Ghandi and his many hordes (Let's play!)

[lymond]

Cox - sidenote:

the pattern you may see us having you do now - and you don't always have the luxury depending on map/land/resources - is settling cities in a compact fashion, with trade routes almost instant or immediate, and the cities have food or resources immediately workable so that these cities are productive from the start.

If you do not have the Creative trait, you have to be more selective in how you settle cities, with food in the first ring. Otherwise, these cities just do nothing for you for a long time. Even if you can chop..say..a monument for some culture you are still looking at 10 to 15 turns for a border pop, plus improving the now accessible resource. 10 turns is a long time.

 

[TheCox]

Alright, so I have 3 cities up and running, building a monument in the 3rd city to the east so I can pop borders and get the horses.. all 3 cities are connected and have gold, rice and cows.. Also found some fish to the NE of that 3rd city.

Edit: I went one turn further into 55 as I forgot to connect gold on that save/picture.

I attached save and picture of where I am at in turn 54.

 

[lymond]

Cox - a few points

1) First, as an exercise, I want you to look at the roads to your 3rd city and see how you might have done that better

2) Hard to tell what your workers have been doing from my perspective, but a chop should have already been completed for that monument

3) the farm is bad..that tile will get a cottage

4) granary mechanics - whew...ha..another little complex nugget...I'm inclined to stall growth this turn and complete the gran by focus on hammers. However, I say let's let city grow and get gran to 1t to completion (next turn) but queue up something else next turn. We will finish the gran when the food bucket (above the production bar) gets about half full

5) Not sure I liked starting that worker in Bombay. I like to see this city growing onto a cottage and probably start a library in meantime. Bulk of your production right now is still coming from Delhi..this will change though soon.

6) I'd like you to run binary (100% tax) for 3 to 4 turns then finish Alpha at 100% research

(100% Tax is basically the opposite of 100% research, where your research slider is 0 so that all commerce is converted to gold)

 

[SpK]

How far away from building libraries are you?

Am i seeing things properly that south of his empire settling 1S of the rice will claim him the gems and some ivory if he gets some decent culture going?
Chopping a library there might be the best play, the north just looks slow to develop.
It is much less conservative, but the ivory might be very useful.

Alternatively, if you claim enough fun to your north, trading for it might be possible. War Elephant will be a very strong unit with at least 2 close enemies.
And he definitely has a chance to win the race to construction.

 

[TheCox]

There are 6 other Civs on this map besides myself.

I believe I did chop on that monument if I am not mistaken. It has 1T left on it before it's done. Granary also has 1T left in Delhi with a warrior queued up.

If I cancel the granary, and build something else.. if I go back to granary, will it still have 1T left on it?

To be honest, not sure why there is a worker in Bombay either.. I already have 3.. Should I cancel it and start building cottages to make it a commerce city? See.. I'm already learning I know you should have a commerce city to start pumping gold out, right?

@SpK I can already build libraries now and 1S of the rice will get me Gems, Cows and 1 of the FIVE Ivory that are down there..

I'm thinking that should be next city for sure, maybe two cities down there for all the ivory? Probably not two, but at least one city down there.

 

[ikotomi]

Does 1 SE of rice get gems in the first border? That would let you work cows first so you can clear the jungle for gems instead of having to clear rice. It also lessens the need for fast culture. I would scout more to see if there is food west of the ivory to better plan the future expansions.

 

[TheCox]

@ikotomi - Yeah.. 1SE of Rice, let's you work rice, gems and cows on initial plot and would eventually take over part of Ethiopia's borders in the south.. But if I settle 1E of rice it would still give me the gems, rice and cows in the initial plot.

Oh and you were correct, I did get those cows under GK's second city

 

[TalladegaKnight]

@ikotomi - Yeah.. 1SE of Rice, let's you work rice, gems and cows on initial plot and would eventually take over part of Ethiopia's borders in the south.. But if I settle 1E of rice it would still give me the gems, rice and cows in the initial plot.

