GK2- The Training Day Experiment

[Gengis Khan]

Infoman:

Some points to consider:

Since we’re expansionist we don’t have to worry about popping barbs, also we get 2 contents plus a lux next door. I wouldn’t have built the warrior, and if I did he’d be exploring not forted yet.

Worker actions- Mining the BG was good, not roading it was a preference, then moving to a normal grassland and irrigating is shooting yourself in the foot. There’s another BG, that should be worked before you get around to the grasslands, plus the wine & cow which will be under our border in 2(city goes to 2 pop in 3). You’re looking at about 7 population before that tile ever gets used.

Not to mention that in Despotism there is a tile penalty, anything that produces 3 or more food, shields, or commerce loses one. Grasslands produce 2 food normally/3 irrigated, once you take out the penalty you’re back at 2. In that same amount of time you could have roaded the BG.

Last thing: Your scouts both headed indirectly south. The end result of this was having 2 scouts to the south within 3 tiles of each other, but not knowing what was 2 tiles to the north of our city. I would have taken them in opposite directions so you can maximize your expansion.


Not trying to come across to critical, but these are things that are probably normally hurting your opening game. The opening 50 turns or so are (IMHO) the single most important phase of the game, because they set the foundation for your empire.



Please chime in with your views on these questions, and then we’ll continue.

1. Which save do you guys want to use? Why?
2. What’s your research plan? Min/max? Does knowing who’s in the game change this for you? Keep in mind that cultural starts aren’t necessarily on due to the custom start.
3. Plans for the city?
4. Any idea for future cities?

 

[scoutsout]

Lemme see if I can get some discussion going on the city placement thing. I prepared a little annotated screen cap based on some of the things that Shogun and I have posted so far.

The red square is where Shogun thinks we ought to put our next city. There's a floodplain w/ wheat there, and a forest. Food and shields right off the bat. This looks like the only nearby site with potential as a second settler factory. I'd like to see this site discussed as a potential settler factory, and a potential second city.

The yellow "L" is a site that I see with worker factory potential. I like the spot with the yellow dot the best. It will do a better job of bringing the desert within our borders (without settling in the desert) and will also leave room to the east for a non-coastal city. The yellow dot also gets us the wheat and the incense without a cultural expansion.

The blue "L" is a potential high-shield city, a likely spot to crank out some units and maybe a few galleys. The spot with the blue dot will let us put a unit in the capitol the same turn it is finished, even with the river movement penalty. It will also save us the effort of putting a road on the hill.

The white dots look like good spots to settle a little later.

 

[mad-bax]

From the way you post scoutsout I was having trouble understanding why you were havin trouble at monarch. This dotmap is definitely part of the reason.

Here's mine. GK won't like it probably. I'll let him explain why. Coloured dots first, white dots second.

Ask yourself these questions.
How many tiles per city am I allowing?
How many tiles will not be worked until after hospitals?
How many towns need aqueducts?

EDIT: At least one of the dots is in the wrong place. I do that in game too often.

 

[scoutsout]

I attempted to delete this post, but it wouldn't let me.

 

[Sir Bugsy]

For those that don't know, what mad-bax has drawn out is called Ring City Placement (RCP) - all the cities are the same distance corruption-wise from the capitol. In this case they are all 3. They way you measure that is: each N,S,E,W tile counts as 1.5.
each NE, NW, SE, SW tile counts as 1.0 You then round down when you get a half. There is actually a utility that will do all these calculations for you. Denyd is a big user, so maybe he can chime in and brief us on it. This whole concept has been pioneered by folks like DaviddesJ and alexman. There is an article in the war academy found here: http://www.civfanatics.com/civ3acad_ring_city.shtml

There are two ways to approach city placement. You place your cities according to RCP or you place them because they look like they are in a place you would like to have them based on terrain. The last one is probably the one GK is going to advocate.

There used to be an argument that it is an exploit because the AI doesn't use it. That was disproven in GOTM 24 (Korea) when someone found the AI using a perfect RCP of 5.

In this situation, I think RCP might work really well. I'm not sure whether I would want them to be as tight as 3.0, but 4 or 5 might work. I'll need to look at it. More tomorrow. I've been busy moving workers in TJ03B for the better part of the day.

