Frustrated with immortal
- Thread starter jorissimo
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It's still not a great position of course but I'd be betting on me winning it already. Expand a bit and piggyback against HC.sylvanllewelyn
Perma-newb
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Started another random game. Immortal difficulty can troll, confirmed.
Spoiler :
soundjata
hole in cheese
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What if the barb city contains a million workers
You've been having some really tough luck my dude. Way worse than those games of mine that I came here to complain about.
a pen-dragon
Prince
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Re: added value of additional cities.
What I will consider here is what I will call the economical value of a city. The criterion I will apply is if a city can cover the added maintenence while building wealth and running 100% gold slider.
I.e. for reaching the domination limit, grabbing essential resources or producing more units other considerations will apply. These are not considered here.
As a reference I used this thread: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/city-maintenance-costs-the-numbers.612888/. I am using the same convention for size/difficulty, namely Standard/Deity. For speed I will assume Standard.
The code for city maintenence is found in
First lets consider number of cities maintenance. There is a cap of 8
/turn for deity. This is /turn, flat. Sufficiently large means that even a size one city hits the cap. This is equivalent to 27 cities.
Obviously most cities will be bigger than size one, reducing the number of cities when the cap is hit.
This is important because below this cap building a new city increases the number of cities maintenance in all cities. This contribution is at most equal to the cap per city.
Thus above the cap an additional city adds 8/turn in maintenance, but just below the cap that amount can nearly be doubled.
Assuming a less homogenous empire will smear out this effect, making adding the most expensive additional city less expensive, but making more additional cities more expensive. In the limit of very high (equal) city count all empires will pay the same number of cities maintenance.
Note that for a size 12 city the cap is reached at about 17 cities.
Now distance maintenance has to be added, and since later built cities will tend to be further away from the capital (or FP, Versailles, I will call those centers for brevity) they will also tend to have higher distance maintenance. A size 12 city that is in the 16th ring of the nearest center will have distance maintenance of about 10/turn.
So roughly adding a ~16th city on the fringes of an empire can drive up maintenance by about 20-25/turn.
Now we have to consider Inflation. Inflation is handled in
Adding that inflation will result the above example to have a post-inflation maintenance of 26-33/turn.
If we assume that new city to be size one the added maintenance is still about 16-20/turn.
If we assume two trade routes at 3
each the city will still need at least 20 + 
to not be a drain on the economy, and more if it is to pay back the investment of building settler and growing it. That corresponds to about 2 per tile for size 12 city.
This means that growing on coast is barely acceptable, and that non-river cottages take time (30 turns) to be better.
Note that due to the base values in the maintenance calculation growing a city reduces the maintenance per population. Furthermore, it means that on top of building a settler a new city will frequently incur a cost due to non-covered maintenance on small sizes. A settler will cost at least 100, due to not producing wealth. Due to halting growth/whipping this will be significantly higher in most cases. Since this is a game of snowballing the actual investment is again higher.
The cost of the settler and uncovered maintenance will make up the cost of the city. That usually needs to be paid back before the next milestone to be worth it.
Having the GLH on with overseas foreign trade-routes will almost cover the costs. Similarly, on non-Pangaeas post-Astronomy and post-Corporation the trade routes will cover a lot. SP will get rid of distance maintenance and inflation on it, halving the cost and allowing to workshop, cutting the time to grow cottages into great tiles. If the next milestone comes after these building a new city pays back quicker and may speed said milestone up. IMHO this is the time to build mediocre cities.
The value of added population implies, again, that only a city that has enough food to grow in a reasonable time is worth it.
What I did not consider is colony expenses, which apply for cities not on the same continent as your capital. Obviously, they increase the cost of a city.
Edit: fixed last section
What I will consider here is what I will call the economical value of a city. The criterion I will apply is if a city can cover the added maintenence while building wealth and running 100% gold slider.
I.e. for reaching the domination limit, grabbing essential resources or producing more units other considerations will apply. These are not considered here.
Calculating the maintenance of a city
As a reference I used this thread: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/city-maintenance-costs-the-numbers.612888/. I am using the same convention for size/difficulty, namely Standard/Deity. For speed I will assume Standard.
