GK2- The Training Day Experiment

[ControlFreak]

Originally posted by denyd
CF - One problem with putting the northern choke point city in that location is that you'll guarantee a war with Japan. Since you are grabbing one of the non-expanded tiles from an AI city, that pretty much ensures a quick AI reprisal for the poaching of their territory. If that was an expansion tile, then you'd be ok. The advantage of that spot however is once a veteran spear is garrisoning the location, he'll be pretty tough to kill considering the hill bonus (and maybe walls later).

I was actually refering to blocking at that point, but not settling. You are right that you would be asking for it from Japan. Trying to plant a city there would be a huge gamble. I would prefer settling the red and blue dots scoutsout mentioned as my Canal/Chokes. Using units to block the horse tile up by Japan until war is declared. Once we start pushing towards them, then settling that horse tile would be a good launch point. Note that by that time, galleys will circumvent this tile with ease.

 

[shoguntaka]

Originally posted by denyd
CF - One problem with putting the northern choke point city in that location is that you'll guarantee a war with Japan. Since you are grabbing one of the non-expanded tiles from an AI city, that pretty much ensures a quick AI reprisal for the poaching of their territory. If that was an expansion tile, then you'd be ok. The advantage of that spot however is once a veteran spear is garrisoning the location, he'll be pretty tough to kill considering the hill bonus (and maybe walls later).

Can you explain that little more, I've heard heard of such thing.
Thanks

 

[shoguntaka]

Here's my dot maps, and I'm making use of RCP.
Each city, if I calculated correctly, has distance of 4 (if 4.5,
it's rounded down to 4).

The number on each dot is the order that I would send
settler to, staring with #1.

 

[denyd]

@shogun: Sure, basically it's what happens when you approach a size-enhanced person in a narrow hallway. You can't get by.

What you would do is place a city in a spot where their is no land method of passing the city with out ending up in your territory. That would allow you to block those spaces with scouts/military and heavily defend that city. This would prevent an AI from getting to your lightly defended core cities.

Just realized you might be asking about defending the choke with a spear and why it would be hard to kill.

Well to start with a spearman gets a base defense of 2. Then being fortified he gets a 25% bonus, then for being on a hill he would get a 50% bonus and being in walled or 6+ size city he would get a 50% bonus. So that defending spearman would be a a defending 4.5 (2 x (1 + (.25 + .50 + .50). Until the middle ages there is probably no single unit that would try to take him on (a veteran Immortal has < 50% to win). Once you are able to upgrade him to a Pikeman then defensive value becomes 6.75 for a Veteran Pike giving an Vet MDI only a 25% chance to win.

So unless a stack of 4-6 attackers approach (that gives you time to reinforce the defenses) this city forms a cork for the AI expansion.

 

[shoguntaka]

But the tile the scout is standing on is not a chokepoint,
the AI can move east and then south.

 

[yoshi74]

Welcome (back) CF, your comments are a very valuable addition not only for the class, but also for the lurkers

As for your 'problem': its somewhat weird that watching american idol is considered valuable time,while playing civ is not. My girlfriend enjoyed playing both diablo 2 and morrowind, but there is no way she could enjoy strategic games like civ 3.
On the other hand she likes watching tv-stuff like american idol (in germany know as 'deutschland sucht den superstar' aka 'germany searches the idol' which IMO requires to turn off the brain which i don't like. I need some challenge, something to think about.
Forcing her to play civ 3 would as senseless as forcing me to watch the stuff the tv stations send.
Everyone should be able to do what he likes. Too much 'stepping back' for one side isn't good. Some meeting in the middle, but never the resign of one side. Hopefully you find a way for the 'meet in the middle'.

 

[mad-bax]

Hey CF
If there's one guy I miss around here it's you.

You seen whats happened to your quick game registry lately. 35 people playing in 7 teams this month. Just let me know when you want it back. I'm only the caretaker.