Edit - cross-posted with scout.

 

[denyd]

Just a quick note before the wife drags me away to a dinner.

RCP has a couple of major advantages in PTW and Vanilla (Conquests makes it a disadvantage).

What you get is reduced corruption in cities.

There are 2 different factors in corruption:
1. # of cities
2. distance from capital

Let's say you have a 20 x 20 grid of bonus grassland in the center is your capital. If you build a city 3 tiles away that city gets minimal corruption as it's the first city and it's the closest. Now when you build your second city you still haven't got many cities for part 1 so that's not an issue. If you build it 3 tiles away it will get the same level of corruption as city # 1 because distance is a tie. If you build it 4 tiles away it gets more corruption because it's farther away. Now extend this to 10 citiies on the first ring, so instead each city getting a litte more corruption than the previous one, they all get the same level of corruption as the first one. Eventually you get enough cities so that factor #1 enters into play and there is only so many spots to put a city on the first ring.

Most often you can get 2 full rings of productive cities (about 12-14) before you run out of space. Dianthus has a great tool for planning where to place cities that I use. I try to take advantage of the corruption benefits and the terrain factors (coastal cities,rivers, hills, resources & luxuries) when planning my cities.

One thing don't become a slave to the RCP layout for two reasons. One it goes away with C3C and two on some maps just dosen't work very well (lots of mountains/jungle or on a narrow island). You need to be flexible and adjust to what seems to work for the given map.

Bugsy has linked to the very good article on why it works, if you have time that's a excellent read. The article also links to a very good article on how corruption works, which is probably just as important to understand.

Time for dinner - later dudes

 

[scoutsout]

I deleted an earlier post for 2 reasons: (1) I mistook Mad-Bax's RCP for ICS advocacy and (2) to delete evidence of frustration...

Have a look at the screen cap, and tell me if I'm on the right track. I've attempted an RCP (4-7?) plan here. (I've got one off, outer ring, extreme SW dot..needs to go one more SW). There's still a bit more scouting to do to the SW and West, but I don't think any of the yellow sites are on water...

Some analysis, assuming I am on the right track:

I think this gives us 3 fewer cities than Mad Bax's version, but a bit more 'elbow room' for the individual cities.

There is a hill that won't fall within any city's radius, and there will certainly be several squares that won't be worked by citizens in the early going...but we'll have more options as to which tiles do get worked, and let them work the best squares for our needs.

Of the inner ring cities, 4 of 7 have access to fresh water. Of the 3 that don't, one is in a desert, and may not need an aqueduct until steam power...Only 2 of the outer ring cities have access to fresh water... but there's not a lot out there to be had.

...speaking of water... 10 of these 15 cities will be on the coast, if naval power ever becomes a factor...

We'll claim a 3rd luxury in our 2nd ring. I don't know if this is a big help or not. (Nothing wrong with claiming luxuries using corrupt towns...)

Maybe some of the cities further out won't be hopelessly corrupt...since we don't know the OCN...

 

[mad-bax]

I started off at RCP 4 and arrived at a similar map to this. The reason I went tighter is that the hill and the mountain to the east is quite a good city location and I wanted to use it. Once steam power is here, this layout is more powerful than the tighter placement.

I'm sure that you are aware that non-integer distances are rounded down. So some of the dots you have placed could be moved to rivers etc and maintain the RCP layout.

My original layout does border on ICS. I like ICS because I tend to play for a fast finish. If I were placing ICS then I tend to position cities a "knight move" away from each other (one orthogonal, one diagonal).

I didn't read the post you deleted Scoutsout, and so I don't know the source of your frustration. Your original dotmap was poor. You were cherrypicking sites without a taking a long term view. The difference between your second dotmap and your first is huge.
If I upset you in some way I'm sorry. It wasn't my intention.

 

[scoutsout]

Originally posted by mad-bax
I'm sure that you are aware that non-integer distances are rounded down. So some of the dots you have placed could be moved to rivers etc and maintain the RCP layout.

We can certainly play with this, or look at other options...

I didn't read the post you deleted Scoutsout, and so I don't know the source of your frustration.

