GK2- The Training Day Experiment

Unless Japan opted not to settle on it's starting position (which never happens), then the choke should not be occupied by a town.

Again, I have no pictures as I am at work, so this may already be clear in screenshots.
 
@Yoshi: What do you consider "key techs" for self research at this stage of the game? Anything 2nd tier, or do you prefer some to others?

@Mad-Bax: I think if you download the save and look at the map it will be clear whether there's a land bridge over by Japan. (There is no town on the possible bridge.) The problem with the screencap is that the menu/civliopedia buttons are sort of ...'hovering' over that particular part of the map, and it's hard to make it out. (That plus the fact it's a zoomed out map).

@SolarKnight: Though Yoshi's right in that a trade on first contact would be good, IMO the opportunity is not completely lost. We can still do some trading with Tokugawa. Japan starts with The Wheel, and that might be a good one to try and trade for.

I personally don't have a problem with researching Bronze Working, though somebody described an early military as "Paper Dolls" or something (i.e., build lots of Warriors). Lots of Warriors will be cheap, giving us enough numbers so that nobody will mess with us too early, use 'em for barb control, and later we can upgrade them to swords if we need 'em for a real war. Once we get our 3rd or 4th city I expect we'll want some Spears.
 
There are actually 4 tier-2 techs availible, HBR can be count as a fifth, because it has no tier-2 before it.

Mysticism and writing are both quite good, i would prefer writing in C3C for the philo. I vanilla both are good. They arn't the first picks the ai would choose, so you have a good chance getting them first even at minimum research.
Iron working is less advisable, because the ai's are really keen at it (as for most techs which enable new units).
Mathematics requires two techs to start, so this would be hard to start right from the start.
HBR also requires two techs, so you normally can't pick it eighter. (It takes normally 10-20 turns for the first contact and trading oppurtinities.)
The only tier-1 tech i would bother to research is pottery, if i don't have it.
So what would be best in this game (IMO ;))?
We don't have alphabet, so writing is out. Math also, since we also don't have masonry. We don't have BW, and i wouldn't bother research IW anyway for the above reason.
Both HBR requirements are missing too.
The last of our starting techs is CB, which enable us to research mysticism. But luckily we already found it in a hut, so we could even research Polythism at min research!
So thats what i had done. After it we hopefully have the wheel and WC, and there we could decide eighter HBR or monarchy. With mysticism, poly and monarchy you can trade for a lot of techs!
Put HBR into it -> three valuable techs researched, should allow us to trade of almost everything else.
 
The real trading opportunity that is slowly being lost is the ability to get a third tier tech for almost nothing, and then get all the known techs, world maps and AI money for that one tech.

Having popped mysticism it would be almost rude IMNSHO to pass up the opportunity of a 40 turn run on Poly. You won't get it from a hut because there are cheaper techs you don't have.

Do you really need the wheel right now? If Japan has not sold it on yet you will pay monopoly money for it.

As for spears... The problem with them is their name. If they were called "chocolate teapots" or "completely valueless AA unit" then no-one would build them, and that would be a good thing.

Spears and wonders... When you learn not to build them your game will be transformed immediately...

I dare you... ;)
 
Yes, the bad thing about spears is that they are totally passive units. All they can do (at least better than warriors) is to sit there and wait till someone attacks them. On the offence they are as good (or bad) as warriors.
So while your spears sit inside the city and taunt the foe to attack, this cowadly enemy can easily pillage or chase some worker and you can't do anything about it (because you won't waste a spear on offence, do you? He's expensive after all!) ;)
A archer or two warriors will do a much better job at defense most of the time (hint: counter attack). At least till horseman hit the field.
 
Originally posted by yoshi74
The last of our starting techs is CB, which enable us to research mysticism. But luckily we already found it in a hut, so we could even research Polythism at min research!
Originally posted by mad-bax
Having popped mysticism it would be almost rude IMNSHO to pass up the opportunity of a 40 turn run on Poly. You won't get it from a hut because there are cheaper techs you don't have.
Now there's another one of those finer points I'm here to pick up! (and it's not lost on me that both of you are saying the same thing...)

@ Mad Bax: Another good point - you're right, we don't need the Wheel right now. I'll have to take another look at SKs turnlog to see what other logical trades there might be...