You're gonna love this map - wait till they start playing with boats.

- well somebody has to.

 

[Sir Bugsy]

@ MB - If ainwood ever stops making GOTM maps, I think I want you to take his place. You both have great minds for this stuff.

@ team - I guess we need to step back and figure out what our priorities are. One of the things like like to do is set priorities and goals for myself. If I am going to start a war, I have a series of goals and an exit strategy (i.e.: I'm going to take city A, B, and C, then sue for peace. If that fails I will do task A then task B.)

At about this time in every game I set some goals that I want to accomplish before 2000 BC and 1000 BC. The priorities will vary if you have given yourself a specific goal or variant for your game. Obviously, if you are playing Always War (AW) you are going to have different priorities than if you are playing a One City Challenge (OCC) or are trying for a 20K Culture victory.

In this game we are just trying to play a strong opening and develop some skills that everyone can grow with. Priorities can usually be broken down into the following categories:

Security
Science
Exploration
land grab or denial
resource grab or denial
infrastructure
military

I would like the team to look at what we know right now and think about which of these items you should prioritize. Depending on how you prioritize will determine how you play the next 50-70 turns or so. If you don't do this, you will probably take a very short-term approach or even a purely reactionary approach to the game.

So why doesn't each team member give us their list of priorities and why. Remember, I'm not looking for a formula here. I'm looking. Given the situation, what is the best approach? Think big. Think out of the box. Then we can discuss how to approach each priority.

After 21 pages, I think we actually might be getting into the meat of what needs to be done in this game.

 

[scoutsout]

@Sir Bugsy - I think our number one priority for the next 40-50 turns is going to be grabbing up all this land. Lots of settlers, workers, warriors. After that, military buildup. We're going to need to deal with Japan or Persia eventually, might as well get it over with. Who knows, we might be able to take out Japan without using our UU to triger a despotic GA....

While doing the military buildup we should probably work towards map making, getting a few galleys out, and doing some more exploring...maybe have a small number of settlers on hand to claim any islands that look interesting. I think the build-out/land grab phase of the game is going to sap our resources too badly to build military and city improvements at the same time.

@Shogun - I had started on a dotmap, then I saw yours. I saw a couple of things in your map that I liked...so I made some changes and incorporated those things I liked into my map. Have a look at this and let me know what you think. It's a 4-7-10 RCP plan...I have no idea if the cities on the third "ring" will be any good, or the northerly 2 even possible... We might have to sack a Japanese city to get those canal cities. That would just be a pity...

Things I changed from my original dotmap - I had a city one tile west of the present position of my #1 (your #2) until I started looking at a potential road route along the eastern shore of the river. Get some workers out of this city and we could have that road built in fairly short order. There's another thing I want to look at with a city on that site. Can we make a second settler factory there? If we could get 3-5 settlers out of that site, then we could take a lot of pressure off our capitol, and send the settlers from our capitol north and east...

I also had a city one tile SW of your #5, which I moved to your #5 location to compensate for moving the city I just discussed.

Your city site #3: If you move it one tile SE, you won't be pressuring your #4 as much... leaving room for my #3... (Put my #3 in there, leave your #3 as is, and your #4 gets squeezed a bit...)

Look at your #1 and my #2. With the city on my #2 site, the workers created in that city won't face a movement penalty to get across the river to the interior of our civ. Aside from that, I don't see much difference between the two sites.

I put cites 4 and 5 towards Japan because I think we need to establish that frontier fairly soon...

Take a look at the orange lines on my map as future road routes. Once we have enough workers to spare, I think those should be priorities, both for expansion and military reasons. What do you think? See how your #2 (my #1) is a key point along that southern route?

@lurkers/experienced players: Getting the most out of a floodplain city is a weakness of mine. So any general commentary along those lines would be appreciated...

 

[Gengis Khan]

My service provider goes down in my area, then when it's back up the forums are down. Just my luck........ BUT they're back!! And I have all day untill I have to go to work.

