Four Green Fields

[dalamb]

Ok, I've played part way through several more times after my Camel Archer/Treb late win, hoping for a more fun game, but it's not been all that much fun. So I'm hoping for improved fun next time around. Here's my limited understanding of how to get well established with this setup; I'd appreciate any enlightenment others could offer:

1. You really really want some state religion for the benefits of temples (priest specialist) and Organized Religion (25% production bonus on building whips -- not enough hammers for it to matter otherwise until you settle Great Priests or get boosted workshops online).
2. You want to avoid multiple religions early on, so that you get some spread of only the state religion until you get to the point of being able to afford to generate missionaries. So, don't go for Polytheism right away; wait for Judaism.
3. Your fastest way to get a 2nd city is to take over Monty's. Move to diagonally 2 away, settle, research Hunting/Archery first, pump archers, attack: he'll likely have 1 warrior and whip at most 1 archer, so maybe 4-5 archers is enough? Edit: I did it with 3 and my initial warrior; 1 died, 1 finished off the archer, 1 finished off the warrior (both survived with enough XP to get Drill III), my warrior was there in case I'd lost another archer. I managed to get a worker (conquered settler) out of it.
4. You want your state religion to spread, so connect the capital to the 2nd city with roads while waiting for Pottery; maybe there's time to build roads to your 3rd city site.
5. Granaries for improved whips are essential. Tech Pottery next, build granaries while teching Mining > Bronze Working, finish granaries with the whip.
6. Tech Masonry > Polytheism in some order, then Monotheism, then Priesthood. Build/whip temples so at size 2 you can work a priest instead of a citizen. Use the whip overflow for whatever your city is building.
7. It looks to me like you get 8-9 from an archer whip and regrow your city in 5-6 turns. Thus the archer pump gets about 5 during growth and 8 for the whip (if both minimal numbers are correct), for 13 every 7 turns at minimum. With the whip you get an additional 2 if whipping a building if I understand the 25% from organized religion. This is just over 2/turn average. Staying at size 2 and working a priest gets you 2 per turn (before the Apostolic Palace). So the archer pump is right for buildings, but they're about balanced after you get 'enough' archers; initially archers are so valuable for pushing up your power level to discourage AI attacks that even the loss of from not running a priest is worth it. Eventually wins, though, doesn't it?
8. While building a settler you get 3 effective per turn from the city site and the 2 extra . This is better than the archer pump.
9. While building a wonder you don't get the benefit from OrgRel. Working a priest is better than pumping archers, isn't it? If my /turn comparison is off for the two methods this obviously changes.

So that's my analysis of the earliest stages. After that there's lots of choices, depending on which approach you want to take.

• ISTM the non-wonder city ought to pump out settlers at size 2 ASAP, until you get "enough" cities. I don't know how many cities that might be, but I guess it probably depends on the rest of your strategy. Apparently Infinite City Sprawl with cities 2 tiles apart is optimal.
• Apparently building a barracks and pumping Drill II archers can conquer the AIs quickly; you thus might want Writing > Theology after Priesthood to get Theocracy online so your attacking archers get Drill III ASAP. Plus the (relatively) big production boost from the AP from temples and monasteries.
• My experience with sticking at size 2 for "too long" is that the AI kept up with me in tech rate. I think Math > aqueducts might be high priority (if you're not trying for an early archer conquest) not to mention the big benefits of the Hanging Gardens in a longer-term game. If you want the HG, time it for after your last city is built. Apparently in this game it's pretty safe to postpone wonders.
• You need Great Prophets for the from settling so building Stonehenge first in your capital is very important. My experience was that you can get temples online quicker than you can build Stonehenge, but SH is still very very important.
• A pair of Caste System workshops give a total of 4 /turn at the health cap, so MC > CoL (so your workshops are ready in time for Caste) is important. Before or after Math/aqueducts, though? I suspect Math can be delayed so you get aqueducts built a lot faster.
• Forge seems to be appropriate only post-aqueduct, and I suspect it's appropriate for 1 city but I don't know about a 2nd. I'd want to build the 'mids and HG in the same city (HG first) so it gets a pure GE pool, but I'm not sure that's better than polluting the gene pool in the capital (which is building the other wonders).
• Should all Great Priests settle in the capital (for wonders), or is there some value in boosting the production in a 2nd city with one of them?

