Is this a crazy start for a GP farm????

[val13]

http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/107807/Ramesses_BC-4000.CivWarlordsSave

So... GP farm... maybe????

 

[jerVL/kg]

A screenshot would be nice...

 

[Ruler]

No enough of hammers for me.

But I think you should really go for CE there is enough sugar for 4 cottage powerhouses one in each direction and north with ivory can make a decent production city too.

What's difficult level is this? Heck, if this is monarch im going to play it myself.

 

[val13]

A screenshot would be nice...

How do you do screenshots?

 

[val13]

No enough of hammers for me.

But I think you should really go for CE there is enough sugar for 4 cottage powerhouses one in each direction and north with ivory can make a decent production city too.

What's difficult level is this? Heck, if this is monarch im going to play it myself.

Warlord... I'm not good enough yet to get beyond it...

Warlord diff, continents, epic speed, large map...

 

[Welnic]

No enough of hammers for me.

But I think you should really go for CE there is enough sugar for 4 cottage powerhouses one in each direction and north with ivory can make a decent production city too.

What's difficult level is this? Heck, if this is monarch im going to play it myself.

There is a utility called SaveConvert that you can use to change the difficulty level of a save.

 

[Ruler]

Nice to know but tt's large map so it's not so good as I thought in first place on standard map size that kind of start could rock big time so it doesn't matter.

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

So... GP farm... maybe????

Hmm - that much food makes an uber city of just about any form. So the question in my mind is "does using this city as a GP farm provide better leverage than the alternatives?

An intersting point is that these plantations are all equivalent to pre-Biology farms with extra commerce and no worries about irrigation. So the plantations don't conflict with the idea of using this as a GP farm, where they take up tiles you would rather cottage or hammer.

The Egyptians get two slots from the Obelisk, plus two more with the library, so you can get the GP running with relatively cheap pops, the priests give a little bit of hammer without compromising the GP points. If you can arrange the Anchor Wat, then you'll be in fine shape with Priest slots (plus the forge).

The plantations may give enough commerce that you can leverage Bureaucracy to help get things set up before you build the palace somewhere else.

Getting the national epic is going to be slow, though. You may need to rush it.

 

[val13]

Hmm - that much food makes an uber city of just about any form. So the question in my mind is "does using this city as a GP farm provide better leverage than the alternatives?

An intersting point is that these plantations are all equivalent to pre-Biology farms with extra commerce and no worries about irrigation. So the plantations don't conflict with the idea of using this as a GP farm, where they take up tiles you would rather cottage or hammer.

The Egyptians get two slots from the Obelisk, plus two more with the library, so you can get the GP running with relatively cheap pops, the priests give a little bit of hammer without compromising the GP points. If you can arrange the Anchor Wat, then you'll be in fine shape with Priest slots (plus the forge).

The plantations may give enough commerce that you can leverage Bureaucracy to help get things set up before you build the palace somewhere else.

Getting the national epic is going to be slow, though. You may need to rush it.

I count 11 tiles that can be used for cottages, workshops, whatever, with absolutely zero concern for lack of food to still run a GP farm... or would that make it a hybrid????

The whole concept of a GP farm (ok... as *I* understand it) is that you need uber food to slot GP production (2fd/slot). So, given you need 40 food to work the 20 tiles, plus 2 food per GP slot, this start is heaven... right???

This has:

4 Sugar /w plantation (4F1C/Sugar) - 16 Food 4 Commerce
3 Spice /w plantation (3F2C/Spice) - 9 Food 6 Commerce
1 Corn /w farm (5F) - 5 Food
4 Grassland w/ fresh water (2F1C/tile) - 8 Food 4 Commerce
2 Grassland (2F/tile) - 4 Food
2 Forest/Grassland (2F1H/tile) - 4 Food 2 Hammer
1 Plain /w fresh water (1F1H1C) - 1 Food 1 Hammer 1 Commerce

And that isn't counting the city tile.

That comes out to 47 Food 15 Commerce 3 Hammer BEFORE the non-plantation tiles are even worked... which would allow for 3 GP slots right off the bat, yes?

So... with 4 Grasslands on fresh water with a farm adds 4 more Food and the Plain with a farm adds 1 more food for 5 additional food, or total, 6 GP slots.

That still leaves the 2 Grasslands and 2 Forest/Grassland for 2 cottages/2 lumbermills? 4 cottages? 2 workshops/2 lumbermills (for 5 GP slots)?

I would think with food being the means to an uber city, this start has all the potential in the world..

 

[DaveMcW]

I would hook up one of each resource, then cottage spam the remaining 17 tiles.

 

[Weird Piggy]

No enough of hammers for me.

But I think you should really go for CE there is enough sugar for 4 cottage powerhouses one in each direction and north with ivory can make a decent production city too.

What's difficult level is this? Heck, if this is monarch im going to play it myself.