Oh and you were correct, I did get those cows under GK's second city

1E will not give you the gems immediately like 1 SE. You would need a border pop to get the gems. Since we are not creative it is advisable to settle 1SE and avoid having to worry about getting culture. Plus Zara is creative and could steal the gems with his city.

 

[lymond]

Quick response
All that stuff to the SW is jungle and useless

 

[lymond]

Hey Cox -

Attaching a save where I've played on a bit just to give you an idea of what to look for and target in your game:

1) Finished Alpha and easily backfilled a few cheap techs like fishing, hunting and archery (which I actually want here as I'm going for HAs)...after Currency I trade some small techs for gold as well

2) Teched HBR and start producing HAs

3) Easily wiped out GK, razing 3 stupid cities he settled nearby including that one just west - I settled south of the peak next to gold earlier to take the cows

4) Basically just the 4 cities are fine to start the HA rush, but I whipped a couple more settlers later out of Delhi

5) After GK, I nicely wiped Zara from the face of the planet including an elephant city that he got started for us. I trade Currency for IW right before attack

6) Tech - Maths>Currency>CoL>Calendar (cause AIs are slow here and for happy)>Civil Service (switch to Bureau/Caste) > Paper

7) First GS I put academy in Delhi..second GS I started Golden Age which boosts research and GP production. Next GS will part bulb Education, which we should have before 1AD which is great

8) There's surprising large distance between us and AIs (other than GK and Zara). I think Babylon is SE and the jungle has slowed him. Gilgs and Toku are probably to the E some distance.

9) Honestly, you can probably wipe the map here with HAs, but it may be best to look at building your empire and looking to get to a stronger unit to take the rest. Knights actually work fine on Prince or we could show Libbing Curs.

Note: Settling the jungle stuff as mentioned is just not necessary. All you need is like 4 to 5 cities right now and starting pumping HAs. This will soon net you 4 to 5 more cities from GK and Zara. You want to settle cities that can contribute immediately which these 4 do. If going a longer game like Space, you can eventually settle jungle cities, but these won't really be necessary this game I think.

 

[TheCox]

wow that's a lot of roads.. should you ever just road to tile mode in order to connect cities and resources and stuff?

I'm guessing you don't need to build mines on every single hill eh? lol I think that's one of my issues, I run out of things to do and not sure what to do.. so I just build/chop everything I can on every single tile.

Your save puts things in perspective to be honest..Still unsure of everything going on in the save, but it's about expanding and then building a good unit to take out someone or two that's close so that you don't get boxed in and get the whole continent to yourself.. then you can either keep expanding or use all cities to produce units and overrun everyone else.

Right?

 

[lymond]

wow that's a lot of roads.. should you ever just road to tile mode in order to connect cities and resources and stuff?

Not sure what you mean by a lot of roads. Every road I built had a purposes - mainly connecting a city that had to have it. All the other roads you are referring to were built by the AIs. I did built a road between Bombay and Zara's ivory city to speed troops...something I would like do to the East to speed troops to those guys if I decide. I have plenty of workers so alotting one to do roading for troops is fine. Otherwise, you will reach a point were you have a lot of workers.

Still, workers should mainly be doing things with purpose. Chop forest with purpose, i.e., don't just chop into anything. this is a matter of timings and stuff and I don't expect you to grasp all this now...so don't worry. (ha..I've been playing this game over 7 years now and still learn stuff)

Building mines is relative to what the city needs and can work compared to the cities food and how much you are whipping. For instance, Delhi doesn't need many mines early because it is whipping - although an early mine is nice for offset hammers on whips (don't worry about this concept now).