On "spears and wonders": lately I've been playing without building wonders (and it has made a huge difference) but do you really think spearmen are useless? :confused: I'd appreciate it if you could develop that a little more..

edit - cross-posted w/ Yoshi... I think I see the logic here... but I'm still not 100% convinced...
 
While i agree that we don't need the wheel right now it would be nice to have it. For one to see where horses are. I this game i think everyone is quite sure that there are some horses nearby. You wouldn't let them play the iros without horsies, right mad-bax ;)?
But normally for a iro player it will be interesting to get the knowledge obout horses ASAP.
Also i won't mind about a monopoly price, as long as we can pay it with our tier-1 starting techs. I value them really low, because the ai gets them quickly anyway. Waiting some turns and they got them from someone else or researched them by themself and the trading value is zero.
Also, since we popped WC, it would enable to go for HBR after BW is researched or traded for (still i would prefer poly, but HBR won't be bad eighter).

[edit] concerning the spearman: I wouldn't go this far to say he is totally useless. But in the beginning, while founding the first ~6 cities they are worse, because they slow you too much down. 2 warriors are better at this time. With some more cities, when you have one or two cities who don't need to build settlers/worker some spears aren't bad. But don't count on them only. Some archers or other offensive troops are generally better at the defence. Build for every spear a bow and you have a good mixed defence, able to withstand some attack (even better with the defensiv fire from the archer) and be able to counter attack.

[edit2] some spell checking :scan:
 
Spears are useless. You might whip one in a border city that is facing a counter attack.

2 warriors cost the same as 1 spear. A town defended by 2 warriors cannot fall to a single enemy unit. The 2 defenders make two citizens content in despotism. Warriors upgrade to an attacking unit. If you lose a warrior in combat, you only lose 10 shields. Warriors upgrade over half an age earlier than spears and the upgrade improves them from 111 to 321 as opposed to 121 to 131 for spear to pike.

Even archers are more cost effective than spears as they are 211 with a defensive free shot.

Becoming comfortable with little or no defense is a necessary step to becoming a deity player IMO. At deity, even if you built nothing but defenders your defenxe would be weak compared to the AI. Accept this, and then think about what you want to do, rather than what the AI might do.

For me, that is invariably expand peacefully till I run out of room, then expand militarily till I get to the domination limit then play in any number of ways to reach the victory condition of choice.

Will spears help with any of these objectives? No.

Don't build them. :)
 
Originally posted by mad-bax
Becoming comfortable with little or no defense is a necessary step to becoming a deity player IMO...<snip>
....expand peacefully...then expand militarily...then play in any number of ways to reach the victory condition of choice.

Will spears help with any of these objectives? No.
"...we are not worthy..." :worship: :D

Seriously MB, I follow your logic...and also see that the 2 warriors that cost the same as 1 spear will add a content citizen when used as MPs... I guess I should just chalk this up as another example of stuff that works well at lower levels, but not so well on higher ones. (Self-research outpacing the AI being a biggie.) A military without defensive units just seems counter-intuitive to those of us that are still working our way up... as does trading for techs... learning to ...play from a position of weakness rather than build a position of strength.

Grasshoppa's ready to get out the duct tape and try another waltz on the rice paper now!
 
OK, it's time for me to jump in and defend the valiant spearmen.

Who else can you build that can be depended upon to defeat that elite modern armor army to save your empire from complete ruin :D

Actually, spearmen do have a good purpose. I like to start building vet spearmen late in the ancient age about when I start upgrading my warriors to swords. They are cheaper than swords for MP duty and allow the swords to move to the front where they can do some good. They also are effective as stack toppers for that SOD you've built to take on Babylon. Having 1-2 spears in the stack gives the Bowmen something to shoot at allowing your swords to attack at full strength. Also by building them pre-feudalism, you get the cheap shield cost and are then able to upgrade them to pikemen, which are necessary to have around when the AI gets knights. What is probably their best asset is being able to be effective throughout the entire game via the upgrade path. I've had many games where Joe the spearman eventually became Joe the Mech Infantry for just cash upgrades.

With all that said, in this game it's way too early for spears. Warriors are the military unit to be built until you can build chariots and horsemen (Mounted Warriors).
 
Thanks for the critisism guys, all i can say is that i'm far too used to the low levels, it is this kind of advice that i really need to get better, this is the first serious game i've played at this high a level so it's quite a culture shock to hear people say that spears are useless.

I can see i've got quite a few old habits to unlearn.

SolarKnight
 
Well here is a situation where being on Pacific Time has left me in the dust.