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

Ok, I've played part way through several more times after my Camel Archer/Treb late win, hoping for a more fun game, but it's not been all that much fun. So I'm hoping for improved fun next time around. Here's my limited understanding of how to get well established with this setup; I'd appreciate any enlightenment others could offer

I think you need to specify more clearly what "Improved Fun" means. That's a very subjective thing, after all. Your list looks like a blend of ideas without much focus.

My feeling is that this game really has two distinct variants. One is "Research then Kill", where you pick a particular unit/era with which to conquer the world. The other is the Builder Problem, where the riddle is "how do I convert this hammerless Utopia into something that resembles a normal game?"

Well, normal except for the fact that Monty's "stack" is all of two units high.

While building a wonder you don't get the benefit from OrgRel.

Blink - Says who?

 

[semperus]

initially archers are so valuable for pushing up your power level to discourage AI attacks that even the loss of from not running a priest is worth it.

I had no problem avoiding DoWs with something like eight to thirteen warriors.

I'm put off by the archer rush strategies, mostly because they rely on knowledge of enemy placement. It's one thing to know the limitations of the map, but it's completely different to pull tricks like settling next to Monty.

 

[dalamb]

I was trying to summarize basic mechanisms to get enough production and research so I could understand how to achieve some chosen goal; that's why there's no specific VC and the post seems "all over the place". It seemed to me that any VC expecting to research past math/CoL would need the same methods of improving both hammers and beakers.

Oops -- I did a test case and found I was wrong about OrgRel applying only to "buildings" and not wonders; I thought I recalled seeing a lack of a 25% bonus in the tooltip describing total production for the turn in one of my cities, but perhaps it was a hallucination (or perhaps I picked a city that lacked the state religion).

Edit: settling next to Monty I viewed as a way of making a replay a little less tedious.

 

[Cusanus]

I had no problem avoiding DoWs with something like eight to thirteen warriors.

Me neither, with about 3 to 4 warriors. (Until I had camel archers.)

Just pay Monty to declare on all the others, keep the world busy.

 

[vanatteveldt]

I had a go at it (currently around 1400 AD) and although it is a bit boring/repetitive, it is nice that all cities are in identical terrain so it is easy to compare.

For most of the game, growth is limited by health, and there is a health cap H at which the city is still healthy. Every city has 2 surplus, which can be spent in four ways:
- growing
- working 2 more cottages than H
- working 2 workshops
- working 1 specialist

The latter option seems only sensible for generating an engineer to instabuild a useful wonder.

At some point, I switched from whipping to CS-workshopping. I'm not sure if that is better, but it seems that esp. after guilds the 6 production from two workshops is better than whipping with 2 food surplus. So, I essentially have two types of cities:
- cottage city: H+2 cottages, generates max H+3 hammers after US
- workshop city: H-2 cottages and 2 workshops, generates H+5 hammers after US and guilds, +7 after chemistry.

The hammer comparison between cottage and workshop is not entirely fair since most cottages won't be towns for quite a while.

This told me that the capital 'should' be cottage, since we can get towns there pretty quickly and multiplying decent production and good commerce by 1.5 seems a good idea.

Early game city build sequence was granary to size 2, then (zero, one, or two) settlers/workers, then whip warriors until granary and aquaduct complete. Made 'forge city' to get pyramids through GE, self-built oracle and hanging gardens

Midgame city build sequence was something like:
work cottage until size 2 or 3, then work 2 workshops until aquaduct, then work cottages until H, then specialize.