Well, I'll tell you. Two different instructors have posed the question "what would be a good spot for a second city?" Shogun gave an answer. In two subsequent posts, I said I'd like to discuss that site. (This is the red square on my earlier dotmap.) Nobody has seen fit to discuss that suggestion. At all. The next thing I know, I'm seeing an ICS looking dotmap ...

Compounding this was some of the stuff you put in your post ( "this dotmap is the reason... you (are) having touble at Monarch...") I currently play C3C (negates RCP) at Monarch level, and win. I may not win pretty, or cleanly, but I win. I know my weaknesses. My 2 biggest ones are: I'm a builder, and tend to build unnecesary city improvements. Ask the Cunning Celt, he's seen a well-developed savegame of mine. My other biggest weakness: I don't know what to do with a high-food, low shield city. Which is why I wanted to discuss Shogun's suggestion for a second city in the first place.

Your original dotmap was poor.

First off, the earlier dotmap was intended to be a starting point for a discussion, not an empire plan. Second, if you take a look at the first map, you'll note that 2 of the top 3 sites were L-shaped. In my second version you'll find inner ring cities within those L's. You'll find a city site next to the red square (the city site that was never discussed...) One of the three white dots is on an inner ring site, one is one tile away. The extreme northwesterly site is badly off the mark.

I submit that for a starting point for discussion (a discussion that never happened), that first map wasn't really all that bad.

You were cherrypicking sites without a taking a long term view.

The key here is the question it was intended to answer. That question was "what's a good spot for the next city?", not "Where are you going to put your next dozen cities, and lay out an empire from here?".

Ask me where I'm going to put my next city, or next 2-3 cities, and of course I'm going to cherry-pick sites. Bear in mind, I'm the guy whose starting position includes a fully irrigated and roaded cattle tile that's not within my capitol's radius yet. Short-sightedness is not my problem. I'm a builder; different malfunction.

The difference between your second dotmap and your first is huge.

So are the differences between the questions that they answer.

If I upset you in some way I'm sorry. It wasn't my intention.

No harm, no foul.

But if I may be so bold as to offer a suggestion: If you want to teach using Socratic Method, the question is rather important.

 

[Gengis Khan]

Excellent explanation of RCP, bax & bugsy. RCP is extreamly powerful in PTW & "vanilla" but it severly limits your positioning. I'm not the biggest fan of RCP, but I've used it on occasion when needed(normally in 3CC or 5CC games).

The reason I dislike MB's first dotmap isn't the RCP aspect, but because it borders on ICS. I hate ICS, yes it's a very strong layout, but in my games that do make it to the IA, it sucks having cities that can only work 5 tiles. My empires normally go city-tile-tile-tile-city, not the strongest of builds but it works for me.

I'm of the opinion that we should drop RCP, and just manually plan city layout. It will take more planning, but won't have to be a slave to RCP numbers. This will give us more options then "well our choices are A or B cause it's at 4 & 4.5." Up to you guys though.

I, for one, didn't think your first 2 cities were a problem. They were actually probably pretty close to where I would have put them, but I never claimed to be very good at this game.

 

[yoshi74]

Now i really know why i like C3C more. The drop of RCP. IMO it limits the options to choose a city location. Should i go for a productive city, or claim a lux or even a resource or even make a strategic position to block off some choke point? Ah well, i just draw a circle around my capital and place the cities on it!
It may work, enough people have proven it. Still i really don't like it. It takes away some fun for me.
Also i think before suggest someone made a poor city layout without any big plan in mind there should be a discussion about big plans. Mad-bax' first dotmap don't comes with a plan too, but the layout clearly says: winning with mass troops way before IA. The layout is clearly great to churn out masses of mounted riders, but in the Industrial age it leaves you with a lot of low corrupt, but still unproductive cities.
All we have at the moment is the land knowledge of ten turns. Making a plan for the next 20 cities somehow cripples the ability to adapt future knowledge. We have a nice plan, a shiny dotmap. We can build some other cities later, when we finished with the plan.
I really think succesfull play is all about adaption. Look at the situation, at the possibilities and the long and short term goals and decide what should be done accordingly.

@scoutsout: Why do you want to avoid settling on a desert square? The city square produces the same as when it would be positioned anywhere else. So IMO settling on a desert square is the best you can make out of it, unless you play a acricultural civ.

