horizontal + vertical expansion

[futurehermit]

i've written about this before, but with bts out, etc. i feel like revisiting this important topic is not a bad idea.

my experience with bts so far is that horizontal + vertical expansion is the key to victory (unless going for cultural or using specific strategies like obsolete's).

so, what do i mean by horizontal + vertical expansion?

horizontal expansion is getting as many cities as possible as soon as possible. peacefully this is REXing and involves cranking out settlers to landgrab. not so peacefully this is axerushing and involves cranking out military units (not necessarily axes) to take out a close neighbour.

vertical expansion is growing your cities as large as possible as soon as possible to work max tiles.

what are the barriers to horizontal expansion?

maintenance is the big one. each city you build/conquer hits your pocketbook. being boxed in by AI civs can be a barrier to REXing. having an AI that builds a pile of military (e.g., Shaka) can be a barrier to axerushing.

what are the barriers to vertical expansion?

happiness is the big one. health is also a concern, but can at times be combatted with enough surplus food.

how can one overcome the barriers to horizontal expansion?

dealing with maintenance is the tricky one. pottery is key for cottage spamming, which gives $. currency is key for extra trade routes, selling techs for $, markets to enhance $ and run merchants in some cases, and building gold in a pinch. col is key for courthouses which cut maintenance costs in 1/2. cs helps by giving 50% more $ in your capital. don't overexpand before getting pottery/currency/col.

dealing with being boxed in/a military power is all about production. i had one game with shaka close by. i put all my early efforts into production to take him out (whipping/building with mines/etc.). after he was gone, i transitioned my empire to commerce. while this isn't preferable, sometimes it is the only way to go and it still works. sitting with a few cities for centuries is not a good idea, so do what you have to do to maximize military production and then recover afterwards.

how can one overcome the barriers to vertical expansion?

hereditary rule > happiness problems. don't delay monarchy. if you can take it off the oracle, more the better. cranking your capital up past size 10 in the BC era in preparation for bureaucracy is a great idea. it is also important to look for resources. while that tundra site doesn't look great, it has both silver and fur which means 2 additional population points in every other city! also, if you have a few calendar resources, you must beeline calendar at some point (don't delay). now that stonehenge/monuments don't obsolete until astronomy, plus with the mausoleum, beelining calendar is much more attractive. markets/theatres/forges/temples can also help.

health is somewhat more difficult to manage. obviously acquiring health resources is important. (since + health resources are so important, you can see where horizontal expansion fuels vertical expansion.) then it's a matter of buildings. granaries/aqueducts/grocers are the key early ones. often people delay guilds until they are in the renaissance era. i've had a lot of success with diverting research to guilds before going up through liberalism. surplus food also helps combat health caps, so windmills and farms can help in a pinch and building cities that are high-food is always important.

what traits, etc. help with horizontal expansion?

traits

military: aggressive, charismatic (protective for gunpowder to a certain extent)

rexing: imperialistic

maintenance: financial, organized

other: creative helps get cities online faster and you can avoid the religious tech path in favour of math-currency-col-cs.

etc.

in general wonders slow your horizontal expansion. but in some cases they can help. colossus for example helps all of your coastal cities become more profitable. pick your wonders very carefully and preferably you will have the resource that enhances their construction.

UBs that give are a real help here, especially if they come early, like the hammam or odeon.

what traits, etc. help with vertical expansion?

traits

expansive is really key here because it combines very nicely with h. rule.

charismatic for the

spiritual to a lesser extent for the cheap temples that give

etc.

again wonders are not your friend really when it comes to expanding quickly, but if you are very selective, they can help. hanging gardens is on the math-currency-col-cs path, is dirt cheap especially with stone, and gives health + population to each city, which can really help fuel vertical expansion.

UBs that give additional health like the apothecary can be very helpful.

 

[AlessioCerci]

I have found that being boxed in is not often an issue in BTS, providing you get to CoL quickly and thus continue your expansion. Happiness issues are always solved by hereditary rule. With this in mind i more often than not go meditation/priesthood/CoL/monarchy much earlier than before; in Warlords i would get alphabet and literture. This also gives you a chance at building the Oracle which is nice, but not really a necessity.

Of course if you have an abundance of calendar resources, are creative, or are the Ottomans then Mathematics-Calendar-Currency is probably the way to go.