More like insane hammer powerhouse....

 

[val13]

I would hook up one of each resource, then cottage spam the remaining 17 tiles.

I saved the initial placement... saving the rest in separate slots so I can always start over from scratch...

Why only 1 and cottage the rest?

 

[Jet]

In my opinion the reason you might want to cottage the other 17 tiles is to squeeze out the absolute maximum benefit of A x B x C:
A = working the cottages as early as possible. The capital has the most time to grow and work tiles, and typically also has all the best buildings for happy and health.
B = Bureaucracy
C = Oxford and other science and wealth multiplier buildings
This is given the fact that even with only the three food improvements it would still have a healthy food surplus.

It would be very low on production and conflicted between whipping buildings and growing and working cottages, so I doubt there would be time for every single building you'd want, until Universal Suffrage. Just building Oxford... ugh. My intuition would be to put in some temporary workshops for that.

I imagine you might not always have enough health to work all 17 cottages, so that you might need food improvements on some of them at some point. (Just a guess, not looking closely).

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

The whole concept of a GP farm (ok... as *I* understand it) is that you need uber food to slot GP production (2fd/slot). So, given you need 40 food to work the 20 tiles, plus 2 food per GP slot, this start is heaven... right???

It's very good, but I don't think it is heaven.

Main points to a GP Farm:
1) A city that is specialized to act as a GP Farm has a simplified list of city improvements to construct - you worry about slots, with health and happiness as you go along, but that's basically it. Units, mercenaries, commerce... those are somebody else's problems.

2) You can only build one National Epic, which means one place where the leverage of GP points is maximized.

3) The population points working the tiles to provide you with the food are not directly contributing to the goal - therefore you want as few of these as possible. Having your four surplus food concentrated into one corn farm is better than sharing it over two plantations, because you can support the same number of specialists at a lower population (less need for building health or happy).

4) The more suitable a city is for some other activity, the higher the opportunity cost to use it as a GP Farm.

So consider this site. No hills to speak of, so it has no immediate prospects as a production center (good). Like most capitals, it is configured so that you can run a zillion cottages, and still have food left over to run specialists if you like - your typical science city (planning to leverage the high commerce and the slots to run scientists, plus academy, oxford and so forth).

However, cottaging everything has an opportunity cost associated with it - any of those resources that you cottage over cannot be used for trading. At a city level, the trading aspect of resources is irrelevent, but if your civ needs the resource collecting improvements, then the options you have for the tiles are restricted a bit.

Now, between Calendar and Biology, those plantations are a good thing: they are farms with extra commerce, so in a GP farm you can leverage them quite happily. Once biology comes, though, having a plantation instead of a farm is 1/2 a specialist that you cannot feed. In the post biology world, you'l have a choice to make (basically between running 21 specialists and 24 specialists), but that's a long way off, since you have to be able to support the health and happy first anyway.

Because the food is smeared out, you have to run a higher population per specialist. Irrigated corn supports two specialists with one person working, the tiles, you need two plantations to provide the same number of specialists - that's one more health, and one more happy, that you need to scrounge up as you go.


GP Farm heaven starts with two tiles of ocean, both with seafood, irrigated corn, forrests that you can spare for chopping (ie, surplus over those you will keep for the health benefits), something useful under the city tile (for an extra hammer or food)... reach for the moon.

 

[DaviddesJ]

I would hook up one of each resource, then cottage spam the remaining 17 tiles.

Cottage on a lake? Is that a new variant?

 

[Preston85]

I think mine is a bit better....

captured after I made GL in my own capital so its pumping out GS to move to settle there... seems to be working alright for my first real GP farm.

p.s. war with hatty is reason for all the unhappy faces, just took 4 of her cities and am marching on regardless in true Toku style! (Might stop after the next city and get something from it while I recover a bit).

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

I think mine is a bit better....

captured after I made GL in my own capital so its pumping out GS to move to settle there... seems to be working alright for my first real GP farm.

That's an awful lot of tiles that aren't contributing GP points.

 

[shadow2k]

I absolutely hate starts like that. Zero hammers, and pretty much all Calendar resources. I can't figure out why the game is so intent on giving the capitals so much food, but often completely neglecting any type of production tiles.

 

[DaviddesJ]

I can't figure out why the game is so intent on giving the capitals so much food, but often completely neglecting any type of production tiles.

Yeah, everyone knows that, in the real world, every place that people live has a proportionate balance of all types of resources. Why can't Civ4 do the same thing?

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

I absolutely hate starts like that. Zero hammers, and pretty much all Calendar resources. I can't figure out why the game is so intent on giving the capitals so much food, but often completely neglecting any type of production tiles.

Not playing the Highlands map often enough?


Effective ways to leverage calendar resources during the opening have eluded me thus far, including the general problem of what strategic ideas work with discovering Calendar as quickly as possible.