Some questions:
- How many cities do people build? I built quite a lot (around 10) but it started hurting research and courthouses are expensive
- Do people agree that each city works H-2 cottages and then either 2 workshops or 4 more cottages?
- What do people aim for later? state property and massive workshop spam, all towns + rush buying, combination, or something else altogether?
- Do you still build granaries after cs+guilds makes whipping less attractive?

 

[Nares]

At some point, I switched from whipping to CS-workshopping. I'm not sure if that is better, but it seems that esp. after guilds the 6 production from two workshops is better than whipping with 2 food surplus.

One of the rules of thumb of whipping is to not whip off grassland hills (1F/3H).

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

I had a go at it (currently around 1400 AD) and although it is a bit boring/repetitive, it is nice that all cities are in identical terrain so it is easy to compare.

Yup - I felt distinctly silly when I dropped down a city and announced "here's my GP farm".

 

[vanatteveldt]

Do you feel it makes sense to run a specialist GP farm (excepting an initial engineer to get a "quick" GE) rather than build all wonders in one "high-production" city, given the low food and need for a number of wonders (pyramids, gardens) and usefulness of great prophets? I thought I'd build the wonders and then run specs, but I never get done with the wonders in the first place... but a specialist GP farm can run exactly one specialist so that also feels silly, and replacing 2 workshops for an engineer is pretty bad for production...

 

[iggymnrr]

@ vanatteveldt

You summed things up well. I imposed a culture VC on myself and it was a difficult. Fortunately, the spiritual trait lets a person use a trail and error approach. Also, playing the settled priests challenge helped a lot. My setup was 5 cities with 4 in a symmetrical pattern around the captiol. Each outer city was 3 tiles from the center at 2 moves diagonally and 1 move left or right. Incredibly the capitol slow built stonehenge, HG and the mids to open up rush buy. This could not be done easily without a settled prophet or two. The GP artist farm was setup by eventually buying all artist wonders and the using liberalism/oracle to snag biology/medicine so farming allowed 4 (?) artists to be run. It was very slow and painful.

EDIT: I forget whether I used the UB to speed up the initial prophets or not.

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

Do you feel it makes sense to run a specialist GP farm (excepting an initial engineer to get a "quick" GE) rather than build all wonders in one "high-production" city, given the low food and need for a number of wonders (pyramids, gardens) and usefulness of great prophets? I thought I'd build the wonders and then run specs, but I never get done with the wonders in the first place... but a specialist GP farm can run exactly one specialist so that also feels silly, and replacing 2 workshops for an engineer is pretty bad for production...

I'm not sure yet, in part because I'm not sure I understand what wonders make sense. Forge->Engineer->Gardens seems reasonable. Now what? If you rush the gardens somewhere else, you are probably waiting 66 turns for engineer #2, where if you stack the garden with the force you can get #2 in 40+ turns (depending on how much time you wait to grow). (Sooner if you bank toward Philo, I suppose).

Or you can decide you don't need to rush more wonders, in which case you move the engineer to the capital (for Bureau, and because the towns will have production eventually, and turn that city into a wonder works with Priest points messing things up?

 

[vicawoo]

With the 3+ arid tectonic examples I've seen recently, can you make a 4 brown fields map?

 

[vanatteveldt]

I feel that either of Great Scientist, Engineer, or Prophet are very useful, because they all give some production and commerce. A Merchant could also really help giving a city an extra food, although I'm not sure how much that is worth given the low health cap (ie you can't automatically run another workshop as that is a -2F at the cap). If you have US towns and enough happy, a merchant is worth 4+C1H, which is about equal to a scientist (since buro makes it 6C and printing press etc. inrease it further).

So, I think you should put all wonders in the same city, which can be either a cottage capital or a designated 'production' city. A forge in such a city post-aquaduct makes sence, since the health cap cannot help work more workshops anyway, so we might as well use the health to counter the forge "unhealth". However, if we want to build wonders (as opposed to GE-rush), we might want to settle our GP there, which speaks for the capital, but maybe building a forge in the capital makes sense (sacrifice one town for +25% production)...

