GOTM 03 Pre-Game Discussion

[DaviddesJ]

What?!?
Is this a Monarch limitation? Or GOTM? I know that I have upgraded units as high as at least 23-27XP before! (Although, the only example I can think of was in a scenario.) Is it a 5 or 10XP cap? Man, if this is true than that really sucks for a militaristic civ...

You can't go higher than 5 XP by fighting animals, and you can't go higher than 10 XP by fighting barbarians.

I don't think you really understood the fundamentals of the early barracks build. #1. It will mean that all of my units will be automatically upgraded twice. (Or will at least gain the XP for me to upgrade them later to quickly counter any unexpected invasion.) #2. It will force me to devote a substantial portion of my production to military units during the early game (where I feel I will be most vulnerable because I have yet to play a game at Monarch - save for the 20turn test game I tried the other night.)

I think it's rather insulting to suggest that I don't know that building a barracks will give your units more XP. And it's untrue that building a barracks will "force" you to build more military units. Indeed I think it's pretty sensible to spend less on military units when you have a barracks, because each one is stronger and so you don't need as many. It also disincents you from building units elsewhere, which may be another reason you build fewer.

It's your game, and you can do whatever you like, but I think it's pretty silly to do A in order to "force" yourself to do B, rather than just deciding to do B and then do it.

 

[Greenlocke]

@DaviddesJ
The second section of my post was referring/responding to the comments made by mboza. Despite this, after re-reading it I decided to edit it because some people might have misunderstood my meaning. Obviously (I hope) we all understand what a barracks does. I was only outlining my reasons for building it so early. Sorry if I offended. And by 'force' I did not mean that I would have no choice what to build. I meant that if I was going to sacrifice the early production for the barracks, I would have to follow-through with a meaningful and related strategy. It would be 'silly' to build the barracks as your second build if you didn't then direct your strategy around this choice.

@kingjoshi
Hmm. I guess that I was confused by mboza's post then. Normally, when I precede one of my comments with a quotation I will be responding to that quotation - not an unidentified and unmentioned previous post. My bad.

@mboza
If your comment was directed to me, please see post #139 for my response.

---------------------------------------------
Wow. This was one of the more confusing posts I've had to deal with. Sorry for the chatter everyone...

Thanks for the info regarding the XP cap for animals and barbs. I had actually noticed that my XP didn't go up in some circumstances, but I assumed it was because the battle (between my unit and the lion/barb) was not significant enough to merit points. I appreciate the heads-up.

 

[DaviddesJ]

It would be 'silly' to build the barracks as your second build if you didn't then direct your strategy around this choice.

Well, I disagree. At this point in the game, your only choices (if you want your city to grow) are barracks or warriors. You're going to want the barracks eventually, and, if it's cheap, I think it makes sense to build it first even if you're only going to build a minimal military.

 

[kingjoshi]

Okay, on a different note..

I decided to do a test game. I've never played monarch and for whatever reasons (despite winning in 4otm2), I've been struggling on Prince. I think one reason is because I get mentally lazy..

Anyway, on the test game on monarch, I'm doing better then I've ever done on any prince game. Now, I'm not saying I'm doing well, but still.. I think the main reason is because I always play on Huge Maps instead of standard. On standard, things seem so much simpler. Also, I play with 18 civs and no razing.

Anyway, I decided to try warmongering. I always tell myself I'll do it, but I get in a builder mental. It's like some obsessive compulsive thing where I 'just have to' built the latest and greatest buildings. I'm just happy I don't live my own life that way..

Anyway, I settled on plain hills and I had source to 3xIvory! I found copper in my radius and there was also corn (but I didn't get agriculture until size 5 anyway and I dont' have happiness to grow, though I'll probably use slavery soon). I decided to turn my city into a military factory to test that theory it's better to take then to build (obviously it depends upon situation, but regardless).

Well, Saladin happens to be my neighbor to the north. Louis to my south. Sea to the east. Chinese to the far east I haven't really seen much of the map (barbs killed my scouts and warriors).

I stole Saladin's worker. I used archers but couldn't really attack his cities with archers. I pillaged Medina until eventually we declared peace. After 10 turns, I had some axemen and I declared war again. I lost 3 axemen and 2 archers on the initial attack to his 3 archers without him losing any!!! Anyway, eventually I captured Medina. We declared peace.

During this time, I had also built a settler in Kyoto and settled Tokyo (iron and stone in city radius).

