Jumpmasters 1B: Power is Knowledge (Vanilla, GOTM mod - Emperor - No research)

[DJMGator13]

A few things I've been thinking/wondering:
1) Can any of the Mongol UUs trigger a golden age?
2) Has anyone seen a good summary table of worker-turns-to-complete-improvements? My combinations of workers is often less than exact.
3) I fully agree with keeping an extra warrior around the new cities for MP/defense, surprise attacks hurt me in my Emperor game.

Thing I write to myself most often in my Civ notes: "Play Slower!"

#1) Don't know I was going to ask AlanH the same question.

#2) Very good article (understatement, should be required reading) in the War Academy by Cracker on Improving Your Opening Play and the Forestry section has a worker turn chart. Here is a link to it. EDIT: The Terrian Basic section has a very nice chart on irrigating vrs mining bonuses.

"Play Slower" - taking notes as you play for your turn report will force you to play slower.


EDIT: Cross posted with MB - nice chart.

 

[mad-bax]

1. They all can.
2. >>HERE<<
3. Usually wise

 

[AlanH]

Turn 0 4000 BC
Set research to CB.
Check prefs to ensure that stop at end of turn is ON and that darned book cursor is OFF.
Settler NW to hut. We get Bronze Working [dance]
Scout sees wheat on the FP within our proposed capital's radius.
There's more FP to the north. We are going to make lots of little Mongols around here.
Scout West to hill. Sees more sheep to the W/NW
We can see lots of plains on the river to the west. Good stuff, lots of shields.
Our proposed city site would have:
1 x FP/wheat
4 x FP
1 x sheep/hill/river
1 x olives/hill/river
3 x forest river
3 x plains river
1 x hill/river
2 x coast
1 x desert
2 x ?? forest
This is a great settler factory
Settler west to forest, confirms the hidden tiles are also forest.
Worker starts to irrigate the start tile FP.

Turn 1 3950 BC
Found Karakorum -> warrior (4)
Sliders to 10.0.0 for Mongol-speed research and 4 gpt into the piggy bank
Citizen works sheep/hill
Scout west sees coast to SW, west again to coast, sees whale tail and goody hut

Turn 2 3900 BC
Scout to goody hut, gets a settler [dance] I this game!
Scout NW on coast
Settler heads SE towards RCP 3.5 location on the hill by the river.

Turn 3 3850 BC
Settler SE to coastal hill on river. Sees a second whale tail, but a site to get both would not be on the river.
Scout N, E to hill and sees another goody hut.

Turn 4 3800 BC
Worker completes irrigation starts road
MM Karakorum for 1 shield and extra food from FP to complete warrior in 1 turn.
Found Ta-Tu on west coast, start a worker (10 turns)
Scout N on hill towards hut.
Now earning 6 gpt

IBT:
An AI unit appears across the water and pops the goody hut over there.
Karakorum Warrior -> Warrior

Turn 5 3750 AD
Contact Korean Ashigura Footman (spearman stats)
Korea is polite, has Alphabet and 10 gold, needs Warrior Code. Already has Bronze and Pottery.
No deals available, if we offer all we have (28 gp + 6 gpt + WC) we are close to a deal.
Warrior SE to sheep hill to do a little local exploring to the south while our long range scout heads north-ish. Warrior sees wheat on grass, and a coast to the south. Looks like we are near the southern end of a land mass.
Scout north to the hut and we get ... the Wheel
We can see horses a short distance north of Ta-Tu.
Back to Korea then, with our new-found technology.
We can have Alphabet + 10 for Wheel + WC.
Or we can have Alphabet for Wheel + 28 gp + 1 gpt.
I decide to take the first option. I prefer to keep our treasury strong, and Warrior Code might become obsolete for trading purposes if Korea meets someone else.

Turn 6 3700 BC
Warrior SE to olives hill. Sees more coast on both sides of the narrow channel.
Scout N, E, Sees more river, forest, FP.

Turn 7 3650 BC
Worker completes road, moves NW to second FP.
Warrior South, see fish
Scout NE, N, sees fish

Turn 8 3600 BC
MM Karakorum for growth next turn at maximum shields.
Ensure governor is set to manage production and not moods. Don't want an entertainer, thanks!
Scout North
Worker starts irrigation.
Warrior West

Turn 9 3550 BC
Karakorum grows to pop 2
Slider to 9.0.1 to control happiness
Warrior South
Scout NW, NW to mountain, sees horses, rivers, hills. This looks like a big island!
Korea still has sero gold and no cities.

