GK2- The Training Day Experiment

[scoutsout]

I'll go ahead and say it since you destructors were kind enough to proscribe such comments from the peanut gallery. Some of my trades were moves... I guess I let that freshly roaded Guiness, er, wines, distract me.

With constant monitoring in the early part of the game, you guys should be able to crank out settlers. Cities become power now. <snip> What are we going to do with our worker now?

There may have been better worker moves, but here's why I made that one: I think it'll help (longer term) with managing the settler pump. I put the worker on that plains tile so he can irrigate and road it. Every time our city grows, the stupid machine puts the new citizen on that forest tile SE of the city. The problem with this is that it reduces our surplus food from +5 to +4 fpt. If we don't stay at +5 fpt, we'll deplete the city's population if we're cranking out settlers every 4-5 turns (especially with the forest producing 2 shields). At one point I think I put a worker on a totally unimproved regular grassland square just to stay at +5 fpt.

If we irrigate and road that plains tile, we'll have a second square that produces 2 food and 1 shield (the roaded/unmined BG being the other). Maybe it'd reduce the computer's tendency to stick a citizen on that forest tile. I dunno, but note to my classmates: Check the city every time it grows, for both happiness and +5 fpt. I might be wrong about this, but I think that's more important than the shields for a settler factory. I believe the idea is that (with a granary) the city grows every 2 turns. The 2 new citizens every 4 turns replace the 2 citizens lost to the creation of a settler...

Roading before irrigating might make more sense. I've got a "northward expansion" scheme I'm going to post later on. As for city sites: floodplain wheat, worker factory.

Real minor sidenotes: the unfortified Warrior makes micromanaging a tad easier for me. Since he's in the "unit rotation", he "reminds" me to check on a city I want to watch closely. When he comes up in the rotation, I simply hit <Enter> to zoom to the city. Note: If you send the warrior out to chase barbs, be sure to check the happiness in the city after sending the warrior out from the city...until we get a couple more luxuries hooked up, we're going to be "dancing on the edge" for a while, happiness-wise. I seem to remember adjusting the lux slider more than once in that last round. (sometimes up, sometimes down)

 

[Sir Bugsy]

scout - you're right. The +5 fpt is the critical part. I need to look at the save... a lunch time project... in order to comment on the city management.

I'm interested in hearing the team's point of view on the the order we settle our cities. I think this could have a huge impact on the way the game evolves, and I would like to spend so time discussing it.

So in addition to where to place the cities, when is going to be huge also.

Edit - mad-bax' set up will require the team to do a lot of critical thinking. A lot of out of the box thinking. If anyone was worried about these guys learning a formula, I don't think you need to worry anymore.

 

[ControlFreak]

Greetings! Just registering myself as an offical lurker. (Hello to some of my old friends, I'm just getting back on the forums after a four month break.)

Also had some comments for scoutsout if you don't mind entertaining them. Mad-bax can attest to my long windedness.

Trading
Regardless of whether your trades were dubious or ingenious I think it bears noting that whenever possible, you should trade on your own turn. That means, when Japan offered you money for Masonry, you should have said "I'll get back to you on that..." and then on your next turn checked to see what deal could be made. The biggest reason for this is that if you sell it to him on his turn, he could turn around and sell it to Shaka himself. In this case, you're out 10g. In later rounds, it could be much more.

Worker Actions
There are a few problems with the plains tile the work is currently on.

1. It's not the best tile you have unworked. Some of the problem developed from the beginning turns when the worker left the first roaded BG unmined to bring in the wines faster. That tile is the one that needs worker actions now.
2. Even chosing a plains tile to improve, there are other plains tiles that are ON THE RIVER gaining +1gpt that should be done before this one.
3. The MicroManagement (MM) issue of the governor is still not going to be resolved because a irrigated plains tile with a road is (2F, 1S, 1G) where as the forest (on the river) is (1F, 2S, 1G) = same power points. Since you are making +5fpt, the governor will select the sheilds over the food and the forest is still selected on each growth.

That said, the position of the river and the movement penalty imposed by it didn't give you a lot of choices once the wines were done. The tile you are on now is a great tile to road because it allows 2 or even three moves from the capitol on the west side of the river. When your done with the road, the worker can move directly to the BG that still needs a mine to get that done. (Note that once the BG is mined, you're MM problem is solved per Sir Bugsys experiment. Lucky for you since most settler factories require MM every growth turn like you have had to do so far. The experience is good practice and your solution of an unfortified warrior is a common practice for those with no memory like myself. )

Settler Factory
Every settler factory is different but you have defined the goals well: you need to create two new citizens for every settler built. In terms of resources that means with a granary 20f per settler and 30s per settler. For 4turns=5fpt,7.5spt. Since you clear the food bin when you grow and you clear the sheild bin when you build, it is more accurate to say you need 2*10food and 1*30 Sheilds. Thinking about it interms of what you need is important when you have MORE than the basics of a settler factory.