The code for city maintenence is found in
CvCity::calculateBaseMaintenanceTimes100().First lets consider number of cities maintenance. There is a cap of 8
/turn for deity. This is iMaxNumCitiesMaintenance in Assest\XML\GameInfo\CIV4HandicapInfo.xml. For a sufficiently large empire this will only be 8 /turn, flat. Sufficiently large means that even a size one city hits the cap. This is equivalent to 27 cities.Obviously most cities will be bigger than size one, reducing the number of cities when the cap is hit.
This is important because below this cap building a new city increases the number of cities maintenance in all cities. This contribution is at most equal to the cap per city.
Spoiler Proof :
Thus above the cap an additional city adds 8
/turn in maintenance, but just below the cap that amount can nearly be doubled.Assuming a less homogenous empire will smear out this effect, making adding the most expensive additional city less expensive, but making more additional cities more expensive. In the limit of very high (equal) city count all empires will pay the same number of cities maintenance.
Note that for a size 12 city the cap is reached at about 17 cities.
Now distance maintenance has to be added, and since later built cities will tend to be further away from the capital (or FP, Versailles, I will call those centers for brevity) they will also tend to have higher distance maintenance. A size 12 city that is in the 16th ring of the nearest center will have distance maintenance of about 10
/turn.So roughly adding a ~16th city on the fringes of an empire can drive up maintenance by about 20-25
/turn.Now we have to consider Inflation. Inflation is handled in
CvPlayer::calculateInflationRate(). In the early game (before turn ~200) it can be approximated reasonably well as 0.3*(turns-90). So by turn 170 (1100AD) it will be about 30%.Adding that inflation will result the above example to have a post-inflation maintenance of 26-33
/turn.If we assume that new city to be size one the added maintenance is still about 16-20
/turn.The cost of a city
If we assume two trade routes at 3
each the city will still need at least 20 + to not be a drain on the economy, and more if it is to pay back the investment of building settler and growing it. That corresponds to about 2 per tile for size 12 city.This means that growing on coast is barely acceptable, and that non-river cottages take time (30 turns) to be better.
Note that due to the base values in the maintenance calculation growing a city reduces the maintenance per population. Furthermore, it means that on top of building a settler a new city will frequently incur a cost due to non-covered maintenance on small sizes. A settler will cost at least 100
, due to not producing wealth. Due to halting growth/whipping this will be significantly higher in most cases. Since this is a game of snowballing the actual investment is again higher.The cost of the settler and uncovered maintenance will make up the cost of the city. That usually needs to be paid back before the next milestone to be worth it.
Conclusions
Having the GLH on with overseas foreign trade-routes will almost cover the costs. Similarly, on non-Pangaeas post-Astronomy and post-Corporation the trade routes will cover a lot. SP will get rid of distance maintenance and inflation on it, halving the cost and allowing to workshop, cutting the time to grow cottages into great tiles. If the next milestone comes after these building a new city pays back quicker and may speed said milestone up. IMHO this is the time to build mediocre cities.
The value of added population implies, again, that only a city that has enough food to grow in a reasonable time is worth it.
What I did not consider is colony expenses, which apply for cities not on the same continent as your capital. Obviously, they increase the cost of a city.
Edit: fixed last section
Lennier
Emperor
SP doesn't cut time for cottages to grow--US does that.
What a pen-dragon means is that late game SP workshops are better than cottages. They instantly give a bunch of hammers that can be converted into gold or beakers by building wealth/science.
, first was academy), then just manually towards liberalism. Capital is good, but 5
due to no rice/wheat on this continent. Other cities mostly have no buildings other than a granary, some have a library or AP buildings. Everything points towards a draft war in my opinion (also the hippodrome!).
-resource is good enough to whip settlers. If barbarian in the north is an issue, gift a city after settling 3 (=like T50). On immortal and below you can just spread asap, the barb trouble is very minor.
drewisfat
King
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- Feb 8, 2011
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- 994
Your capital is size 8, you have 4 archers and 4 warriors (that I see), and you got rekt by a stack of 5 units from the game's most notorious warmonger. That's more than one mistake sir.
