GK2- The Training Day Experiment

[scoutsout]

Interesting decision to abandon Ulundi... you took an overextended position and denied them the chance to re-take the city. Heads-up play, I rather like that! (It's a lot more fun to raze cities in C3C, you get these nifty looking rockpiles...)

@Team: It appears to me that the soon-to-be former Zulu land will need to be resettled. Since Coletite was good enough to post a nice screenshot for you to right-click and download...

Where would you guys place cities to claim these lands? (Dotmaps anybody? )

 

[Sir Bugsy]

Since Gengis is waiting for his new 1.29f disk, I'll shadow these turns. GK, you owe me some serious dude!

One point to note, and I've been seeing this during almost everyone's turns. You need to CHECK F1 BEFORE hitting enter or space bar. It doesn't take much time especially if you have the smiliey face mode. I also do a diplo check at the same time (unless you have Dianthus' utility, then check that) Any head of state today can tell you what is going on in the world. If they can't the might end up like Saddam. You as a civ head of state should do the same.

I shadow during lunch tomorrow.

 

[Sir Bugsy]

Good point Scout. Where do you want to settle and how are you going to finish off the Zulu? What cities are you going to keep and which ones aren't positioned very well and deserve to be razed?

 

[denyd]

One little trick with F1 button. If you click on the heading above the faces, the list will sort with the biggest cities at the top. Normally, it's the larger cities that have riots. Figure that you get a base of content, plus the luxuries & marketplaces to make smiling people, add in the temples & cathedrals and any wonders, plus any luxury taxes, so only larger cities (greater that 6) and recently captured, might be candidates for riots.

 

[DJMGator13]

Interesting decision to abandon Ulundi... you took an overextended position and denied them the chance to re-take the city. Heads-up play, I rather like that! (It's a lot more fun to raze cities in C3C, you get these nifty looking rockpiles...)

Sometimes I'll let the city get recaptured, the AI will try to reinforce, usully with not enough troops, and then I retake the city the next turn. By taking and recapturing the city you have also lower the city pop by 2 without having to starve them.

 

[Mistfit]

Good turns coletite

Basic Dot Map:

At 1st glance there are really only 2 spots I would go after first:

Red: Because of fresh water

Blue because it is in our 10th ring

The rest of the cities I think are Ok where they are at. On the water is important. I believe these cities will be so courrupt and out of the way they will be used for population mostly. And of course the extra lux's

 

[GJ]

Wait a minute, what happened to Ulundi? I'm a little unclear on its fate - it's not in the screenshot but it's there when I boot up the save.

I think I like where the Zulu have already put their cities. A couple of them will autoraze, but we can deal with that. I might move Isandhlwana 1SW to get at those whales down there. (If it doesn't autoraze when we capture it, though, we can keep it there - as Mistfit said, these cities are probably going to be corrupt enough that they won't do us a whole ton of good.)

One thing that strikes me is that if corruption is going to be a serious problem, there's not a whole lot of advantage in razing larger or established cities and moving them one tile or two. If they aren't going to be productive anyway, then the main advantage in moving them would be to grab luxuries without requiring a whole lot of cultural expansion. But even that doesn't seem like a great reason to me, mostly because we would be duplicating luxuries we already have. By the time we would need control of all the extra incense and wines, we should have cultural expansion under control.

Plus, the closer cities to Salamanca are all in the desert anyway, so they won't produce much without a major-league irrigation project, and...well...you get the idea.

The only overriding reason I can think of for moving a city would be to keep it from stealing tiles from a productive neighbor to the north. In the meantime I don't see any really good way to make these towns a productive part of the empire.

Anyone have a reason for moving stuff around that I missed?
And just what is the deal with Ulundi?

 

[coletite]

Gator: Ulundi was pop 1, so we couldn't reduce pop. It already had culture (which didn't do us any good.)

GJ: I'll bet Shaka resettled Ulundi. He had a settler moving around there which diverted resources from the war. [EDIT] I took the screenshot before I accidently advanced to the next turn. SHaka probably established the "new" Ulundi during the IBT.

Bugsy: I checked F1 everyturn. The one riot I had was because I moved a unit out of Grand River AFTER I checked F1. Still a mistake.[EDIT] Oops! I missread your post the first time. You're right, checking F1 should be the LAST thing I do in a turn.

To finish off the Zulu, I would just keep the swords marching across the land. We should still have enough if we pull some out of defending ex-Japanese cities. I don't think this will be much of a problem so we could declare on Xerxes on the next player's turns.

As far as resttling, I think 1N,1NW of Misfit's red dot is a good place and, I think, still on fresh water. The red dot is only one tile away from Isand (assuming we keep it) which is a little too close if we are going to use the Zululand for population growth. I think we will also need to resettle Mpondo- pop 1, no culture.

Speaking of settling lands far away from our capital, it seems that general strategy is based on what our ultimate objective and government are. If we were going pure conquest and sticking to Monarchy for most of the game, then setting cities very close together (like ICS) would allow for the most unit support. If we wanted a high score for a late game vicotory (culture, ss, diplo) then we would want to have something closer to optimal to get realli high populations.

 

[Sir Bugsy]

Exactly coletite. First I usually do a diplo check, then in the early game I MM the cities, then F1 check then hit enter. With Dianthus' utility the whole thing is a lot quicker. Now I make sure the utility is working right, check the trades screen, the happiness screen, reenter civ and hit enter. What used to be five minutes now is less than a minute.