For example, if you had two cows instead of the cow and a wine, you could get your city to 10spt at size 5, at 4fpt or 8spt at 6fpt. 6fpt every turn would waste 2food each growth, but alternating 4fpt, 6fpt is no waste. In this case you could go:
{Start}Size 5, 4fpt, 10spt building warrior[hit enter]

1. Warrior built, Set to 6fpt, 8spt, Order Settler.
2. Growth, governer adds citizen so collect 10s instead of 8. MM to 4fpt, 11spt.
3. MM 6fpt, 9spt.
4. Growth, governer adds citizen so collect 13s instead of 11. Settler built, size back to 5. You're at {start} position, rinse, repeat.

Short Term Goals
Your map has given you a lot of true chokes as well as some narrow points (spots that cant block with a single unit but could block with a few). If you can get your next city cranking units, you can block off this entire part of the continent from any AI (except the settlers that have already gotten through). This would be a big help in having places to send your settlers every fourth turn. Priority would be given to the Japanese border since they are the closest. However, expect them to get fiesty as they will be trapped without any land. Other alternative is to capitalized on your food start and just out settle the AI. One big disadvantage to this is the AI city placements will usually not capitalize on the choke point positions. Note that these positions are not just useful to block land travel but will be a HUGE asset to ship travel, allowing your fleet to cross E to W through the "canal" cities.

I love training games, and I hope you don't mind my occational comments. Since I don't have civ installed currently, I can only base my comments on screen shots. (hint, hint)

Good luck!

BTW, Great map making mad-bax!

 

[Sir Bugsy]

Welcome back CF!! I have learned a lot reading your posts over the past year. Your comments are always welcome and insightful. BTW - the details you provided when you left has helped me to keep my marriage and keep playing Civ. Civ has just taken a second seat to RL... I know... That's blasphemy to some

 

[ControlFreak]

Originally posted by Sir Bugsy
Welcome back CF!! I have learned a lot reading your posts over the past year. Your comments are always welcome and insightful. BTW - the details you provided when you left has helped me to keep my marriage and keep playing Civ. Civ has just taken a second seat to RL... I know... That's blasphemy to some

My marriage is intact but my civing is not. Glad you could keep both.

I plan to reinstall civ when I convince my better half that sitting next to her with a laptop while she watches American Idol IS considered "Quality Time"

Until then, I will live vicariously through all of you. Please post screen shots

 

[scoutsout]

Originally posted by ControlFreak
That said, the position of the river and the movement penalty imposed by it didn't give you a lot of choices once the wines were done. The tile you are on now is a great tile to road because it allows 2 or even three moves from the capitol<snip>

Lots of good stuff in here CF, well written and easy to follow, thanks! (I did do all of my trading on my turn... that much I know.. ) Your comment on roading that tile goes to my little "plan for northern expansion"... though I'm looking at the worker a little differently at the moment.

Let me add this up front - this is just a rough idea at this point, not a carefully thought-out plan. Experienced players: This means it's offered as a starting point for discussion. Classmates, this means it needs your input too.

Here's the basic idea, with a screenshot below:

Worker roads the tile he's on. That'll take 3 turns... then he goes N, NW, and roads that tile. (He can then return with no movement penalty to irrigate the original plains tile.

First settler goes to site 1 for a worker factory.

Second settler goes to site 2. We now have a good "jumping off" point to settle somewhere in the 3's and 4's, which should enable us to establish a "frontier" with Japan around that green/purple double line. With a road to city site 2, a settler in the capitol can be standing on site 3 and 4 in 3 turns of movement. (Site 2a totally messes up my little worker scheme, messes up RCP, but it's a better spot if 3a and 4a are chosen as city sites...a note on RCP shortly)

I think the Japanese settler that was spotted by the scout will make a city somewhere in that green "L". With the lake over there, we can keep Tokugawa on the other side of that double line with 2 warriors and a couple of scouts... (which we already have).

Again, I know this is rough - but the idea here is to expand towards Japan quickly. I don't necessarily want to expand all the way to the land bridge, but I don't want him to snap up city sites that would be productive for us...