- Why didn't you fogbust the south? There's literally a barb axe in your base. I get that it's jungle so I might have ignored it at the beginning too. Surely though once you saw neighbors to the north you should have redirected to fogbust the only direction that matters.
- Walls don't outperform additional units until you have a handful already and you have just one. I get that you probably thought you had a longer plot time, but this really stands out. That could have been two archers. You probably hold with that change alone. Why do you even have masonry?
- Should have had a couple archers fortifying in the bait city ASAP. Worst case scenario is Shaka doesn't attack and you've spent 20 hammers more than you needed on happy police.
- You're IMP and you played the map like you were EXP. There's multiple silly farms. There's 6 roads by the capital where 2 would have sufficed. Too many workers too soon accomplishing nothing of value when you needed more military and more settlers.
- As BiC already mentioned, it's downright bizarre that you ignored a 2 corn 1 gold city. You can't argue that early commerce isn't important while simultaneously cottage spamming before you're even safe from barbs and neighbors.
- Cataphracts then astro should have been the plan. Drafting has more to do with traits, city count and espionage than it does happy/health ratio. You're ignoring one of the better UUs in order to utilize a mediocre UB.
- Why didn't you fogbust the south? There's literally a barb axe in your base. I get that it's jungle so I might have ignored it at the beginning too. Surely though once you saw neighbors to the north you should have redirected to fogbust the only direction that matters.
- Walls don't outperform additional units until you have a handful already and you have just one. I get that you probably thought you had a longer plot time, but this really stands out. That could have been two archers. You probably hold with that change alone. Why do you even have masonry?
- Should have had a couple archers fortifying in the bait city ASAP. Worst case scenario is Shaka doesn't attack and you've spent 20 hammers more than you needed on happy police.
- You're IMP and you played the map like you were EXP. There's multiple silly farms. There's 6 roads by the capital where 2 would have sufficed. Too many workers too soon accomplishing nothing of value when you needed more military and more settlers.
- As BiC already mentioned, it's downright bizarre that you ignored a 2 corn 1 gold city. You can't argue that early commerce isn't important while simultaneously cottage spamming before you're even safe from barbs and neighbors.
- Cataphracts then astro should have been the plan. Drafting has more to do with traits, city count and espionage than it does happy/health ratio. You're ignoring one of the better UUs in order to utilize a mediocre UB.
Saturday night, time to grab a bottle and write some horsehocky to the internet!I mean I sure didn't expect a dagger, maybe I should've. Of course it looks dumb when he attacks and I can't even get a 2nd archer in place.
- not sure how much you have experience with immortal barbs but often it's just a joke. Getting infiltrated by two barb axes is something I've never encountered before I think. But ok, fair, I could've taken it more seriously.
- two archers are unlikely to hold, but you are correct I should've had 1T in an archer to be able to whip it. I could only whip walls and they won't help with one archer inside, I understand that
- too many workers too soon, perhaps. I agree I had farms that I had to turn into cottages.
- I don't think it's so bizarre to ignore that jungle spot, there is another, closer gold for
with a floodplain. There are pros and cons for both spots. Did I argue that "early isn't important?". Perhaps you misinterpreted something. You seem to like to interpret or guess rather than ask!- sure you can go cataphracts if you want to, I mean I think the game is just won if you don't get attacked anyway. I agree that drafting has a lot to do with traits and city count. I never claimed it has much to do with say
, of course to a degree.Just ask if you don't understand, I mean I don't think it makes sense for you to guess what something means and then attack it? Unless you just like attacking, in which case it is a great thing to do.
Did you also misinterpret what I meant when I said "my only mistake"? Does that in your mind mean that I think everything else I did was perfect? Good night!
drewisfat
King
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We both like to attack on here Sampsa. Too often we have been on the same side and bullied others! Shaka isn't the only one who can 
. I want NATO allies who can defend themselves!
But yes you woke me from my slumber with "only one mistake". We all make lots of mistakes, every game, even in the first 100 turns.
You argue against commerce early every time there's a gold mine lol. I'm arguing against your settle location not your settling order to be clear.
