Expansion, Expansion

[vmxa]

The best way to prevent flips is with force. At deity/sid you can't be sure to prevent flips with your own culture anyway.

Obormot I like the writen explanation for what should be obvious in reference to uni's. I am not sure if everyone will remember that it is only for relatively low corruption cities. In corrupt places, structures are very problematic.

 

[Obormot]

Yes, of course everything i said applies only to core cities.

Corrupt cities cannot build neither buildings nor units fast enough, but they are perfect for building workers and settlers because loosing population in the core hurts you a lot, and loosing population far away dis not a big deal. When everything is improved hire scientists there.

 

[fishjie]

yeah no need to build every city improvement

 

[Alex Johnson]

What are you guys talking about? Temples should almost never be built in the core in a non-culture game, they are only for border expansion in conquered cities to get domination. You get +1 happy face and you pay 1 coin for maintenance. So what is the benefit? Why can't i just move my lux slider to get exactly the same effect?

Because you have a large empire with huge income and the slider only works in 10% increments? Why spend 100gpt for 10% luxury when you could buy 10 temples and 10 cathedrals to make your top 10 cities happy for only 30gpt? With Sistine Chapel, that is 30gpt for 70 happy faces! And there are always those smaller cities. You don't need to waste 10% of their income in every city. They will spend money on entertainment they don't need because they are already completely happy due to luxuries. And even if they aren't, they are often happy enough. Which brings up the point that not everybody needs to be happy all the time. Why spend money to make them happy if they don't matter to the outcome of the game?

The luxury slider is not the magic bullet that solves all your problems. There are times when it doesn't work the way you want and times when it is very inefficient, resulting in more waste than the alternatives.

 

[WackenOpenAir]

No, obormot is right. Don't build that crap.

 

[Lord Emsworth]

To clear up a misunderstanding ... Improvements such as temples only give you content faces, not happy ones.

 

[vmxa]

Alex this stuff is not going to work at levels of deity/sid and maybe not even DG. You are not going to be building the Sistine Chapel. Even if you could it would be crazy.

You cannot count on having lots of lux, until the game is going so well, it does not matter what you do. So most of the game you will probably not have more than 3 lux.

The thing is it is not about money, it is about shields and production after you get to the middle ages.

You also do not have to deal much with non core cities and happiness. I mean those size 12 cities that are mostly corrupt, will have specialist. I have only to deal with my productive cities for happiness.

I do not want to do it with cath as that is what, 160 shields and 2 maint? Not to mention you have to have a temple. I not only do not want to pay the 2 gpt per city during this very important phase of the game (MA), but I really cannot afford to take maybe 10-16 turns building it and NOT building things I need more.

It is the timing that is critical. So if you get to the later industrial age, and want to slap in one of those structures in a core city, I won't scream. I won't do it very often, but at least it is not so bad as doing in the middle ages.

Anyway those cities are already going to be content, I just won't be seeing any WLTKD. Well may, on occassions when I make a tech trade for some lux, in a non AW game.

 

[vmxa]

To clear up a misunderstanding ... Improvements such as temples only give you content faces, not happy ones.

Sort of true, if you have all content or happy, does it not makes a content happy?

 

[Lord Emsworth]

Sort of true, if you have all content or happy, does it not makes a content happy?

No, the additional content faces are wasted.

ETA: Well, to be more accurate, it might feel like it does make a content happy, but it makes an unhappy content, which then is affected by a happy face.

 

[Pentium]

IIRC it doesn't. Luxuries make a conten person happy, and if there are no content people, it makes a sad one content.

Temples, OTOH, make unhappy citizen content, but they don't make content citizens happy. So they're only good for preventing riots, and not for WLT_D celebrations.

Try building a temple at the start on Chieftain and you'll see all the citizens are still content.

Edit: X-post with Lord Emsworth, saying the same thing.

 

[Obormot]

If you need to make just one citizen content just turn him into a scientist or build a worker. It is that simple.

 

[vmxa]

No, the additional content faces are wasted.

ETA: Well, to be more accurate, it might feel like it does make a content happy, but it makes an unhappy content, which then is affected by a happy face.

I guess you can see I do not build them much.

 

[Lord Emsworth]

I guess you can see I do not build them much.

WRT happyness temples etc. are pityful, I agree.

 

[1shot1kill]

to exspand quick and still get units and buildings produced this is what i do and it works. First unit built is a defensive unit second unit- if the city is big enough settler, third barracks,settler,defensive unit,settler,granary,settler... Eventually when you get to the end of the middle ages this isnt working as well as it should so about this time your bigest cities should just build units and buildings and you should be out of land at this time to.

 

[adog]

You should build offensive units instead of defensive units.

 

[WackenOpenAir]

to exspand quick and still get units and buildings produced this is what i do and it works. First unit built is a defensive unit second unit- if the city is big enough settler, third barracks,settler,defensive unit,settler,granary,settler... Eventually when you get to the end of the middle ages this isnt working as well as it should so about this time your bigest cities should just build units and buildings and you should be out of land at this time to.

I hope you understand that this is a little bit of everything and you won't be doing optimal on any of them. Of course it works at lower difficulty levels.... Everything works there.

predetermined build orders are not good anyway. Sometimes you'll make a settler factory, sometimes just settlers without granary, sometimes a granary after some settlers.
And this "barracks,settler" can almost never be good.

 

[1shot1kill]

The barracks settler thing works up to regent quite well above that i dont know.
And personally i dont like to get involved in wars until late industrial age and i 90% of the time i am succesful and then i have bombers-tanks-marines mass producing thanks to my many cities with this i can quickly i repeat quickly over run any oponent i have had wars last 4 turns.

 

[WackenOpenAir]

barracks - settler is a basic error, nothing to do with difficulty level.

Does a barrack help you building a settler? - No.
So why would you like to delay your settler and pay upkeep for the barracks while building the settler? - you don't.
Turn these builds around, first build the settler, then the barracks.

You are gonna bring the following arguments, so i will answer them already:

You don't have population for the settler. - A barracks is rather expensive, either build just a warrior before the settler, or if production is so much more than growth, build a granary first.

Letting the city grow larger before building the settler will increase its production. - disasterous thought, an extra city will also increase your production, and your total growth (fpt surplus) as well.

 

[yavoon]

barracks - settler is a basic error, nothing to do with difficulty level.

Does a barrack help you building a settler? - No.
So why would you like to delay your settler and pay upkeep for the barracks while building the settler? - you don't.
Turn these builds around, first build the settler, then the barracks.

You are gonna bring the following arguments, so i will answer them already:

You don't have population for the settler. - A barracks is rather expensive, either build just a warrior before the settler, or if production is so much more than growth, build a granary first.

Letting the city grow larger before building the settler will increase its production. - disasterous thought, an extra city will also increase your production, and your total growth (fpt surplus) as well.

I too am guilty of letting my cities grow. I find after my first core cities and perhaps some resource hogging cities that I prefer to grow 5-3 or 4-2 then 3-1 all the time just to pop cities that wont produce very well anyway.

I find its far easier to get a military to kill ur neighbor quickly if ur core is larger. I also like to build granaries.

 

[eldar]

Unless it's already a good settler factory (4 to 6 turns) I don't let my capital go beyond size 3/build a granary until I have built a couple of settlers. Then I'll build a barracks (if my settler factory is to be elsewhere, so my capital will switch to units) or a granary (if things are really that bad food-wise).