After 10 to 15 turns, I sent axemen to Mecca. He had founded Buddhism in Mecca and it had spread to Medina so that will come in handy later. We declared peace and I used the axemen to fight barbs. They had a city in a good spot, but it was only size one and I usually play "No Razing" but I forgot the settings were different

After 10 turns, I declared war again. It's 320 BC, I just got Alphabet and took his final city. I think I'm doing relatively well, especially given it's Monarch.

I completely agree with those comments on another thread about what separates "great" players from regulars. It's critical to differentiate between what decisions are crucial versus what's not. And to make the right decisions in those situations. And it's important to have a plan (and adapt that plan to the map).

I think playing GOTM and reading other people's strategy is so helpful and I thank the administrators for setting this up and all the players for their wonderful write-ups. I'm getting better each game and also increasing my enjoyment of the game (though I must admit, after reading some people's accomplishments, some insecurities do arise ).

 

[Rad Chris]

Anyway, I decided to try warmongering. I always tell myself I'll do it, but I get in a builder mental. It's like some obsessive compulsive thing where I 'just have to' built the latest and greatest buildings. I'm just happy I don't live my own life that way..

I'm the same way. Gotta build that Bank/Temple/Whatever ASAP! Ive found the best way to get around this is to ALT-click on Axemen in your capital and just leave it to pump out wave after wave of dudes.

 

[mboza]

Zxe

My post was in response to your post. (This is going to get confusing fast)

Really I was unsure if you were planning an early war-mongering strat, that had been mentioned at one point by someone else several pages ago now, or if you wanted the barracks for barb fighting.

I also posted about the XP caps for animals and barbs, which is why I would disagree with a really early barracks for fighting animals, though I edited it back out again when I saw another post (by DaviddesJ) had beaten me to it. Though i do find that my early warriors die quite regularly, even if they do pick up 5XP, so a barracks might not really enhance their survivability.

Finally, upgrading a 6-8XP warrior is not a huge advantage over building a 4XP axe, unless you cannot pick an easy fight for the new axeman. but I have so few warriors surivive, I am not sure how much the upgrade might be in gold.

 

[Samson]

Zxe

My post was in response to your post. (This is going to get confusing fast)

Really I was unsure if you were planning an early war-mongering strat, that had been mentioned at one point by someone else several pages ago now, or if you wanted the barracks for barb fighting.

I also posted about the XP caps for animals and barbs, which is why I would disagree with a really early barracks for fighting animals, though I edited it back out again when I saw another post (by DaviddesJ) had beaten me to it. Though i do find that my early warriors die quite regularly, even if they do pick up 5XP, so a barracks might not really enhance their survivability.

Finally, upgrading a 6-8XP warrior is not a huge advantage over building a 4XP axe, unless you cannot pick an easy fight for the new axeman. but I have so few warriors surivive, I am not sure how much the upgrade might be in gold.

I find a big reason to build a barracks ASAP is to get to 5 XP soon for the woodsman 2 promotion, and the extra move in forest / jungles. Great for exploring, and the 50% defence in forest (on top of the natural 50%) makes them very survivable.

I will get out 3 or 4 to keep back the fog around my borders first though.

 

[Shillen]

I find a big reason to build a barracks ASAP is to get to 5 XP soon for the woodsman 2 promotion, and the extra move in forest / jungles. Great for exploring, and the 50% defence in forest (on top of the natural 50%) makes them very survivable.

I will get out 3 or 4 to keep back the fog around my borders first though.

You're going to build 3 to 4 warriors, then a barracks, then more warriors that have to find a barb to get their 5th experience point so they can get woodsman 2 and explore? Is there going to be any exploring left to do at that point?

 

[Methos]

You can't go higher than 5 XP by fighting animals, and you can't go higher than 10 XP by fighting barbarians.

I did not know that. Thanks for the heads up!

 

[Samson]

You're going to build 3 to 4 warriors, then a barracks, then more warriors that have to find a barb to get their 5th experience point so they can get woodsman 2 and explore? Is there going to be any exploring left to do at that point?

For me, yes. I will prioritize exporing my local area and keeping back the fog from my borders with these 3/4 wariors. It is only after I have established myself that I will explore forther afield.

I cannot think of any advantage of knowing everyone before alphabet.

 

[Methos]

I cannot think of any advantage of knowing everyone before alphabet.

Cheaper techs. It'll make getting to Alphabet a little faster.

