Experiment 626's Japanese Pre-Game Thread

[CommandoBob]

I prefer Number 1. You have to move 1S to get off the wheat, which means the northern wheat can be used by another city. Lots of BGs, which means lots of shields and lots of growth. Three wheats could feed three cities, with at least one of them being a settler factory, if not two.

 

[Marsden]

Strangely enough while all look like good starts, they all seem to require you to move the settler. I say "seem to" because some people wouldn't care about wasting the BG, and on regent it might not matter either way. My prefrence is #3 with the deer. It's the most centrally located of the 4 on the mini map. A big part of a conquest victory is finding your opponents, especially with minimum enemies, so the farther you have to walk, the longer it takes.

Now for some Marsdenism*:

No mater how many cows/wheat you start with, will you be able to find iron, horses? Is one of you opponents on an island off of the main pangea? These things cannot be answered until all is revealed, wether one map is good or not. They all look good to start, but I can't say which is better.



* in spoiler

Spoiler :

Wierd stuff Marsden says or posts.

 

[gmaharriet]

Strangely enough while all look like good starts, they all seem to require you to move the settler. I say "seem to" because some people wouldn't care about wasting the BG, and on regent it might not matter either way. My prefrence is #3 with the deer. It's the most centrally located of the 4 on the mini map. A big part of a conquest victory is finding your opponents, especially with minimum enemies, so the farther you have to walk, the longer it takes.

I'd agree with #3 for the reasons you name, but for 1 additional reason as well. All the starts have 2 food bonuses (boni?), bonus grass and rivers, but if my fog gazing skills are correct, all the other maps would place your capital exactly 1 tile from the seacoast no matter where you moved the settler. In that position you cannot build a harbor, and you can't develop the coastal tile. Save #3 appears to have coast to the north, but settling a tile to the west of where the settler stands now, could put all land tiles in your capital's radius and, therefore, the potential for developing a more powerful city.

Just my $.02.

 

[Experiment 626]

So right now, the voting looks like this:

1 vote for #1 (CommandoBob)
0 votes for #2
2 votes for #3 (Marsden and gmaharriet)
1 vote for #4 (AutomatedTeller)​

Would anyone else care to cast a vote?

 

[Ansar]

Obviously, the bad thing about them all is that you gotta move one space somewhere to get off a BG or get on the coast.

I like #4 because, like Automated Teller, I like cows more than wheat.

 

[TerrisH]

though I should n0t have a vote, since I play Civ3 merely to salve my Ego...
I'll cast a vote for Option Three. there are three Ocean/Sea Squares bordering Option Four. while not relevant for the short term, would they not hinder the capitols growth in the long term? limited to a mere One food and commerce for the tile (no harbor?).

 

[vorlon_mi]

I'm a builder at heart, so my advice to a world-conquerer-to-be should
be viewed with some skepticism...

I love to get cites with rivers, since one can avoid spending shields to build
aqueducts. The cities will grow to their natural size, and I rarely build
hospitals. A minor consideration might be to plan to build just enough
hospitals so that you can build the Battlefield Medicine small wonder,
to help heal your troops in the field. OTOH, if you are cranking out enough
troops in your production cities, the wounded ones can just fall back and rest
in the conquered cities.

I also like coastal cities, to build harbors for trade and galleys for exploration.

I would love start 1, since I would try to build 3 cities on the same side
of the river, each with one wheat... a nice core. Starts 2 and 4 have access
to the coast. But start 2 is a bit of a tease .. to get the coast, one has
to move away from the food specials

Start 3 seems to have a lot of twisty rivers in it. While that is good
from a defensive posture -- the AI or the barbs would have to attack
across a river -- you won't be defending. You'll be attacking!
You will suffer a movement penalty until you get engineering, but your UU
has good movement, so it may not matter as much.

Start 4 offers cows, which give both 2 food and 1 shield, and one can build
cities on the N side of the river to avoid the movement penalty.
It also lets you build your 2nd or 3rd city on the coast, for naval ops.

I guess that I vote for start 4. Though the builder in me longs for
all that wheat in start 1

Say, I don't have your terrain graphics mod.
Is there any significance to the types of trees in the screenies?
Are they all forest, or are any of them jungle?

 

[Experiment 626]

Originally posted by vorlon_mi:

Though the builder in me longs forall that wheat in start 1

If you'd like, I can post Save #1, so that you can download and play it. On one condition: you don't tell me or anybody else on this thread what's what, and what's where.

Say, I don't have your terrain graphics mod.
Is there any significance to the types of trees in the screenies?
Are they all forest, or are any of them jungle?

Nope. They are all Forests. One of the lines that I used in MapFinder was Jungles=0.

 

[Marsden]

Are we about ready to kill something yet?

 

[Experiment 626]

Originally posted by Marsden:

Are we about ready to kill something yet?

My, aren't we blood-thirsty?

I figured that I give until the end of the month for people to vote.

 

[Marsden]

My, aren't we blood-thirsty?

You're asking me? I think you should know that by now.

 

[Experiment 626]

Another question just struck me (OW!):

Should I have a defender garrisonned in each city?

 

[CommandoBob]

Another question just struck me (OW!):

Should I have a defender garrisonned in each city?

Surely you jest.

("No, I'm not jesting. And stop calling me Shirley!")

In Despotism, the first two units in a city will make one unhappy person content, once the first unhappy citizen is born.