Health is very rarely a limiting factor in the classical era, or even the medieval era so imo its of less importance, although the apocathery/garden are nice UBs.

 

[alex sword]

Futurehermit - I read some of your posts concerning CE/SE and HE. They are pretty informative. At this point no one have create a good algorithm how to determine the best expansion approach for a given situation. For example, when you should do switches from farms to cotteges playing Stalin and when playing Elizabeth and so on.

A great thinker in management Peter Drucker said once that the current management is just a set of so called "best" practices, which have no good academic and theoretical grounds. Similarly how it was for alchemy before chemistry.

I think the same problem exists with a current state of strategic thinking for civ 4. There are great tricks and great exploits. Tactical ways to get a benefits. There are good strategic ideas. There are a lot of "best practices". But there is no one good mathematical model! It's very strange due to a very mathematical nature of the game.

What I am going to do? I am going to stop playing for a little while (sic!) and create some model. In some way I will stop playing in traditional way but will start plaing in unusual, using Excel as a playground. Due to your unordinary way of thinking, I would like to get your opinion regarding this approach. Also as soon as I've a model (some draft version), I would like to get your feedback on it. Perhaps, due to a maximin nature of tasks to be resolved, I will need experienced programmer to create a C or, maybe, Java program to resolve the task. Anyway, good Excel model is needed before programming.

The goal - if we reach it - will be great. We will stop the infinite discussion between CE/SE etc fans. Instead we will provide them with a good way to choose a strategy for a given situation. The model should allow a customization by entering some key parameters.

 

[frob2900]

Perhaps, due to a maximin nature of tasks to be resolved, I will need experienced programmer to create a C or, maybe, Java program to resolve the task. Anyway, good Excel model is needed before programming.

The goal - if we reach it - will be great. We will stop the infinite discussion between CE/SE etc fans. Instead we will provide them with a good way to choose a strategy for a given situation. The model should allow a customization by entering some key parameters.

This sounds extremely ambitious. I have serious doubts about how versatile a general "strategy generator" would be. The hindrance to a general model generator is not that the game isn't mathematical, it's that it is so incredibly complex.

Although it does sound very, very interesting

 

[futurehermit]

With all the variables involved I think it would be very hard to create a model.

Part of the problem is terrain. You get different terrain each game and different terrain lends itself to different approaches.

E.g.,

Some games I get a lot of cities with high food but no rivers. SE.

Some games I get a lot of cities with average food and snaky rivers. CE.

Some games I get a lot of high production cities. Warmongering, sort out economy later. or controlled wonder spam, sort out economy later.

Then you have to factor in different leaders. Saladin? Cultural victory spamming great prophets. Mansa? Space victory spamming cottages (depending on terrain!). Liz? ... etc.

There are just a lot of issues.

What I like best are the game threads, where you have a start and then you start weighing the options. I think, given a specific start location, you can discuss mathematically what the best options are, but for general rules, I think best practices is all you can get.

And the reason I think the SE-CE debate remains so lively is that both can work and both are designed to do different things. A SE is not going to outperform a CE in terms of late-game beaker production. It is just not. But a CE is not going to have the early-to-mid game production capabilities that a CE is going to have. It is just not.

The highest score I got in warlords was a 1600 dom victory (standard/normal) with kublai and I never built a single cottage. Does that mean that I should never build a single cottage with all leaders on all maps in all circumstances? No, of course not. The leader, the terrain, etc. led to that situation. I've had other games where my late-game rush-buying capabilities with universal sufferage and a powerful CE was unrivalled in comparison. It just depends on the situation.

 

[DaveMcW]

The model should allow a customization by entering some key parameters.

The most important parameter is: In which age does the game end?

 

[DaviddesJ]

Part of the problem is terrain. You get different terrain each game and different terrain lends itself to different approaches.

Well, "problem" is the wrong word. It's a good thing that gameplay can't be reduced to a set of simple formulas. The variation in terrain, leader traits, and map types (among other factors) is designed to ensure that.

 

[Percy]

"Problem" is "something to solve" too, not simply something bad

 

[futurehermit]

Well, "problem" is the wrong word. It's a good thing that gameplay can't be reduced to a set of simple formulas. The variation in terrain, leader traits, and map types (among other factors) is designed to ensure that.

I meant it is a problem for designing formulas. I didn't say that it was a problem with the game or that I am in favour of designing formulas for the game.