Finishing up shadowing.............................. done!

And the much anticipated turn log.


As a note I’m not saying this is the best way or anything like that, only suggesting what I would have done differently. At least it will give you a different perspective on things. I’m really bad at suggestion things without sounding condescending so I pre-apologize if it comes across like that.

Originally posted by scoutsout
Trade Pottery, Warrior Code, 32 gold and 5 gpt to Tokugawa for Bronze Working and The Wheel. I'm more interested in buying time than Bronze Working. We can't sustain 90% research, and I want to start the "40 turn Polytheism Gambit". The Wheel isn't cheap, but I wanna see the ponies! Change Research queue from Iron Working to Polytheism.

While I understand the reasoning for wanting to start the gambit quicker(and have stated the same thing), not a chance I would have done that. I might have given him 25g for BW alone(I doubt it though), but TW isn’t even close to being worth Pot, WC, 7g, & 5gpt. We don’t need horses yet, we need money.

As a rule, I won’t EVER give up gpt , until I meet at least 2(normally 3) Civs. The only time(some example, not really the only times) I’ll break this rule if :
A. I determine for 100% certain that me & another Civ are alone on an island(then it will normally be for Writing so I can go for MM to start suicide caravels).
B. If I’m playing a ?CC game and need to have IW/TW before founding my remaining cities.
C. Have a river/lux/gold heavy coastal capital start and really want the Colossus(but don’t have & can’t start researching BW) in my capitol for the increased income to an already rich city.

The main advantage in giving up gpt is that it allows you to get a tech(even at a monopoly price) and barter that tech off to other Civs for additional techs you don’t have.

Turn 2 - 2900 BC
S Scout E, sees end of land
Worker, finishes job, NW to wine
MM citizen from forest to freshly mined BG
Salamanca will now grow in 2, not 3. Delay that order - MM citizen from UN-mined BG to forest. Salamanca now gets Granary in 2, grows in 3. Our Granary should be full when it's built now.

Excellent.

Turn 3 - 2850 BC
Worker - Irrigate
E Scout W, SW
N Scout N, N
S Scout W

Good choice to irrigate before roading.

Salamanca Granary > Warrior
Zoom to Salamanca: Granary is full, MM worker from Forest to BG, Warrior in 2, growth in 1, treasury at +1 gpt (we CAN afford the granary and the techs)
E Scout W, SW
N Scout..SW onto hill w/ horses
S Scout W

Looking good, something got changed & somehow Persia popped up on my radar this turn.

Turn 5 - 2750 BC
N Scout N
E Scout W, W
Zoom to Salamanca, 1 unhappy citizen. MM citizen from forest to wine for growth in 3 instead of 4. Treasury @ +3 gpt, slide Lux to 10%, now +2 gpt. Citizens: 1 smilin', 2 content, 1 gripin'.
S Scout W

MMing exactly what I would have done.

Good choice on moving to block the landbridge.

Turn 6 - 2710 BC
Salamanca Warrior>Settler (?)
Hit F3, no barb warning, Warrior draws MP duty. Lux slider back to 0, 4 content citizens in Salamanca. Growth in 2, worker will finish irrigating wine in 1 turn...
Warrior - bump (skip)
E Scout W
N Scout W, S, now trespassing.
S Scout SW - Meets a Persian Warrior! Persia is down Wheel, Pottery, Ceremonial Burial. He's got 60 gold. He'll offer 17 for The Wheel, 50 for either Pottery or Ceremonial Burial. We sell him CB for 50 Gold.

Good job remembering to bump back lux.
Also nice to send scout through Japan, I see other scout is on the way to block off the pass(I hope).

Yes, he offered 50g for Pot or CB, but had you increased it he would actually pay all of it for either of them. I too would have chosen to sell him CB instead of Pottery.