Eventually though, and this is key, after your initial expansion of 4 to 6 cities (which depends on land if you are a keying up a rush), you want a city to take on the brunt of research and try to grow to the happy cap working food, cottages and scientists. Usually this is your capital and you want to set it up as a Bureau cap if it is suited for it. (you can also move your Palace to a better city for Bureaucracy if your first cap is not good for it..the need to do that though depends on the type of game your are pursuing..again, something like a Space victory I want to max research so I may do it..if I'm just killing peeps I may not bother unless I need to tech up to advance units. On higher levels this is often the case)

Bureau caps ideally have a lot of river grassland and/or floodplains that you can cottage. Delhi is ok for this. Notice Bombay was working a bulk of the cottages early, but as you switch to Bureau, your cap can start taking on more of the cottages. Bureau significantly boots your commerce output from commerce tiles and thus your research.

Often, with a good capital setup, you really only need one city to take care of the bulk of your research needs. It is nice to have a high food Great Person farm at some point as well. Then other cities can primary be abused for production, ie., whipping as needed...although they can certainly grow and build during downtimes...even run specialists.

The save is just to give you a little taste of what you can do with a strong start and this is certainly one of them. I don't expect you to necessarily mirror it, but you should have no issue taking out GK and Zara easily.

On Prince level on Pangaea you can pretty much usually run the map with Horse Archers. But at minimum, you can take out a couple of nearby AIs to expand. Also, gives you lots of gold as well even with increase maintenance. After I got Currency, I've been pretty much running 100% research with no gold problems up to now.

(IMO Currency is the most important tech in the game..not everyone agrees with that,but I feel pretty strong about it)

Generally, a Horse Archer rush like this you can expand to 3 or 4 good cities while teching up to HBR..then whip/chop HAs and go attack. You are basically doing this in lieu of other expansion early.

Early on, a small empire can let you tech a little better before things like Currency as you won't overextend on maintenance costs. Long term though...say..if you want a Space game..you look to grab as much land as possible later. More land = more research.

(last note: The discussions and exercises here can serve you well I believe for some time, so I encourage you to reread stuff and ask questions. You don't even necessarily need to complete games, but rather practice certain concepts and techniques we've discussed, using other practice games you have going. Feel free to even replay turns or restart games and try again. I highly encourage you to practice Granary optimizations and whipping ...looking to max growth potential and whip overflow. Also, looking at bonuses you get from Traits or certain resources to take advantage of these hammers one way or another)

Civ IV can keep you slap happy with stuff to learn for a long time

 

[TheCox]

What's considered small techs and by roads, I mean use the option to build tiles from your current workers tile to a tile of your choosing... Is that not a good thing to do?

 

[TheCox]

So, I was working through, basing my builds off your recommendations and all.. But I just finished Alpha, got hunting done, Brennus gave me fishing for iron working and I got archery.. I had just settled the city to the SE of that gold tile near GK and he had chariots already, and declared war on me and took my city.. I was like what???

So, I'm going to reload, go a little bit faster and watch my builds, as soon as I get horses done faster this time, I will definitely start whipping HA and declare on him..

I had to reload once, because I went 2 turns to late and his borders were too close so I couldn't settle there... So I will try it again because obviously it works because you were able to do it.

 

[TheCox]

So.. I reloaded the save, got on top of everything.. started churning on horsemen.. but it wasn't like your save.. I kept losing units over and over and over again to fortified archers. By 1AD I still hadn't killed off GK yet and he resetteled that stupid city right by my borders again..

Really not sure what happened, but I played 60 something turns into it only to get no where and the HA's are just dying left and right to the archers.

Frustrated.. but probably missed something, so I saved it where I was at.. I'm going to reload to T63 and do it again... practice makes perfect ya know?

 

[lymond]

I'd like to see a save from some turns ago. It appears your timings are off from my game quite a bit. I'm surprised GK would declare on you so early, but then I"m not sure where you are in your game. Based on what I know from my have, he should not have even been in a "mode" to declare.

What do you mean by "got" hunting? You should not have need to tech it. I think that is where I want to see your game, and I think it a good idea to get advice before making any tech trades. IW is an AI priority tech, but in this game seems a bit steep of a trade from just fishing. I was trading like Pot and Writing for things like Fishing, Hunting and Archery and Sailing, while teching to HBR.

(Certainly don't get discouraged...this is a learning process)

Not sure I follow your thought process on workers and roads. i probably need an example.