@Scout - Great analysis of SK's exploring. I could not have explained the confirm or deny principle any better.

That is a land bridge up there by Japan. We should cross it with a scout and see what Tokugawa has. He can get annoyed, but he won't kick your scout out. Let's cross that bridge. A good rule of thumb is to keep exploring right up to where you run out of dirt. Even if you just think you will see ocean. I've had many occasions where you see something across the ocean...like the boarder of a civ. Then you just stand there until some walks into view, and voila! Contact that no one else has.
 
So some questions for the team:

1. What do we do with the worker when he completes the mine?

2. What do we build after the granary?

3. What's the best deal we can get trading with Tokugawa? It might be an interesting exercise to have everyone down load SK's save and execute the best deal they can with Japan. Then we can compare notes and see how everyone did. Why don't we do that, since trading is one of the skills we will need to master in this game. This will be our first crack at it.
 
Just as an FYI

From my expierences, the AI willl complain when a unit enters it's territory. If the unit is a military unit (w/offense > 0) and if the unit is next to an AI city, you'll be ordered to leave now or declare. If it had no offense (workers/scouts/settlers/explorers) you can continue to move the units around without further complaint.

On the second turn you are in the AI territory, if your unit is not military there is no complaint. If it is military, then the AI looks at if the unit can reach one of their cities, compares military strengths and checks open deals, then either it may you to leave again (politely) or the declare/auto-eject options comes up.

The ensuing turns are all like turn 2.

Note that if your offending unit is a ship, the AI will look at what is being transported. An empty boat is the same as a non-combatant.

Their is a banned exploit where you move your scout/worker into the AI's land and camp out on their sole sourse of horses, iron, etc and prevent the AI from connecting the resource. Since the blocking unit has no offensive ability the AI does not percieve the threat and does not force the eviction.

BTW: One more comment on spearmen, when you are ready to build them, build veterans. The extra hit point makes a big difference in combat and makes the promotion to elite (with 10% bonus) more likely and yes, you can get a GL with a sucessful defense.
 
I think you will find a lot of different opinions on spears; their usefulness depends quite a bit on how you play.

For example, from what remember, Madbax likes to use fast units to hit cities hard and fast using knights and cavalry. This has several advantages; your wars are shorter and you can take cities faster. It is especially good for weaker civs that are behind in tech. There are other ways to fight wars though. For example, catapults, cannon, artillery can be used to soften up a city first. These units are able to do damage with no risk to themselves, so you are able to reduce casualties quite a bit. The disadvantage is that they move at speed one so your progress is much slower. This is pretty much THE way to fight if you happen to be behind in tech, or during the period between Infantry and Tanks. Of course, since you are moving slowly, you are more exposed to counter attacks and need to defend your artillery units. For this you need defensive units (which spears will upgrade to).

So here are my personal opinions on the matter:

1) If you are going to build spears, then build veteran ones whenever possible. The reason is that veteran ones will upgrade and always have use. Regular ones are not really worth upgrading and so more deadend. So if I have a town without barracks I pretty much always build the cheapest unit. By the time spears are the cheapest unit, I don't build units in towns without barracks.

2) In PTW, CIV warriors can be upgraded to swords. The sword rush (build warrior and save money; upgrade them all and attack you neighbor) is a really fun strategy and worth trying especially at regent and monarch. In conquests, the cost is 50% more so this is a bit harder to do.

3) One time I tend to build spears is when I have 7-9 shields in a town with barracks. The reason is that normally you get twice as many warriors as spear; and two warriors are generaly better than 1 spear. At 7-9 shields you get a spear in 3 turns and a warrior in 2 turns. Unless I am planning a warrior rush and need more warriors, I prefer 2 spear to 3 warriors, becase those spear upgrade and will defend me up through Mech Inf.

4) The number of units I build is very much dependent on the situation and try not to build more units than I need.

So in general my first few towns are defended by regular warriors; after I have my second or third town, I build barracks, so I pretty much never have more than 4 regular units ever. If barbs are light, then I build a single warrior to defend settlers. With heavy barbs, a mix of warrior, archers, and spear seems best. In general I don't worry too much about the AI. One exception to this: When I am doing better than the AI and when I have very little military, the AI seems much more likely to attack. So if I get a settler from a hut or have a mulit-cow start, I am much more likely to defend my capitol with a vet spear and archer or warrior and keep it there.