 

[mad-bax]

Well, I apparently touched a nerve, and I apologise. It's difficult to judge sometimes how people need to be treated when you don't know them well and I obviously misjudged you scoutsout.

 

[scoutsout]

Ghengis: Which two cities? We've only discussed about three dozen city sites!

Yoshi: I'm not opposed to settling desert squares, I just don't like settling them too early. It looks like there may be some food around these desert tiles, so these may be a bit better than some other desert sites I've seen. The wasteland isn't all that big...

Mad-Bax: you didn't touch a nerve. One reason I deleted the earlier post was because I thought it could be taken the wrong way. I was not and am not angry or frustrated with you personally. And now I really am feelin' badly that you think you misjudged something in my character... I tried to mix smileys in there to show that I meant to be light-hearted, tongue-in-cheek with this stuff. That's hard to do with this medium sometimes.

I guess the thing I got a (just a little) frustrated with is that we (all of us) seem a little incoherent at the moment. At one end of the spectrum we've got a player who hasn't played his first 10 (and who is a beginning player to boot) and at the other end we're kicking around ICP/RCP (and variations of RCP) when there are some more basic questions (some of which have been raised) that we haven't really gotten around to discussing. Your posts simply underscored that for me, prompting me to try and point these things out. Maybe I could have done it a different way, I dunno.

And another thing I don't want you to misunderstand - I don't think you mistreated me at all, just took my first map a little out of context. I think you raised a really important set of issues with your dotmap and kicking off the RCP discussion. I simply think we (most of us) "skipped a gear" in the teaching and discussion process.

You were trying to point out some things about the game, and I appreciate that. I was trying to point out some things about teaching, and I hope you can appreciate that.

-End of sermon, amen.

At this point I think RCP is well worth considering. It's potentially powerful, and looks like it could be done more than one way in this game. IMHO, we need to return to the "next city" discussion, and come back to RCP. I offer the following:

What's our first priority in a second city? A unit factory, a second settler factory, or a worker factory?

 

[Sir Bugsy]

Originally posted by scoutsout
What's our first priority in a second city? A unit factory, a second settler factory, or a worker factory?

I think this is a great question and the topic we should stick to for a while. What are our priorities at this stage of the game?

I think this depends a lot on what you decide your strategy is going to be for the first 80 turns or so (the QSC - Quick Start Challenge -period). Think is usually something that evolves as you learn your immediate terrain and surroundings. Which leads me to what I think should always be your number one priority:

PRIORITY #1 - Explore! You need to go out an meet new people! You need to get a feel for your land mass. You need to know the surrounding terrain. If you are non-expansion build several warriors (I say a minimum of three, usually four for each compass point - N, E, S, and W) If you are expansionist build scouts.

Here is where you need to make a decision based upon what your wanderings tell you.

Option #1 - Farmer's gambit - If your neighbors aren't very close, you can limit the amount of military units you build and spend your shields and food on building settlers and workers. Did I mention about exploring In this situation I will set up my second city as a worker factory. IMHO, the worker is the single most important unit in the game. The more you have, the better off you will be. They make it possible to produce more shields, commerce and food in your cities. If you have any doubts read either of the FRFR (Finally Ready for Regent) games where workers are only allowed to plant forests and cut jungles.

Option #2 - Standard combination of military and settlers, (normally one for one) usually when there are a lot of barbs and other civs nearby. I will usually try to set up a second city as a warrior factory. I will avoid spears and stick with the paper cutouts. It will fool most people most of the time. The third city then becomes a worker factory.

Option #3 - A lot of military - Use your first city for mostly military units until you can pop a settler and then use your second city for military.

Other things that need to be taken into consideration: strategic resources and luxuries, chokepoints, terrain.

 

[Vaiar]

I hope that I may ask a question as a lurker to this thread. On the pics above several potential city sites were located on hills and not a adjacent other square. So I take it doesn't matter whether you place a city on a hill or not?

 

[denyd]

A city always gets the same food/shields no matter where is it placed (that's why never build on a cow or wheat...)

