production enhancement. (I believe I worked it out to about 0.4 hammers per turn, or 6 hammers per 15 turn cycle.)
Fishing gives us access to Fish and Clams. We do not have Fish or Clams. Arabia has both.
Then we can look at things like Hunting and Pottery and Writing and Sailing as we need them.
So Animal Husbandry, Mining, Bronze Working, Fishing, Hunting, Pottery, Writing.
3. Near-term plan:
a. Persia first.
b. Arabia first.
c. Somebody else first.
d. Japan first.
e. Inca first.
Before we did Persia first. That gave them less time to prepare, fewer turns with access to horse, less likely they develop Iron Working. Arabia still has their CG2 Archers on Hills and most likely more of them. We will have more War Chariots and more experienced War Chariots. We will also lose more War Chariots. Persia with Iron and Horses and an Imperialistic leader has more opportunity to become a big threat. Arabia threatens with a stack of whipped and conscripted archers fortified in hills. A favor a Persia-first strategy, except......
4. Worker steal!
a. Steal from Arabia.
b. Steal from Persia.
c. Steal from both.
At the end of my previous thread, somebody showed me his start with Alexandria as his capital, where he obtained a worker from Arabia. It's a cheesy strategy, but very effective. One way would be to wait at the border with the warrior and grab the worker when he shows up. Another way would be to do this with a war chariot instead. The lost worker means they grow and advance more slowly. No mines. No hammers. No horses. This is also happening much earlier in the game. Also, going to war earlier means we get earlier visibility on our target city, instead of having to guess just how many war chariots we will need.
Somebody please educate me more about worker stealing!
5. Espionage
a. Spy on Arabia.
b. Spy on Persia.
c. Spy on somebody else.
d. It does not matter.
Last game I found some leaders don't like being spied upon and they spy right back and we never get to see what they are researching.
As I come up with more thoughts, I will add them.
Earth18 Scenario - I just love it, quirks and all. I remember some time ago, somebody made a scenario that uses the same map, but places civilizations near their correct start positions, along with the units and tech they should be getting at the chosen level. I hope there are people here who also love the scenario.
The Hump - A big drawback to the Earth18 Scenario is with all the quirks we can take advantage of, this comes much earlier. So we spend 1 hour getting over the hump and winning, then 71 hours cleaning up.
Raging Barbarians - I understand this really slows down some AI. It adds more quirks to the game. One thing I remember from the last game is while the AI gradually expands and chokes out the barbarians, the combination of taking out 2 AI instead of expanding down the Nile and setting up spawn busters really made it intense for a while.
Random Events - A lot of them are minor and add a little bit of variety to the game. Some add interesting bonuses. The Barbarian Events can ruin the game, more specifically the Vedics, which are 4 Barbarian archers showing up on your border on Turn 21. If it happens to somebody else, then we will suddenly see a civilization destroyed way before its time.
Note - So far I have not played a single turn from this save, so have no idea what is there. I made a copy of it that was not named initial save, then loaded it to test it. So I do not know if we have 4 barbarian archers showing up to turn 21.
Long Weekend - I actually have Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday off!
Writing - I actually enjoy writing and discussing stuff like this. Thinking about playing Civ and writing about playing Civ are as enjoyable as playing Civ! Maybe this time, I spend less time playing and more time discussing strategy instead of struggling to understand what happened over the past 100 turns. Note that I have been writing this for nearly 2 hours, and have not played a single turn of the scenario I posted!
Working things out - I love doing this, really. See Writing, above. Even if I am going completely down the wrong path, I love working out things in the early game like when the first worker is ready, when the improvements are made, when the city grows, and when tech is researched. I can also come up with formulas on how to calculate things like the combat odds that come up in the tool tip. I have not yet developed anything on how to model this with multiple units, which becomes more relevant in stack combat. (For example, if we are attacking 4 archers with 7 war chariots, what is the probability that we win?)
Symbols. By now it should be noticed that I almost never use
or 
or 
. I sometimes use gp to indicate commerce or gold or research, as if they are interchangeable. When I make a hand calculation, it is very often in a format resembling a matrix.
Micro - I like micro early in the game, even if I do it completely wrong. One thing I have noticed after a while is there is a limit to the number of variables I can simultaneously track. I do not know what this number is. It is something simpler like in 3 turns, I switch from farm to mine to finish a build or something. It is also something like running 5 turns of slavery, followed by 10 turns of not slavery. If there are too many variables to track at the same time, then some of them get forgotten and I forget. I have a similar issue in life. I also have an issue with pennies and pounds.