What does this tell you? We paid 2 techs & 132g for TW, but can only get 17g for it.

You could also MM from the un-improved BG to the forest to save a turn on the settler, at the expense of 1gpt.

Turn 7 - 2670 BC
S Scout SW
Warrior <Enter> (Zoom to Salamanca) +5 fpt! Settler in 5(?)
Wine is irrigated, nobody's gripin'. Bump Warrior
Worker - Build road
E Scout NW, NW
N Scout SW, SW
Wonder what Tokugawa will offer for Masonry?

Very nice.

Turn 8 - 2630 BC
S Scout SW
Warrior <Enter> Settler in 3, growth in 3, 1 citizen gripin'. MM citizen from forest to un-roaded BG to E-NE. Grow in 2, settler in 3
Hit F1, lux to 10%; 1 smiling, 2 content, 1 gripin'.
F3, no barb warning, bump warrior.
E Scout N NW, sees Jap settler
N scout SW SW

Very nice as well, like how you check the MA for barbs(although at this point it wouldn’t give us much of an indication of what direction to head for our gold, still it’s a good habit to be in).

Turn 9 - 2590 BC
S Scout S, S
Warrior - F3 - no barb warning, bump
E Scout NW NW
N Scout S, S - sees yellow border!
<Ctrl-Shift-D> We have met the Zulu!
Shaka (Polite, no less!) Has +10 gold, down Masonry & Mysticism
Quick check
Tokugawa - +87 gold, down Masonry & Mysticism
Xerxes - +10 gold, down Pottery & Mysticism

Xerxes offers 10g for Pottery, we take it
Tokugawa offers 80 gold +2gpt for Masonry, we accept
Shaka offers 10 gold for Masonry, we take it.

[/QUOTE][/B]

Like how you used Diplo to meet Shaka a turn earlier before he showed up on the FA or we saw a unit.

Good scout movement.

Excellent Trade with Toku. No comment on the other 2.

Turn 10 - 2550 BC
Worker finishes road to wines!
E Scout N NW sees warrior
N Scout S S (Trespassing)
Worker S
Warrior <Enter> 2 smilin, 2 hangin' out, 2 gripin'
MM Citizen from forest to grass to maintain +5fpt
S Scout SW

I would have ran the worker to the other side to mine the BG, but that’s just me.


All in all a good set of turns, you got a bit carried away with the trading, but no real harm done.

 

[Gengis Khan]

Originally posted by Sir Bugsy
@ team - I guess we need to step back and figure out what our priorities are. One of the things like like to do is set priorities and goals for myself. If I am going to start a war, I have a series of goals and an exit strategy (i.e.: I'm going to take city A, B, and C, then sue for peace. If that fails I will do task A then task B.)

At about this time in every game I set some goals that I want to accomplish before 2000 BC and 1000 BC.

Priorities can usually be broken down into the following categories:

Security
Science
Exploration
land grab or denial
resource grab or denial
infrastructure
military

I would like the team to look at what we know right now and think about which of these items you should prioritize. Depending on how you prioritize will determine how you play the next 50-70 turns or so. If you don't do this, you will probably take a very short-term approach or even a purely reactionary approach to the game.

Couldn't agree more, and please be specific. What's your primary, secondary ect? What's short-term(10-20 turns) , and what's your long term(40-50) goal(s)? Any worries or problems you think might interfear with these?


Scouts: Dotmap looks nice, but that settler wandering around is about to throw a wrench in it.

After 21 pages, I think we actually might be getting into the meat of what needs to be done in this game

Has it really been that many?? It doesn't feel like it could possibly have been more then 19.

 

[scoutsout]

Originally posted by Gengis Khan
Scouts: Dotmap looks nice, but that settler wandering around is about to throw a wrench in it.

Thanks - please note that I was trying to build on what Shogun posted. As for the 2 blue cities to the north... yeah, I think we're going to see a Japanes city founded on one of those green dots here pretty shortly. Like I said, we may wind up having to raze a couple of Japanese cities to get our canal towns...