With high food, my capitol doesn't tend to build any units; the other towns handle that. Wth less food, there is plenty of time between settlers. By keeping my size higher I get very decent shields to build up a military (i.e. I don't like building a settler when I hit size 3 going back to size 1, I wait until size 5 or 6. The only exception is when I want to rush for a certain spot.

One final reason I build spears and defensive units in general. When war comes I tend to want to use all my offensive units. The defensive units are often cheaper, so it frees up these units to go to the front. In don't always defend interior cities (unless I have an ROP with a civ), just ones that can be reached - especially after rails.

Feel free to post the excell spread sheet you mentioned Scoutsout - If you sent that PM a while ago - I apologize for not responding - I am bad at checking for PM's regularly).
 
1. What do we do with the worker when he completes the mine?
Although we'd lose a movement point by not taking advantage of the road to mine the other BG, I think it's time to harness the power of the wine. I'd move him there and have him irrigate, then road.

After the granary, we make settlers! Hmmm...maybe not Lemme do a little math here... I think we'll want to make a warrior to let our population build a little bit. With 4 citizens and +4 fpt, we won't be able to make a settlers in 4 turns without depleting our population...it'll take us more like 6 turns/settler. Ideally, I think we want to start making settlers with a population of 5 and +5 fpt... making a settler (-2 population) just at the moment we would otherwise hit pop 7...

I'm going to play with this tonight, but my first reaction is that it might be wise to build something cheap while the worker irrigates that wine, then start popping out settlers.

@ Greebly, denyd - it sounds like you guys it's more a question of when rather than if to build spears.

I think we'll probably need more discussion on this as we settle our 3rd or 4th town. IMO, a worker factory near the floodplain w/ wheat is important, then we pick a couple of high-shield sites... build some warriors; once we get another reasonably productive city going, we could build a barracks in one (or both) higher shield towns. Then our units (whether warriors, spears, or archers) would be 4 hit point veterans...

The warrior upgrade gambit is something I've played around with a little bit. I'm following an SG on another thread where they deliberately stopped a worker from hooking up their iron so they could continue to build warriors for a mass-upgrade technique... I think it's well worth considering here if we want to fight a war but wait a little bit to trigger our Golden Age...assuming we have iron, maybe we could send 15-20 newly minted swords to Japan to clip his wings (and take any iron he might have...)

On combined arms: I'm a huge fan of using Infantry, Artillery, and Cavalry during the early/mid industrial era. I have problems with it in the earlier eras - particularly the ancient age. It's tough to marshall enough catapults to a single location to do much damage. I tend to favor fast units (and one-dimensional attacks) until Metallurgy.
 
Originally posted by SolarKnight
Pre Turn: Seems we have no science research, thats not something i really feel comfortable with, ill see how long it would take to get bronze working at max, if only for defence against barbarians and other civs if they show up. (That and the fact i've read stories of players self researching on emperor and above).

Set to Bronze at max, due in 16.

Leave capital building scout for now.

The scout I would have done, the science on BW I wouldn't have. Also I would have moved the warrior out to scout, saving time by making it 1 less place our scouts had to go.

Hit Enter.

Turn 1 3450 BC: Salamanca: Scout -> Granary
Borders Expand.
New Scout W -> S.
Southern Scout pops hut, we get Warrior Code.
Northern Scout Moves south towards the fog.

Looks good, although it's hard to duplicate cause I don't know if you were working the forest or the BG.

Turn 2 3400 BC: Worker SW to BG square
New Scout S.
South Scout W.
North Scout S -> W.

I would have definatly improved the BG that was already roaded, before heading over to the other one. You won't need that one until we have 4+ population.

Turn 3 3350 BC: North Scout NW -> W.
Worker Builds Road.
New Scout SW -> S
South Scout SE.

All good, cept the worker.

Turn 4 3300 BC: New Scout SW -> W.
South Scout E.
North Scout NW -> NW, spot Green Border, Going by the knowledge of the opponents we have, i would guess thats japan. :(

All good.

Turn 5 3250 BC: North Scout N.
New Scout E -> E.
South Scout S.

All good, I would be moving my scout to push through the new territory, with 2 moves & no attack/defense it can get through easily.


Turn 6 3200 BC: South Scout SE to reveal large jungle.
New Scout E -> NE.
Worker builds mine.
North Scout N.