 

[Samson]

Cheaper techs. It'll make getting to Alphabet a little faster.

[Talking about meeting people] Are you sure? I am 90% sure that unlike Civ 3 other people knowing techs has no influence on the cost to you. If I am wrong I will have to totally change my early game strategy.

I am sure I have had a neigbour discover meditation (and so become budist) and the price for me has not changed.

 

[ohioastronomy]

Initial analysis, albeit a bit late in the thread...

The game is Monarch/Epic.

Tech development will be much slower than previous GOTM.
10 turns for mining, followed by 20 turns for bronzeworking, for a generic
Japanese start. Either early commerce development or patience will be required. Animal husbandry is also not going to be done early. Pray that they tossed us a gold mine somewhere near.

The Japanese don't start with mining or agriculture, so expect a slow start and to be well behind the AIs in the early scores.

Inland Sea maps, on average, have limited metals - I've played a fair number of them, and copper usually shows up no closer than two city sites from the capital. Since the GoTM typically has some twist, I'll bet that there is no copper for the Japanese. We'll see. Food resources are usually plentiful.

Fishing is less useful than it may appear, since resources tend to show up at the map edge. Exploiting these and having ports is a bit of a challenge, and for whatever reason there don't seem to be as many seafood resources as on other maps.

Tropical/high seas means that there is a narrow fringe of land (less than 10 tiles except at the corners) without frozen wasted spaces at the top and bottom. This will yield a relatively crowded map, and most likely two neighbors.

 

[jesusin]

Epic again, aaaaaarg. I hate Epic, it takes soooooo long to finish a game! Anyway, staff members, keep the good work going. If I don't like Epic it is my problem and I have other options like losing 4 private normal-speed Deity games or participating in the HOF Gaunlet. I would love to see a QSC going, Then, I could play this GOTM till 1000BC or 1AD without investing too much time.

Epic, Tokugawa, one single landmass... domination or conquest are the obvious choices. Very interesting starting position because it is not easy to choose where to settle or what to produce first. If I finally give it a try, I will probably roam with the settler for a long time, trying to find a food resource plus the cow site.

 

[Shillen]

For me, yes. I will prioritize exporing my local area and keeping back the fog from my borders with these 3/4 wariors. It is only after I have established myself that I will explore forther afield.

I cannot think of any advantage of knowing everyone before alphabet.

I let the other civs contact me. I rarely bother exploring their territory unless it's my nearest neighbor and I want to scout them out for a possible war. Otherwise I don't care what the civ halfway across the world looks like. I'll get the world map with paper which I'll probably learn as the next tech after samurai.

And, yes, knowing the other civs does affect research. It's backwards from the way it worked in civ3, though. Instead of devaluing the tech, you get a bonus to your beakers gained per turn. So meeting the other civs is definitely useful. That said, I'm most often researching techs that the AI doesn't have to maximize trade value so that modifier doesn't affect my research most of the time.

 

[Arizona_Steve]

I fired up a game with the GOTM parameters yesterday.

Found myself in a location with three flood plains and lots of forests. Picked up mining, pottery and bronze working quickly. Built warrior, worker (timed with bronze working), warrior, settler. Found copper one tile south of my capital.

Timed mysticism to my first settler, then went for Stonehenge via forest chop. Placed second city in a good location with a warrior to defend it. Two turns before Stonehenge completed, a barbarian stack of doom containing three archers walked into my second city. I've never seen that before.

So I think the barbarians could be a problem here.

 

[greentea]

I am sure most of you have figured out what to do, but this will be my first game on Monarch (after only one in Prince - GOTM2), and I am still getting the hang of it. My problem is to figure out the balance between research and warmongering. I had 2 test games that developed quite differently and it seems the crucial factors were strategic resources availability.

Game 1 - mining, BW, see copper nearby, built 2nd city there, built a couple more, got 10-15 axemen, attacked nearest neighbour, took 2 cities plus capital and then my invasion could not go on without catapults. Unfortunately, research had fallen dramatically, down to 0 at some point, and slowly recovering after the first war. It became about 500AD and I still lacked too many vital techs. My territory was decent, but I fell behind too much, not sure how to catch up soon.

Game 2 - mining, BW, as usual, but then saw stone very close and decided on a Pyramids gambit, went for masonry, chopped barracks, chopped another worker, chopped settler, another worker in capital and one in the new city by the stone. Chopped with 3 of them for Pyramids, no problem getting it. Lost Stonehenge for a few turns. Got a couple of warriors w/ cover meanwhile, spread them around and barbarians weren't a problem for quite a while.