I feel the biggest question is when do you want a well-functioning empire. If the answer is guilds+engineering to go on a treb+camel rampage, you probably want to workshop the capital anyway and run police state + theocracy after getting the required techs. If the answer is post-biology to build a normal looking empire and go space/late conquest, I think towns make most sense and the forge is a bad idea?

 

[UncleJJ]

I used a different route to build wonders. A settled GProphet plus an early workshop with Bureaucracy and OR, built Stonehenge and Hanging gardens in a reasonable time.

Temples: The GProphet was generated in my 3rd city as soon as it could be, the first building there was a temple. Once the city grew to size 3 the temple was ready to be whipped for 1 pop and next turn the 2nd citizen was made a priest. Pacifism was not available at that time so it took 34 turns to generate a GProphet. Co-incidentally that is the same time as it would take to build a settler but the two cases are not the same. During the 34 turns of running a priest meant the city built a granary and started on the aquaduct. That meant the city recovered very quickly and grew to size 5 quickly once it started to work cottages again. The cost of generating the GP was some loss of cottage turns but no long term damage to the city. The temple was useful for happiness.

Forges: I thought about using forges and a GE to grab a wonder and decided it wasn't worth the trouble. A forge effectively ruins the whole city it is in for the rest of the game. The unhealth reduces the population permanently by one and that eventually costs a town in an early city and that is a heavy long term cost to impose early in the game. Also a forge costs 120 hammers to build and that is difficult to get early in the game even with OR and whip overflows or workshops. A GE takes a lot longer to generate and is much more costly than a GProphet made with a temple.

Pyramids: is not that good early in this game. Representation is weak since there are few, if any, specialists and the happiness is not needed. US is strong for the hammer on towns but there are few towns. Without PP and FS a town gives just 4 commerce and 1 hammer so rush buying has to be used very carefully since you are effectively turning 3 beakers into a hammer and that delays the use of powerful technologies. Will getting those few hammers per town pay for the huge 500 hammer investment or the sacrifice of your first GE? I don't think so.

Engineer Use versus Slow Build: Using a GE to pop Hanging Gardens is another matter as that wonder is pretty much essential to growth of the cities, it adds 1 pop to all cities (eventually I had 6 good cities and another growing). Each of those extra pop becomes a cottage, so HG is worth 6 cottages. Even so I think it is arguable whether you should sacrifice a GE rather than settle him in the capital for 3 hammers and 3 beakers. With Bureaucracy and OR the GE and city hammer gives 7 hammers towards wonders or 6 towards units. How many turns would the extra cottages be delayed? Maybe 20 turns, and in 5 cities that is a high cost, but after the HG the settled GE would next be able to help build the Oracle and that might recover most of the lost beakers. Later a GE or GProphet makes the capital a good unit generator while Bureaucracy is being run but that drops off with full CE civics.

Final City Size: I did some simple analysis and came to the conclusion that with an aquaduct and HG cities had several basic forms they could take at sizes 5, 6 or 7.

Growth: Working 5 cottages/towns they produce 2 food and 1 hammer and with a granary take 8 turns to grow to size 6 and a further 16 turns to grow to size 7. So it's possible to move between these configurations.

The 3 basic configurations at Size 5 are:
3 cottages + 2 workshops (Caste System)
4 cottages + 1 specialist
5 cottages with + 2 food for Slavery (worth 4 hammers / turn)

At Size 6 the configuration is
5 cottages + 1 workshop (wasting 1 food)

At Size 7 only 7 cottages (wasting 2 food) are possible.