Advantages:
1. On a hill your defenders get the hill (50%) defensive bonus when attacked
2. You can work the ajoining tiles without grassland
3. Potential for Saltpeter/Iron/Coal under city is good

Disadvantage:
1. You lose the ability to mine & railroad the hill later (4spt)

 

[Sir Bugsy]

Absolutely you may ask questions.

Settling a hill will give you a defensive bonus in combat, however you will lose the benefit of the shields you would normally get from a hill. In fact, you will lose the benefit of any bonus if you settle on it, except the benefit of a resource or a lux.

Edit - another crosspost

 

[scoutsout]

Sir Bugsy - your "farmer's gambit" sounds like a pretty good idea to me, considering we haven't met anybody yet. We may not be alone on this landmass, but grabbing some territory through settling is cleary important at this stage.

I couldn't agree more about the importance of workers. They're the only unit you use in every stage and every phase of the game. Since we've got a non-industrious civ, we'll need more of them.

With that in mind, I'd like to propose a second city site, W-W-SW of our capitol (1 tile SE of Shogun's suggested site.) Though a spot closer to the incense would probably work just as well as a worker factory, it will be easier to road the terrain from this site back to our core, and let us get our workers positioned quicker.

This site is an "inner ring" site on the RCP 4-7 map I generated based on Mad Bax's suggestions, so settling a city here would still allow us to adopt an RCP strategy if that's what we want to do after further discussion.

A "unit factory" should be the second city site priority, IMO. I imagine we'll see some barbs soon...

To get the game going again, we could do the following:

1) Get Tmarze to do his turns and post them.
2) Choose a savegame to play from. Though this may generate some discussion, I think all the ones posted so far are playable at this point.
3) Once the savegame is chosen, I think it would be a good idea for the experienced players to look at that savegame and post pointers on getting the "settler factory" up and running, as well as some pointers on "keeping the pump primed", for the third player...
4) I think the experienced players should also offer some advice on the direction we ought to take with science before the second set of turns.

Sir Bugsy - I think some of the points you raised at the tail end of that post are good, but they're more...'tactical' than strategic. I think the 5 of us students need to get on the same page as far as strategy goes. If we all agree we need to go grab land with settlers, then I won't build temples and Shogun won't build mounted warriors. When it's time to go to war, Infoman won't build settlers, and I won't build temples. (When will I get to build a temple, anyway?

 

[tmarze]

You all go on without me.Did not know you all were waiting on me to continue your game .I just picked up my 2nd job a week and a half ago and so far I have been putting in over 80 hours
a week not much time for nothing outside of eating and sleeping
if there is a moderator here I post one of these in the discussion
forums by mistake could you delete it please thanks.I try to learn what I can by reading what you all do I can follow some of it .

tmarze

 

[scoutsout]

If Tmarze is going to back out, it's time to pick a start. Here's the basic position each is in, in reverse order of posting:

Infoman's start:

2 scouts, 1 worker and a warrior
Techs: Masonry, Bronze Working
Salamanca: BG NE of city is mined, worker will irrigate cattle in 2 more turns.

SolarKnight's start:

Units: 2 scouts, worker and a settler!
Salamanca: BG NE of city is roaded and mined. City will grow in 1 turn, on pace to produce Granary in 17.
Techs: Wheel

Scoutsout's start:

Units: 2 scouts, worker
Salamanca: Cattle is irrigated and roaded, BG N of city will be mined in 4 turns. Growth in 2, Granary in 25.
Techs: Mysticism, Warrior Code.
A scout is poised to pop a goody hut next turn.

Shoguntaka's start:

Units: 2 scouts, worker, warrior
Salamanca: BG roaded, cattle tile irrigated, roaded next turn. Growth next turn, Scout next turn.
Techs: Mysticism
A scout is poised to pop a goody hut next turn.

My questions for my classmates:

If you haven't already, analyze all four games at this point. Give what you think is the biggest strength and weakness of each of the four positions?

Which starting position gives us the best chance to get the granary soonest?

How powerful is that settler that SolarKnight popped?

I think it would be great to hear these questions answered by some of the more experienced players, after the four of us have gone through the mental process. IMO, that would be a good time for the more experienced players to post some thoughts on finer points and subtleties that we're likely to miss.