Important: I think we need to re-visit the RCP discussion that Mad-Bax raised a while back, and make a strategic decision here. Whether to use RCP or not will have a big impact on our city placement... and whether we decide one way or the other, I think we need to make a concious, deliberate decision on that point.

 

[Gengis Khan]

Originally posted by ControlFreak
I plan to reinstall civ when I convince my better half that sitting next to her with a laptop while she watches American Idol IS considered "Quality Time"

That should be in a sig somewhere.

Worker roads the tile he's on. That'll take 3 turns... then he goes N, NW, and roads that tile. (He can then return with no movement penalty to irrigate the original plains tile.

But unless the worker mines the BG, in the near future, the "perfect" 4-turn factory that bugsy outlined won't come until later(and will require more MMing each time at that).

........... back to duplicating the turns, although my post will be redundant after bugs's, yoshi's & especially CF's very articulate post.

 

[scoutsout]

Originally posted by Gengis Khan
But unless the worker mines the BG, in the near future, the "perfect" 4-turn factory that bugsy outlined won't come until later(and will require more MMing each time at that).

Yeah - I see that now after re-reading some of the finer points in ControlFreak's post... +5fpt +30 shields every 4...and we're a couple of shields short at the moment. Max 6 spt with a pop of 5 to maintain +5 fpt unless I missed something. Either we curtail some food, or hit size 7 and dump the granary...dangit.

Dang I'm wondering if I shouldn't have gone ahead and taken the over-the-river movement hit with the worker...

 

[denyd]

Welcome back CF - nice points about trading and terrain improvement. I hope you enjoy what's become of that little "let's play the GOTM as an SG" idea you had last year.

I look forward to your comments and observations as the days go by.

I've found that the best time to grab 1-2 hours is 10pm after the wife & son have gone to bed. Of course that means sitting through Survivor/American Idol/Bachelor/Friends/Frasier... while waiting for the baby to go to sleep.

As for city placement, the tile 1 SE of the northern scout would be my #1 priority for a city. With the scouts help you could then have the Japanese bottled up in the north and settle the middle ground at your leisure. Note that you'll want to get a defender in that city ASAP and might even want a 2nd defender and city walls until you are ready to move on Japan.

As far as prioritizing your victims, there are 2 paths to take.

1. Japan first before the Samurai and wait to invade Persia until MDI arrive.
2. Persia before the Immortals arrive and then hurry to Japan hopefully before Samurai are in place.

Remember your UU is a fast attacker and will have an advantage against Persia, but could also trigger a despotic Golden Age.

 

[Sir Bugsy]

@ scout - that screen shot was what I was looking for. We have several chokepoints that we can control. If we control those we can then assure ourselves of the majority of the land behind the choke. (at least until the AI comes sailing around the choke to found a city in our back yard )

The team needs to decide when to grab those chokepoints. If you delay settling them, how can you delay the AI form settling beyond the choke points?

 

[mad-bax]

What are canal cities?

 

[shoguntaka]

I believe it is infoman's turn before mine.

Otherwise, I will draw up a dot-map
and discuss the order and the reasons.

 

[scoutsout]

Originally posted by Sir Bugsy
The team needs to decide when to grab those chokepoints. If you delay settling them, how can you delay the AI form settling beyond the choke points?

Agree strongly on that first sentence. From this point we (the class) need to do a little more discussion and strategizing so that each us can play our turns towards a mutually agreed on goals. Little things here and there shouldn't take us out of a Monarch level game, but if one of us plops a settler down based on RCP, and another based on terrain considerations, we're working against ourselves...

As for controlling the choke points by the lake... it looks like we could do it with 3 units. Here's a screencap:

Either the red or blue combination should keep Tokugawa on the other side of the line. Adding a 4th unit at the yellow dot location might keep him off the peninsula, but it might also bottle him up to the point that he attacks us...and I'm not sure we could effectively settle that peninsula since we've got so much room to go in all directions.

I just noticed something else here... put cities on 2 of the 3 red dots, and you've got a pretty nifty passageway for ships...

 

[denyd]

MB - Quite often in a map you'll find a spot where a ship can pass from one coast to another by using the city as a bridge between bodies of water. This Canal City can save many turns of ship movement when transferring a vessel from one ocean to another.

Check out this picture

New Bangalore & New Calcutta are canal cities in this screen shot from GOTM 28

 

[scoutsout]

Originally posted by shoguntaka
I believe it is infoman's turn before mine. Otherwise, I will draw up a dot-map and discuss the order and the reasons.