Copper was a bit far, so delayed settling a bit, maybe a little too much, cause an AI settled between my capitol and copper city. However, iron came up near the capitol, so no worries. Barbarian towns were my main target at this point, and I also had to continue expansion. Around 300 AD when I stopped I had only 5 cities, but 2 of them were quite well developed, due to the additional happiness from representation, and others were growing well. Research never fell below 70%, and I traded successfully until someone required Alphabet and I gave it (mistake, he was too far to be a problem, and then became the only civ ahead of me in tech). Civil service was around the corner, I guess I would have gotten it somewhere by 500-600AD.

Clearly, my second game was better, certainly depends a lot on resources, but I feel I should leave war for samurai/catapults, because I cannot manage the costs of early war well.

Another observation. I got my great enginner by the time I got construction, Hanging gardens appears to be a nice addition to the Pyramids, never thought of that before.

I will hope for stone with some floodplains and forests nearby in the GOTM . Probably won't be that lucky, but Monarch does not seem unbeatable anymore.

 

[Shillen]

Timed mysticism to my first settler, then went for Stonehenge via forest chop. Placed second city in a good location with a warrior to defend it. Two turns before Stonehenge completed, a barbarian stack of doom containing three archers walked into my second city. I've never seen that before.

I haven't had 3 archers at once yet, but barbs can definitely be a problem and it's greatly luck-based. I use warriors for defense only until axes/swords in about 3 games with no trouble. But then in the next game I tried doing that I had a single archer take out one of my cities defended by a fully fortified warrior. I had had that battle many times in the course of the 4 games and always won. I decided to take a look at the combat log and found the archer had about a 31% chance of winning, which is much higher than I expected. I think the archer might have had combat 1, but anyway the bottom line is that it can be quite risky to try to defend with a single warrior against an archer even with full fortification +25% city defense bonus + combat 1. Usually I try to get them anti-archer promotions but that one hadn't promoted yet. That was a good lesson to learn prior to the GOTM. I couldn't even recapture the city because my best unit was a warrior. I founded my copper city 2 tiles away from the copper and I didn't have mysticism yet to get an expansion so that city was pretty much lost. I'll make sure in the GOTM if my warrior doesn't have an anti-archer promotion then I'll send another unit to help it defend the city.

edit: I don't like double-posting.

Game 1 - mining, BW, see copper nearby, built 2nd city there, built a couple more, got 10-15 axemen, attacked nearest neighbour, took 2 cities plus capital and then my invasion could not go on without catapults. Unfortunately, research had fallen dramatically, down to 0 at some point, and slowly recovering after the first war. It became about 500AD and I still lacked too many vital techs. My territory was decent, but I fell behind too much, not sure how to catch up soon.

War, particularly early war, is extremely difficult to manage well in Civ4. It only gets more difficult as you move up in difficulty levels. The problem is as you get higher difficulty you suffer higher unit support costs for the same number of units. Then add in the slower research and distance maintenance costs and it doesn't take very much at all to throw your economy down the tubes. So you need to be very precise with your war. How many cities can I afford to take? How strong is my opponent's military and what units can he build? How many units do I need? Too little or too many are both major problems. If I wage an early war I will probably only grab 2 or 3 cities with no more than 6-8 axemen. Whether I finish off my opponent by razing his remaining cities or not will depend on the situation. I will probaby take over 1 more opponent with samurais and catapults and then consolidate my economy and research for cavalry or maybe an even better unit. Then I will finish off the rest of the AI's.

 

[Rain]

Had the same thing happen in one test game - lost city to barb archer vs fortified warrior with promotion - just bad luck but apparently happens often enough to be risky.

I have also noticed in some test games that barb archers walk right across my civ without attacking anything. Also observed one walk up to a german city defended by a single archer and walk away without attacking. Guess they had an early alliance

 

[Greenlocke]

After playing the posted test game (thanks Shillen) I realized that if I wanted to go worker-barracks-warrior, I would have to modify my tech order due to the fact that Japan doesn't have mining(and is therefore 2 techs from bw). While I still went through with the early barracks build, I'm not sure that it is the right strategy whenever you have to wait during those early turns. Plus, the map doesn't show a lot of forest-which means that we'll only have so many chopping chances...