Make contact with Japan, they have the wheel, but are behind Pottery, Mysticism and Warrior code. Looks like a small island they are on, but the fog makes it impossible to tell, im guessing by the looks of the mp, we are either a continents or a pelago, ive never seen a pangea with so much water, which increases the likelyhood of them bing on a small island.

Before this turn japan aproaced me offering TW for Myst & 40g. HA! But we have contact now.

Since the worker now has to mine, the wasted turns are starting to add up(no offense), next turn he could have had a mine already down & be walking to the wine.

And I won't even go into the trading, needless to say I wouldn't have traded anything either at that point. Japan either wants Myst(which I wouldn't have given them because I'd be doing a 40turn gambit for Poly) or both our techs & all our gold for TW.

Turn 7 3150 BC: North Scout SE then S.
I drop the science slider 1 step so we dont lose any more money.
But i then increase the lux by 1 as the city is about to grow (and i can't remember how many content citizens you get on Monarch :()
New Scout NW -> North.
South Scout S.

Note for the future: you have a single turn as leway, when dealing with citizens. IE you can have a citizen that grows be unhappy, but you have to fix it that turn, if it goes to the next turn the town will riot.

Turn 8 3100 BC: Drop lux again as there is one warrior in salamanca and its providing MP, sorry ive been caught with that one before, and didnt want to be caught again.
South scout South, looks like our land mass is coming to an end.
New Scout N -> NW.
North Scout S -> SW, the japs iland is bigger than it looks.

During this turn Japan learned BW, I would have traded him WC & 10g for BW, that way you could start your Poly gambit. Even though it huts to give up a tech for a tech you'll have in 3 turns anyway, those 3 turns headstart on a 40turn gambit could make all the difference in the world.

Turn 9 3050 BC: North Scout SE then E.
New Scout N then NE.
South Scout E, looks like there is a little more land here.

At this point I decided to take a detour from your save & last turn I run my scout through Japanese territory. I won't tell you guys what I found though.

Turn 10 3000 BC: South Scout E.
New Scout NW.
North Scout S then S.

Looks good. At this point it becomes obvious that we were emphasising different things, you were going for production where I kept it on the food tiles. Your Capitol: 3 population, grow in 5 & produce in 5. Mine: 3, grow in 2 & produce in 6. Which would you rather have? Just goes to show you how strong a role growth/food in the early game plays.

........I got a start on the granary, and the development of the capital, hopefully we can get the settler factory online before we see japanese cities on our island.. Sorry about the lux slider, i was just a bit more careful than normal as i normally get riots this early on due to me not concentrating.

No problem at all! I'd much rather you use a single gold piece then have a town riot, be as careful as you want.:D
 
When i was improving the land, i tried to set it up as in the screen shot of the settler factory, i was only improving the Bonus grassland tiles, then i started working towards the wines.
 
Questions for the group:

1. When BW finishes in 2(are you going to let it go 2 turns or trade for it?) what's your next tech? Don't just say Poly, because that's what we've been saying(going for Poly means you won't be able to trade Myst, probably ever), why do you think we should go for whatever tech you selected?

2. It's pretty obvious what scout 2 & the scout to the south are going to be doing. What you going to do with scout 1?

3. It's also obvious we need another quick unit before we start the settler factory, you going to pick a warrior or a scout & why? The warrior will be an MP, and escort when we produce that settler, however a scout can get to the north & blockade the forest tile to prevent any units from coming through for at least 40 turns(I'm assuming they have just a palace in their capitol). What advantages are gained through each, other then what I listed?
 
Originally posted by Sir Bugsy
3. What's the best deal we can get trading with Tokugawa?
Per your request, Sir Bugs!

Some things I'd like to point out:
1) I went to the domestic screen and ratcheted science down to 10%, which left us at +6gpt. Doing this deal will leave us with a reserve of 11 gold, and keep at least a little gold trickling in at 1gpt... (that should improve as our city grows...) We'll have 15 or 16 gold in the treasury when we have to start paying upkeep on the Granary...

2) I suspect SolarKnight's research into Bronze Working was not for naught, as I could have purchased BW outright for 25 gold straight up. (SK - I'm with ya, buddy!)

3) As someone pointed out earlier, The Wheel is not cheap; monopoly priced. Much of what you see "on the table" here is to get TW. If we can meet somebody else, we should be able to recoup some of this by trading TW.

4) This deal lets us keep Mysticism. :D

TRADE1.jpg
 
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