Draw it up anyway Shogun - throw out some ideas!

We can discuss stuff no matter whose turn is next, can't we?

 

[ControlFreak]

Originally posted by scoutsout
Yeah - I see that now after re-reading some of the finer points in ControlFreak's post... +5fpt +30 shields every 4...and we're a couple of shields short at the moment. Max 6 spt with a pop of 5 to maintain +5 fpt unless I missed something. Either we curtail some food, or hit size 7 and dump the granary...dangit.

Dang I'm wondering if I shouldn't have gone ahead and taken the over-the-river movement hit with the worker...

Sirian and T-hawk taught me not to worry about growing to size 7. If you're happy at that level, it doesn't hurt you as much as you think. The extra citizens can be used to build some high ticket items a little faster. Then switching back to building settlers will drop your pop back to the factory range since builds will get done faster than growth. I rarely curtail food, considering it to be a second mistake on top of my first mistake (of missing the factory MM).

You're not that worse off having done what you did, providing you only road the plains and then move directly to the BG. You will have lost about 1/2 a settler (in terms of production) but you will have gained two turns for any unit moving towards japan.

Since you've decided that you want the BG mined, the worker is going to end up on the east side of the river. That means your most efficient worker usage would be to keep him on that side. It usually helps to have a few more improved tiles than you plan on using for the factory. They will be used by a) closely spaced cities, b) the extra citizens gained because you forgot to MM your factory c) the normal growth after the land grab phase. You will want another worker shortly after the settler though to help roading towards your goals and improving your 2nd city tiles.

Note that until the BG is mined, your settler factory is a much better worker factory (you can do 5fpt, 5spt for a worker every 2 turns). You might want to use the period that you're mining the BG to build a scout/warrior and a worker. Building them in that order keeps your population higher, netting you a little bit more gpt with the same production.

{Regarding my first comment about size 7: I haven't done the math, but if you do end up growing to size seven, you may be able to build a warrior in 1 turn, and then a worker in 1 turn. The food amassed during those two turns at size 7 would fill the granary as you drop back to size 6. You could build a second worker right away and get near the start of your settler factory. Three units in three turns is much better than slowing growth down just because your granary will be emptied at size 7!

The extra units could: escort settler, replace scout at Japan choke, block another choke road towards your 2nd city, get it up and running, etc, etc, etc...}

Heres a screen shot from Dianthus' amazing CpRings utility.
I labeled the Choke point and the canals. Note that if you leave the scout on the choke point, and Japan culture expands over it, you will be violating the Scout Resource denial exploit. Better to move a warrior (or actually this is a useful place for a spear!) there since Japan will be itching to fight for land anyway.

I changed the distance number coloring to prevent biasing your team to my preferences. Being on a narrow piece of land limits your choices. Either you go with a very tight ring (3) or you lose out on some city sights (to the East is all ocean). That is if you care to do RCP at all. Again, Great Map mad-bax!

EDIT: Problem with being long winded is 5 posters get in before you. mad-bax, a choke point city is a canal city. It allows boats to pass through the continent/land bridge. This can save you >20turns moving boats from one side to the other.

 

[Sir Bugsy]

Knowing MB, I don't think that that is just a random map feature. Sort of like the proposed plan to put a canal through Nicaragua back in 1900.

@ CF - I think mad-bax was using the Socratic method to get a response from the team of students

 

[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 think mad-bax was using the Socratic method to get a response from the team of students " didn't mean to steal your thunder

 

[ControlFreak]

Originally posted by Sir Bugsy
@ CF - I think mad-bax was using the Socratic method to get a response from the team of students

That's a relief! I couldn't figure out how he wouldn't know that. Sorry for selling you short MB. So will you be drinking a vial of hemlock juice next?

 

[scoutsout]

Originally posted by Sir Bugsy
@ CF - I think mad-bax was using the Socratic method to get a response from the team of students

Originally cross-posted by ControlFreak
EDIT: Problem with being long winded is 5 posters get in before you. mad-bax, a choke point city is a canal city. It allows boats to pass through the continent/land bridge. This can save you >20turns moving boats from one side to the other.

Check out the very last comment in my long-winded post that was written while I was apparently cross-posting with the whole dadgum board (including Mad Bax), trying to answer Sir Bugsy's question on controlling choke points...

That was pretty cool - post something and find out the whole world was posting too...

I'm gonna hit <Submit Reply> now and see how much reading I have to catch up on!