I didn't set the difficulty level. I just think if you're taking it seriously to help others, you should take it seriously and build good habits. I think the map and Shaka is only tricky if you don't settle that bait city, as it might be harder to predict where he attacks and of course it won't be on a hill.
. I want NATO allies who can defend themselves!But yes you woke me from my slumber with "only one mistake". We all make lots of mistakes, every game, even in the first 100 turns.
You argue against commerce early every time there's a gold mine lol. I'm arguing against your settle location not your settling order to be clear.
I didn't set the difficulty level. I just think if you're taking it seriously to help others, you should take it seriously and build good habits. I think the map and Shaka is only tricky if you don't settle that bait city, as it might be harder to predict where he attacks and of course it won't be on a hill.
Sure and absolutely no offence taken, I think I know you well enough to understand our style of interaction and I know I can learn a lot from you! And probably my play was weaker in this game than I thought when I wrote the reply to BiC.
I don't try to argue against early honestly, but I just love the fast expansion, especially below deity.
I don't try to argue against early
honestly, but I just love the fast expansion, especially below deity.I finally finished the Washington game. 1880 Dom. My first non-fin win on Immortal with virtually no outside help. Ended up being less peaceful than I had planned because circumstances called for a more aggressive approach. First, AP reassigned Saint Pete, which had been under my control for over 1000 years, to Cathy. That led me to go down the cuirs route, libbing MT. I waged a short and surgical war with 20-something cuirs, just enough to quickly take her 4 cities and resist any counter attacks from her master Wang. So far so good. But then, when I discovered Sci Meth, I realized I didn't have a single source of oil in my 19-city empire. I didn't feel comfortable going to space without any oil, so I went cavs and cannons and took out Wang (I know, very fitting to play as America and go to war over oil). After that, I could have gone to space but it seemed like Pacal could win culture faster. So I went for tanks and fighters/bombers to take him out. After that, I had about 50 tanks sitting around and would it be easy to pump out a few boats and ship everything over to chronically backward, 13-city Genghis on the other continent? Btw, at this point I realized I could have won diplo if I had just converted 1 of Qin's and 1 of Genghis' cities to Hindu, but Genghis had the brilliant idea of attacking me with a bunch of backward mini-stacks and then wouldn't open borders with me for the longest time. So I had to conquer him. I went in with 50 tanks, first attacking his war vassal Qin who had only 3 cities, but also had infantry and destroyers. I sustained heavy losses taking a hyper-cultured Genghis-owned Beijing full of wonders, defended by Chinese infantry and a bajillion Mongol cavalry and lost about half my tank force. I did have air support but had used it for taking Shanghai on the same turn and got impatient The invasion seemed to be on shaky ground but my production was so overwhelming that I managed to break through, especially after I built airports everywhere and started airlifting on a massive scale. I never saw a Mongol infantry and hit the domination limit before he was willing to capitulate. All in all a fun and very eventful game. Btw, if you're wondering about the freakishly long game time, it's because I had a scooter accident in which I broke my right arm and right leg, and played this out with only my left hand.
If you think you're having a bad day, consider what happened to me: on the turn I attacked my neighbor with an engineering attack in the 700s, HC wins the AP vote and with that, the game. Is there any highly illegal way to worldbuilder this out or edit the save to disable diplomatic victory? This is worse than bad RNG, this is a gameplay flaw.
Spoiler :
Last edited:
a pen-dragon
Prince
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AFAIK there currently there is no way to edit save-files, although a tool to do so is in development, in this thread.
As for removing it via WB, I think the least impactful way would be to remove the AP wonder, or remove the religion from a civ that does not have it as state religion, as a diplo vote can only be called when all civs have that religion.
As for removing it via WB, I think the least impactful way would be to remove the AP wonder, or remove the religion from a civ that does not have it as state religion, as a diplo vote can only be called when all civs have that religion.
I'm thinking of WB-ing 3 desert islands with 3 of my cities surrounded by peaks so that Buddhism can never spread there and then spinning it off as a colony. That way no one would benefit or be prejudiced and HC can keep the AP. But I'm seriously considering playing without the AP from now on, it's kinda like random events in the way it's punitive and completely outside the player's control.
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