There comes another hump in the game where I am no longer worried about micro.
Somebody please educate me more about worker stealing!
https://forums.civfanatics.com/thre...-while-since-i-played-and-posted-here.654377/
I was checking where I was at at certain time periods and it was painful to watch. Every so often there were posts with sensible and relevant advice, but I did not understand, because I had some mentality blocks. I do not know how else to describe it.
It also did not help that I was about 100 turns in by the time I posted pictures and saves and could start getting feedback. The result of the initial war was a combination of very good and very lucky. We had a lucky Carro numero uno that kept winning at 20% to 30% odds. We were also able to take the Persians and Arabs completely by surprise and they only had one or two defenders, instead of three or four. So at T88, we were still in a very strong position with 5 cities and two AI down.
Then came the Zombie Apocalypse, also known as Barbarian Warriors. They came by the dozens. I called it the Zombie Apocalypse because while they were very easy to defeat, there were so many of them. At the same time, I switched to building stuff instead of attacking. Oddly enough, when I was looking at 600AD pictures, we were still attacking with Elephants and Swords.
I believe we can do a lot better! So here is the scenario reloaded and the start conditions:
Spoiler :
1. Start Position:
a. SIP has 11 FP, 2 Plains, 4 Desert, 1 Hills, and 2 Coast. It also has Wheat, Marble, Horse, Stone, and Incense. It also starts with a healthy cap of 0 and we would SIP with a penalty of 1. The initial worker comes at an initial rate of 23 Turns.
b. 1NE loses the Stone and Incense. It has 6 FP, 2 Plains, 2 Desert, 2 Hills, and 8 Coast. The healthy cap is 2, similar to a normal city with no fresh water. The initial worker comes at a faster rate in 18 Turns.
c. 2N was shown at the end of my earlier thread, along with a Warrior Rush of Greece. This has the same resources as b, plus a Wine tile, and 6 FP, 4 Plains, 2 Desert, 1 Hills, and 7 Coast. The healthy cap is 2 and the initial worker comes in 18 turns, plus 1 turn for moving.
d. 2N1E has the same resources as b. It has 4 FP, 4 Plains, 1 Desert, 1 Hills, and 10 Coast. This is thrown in as an idea, because it connects the Red and Mediterranean Seas.
Right now, I favor option b. It has a 1 turn edge over c and an extra mine if we need it. Option c is very interesting, because it leaves us with the option of building ships to continue the invasion into Europe. There is a time drawback, in that we lose 1 turn moving the settler - and we also lose 3 worker turns connecting the horses to the capital. Option d is not being considered right now, because we lose too many flood plains and we have options later in the game to connect the Red and Mediterranean Seas.
2. Research Path:
a. Same as before. I was obsessed with Hunting before Animal Husbandry, because I thought I could squeeze it in the start, and we needed it later, and we save about 28 gp which gets rolled into another project. This might amount to 2 turns in the early game. However in the same part of the game, we are delayed about 8 turns on all of the tech we were planning to get as well, such as Bronze Working.
I was also obsessed with getting Masonry, so that we could quarry the marble tile. The alternative is to farm it. The difference is 1 hammer and 2 commerce compared to 1 food. My conversion of food to hammers in this situation and this stage of the game is 1 to 1, so the net difference is a little more than 2 commerce per turn.
I was also obsessed with Pottery before Bronze Working and Slavery. There was something holy and sacred about whipping a granary first. The issue is the granary still costs 90 hammers and that is still equal to 2 war chariots, and we still have to convert those hammers to food in order to regain the population we lost. After that, we are able to recover from 1 population chariot whips and convert the food we save into hammers at the 1 to 1 rate I mentioned earlier. So it's a question of if we can recover those 2 War Chariots by the time we need them.
b.
b.
b. We focus our research on things we need.
At this stage of the game, we need Animal Husbandry. That's it.
Mining is also useful. We have 2 nearby hills we can mine. This gives us a conversion of 3 food into 3 hammers at a cost of 1gp. We will need lots of hammers.
Bronze working gives us slavery. This will give us a slight production enhancement. (I believe I worked it out to about 0.4 hammers per turn, or 6 hammers per 15 turn cycle.)
Fishing gives us access to Fish and Clams. We do not have Fish or Clams. Arabia has both.