I'll do a more specific answer to Sir Bugs' prioritizing questions later, though I think grabbing up all this land is going to keep us pretty occupied for a while.

The one thing that bothers me about settling the 2 floodplain city sites first is the lack of shields... we do need to start thinking about a good spot to produce some units - even if they're just warriors. Some raw numbers should keep the AI from making too many demands, and we are perhaps overdue for some barbarian activity.

 

[mad-bax]

IMO you need a worker pump and then unit building cities. I stress though that this is just my style of play talking. Other priorities work well too. Just don't be too dismissive of the floodplains. You can get a worker every other turn from there without a granary. There is plenty of land to work. Look at all that jungle you will have to trudge through (or will you ) to get to Persia.

 

[ControlFreak]

Originally posted by mad-bax
Hey CF
If there's one guy I miss around here it's you.

Is that because I'm the only one who left?

My last two hours of typing got eaten by a database glitch. This post will be shorter and written in notepad first. I'm finding out how hard it is to put thoughts into words. Maybe you were all thinking this already but I tried to formalize it as much as possible.

It seems like most of the responses as to what's next are based on what's available to do. I think it's important to pick a long term plan and then strive towards fulfulling that goal.

The case in point here is settling your starting area. While "fill in our land" answers the question of "what are you going to do in the next 10-20 turns?" and manipulating dots to get this tile or that tile says "how" it doesn't help you PLAN YOUR DOMINATION OF THE WORLD.

It's sort of a given that you will fight. You want to have wars on your terms, not your enemies. People have already described the drawbacks of fighting Japan and Persia based on their UU. You have also touched on the timing of your GA with Mounted Warriors. So someone put all that info together to answer THE guiding question.

Do you want to have wars early or later (what age, what part of that age)?
Based on that timing, you will want to maximize your civilizations relative power. The main phases, as I see them, are:

AA-EarlyMiA

• Spacing: 2-4 tiles
• Infrastructure: Barracks, Some Granarys
• Government: Dont care
• Wonders: Capture
• Attack: AA units, maybe knights, artillery is always good.
• Defense: AA units, maybe pikes, artillery is always good.

Late MiA

• Spacing: 4-5-tiles
• Infrastructure: Happiness (market,temple), Economy (market, court)
• Government: Republic (in a few cases Monarchy)
• Wonders: Build some, capture rest
• Attack: horses, MiA units, artillery is always good.
• Defense: MiA units, artillery is always good.

IA-MoA

• Spacing: 5 tiles
• Infrastructure: Everything if it helps your city
• Government: Republic (possibly Democracy or Monarchy)
• Wonders: Build most
• Attack: cavs, tanks maybe MA, artillery is always good.
• Defense: muskets, rifles, maybe infantry or MI, artillery is always good.

You have a horse replacement UU so do you want to use the MW to fight war (AA-EarlyMiA time) or just use him against a weaken unit to trigger GA later (Late MiA or later)?

If it's the first then I think scoutsout dotmaps are good. Cram the city's into the first ring and get building military. He's got tight spacing and puts cities right in the FPs.

If it's the second then I think you shogun has gone the right direction. His map may be considering building fewer of the first ring cities proposed. The reason is that you can get a lot of cities on rivers. They will be using 12 tiles each without aquaducts (Reason not to move shogun's city SE). His FP cities will have a lot of hills to use once out of despostism and grown to size 12.

Cramming all the cities will drop the number of usable tiles per city below your twelve tile capabilities. Having fewer first ring cities will make the overall corruption of the second ring lower. tradeoffs between tight and space.