But in Republic, and I think in Monarchy, units in cities for crowd control (Military Police or MPs) don't work.

You would want to have units stationed in cities along your borders, but not you interior/core cities.

 

[gmaharriet]

In Despotism, the first two units in a city will make one unhappy person content, once the first unhappy citizen is born.

But in Republic, and I think in Monarchy, units in cities for crowd control (Military Police or MPs) don't work.

MPs do work in Monarchy and you can have up to 3 of them for happiness. I'm playing in an SG right now where we're using Monarchy, and it's driving me crazy because I'm so used to Republic. All those units in cities doing nothing but just sitting there to keep the peeps content.

 

[Norton II]

I'll go with start #3 as well, for the reasons Marsden and gmaharriet mentioned. As for stationing a defender in every city, don't do it--your shields are better spent on attackers. I used to put a defender in every city; when I stopped doing that, I started winning a lot faster, no matter what the victory condition.

 

[Marsden]

Obviously, use some common sense about what cities still do need defenders. Here's something I thought was funny, in a civ way. I wouldn't give up on my defenders in every city because I used to like to have ROP with everyone and any city in your empire is then literally within striking distance, so when I realized I didn't need these stupid ROPs I realized only the front is on the front, so to speak, and I didn't need emplacemtments other places. Just look at last time, shall we?

You had the Koreans to the north and Maya to the west and south. You didn't need and defenders to the east, it was a coast and the trans ocean people weren't expected to do much. We said a screening force of 2 or 3 k-nig-ets would be enough to stop a boatfull of their pugs.


So, here, that basic principle would apply.

You can scout to find enemies in all directions.

.


Let's say you start to the west and take that over, then sweep south and east until you go past your home territory to the south and then finish in the east, you will only need defenders fronting your enemies.

But even when you have enemies in all directions, you don't need to have men just standing around in the rear areas, and you don't need every city occupied, just covered. A horesman can cover 6 squares of roads, so if you've roaded your territory well, you can have 1 horse cover at least 2 or three cities. If there is more of a threat than one horse can handle, you can start to divert more forces there.

For this game I suggest (expecting resistance to this, but) building a temple in most of your cities, especially toward the border. Why, when so many here hate temples? Because it's a cheap and easy way to expand your border and increase your territory, plus you can see units coming and react to them quicker. For example, you have a city on the border with a one radius culture, a fast enemy could be in the fog 2 squares away and be right next to you in one turn, if you have the extra border that the culture gives, the enemy would be visible one more square away, plus, depending on how quickly this goes, you would get the 2nd expansion and have an even further veiw of the enemies before they can approach. It would also help with happiness issues as the entertainment slider is subject to corruption before it takes affect and border towns are usually corrupt.

 

[vorlon_mi]

Temples have their place. Like many questions in Civ, one adapts
a general rule to the specific situation at hand.

Many of the players who disparage them are either
Playing at high difficulty levels, or
Playing non-religious Civ's, or
Both

The most common argument is that for the full-price cost of a temple,
one could build more swordsmen and conquer the land that the cultural
expansion would give you. But the religious trait halves the price of temples,
which dilutes that argument.

At higher difficulty levels, AFAICT (I don't play above regent), the first few
builds in a city are critical for overcoming the AI's starting advantages.
If you prioritize your builds, barracks and military usually end up as higher
priorities than cultural expansion. I think that Fearless Leader would have
enough breathing space to recover from a mistake or two in city builds
not that you would ever *make* any mistakes, O Brainy one,

I value the increased city radius, both for the defensive visibility Marsden
cites and the ability to claim resource tiles. Now, that leads to another
question ... how large should he plan to grow his border cities?
If the cities are only size 6, there won't be enough citizens to work
all the tiles once the city radius pops.

 

[Marsden]

I think a good operating core of about 10 to 20 cities to build units, the rest doesn't have to be in good shape, it would be preferable to keep them under 7 for happiness issues. Of course, we don't know where the resources are, if many luxuries are easily attainable then higher growth might not be bad.

Simple analysis: Regent level gets you 2 free content citizens, then add a temple for a 3rd, 3 luxuries would guarentee no riots across the empire, 4 lux. and a temple shouldn't be needed. But weigh corruption against usefulness, even if most of those squares could be worked they would be too corrupt to be worth it. Specialists would be really helpful in these towns. This ties in to my original suggestion of building a temple only and then some type of units the rest of the time, utilizing specialists as apropriate. Also, I strongly recomend republic and the temples could help with war weariness, which wasn't included above. Additionally, the more area the culture claims the less cities the ai will try to fill in on us, having less targets, and just possible the occasional flip to our side. This is possible on regent.

 

[Experiment 626]

That's a lot of discourse to take in.

I take it then, Marsden, that you think that I should once again try for the Republic Slingshot? (And hopefully, not screw it up like last time).


Could you give me the tech tree build queue to achieve the Republic Slingshot?

to all for your opinions.

Just a few days left to vote for the Save that I will use in the game.

 

[Marsden]

I take it then, Marsden, that you think that I should once again try for the Republic Slingshot?

Hell yeah

Could you give me the tech tree build queue to achieve the Republic Slingshot?

Iroquois, and Portugal start with alphabet, so either trade with them or research it yourself, then writing, then depending on how brave you feel, go for code of laws then philosophy then take republic free, or straight to philosophy and take code of laws free. And I think you should make this a priority just because it's an important thing to do in conquests. It does not assure victory, but it's foolish not to exploit it.