 

[Sir Bugsy]

Oh another thought, I wouldn't plan on these cities being corrupt all the time. We are going to enter EVERY government, including Communism and Democracy. In fact, after the Zulu war and before the Persian war, we're going to have you gents jump to Republic so we can compare and contrast the two in peace and war.

There is a lot of unused space, the whole west coast of Japan, plus the northwest, there's a whale up there. I would raze Isandle and build to get the other whale like GJ said. If you get a courthouse and a police station in these city in either communism or democracy, they will rock.

 

[Gengis Khan]

Thanks for the kind words guys. And don't worry, if I ever find out who did this I'll let everyone know so you can enjoy the show. It doesn't exactly make me overconfident when while the police were here, one of the guys was rattling off stats about the percentage of robberies in the area that "actually" get solved, or that he said "I wouldn't get your hopes up." about eight different times.

Rule #1 to my life: Whenver you're off work and have something you want to do for the day, inevitably someone won't show up for work and you'll get called in.

I'm back reading/catching up now.

[edit- And yea, I definatly owe you big time bugs. ]

 

[coletite]

I may be wrong on this count, but even with courthouse and in Democarcy, cities that far from the capital need to have high populations in order to be productive. So that will require a degree of optimal city placement and a focus on food.

If we are going into Republic that soon, we need to build infrastructure REAL fast. We have something like 96 units right now. In Monarchy I think we are getting almost 40 free units (a few more once we wipe out the Zulu) which means around 50 gpt additional spent in unit support in Republic. Can our infrastructure handle that? Is it one extra commerce for each tile already producing commerce? If so, then we should probably be alright. Ok, I'm rambling...

 

[scoutsout]

@Coletite, et al: For those of you who have been playing a lot in Monarchy, I think you'll be pleasantly surprised with Republic. I find it durable enough for all but the most serious warmongering, and a lot more economicially efficient than Monarchy. Monarchy is good for serious warmongering, or if you are really poor on luxuries and need the MPs. If you have a couple of luxuries you can generally afford a higher lux setting in Republic...

A question for the team: How is unit support handled differently in Republic between Vanilla, PTW, and C3C?

 

[SolarKnight]

Unit support costs are increased in C3C to the tune of 2 gold per turn, per unit (was 1 gold per turn, per unit. the stats for free units for town/city/metro are: 1/3/4 for C3C and 0/0/0 for PTW and Vanilla civ 3

 

[GJ]

A question for the team: How is unit support handled differently in Republic between Vanilla, PTW, and C3C?

SK's got it.

Last night I read a GOTM spoiler (28, I believe) where someone (SirPleb, I believe again) discussed the merits of the "new" Republic system. IIRC he discovered that you could warmonger big-time in Republic as long as you won frequently enough to reset war weariness. Otherwise, having a large number of cities (by building cities that wouldn't otherwise be productive) and keeping science at or near 0% was enough to pay the new unit support cost and warmonger a lot. Unfortunately that was all under the C3C model...

I'd actually like to try a bit (or maybe more ) of fighting in Republic. My government management skills aren't very good because they carry over from my Civ2 days...Monarchy (Communism in C3C) when a war is necessary, Republic/Democracy when it is not. Normally I'm so far ahead that the 6-8 turns of lost production aren't a real killer, but it would be much more efficient if I could just learn to go to war without having to pull a major government switch.

 

[alerum68]

Unit support costs are increased in C3C to the tune of 2 gold per turn, per unit (was 1 gold per turn, per unit. the stats for free units for town/city/metro are: 1/3/4 for C3C and 0/0/0 for PTW and Vanilla civ 3

Yes, and that's the reason why I hardly ever go to Republic in C3C now... When I played Vanilla I would usually do the typical builder route... Despot - Republic - Demo. Now that C3C has come out, I almost always go Monarch - Communism... that probably because more warmonging in Conquest, and also partly because of all the changes that they've made to Communism in Conquest. Very powerful on large Empires... and I mean VERY powerful. Thanks Blas for showing us how powerful.

 

[Sir Bugsy]

You're right Alerum. The new communism in C3C is very powerful. I've used it three times now. Epic 39, epic 40 and Bede 01. It really kicks butt!

Republic is still pretty good. SirPleb had a nice write up in one of the spoilers (i'll try to find it for everyone.) He argues that you can actually make more money and be more productive in Republic v. Monarchy. I went Republic in CGOTM1 all the way with very good results.

 

[scoutsout]

"Right Sizing" your military is important if you plan to stay in Republic long-term in C3C. The difference between town and city support makes a huge difference. If most of your cities are size 7 or better, you can have a lot more military... and size 7 cities will be more economically productive anyway... it's actually a pretty good synergy. Key with the unit support issues in C3C Republic is not leaving a bunch of obsolete units laying around without good reason.

@ Bugsy: IIRC, we went from Republic to Communism in Bede01, did we not? And we did ... um... "some warmongering" in that game, didn't we?

 

[Sir Bugsy]

@ Bugsy: IIRC, we went from Republic to Communism in Bede01, did we not? And we did ... um... "some warmongering" in that game, didn't we?

We were never in monarchy. Both governments worked very well. I would almost say that the C3C version of communism is over powered. Plus, AI all seem to go for Fascism now.

 

[Bede]

/throws back cowl and steps into the light from burning Zulu towns/

In Bede01 the biggest negative impact of Communism was the affect on research. The loss of the extra gold (1 for each improved tile, IIRC) means that 4 turn research in Republic becomes 5 turn research in Communism. However the decrease in waste and corruption more than makes up for it...and judicious use of policemen, scientists and engineers can really drive production, science and commerce.

/replaces cowl and returns to shadows/