Workshops versus Slavery:
As can be seen from above analysis a size 5 city can use 2 workshops to produce 6 hammers per turn (Guilds + Caste System, not Chemistry) and work 3 cottages. Alternatively a size 5 city can work 5 cottages and gain 4 hammers / turn from Slavery. As long as the items being produced are small enough to be completed by a 1 pop whip the trade is effectively 1 extra hammer from a workshop against an entire 1 cottage (with its growth potential). If US is available the Slavery option is superior (more commerce) if the cottages have become towns as it then becomes

3 towns + 2 workshops + city = 10 hammers
5 towns + Slavery (4) + city = 10 hammers

Researching Chemistry will add 2 hammers to workshops. Slavery has the significant advantage of more commerce and better developed cottages which pays off with US.

Happiness: Most players have ignored this, but at size 6 a city (other than capital) needs a temple and at size 7 it needs 2 temples/ colliseum. This is an advantage of the temple/priest method over the forge/engineer as the city can grow to size 6 once the aquaduct is finished. The forge city won't need to bother

Mercantilism: I found that my economy was massively boosted by researching Banking and adopting this civic. It gave loads of extra beakers or hammers plus free GPPs in the capital. I saved Liberalism to get Democracy (probably a mistake) as the most expensive free tech and used Oracle to take PP. On reflection I think researching Banking early and then running Mercantilism with Representation plus taking Liberalism earlier for Constitution would allow Free Speech and Free Religion for a big research boost such that PP and then Democracy could be researched quickly the normal way. A city with 5 towns under FS and with PP generates about 38 commerce and a scientist

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

With the 3+ arid tectonic examples I've seen recently, can you make a 4 brown fields map?

No. However, if you look at the map script I published above, it should be fairly easy to convert green to brown. So knock yourself out.

 

[Tlalynet]

I see people have already noticed archer and warrior rushes work, but it doesn't sound like anyone has played that out to its pinnacle yet and realized just how well they work.

Build a warrior, tech hunting -> archery, switch production to archer, teck mining -> BW, cap is now pop 3, whip, wait two turns, take the two archers to kill close opponent of choice.

I auto razed the southern opponent and lost one archer in the process. I hung onto the promotion the other archer got and killed the worker (like I need cottages) I finished a couple more archers, finished my warrior, and moved my lion-promoted starting warrior in as well. I used the warrior to bait one of their two archers then just dogpiled the other one with my cover archers (thx to lions and protective) My two cities built bait-warriors then went back to archers. One bait-warrior got eaten by a lion, but it was ok because Zara decided he wanted to prevent me from razing all his cottages and sent an archer out to eat for EXP anyway. It took several turns to bait, promote, recover, and re-recruit archers but eventually I had 7 archers too his archer and warrior.

I got a GG on the last turn too

Turn 97, 450 BC conquest, a nice, fun, easy game without any low production headaches.

 

[ggmoyang]

NECRO!

Long ago I tried this with deity difficulty and posted walkthrough elsewhere. Now I copy it here - well, not really just a copy since it was written in Korean. Anyways:

Started with building worker and teching fishing(don't need agriculture right now anyways)-pottery. Started building settler when city hit 2 pop. Built cottages with worker.
Researched mining-BW-MC. Whipped out settler, and built forge in it with whip overflows. Assigned an engineer in forge city.
While researching theology the GE pops, rushed Pyramids in forge city. Changed to US.
Found Christianity with theology. Used second GE to rush AP in capital.
Hard built Oracle in capital. Grabbed Divine right and rushed Spiral miranet in capital.
Teched to banking and built banks in all cities. Set research at 0% and rush bought camel archers, wiping out Montezuma.
Teched to rifling and did the same with Riflemen, conquering other 2. Made peace with last AI(Mehmed II) when I had enough territory for domination.

AIs sticked with monarchy after they researched democracy, too bad for them.

The victory:

Spoiler :

The capital:

Spoiler :

Hard built Stonehenge.(at 1900s, lol) Other world wonders(except Oracle) are rushed with GE.

The forge city:

Spoiler :

Hard built the Hanging Gardens. Rushed Hagia Sophia just for fun. Only built GE wonders to make sure I get GE from this city.