Your target age for strength also determines how you deal with the flood plains. In the AA, in despotism, you can get a lot of growth but no sheilds, in the later ages, you use the flood plains to feed citizens working on hills/forests. So later on, they become sheild powerhouses. If you only plan on fighting the AA and being done before hospitals, then you settle a lot of towns along the river, even right on the flood plains in necessary because you want to maximize sheilds (no aquaduct on the river and the city will generate a sheild on the FP what would normally only make food.) If you want the large city power the FP offers later, you settle one city between FP and hills and plan for the time when all the hills are mined, all FPs are irrigated.

It all depends on when you want to be at your peak performance.

Note that some players can slowly shift their city planning throughout the ages, even going as far as disbanding squashed cities in the modern age. The best players can force the game to spend all its time in the age of your choice. How would you try to do that?

Anyway, make sure you answer the "by the 2000BC, 1000BC" questions by including where you think the tech tree will be at that point and how ready for war/infrastructure you plan to be. That will help justify selecting city cites regardless of dotmaps.

With that said, I think mad-bax is right that workers then units is the way I prefer to play so the priority of the cities will be based first on food, then on sheilds. Growth is power in Civ.

 

[shoguntaka]

Hmmmm, I'm having a dilemma: I can't decide if I want to start a early ancient war against Japan with MW.

Let me construct a pro/con table:

Ancient Age War:
Pro: We will wipe out Japan and Zulu, completely neutering any future threats, and allow us Empire to grow very large without land-grabbing contest, and we will get a MGL to build a FP much earlier. And doing Ancient Age War will maximise our CivIII UU's strength. The problem with Zulu is that their spearmen is fast, and our MW won't be able to retreat
Con: Our GA is uttlerly wasted.

And if we are going for AA war, then we should use Scout's map, but it'll be a short-term benefit (but huge). We will be able to produce a mass of MW, and it'll maximise our military strength early in the game, but the crammed cities will suffer as a consequence.

On the other hand, if we are going for a peace until our empire is strengthen and expanded.

Pro: We will have much more efficient and productive GA.
Con: Tougher opponents.

If we are going for peaceful approach early in the game, then we should use the dot-map I drew. The inner cities will be more productive than the inner cities in Scout's map.

Now, I think about this:

I really want to have larger empire, less opponents, and possibly a MGL to rush a Forbidden Palace in other civ's capital, and that'll double our whole civilization strength, and I want to maximise the strength the civ's UU (Mounted Warrior). I think this outweights the benefit of productive GA. So, I say, we use Scout's map of crammed inner ring of cities, and start a early war against Japan.

The reason I'm neglecting the Persians is because they're on the other side of the jungle, and will probably build the Immortals before we destroy them. We can build a choke-point city there, heavily stacked with spearmen, walled, etc. I believe the choke-point city will hold off any future Persian attacks.\

Also, another benefit of staring early AA war is that we'll have much less trouble of dealing with the cities flipping on us. Most of the cities will have roughly around size 1-3.

 

[Sir Bugsy]

Alright! Shogun is starting to use his mind! Excellent pro-con. This is exactly what you need to do throughout the game. It is all a matter of thoroughly evaluating risk and reward and then making informed decisions. Realize that your decisions won't be the same as someone else's. That is why the game is so interesting. They won't always be right. Learn from your mistakes and figure out how to make a better decision next time.

 

[scoutsout]

@ControlFreak you raised an awful lot of good questions in your post...

I'm really not sure that my dotmap and Shogun's are that much different... in terms of strength at a particular age (though neither of us looks like were headed to 25 population megalopolis type cities...)

Consider this: Take my city #3, used as a "jumping off point" for the expansion towards Japan... maybe build a barracks there when we get enough productive cities going... but otherwise, build no additional city improvements...

As the empire "matures" and the core cities start feeling cramped, pump the city for workers, and disband it. (put a few workers there to rebuild the road...) With my #3 disbanded, compare my core city layout to Shogun's. What do you think? Is that nuts?