To your last post: Yeah, I think we really need to slow it down and take more peeks at your game at certain points to give you advice. You really need to play smaller turnsets....let's take this step by step.

I killed maybe 5 or 6 archers in my game...that's it..no more GK

 

[TheCox]

Yeah, so what happened was that my timing was off and I was 1-3 turns off before whipping a settler from Delhi.. Because I didn't trade with him and my timing was off, he had a few chariots somehow and declared War on me. By getting hunting, I meant that Brennus wanted to trade hunting for something, can't remember now, so that's how I got hunting without researching it. So I restarted from my save that I had last sent to you guys.

This time around, I got the settler to the tile 1S of the Peak to get the gold for city number 4. I missed a few turns of horse archers because I couldn't find their icon.. (noob move)
Started churning out HA's from all 4 cities, kept churning them out as fast as I could. I whipped maybe one two many HA's I think because everyone in my cities was mad at me.

Why trade for fishing, hunting, archery and sailing when they are only 2 turns a piece? This might be where my timing came off due to the fact that I didn't trade them and I actually spent time researching them.

By the time I had enough HA's or what I thought was enough to take out the cities, there were 3-4 archers in each city fortified and my % was always like 45% to win and it was definitely a crap shoot if I won or not..

So I think at this point, my timing is off, I can see that for sure, which is why I didn't get GK in my playthrough.

I'll try it again and take it slow, I was trying to base my turns off what you did in your save and your combat log. I'll redo and go 10 turns out and then show the save.

 

[ikotomi]

Using the route option is not usually a good idea. The AI is pretty bad at choosing which tiles to road, and especially in the early game you want to squeeze as much value out of your worker turns as possible. I wouldn't recommend using any of the automations as a rule of thumb for now, and just work on getting to the point where you will always make the better decisions than the automation anyways.

Edit: another reason not to automate is that it can be a headache with barbarian or at war, as the workers don't move to safe tiles and suicide themselves.

 

[lymond]

(i assume you are not automating workers..not sure where that came up)

I'd really like to see your save at certain points. Seems like you are redoing and redoing, but not actually getting advice.

You do whip Horse Archers, but you also have some chops ready as well..ideally with Maths coming up soon for boosted chops. You should not have to incur too much unhappiness or have to overwhip. I started with like 5 or 6 HAs and just kept reinforcements coming. He had 1 Archer and a warrior in that crap city at the time and little else in his other cities. You may take some losses but you should always have enough HAs. Always start with enough to take and defend the first city while you heal if needed. On HA should be turned into a medic which will then become a super medic with your GG.

You teched Alpha just for that purpose, to trade those little techs. Every turn matter. You mention 2 turn here and 3 turns here..whatever..that is still 6 or 7 turns of teching you did not need to do yourself and that is a lot on normal speed. Later, you can trade techs for gold after Currency. Just trade techs judiciously. I'd really like to see your games before you trade techs and discuss the thought process. You should always get the best deals if possible.

Sometimes you whip a unit to whip a unit to get up an army..if you are in prep mode and have some time to spare..you can prep a good HA whip (19H out of 50 is max 2popper) ..then time a chop to that city next turn and...vlola ...2 HAs in 2 turns. I don't want you overwhipping your cities ..that is not necessary or good tactics at this stage. With that right setup you should have no problem getting out enough HAs without getting cities to mad at you.

 

[TheCox]

the automate workers came from when I asked about using the route to mode to build roads for me.

I only have restarted from the last save I sent you guys twice so far which I mentioned earlier.. I'm going to take a break then try the first 10 turns from when I build the settler and found my 4th city. I'll post screens and save when I get there.

Definitely want to learn, don't want to upset anyone about not paying attention =)

EDIT: Just figured out what you meant by trading for the other techs lol.. I'm researching HBR while getting the other techs from the other civ's which means I'm not wasting about 15 turns.. which would give me the appropriate time to get those HA up and sack his city since he only has 1 warrior in that city.. (it just dinged for me)