Then we can look at things like Hunting and Pottery and Writing and Sailing as we need them.
So Animal Husbandry, Mining, Bronze Working, Fishing, Hunting, Pottery, Writing.
3. Near-term plan:
a. Persia first.
b. Arabia first.
c. Somebody else first.
d. Japan first.
e. Inca first.
Before we did Persia first. That gave them less time to prepare, fewer turns with access to horse, less likely they develop Iron Working. Arabia still has their CG2 Archers on Hills and most likely more of them. We will have more War Chariots and more experienced War Chariots. We will also lose more War Chariots. Persia with Iron and Horses and an Imperialistic leader has more opportunity to become a big threat. Arabia threatens with a stack of whipped and conscripted archers fortified in hills. A favor a Persia-first strategy, except......
4. Worker steal!
a. Steal from Arabia.
b. Steal from Persia.
c. Steal from both.
At the end of my previous thread, somebody showed me his start with Alexandria as his capital, where he obtained a worker from Arabia. It's a cheesy strategy, but very effective. One way would be to wait at the border with the warrior and grab the worker when he shows up. Another way would be to do this with a war chariot instead. The lost worker means they grow and advance more slowly. No mines. No hammers. No horses. This is also happening much earlier in the game. Also, going to war earlier means we get earlier visibility on our target city, instead of having to guess just how many war chariots we will need.
Somebody please educate me more about worker stealing!
5. Espionage
a. Spy on Arabia.
b. Spy on Persia.
c. Spy on somebody else.
d. It does not matter.
Last game I found some leaders don't like being spied upon and they spy right back and we never get to see what they are researching.
As I come up with more thoughts, I will add them.
Earth18 Scenario - I just love it, quirks and all. I remember some time ago, somebody made a scenario that uses the same map, but places civilizations near their correct start positions, along with the units and tech they should be getting at the chosen level. I hope there are people here who also love the scenario.
The Hump - A big drawback to the Earth18 Scenario is with all the quirks we can take advantage of, this comes much earlier. So we spend 1 hour getting over the hump and winning, then 71 hours cleaning up.
Raging Barbarians - I understand this really slows down some AI. It adds more quirks to the game. One thing I remember from the last game is while the AI gradually expands and chokes out the barbarians, the combination of taking out 2 AI instead of expanding down the Nile and setting up spawn busters really made it intense for a while.
Random Events - A lot of them are minor and add a little bit of variety to the game. Some add interesting bonuses. The Barbarian Events can ruin the game, more specifically the Vedics, which are 4 Barbarian archers showing up on your border on Turn 21. If it happens to somebody else, then we will suddenly see a civilization destroyed way before its time.
Note - So far I have not played a single turn from this save, so have no idea what is there. I made a copy of it that was not named initial save, then loaded it to test it. So I do not know if we have 4 barbarian archers showing up to turn 21.
Long Weekend - I actually have Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday off!
Writing - I actually enjoy writing and discussing stuff like this. Thinking about playing Civ and writing about playing Civ are as enjoyable as playing Civ! Maybe this time, I spend less time playing and more time discussing strategy instead of struggling to understand what happened over the past 100 turns. Note that I have been writing this for nearly 2 hours, and have not played a single turn of the scenario I posted!
Working things out - I love doing this, really. See Writing, above. Even if I am going completely down the wrong path, I love working out things in the early game like when the first worker is ready, when the improvements are made, when the city grows, and when tech is researched. I can also come up with formulas on how to calculate things like the combat odds that come up in the tool tip. I have not yet developed anything on how to model this with multiple units, which becomes more relevant in stack combat. (For example, if we are attacking 4 archers with 7 war chariots, what is the probability that we win?)
Symbols. By now it should be noticed that I almost never use
or or . I sometimes use gp to indicate commerce or gold or research, as if they are interchangeable. When I make a hand calculation, it is very often in a format resembling a matrix.Micro - I like micro early in the game, even if I do it completely wrong. One thing I have noticed after a while is there is a limit to the number of variables I can simultaneously track. I do not know what this number is. It is something simpler like in 3 turns, I switch from farm to mine to finish a build or something. It is also something like running 5 turns of slavery, followed by 10 turns of not slavery. If there are too many variables to track at the same time, then some of them get forgotten and I forget. I have a similar issue in life. I also have an issue with pennies and pounds.
There comes another hump in the game where I am no longer worried about micro.
Somebody please educate me more about worker stealing!