Now, if that city is planned for eventual disbanding, his #2 makes a little more sense than my #1...long term. I just wanted to throw that little bit out there for us to chew on while I carefully consider the stuff you posted to help us formulate better answers to Sir Bugs' questions...

 

[ControlFreak]

Originally posted by Sir Bugsy
They won't always be right.

Sometimes there is no right and wrong, just different.

Well thought out shogun!

Note about GA, sometimes you're not wasting a GA just because it's early. If you have a GA and your cities go from 3spt to 5spt, you make MW every six instead of every ten turns. As long as you watch your builds and MM so that you don't have 2s to go in a town that makes 10spt, you shields aren't wasted.

True that being in despotism cuts back on the potential for maximum cash in a GA but the production isn't that affected. If you can use an early GA to destroy some neighbors and take their land/cities, you're starting on a higher growth curve than if you waited until later and waste your sheilds by having more units die.

scoutsout@ I realize that you started from shoguns map and you added more cities so it looks more crowded. I was more refering to the philosophy behind your placements rather than the actual city cites. For example, what difference do you percieve between your western FP city and shoguns? When are his 21 tile at their best versus when are your 21 tiles at their best?

I agree that you can disband a worker farm in the late stages. In practice, I don't plan on disbanding my cities because, in experience I find there is never the right time to do that.

 

[scoutsout]

Originally posted by ControlFreak
scoutsout@ I realize that you started from shoguns map and you added more cities so it looks more crowded. I was more refering to the philosophy behind your placements rather than the actual city cites. For example, what difference do you percieve between your western FP city and shoguns? When are his 21 tile at their best versus when are your 21 tiles at their best?

Aside from the "early game tight placement" thing, there is only one other advantage to my western FP city placement over Shogun's: workers created in that city will not incur a movement penalty by crossing the river. Workers pumped from that spot get into a useful position just a tiny bit quicker.

Shogun's western FP city placement is pretty strong, even in the short run... since it captures more shield rich tiles before a border expansion. As for the "21 tile" question, it's hard to tell since we don't know where the next ring of cities would be placed....

The spot I picked was almost a purely logistical consideration, and an admittedly short-sighted one. Having said that...if that city pumps out 20 workers for us, each incurring a one-move penalty just to cross the river...that's 20 worker moves...

I agree that you can disband a worker farm in the late stages. <snip>

Unless I mis-spoke, I wasn't talking about disbanding a worker farm, but a unit farm (My #3, 4 tiles NW of the capitol). I was talking about pumping workers out of it for a few turns to get it down to size 1 prior to disbanding it...leave the pumped workers on the tile to re-road it once there's a pile of rubble there.

In light of my suggestion that this city get a barracks, pump units, and then get disbanded at some point... that leaves room to take my NE inner city and put it where Shogun put his #3... plops a city on a BG, but it also puts it on a river... Consider that, and the difference between my dotmap and Shogun's come down to that western Floodplain city....and a desert town to the southwest that can stay small for all I care...it's there to claim some incense...

Now I really am going to quit posting until I've had time to carefully consider the more important questions that you and Sir Bugsy raised.

 

[scoutsout]

Okay - this may or may not be what you gurus are asking for - it's "painted with a very broad brush" so to speak. The research strategies are not carefully thought out. But here's a go at an overview of a long-term strategy:

Long Term Plan: Own this continent before anybody discovers Astronomy, and build on that position to take the rest of the world in an industrial era slugfest, or smoke-um Iroquois peace pipe on Alpha Centauri later on.

Phase one: Open-land build-out.

Goal: Through peaceful expansion and settling, grab every single tile from "The lake" in the north to the "jungle choke" in the south.

Strategy: Develop a second settler factory to populate the south, push settlers north from the capitol, fill the east and western areas in before other AI's can encroach with galleys.

Military Priorities: Build warriors early, a handful of Archers for barb control, barracks, more warriors. Get some archers to the frontiers in case we need to skirmish...