 

[futurehermit]

The most important parameter is: In which age does the game end?

Surely you mean the most important parameter is how many cottages you're working?

 

[alex sword]

Okay. How do I see it? The model should help to calculate maximin function (term which comes from mathematical decision making theory). "Max" means that total research should be maximized for a given year, "min" means that resources should be minimized.

Resources here are cities because namely cities is the main restriction in the game not other players due to maintenance factor. If you had no such a factor, you would just need to apply Civ1 best strategy - settlers spam.

That's why I was especially interested in the vertical/horizontal expansion subject which respected Futurehermit opened. I think this is a key question in the game to find out a proper starting balance between pure SE/CE models - and adjust it later. So that given set of resources will be spent as much effectively as possible.

 

[futurehermit]

Well, I'm interested to see what you come up with.

 

[Via]

Hey! It's a game! I really like reading about some ideas/strategies as far as it not includes any mathematical analysis. I saw some on the forums and I skipped them entirely. Part of every game is some illusion. If you look at civ4 as a problem that needs to be solved, then yes, we can make dissection of every single aspect of the game just to make the greatest score. But it wouldn't be fun anymore. And following the best mathematical way in your game will prolong your gametime X-times.

 

[alex sword]

For some people building mathmodels is fun as well, especially keeping in mind that playing with Excel and their tons of XMLs, I can listen very special MP3 livesets from global gathering . Civ4 is a real challenge from mathmodel point of view. It looks like P&L calculation model I've built as a part of FY'07 bussiness plan in real life came MUCH more easier.

 

[bazola]

Via, accessing the numbers is just a part of trying to master the game. Keep in mind that the AI knows all the rules, and the player has to learn them. Knowing what's going on in the background can be very valuable once you start moving up difficulty levels. The great thing about Civ is that you can keep digging deeper, and the deeper you go the more you have to understand to succeed.

 

[Carnage04]

I think it's important to deal with some of the math behind figuring out your economic situation.....when to run scientists instead of merchants....where to build banks, markets, and grocers instead of libraries, universities, and observatories instead of building barracks and stables leads to a huge leap forward in the level of your game.

I think trying to create a mathematical model to try to determine the most successful way to play the game is neigh impossible though. Unless you create it to play on the same map with the same spam point and the same AI's.....it won't do you much good. There are far too many variables that you cannot control to make an effective function.

 

[Via]

For example - I saw some research discount article. Tons of text, numbers and formulas. I will do with a basic knowledge about research overflow and pre-req-techs. And it was only about research! I cant imagine a model containing multiple aspects of the game.

Via, accessing the numbers is just a part of trying to master the game. Keep in mind that the AI knows all the rules, and the player has to learn them. Knowing what's going on in the background can be very valuable once you start moving up difficulty levels. The great thing about Civ is that you can keep digging deeper, and the deeper you go the more you have to understand to succeed.

Hey and I am not a noob! I mastered Immortal level already and now strugglin with deity. With deity BTW I have similar problem. I am losing an illusion here. Illusion about clashing of civilizations. They got such a headstart over you that you look like a barbarian compared to them (even more than in Barbarians scenario - try both to compare, interesting). I am going to try multiplayer now, another challenge. So bad that blazing nonsense is so common over online games. But that's offtopic.

 

[futurehermit]

Blazing makes multiplayer no fun at all. Those people should just play rts. And I'm not bashing them or rts as I've played a LOT of rts over the years.

 

[alex sword]

Hi all, this weekend I built some model but it's too primitive to be useful. It looks like I should somehow incorporate luxury resources. They are very important on higher levels for a vertical expansion.

Please note that at this point I am NOT sure that my attempt is going to be succesful.

Unfortunately the week has been started and I don't have enough time. So don't expect a quick output. I don't need explanation why it is not impossible to model the game because I know - it's possible, the only problem is a lack of time and, perhaps, my knowledge is not enough (Excel probably is just not an appropriate tool for very complicated models). However, I think I've got some ideas how to continue and I will try.

And I will try. Any help and ideas are appreciated.

P.S. You know, someone said russians can be killed but they don't surrender. Feel free to consider me a fanatic but... what is the site name and btw what are you doing here? ))

thanks! Alex.

 

[Percy]

I'd really like the topic (horizontal + vertical) to be discussed ^^

alex, can you please start a new thread for your project (which looks interesting, if somewhat daunting)?