Research Priorities: Finish Polytheism Gambit, acquire Iron Working, research Writing and Map Reading. If we can acquire Map Reading through trade, work towards Literature.

Exploration Priorities: Scouts continue to work north and south, to gain more information on the lands to the West (Zulu) and South (Persia). Get a few suicide galleys out.

Infrastructure priorities: Roads, terrain improvements, more roads. Barracks in cities with high shield production. Temples in selected productive cities that have fresh water.

Transition: As we build out and reach roughly 2 warriors per city, start building some spears and archers and get some to the frontiers... (Note: if we have no iron, we will need to cut the number of warriors in half, and build a large stack of archers...)

Phase Two: First Ancient War

Goal: Take out Japan without triggering our Golden Age.

Strategy: Do a massive upgrade of our Warriors to Swordsmen, and send them against Japan. Get Shaka to join us in an Alliance (he gets his GA and builds a wonder for us). We want everything east of the Land Bridge... Let Shaka have what's west of the land bridge, if he can take it. If not, we take that too. Either way, Shaka gets an early GA and we get a nice chunk of Japan.

Military Priorities: Build and buy Swords, and start on a few Mounted Warriors. Send a few MW's to the southern most city to skirmish against any Immortals that may show up (just in case).

Research Priorities: Work towards Monarchy, Literature, acquire Mathematics, Currency through trade.

Infrastructure Priorities: If we can acquire Currency through trading, start building a few markets, though this can wait.

Transition: Garrison what we took from Japan, focus on building Mounted Warriors. Get into Monarchy.

Phase Three: A late Ancient/Early Middle Ages, War-triggered Golden Age

Goal: Get into Monarchy, take Persia

Strategy: Send a ridiculous number of Mounted Warriors to take out the Persians. Use the Golden Age for a massive Military build-up of MWs. If we can get to Chivalry in our GA, start putting shields into Knights...

Military Priorities: Mounted Units, almost exclusively.

Research Priorities: Work towards Chivalry if we're not already there. Acquire Republic if we don't already have it.

Infrastructure Priorities: We should build a selected Libraries and Marketplaces in key cities if we can.

Transition: Build spears or pikes to secure the Persian cities, to free up MWs to come home to be upgraded to Knights for the next war... if Chivalry is a long way off, build markets and some libraries to boost research.

Phase Four: Take out the Zulu

Strategy: Since MWs can't retreat from Impi, wait until we get Knights to take the Zulu. Hit the Zulu with what will hopefully be superior units, and push him into the sea/off the planet.

Research Priority: Get Engineering (for forest chopping courthouses in our MANY corrupt cities) then work towards Education, Astronomy

Infrastructure Priority: Once we get to the point that we can count Shaka's numbered days, we go on an infrastructure binge. Libraries and Markets in every city that can use them, Cathedrals in any cities that need them, and work towards getting universities in our core cities. Focus on temples and courthouses in our corrupt cities, and site that Forbidden Palace where it will do us the most good. In other words, build the capability to do some serious self-research.

Phase Five: Build a continental powerhouse

Once we own our own continent, we get into Republic and work hard on building our economy and self-research capability. Strive for research parity by mid-late Middle Ages. Put ourselves in a position to take a victory of our choosing. Either conquest/domination in the Industrial Age, or Space Race/Diplo... depending on our mood when we get there.

Research priorities: Astronomy, Banking, Navigation, Economics, then Democracy if corruption is still bad. Trade our way through the lower half of the tech tree, or get into Democracy and burn our way through it.

Military Priorities: Muskets in all coastal cities.

Wonders: If we can push Shaka into the Sea before Astronomy, we can start thinking in terms of building some wonders. A "super science" city containing Copernicus' Observatory and Newton's may be out of reach, but we can assess that when we get there. If we can't get Copernicus' Observatory, there are 2 wonders I'd like to see us build: Smith's Trading Co. and Magellan's Voyage.