Turn 10 3500 BC
Warrior heads back North towards Karakorum to take up MP duties.
Scout W, SW to hill

IBT Karakorum completes warrior2 and starts a granary. Its borders expand.

Turn 11 3450 BC
Scout west, sees more sheep
Warrior2 east on the road, and north to check out the east coast north of Karakorum.

Turn 12 3400 BC
Worker completes irrigation and starts road
Warrior2 north on coast
Warrior1 back into Karakorum for some R&R and to entertain the ladies.
Slider 10.0.0, +7 gpt
Scout West, sees a hut, pops it for 25 gold, sees furs
Korea still has zilch

Turn 13 3350 BC
Warrior2 north, sees local furs north of Karakorum. So we shall have one luxury
Scout south, south, sees lambs

IBT Ta-tu completes worker2, starts barracks

Turn 14 3300 BC
Warrior2 North on coast
Scout W,W, sees cows x 2
MM Karakorum for growth next turn at maximum shields
Worker2 to plain for irrigation duties

IBT karakorum grows to pop 3

Turn 15 3250 BC
Worker2 starts irrigating
Warrior2 NW on coast
Scout W, N, sees horse
Korea has CB, wants over 100 for it. There's no hurry, and the price will come down if we meet someone else.
Slider to 9.0.1 to keep Karakorum happy.

Turn 16 3200 BC
Start chopping the forest SW of Karakorum. This will provide shields for the first settler.
Warrior2 N
Scout W, NW to hell, sees NW coast.

Turn 17 3150 BC
Scout NE, N. Warrior NE

Turn 18 3100 BC
Warrior NE, sees oysters. Scout NE, N sees hut

IBT Warrior meets Han warrior on the NE coast. We are not alone on this landmass!
Karakorum grows to pop 4

Turn 19 3050 BC
Meet Han. He's cautious, has 44 gold, furs, Masonry and also has no cities! This is not Emperor as I'm used to seeing it!
He needs Alphabet, Pottery, Wheel. We have a trading opportunity. Let's deal

Give Korea 114 gold for CB
Give Alphabet+Wheel+Pottery to Han for Masonry+33 gold
Sell Masonry to Korea for 99 gold.

We gained Masonry+CB+18 gold
We are at tech parity with Korea and we are ahead of Han by CB.

Set our massive team of scientists to research Mathematics, flat out at zero cost.
Scout NE to hut and pops Mysticism, moves north to hill on NW coast
Warrior NW
Worker completed irrigation, starts road.
Slider to 8.0.2 to keep Karakorum happy

IBT Han warrior heads in our general direction

Turn 20 3000 BC
I decide to turn warrior2 back towards Karakorum, just in case Han's warrior gets any bright ideas. He heads south, cutting off the Han direct path down the coast.
Scout moves east ,east, sees the Han light blue border.

State of the nations:

Scores are Mongols 117, Han and Korea 89
Korea has a second city. We are up CB on Han, and Mysticism on both.
We have two cities, no improvements, two warriors, one scout, two workers.

We have a granary in 5 turns in Karakorum, and currently it is set to grow to pop 5 on the same turn. We will want to slow that growth by one turn without slowing the granary build. This will leave the granary full. Karakorum has a variety of combinations of spt and fpt available for fine tuning - a micromanager's dream. So this will be easy to arrange. There's a forest chop that will complete on turn six, putting ten shields in the production bin towards a settler. So we should queue a settler after the granary, and we can then pop a settler four turns later, as the city reaches pop 7. We'll need some serious entertainment tax when Karakorum reaches pop 6, so let's watch for, and avoid riots. Warrior2 can return to base as an MP to help with this.

Here's a screenshot of our world, and the zipped save:

 

[Grunthex]

Well, I got everything installed (Thanks Gator) and tried to shadow along your turns (to see how a flood plains start should be done)

My seed went a little off right away, not giving me The Wheel from a hut, so I couldn't duplicate the trades. It also showed differently when I finally met the Han, as he had a second city (though I don't know where!) ... I was able to mimic your moves absolutely (there was one typo in your log, you said you sent the scout NE, N, but it was really NE, E). And I learned absolutely nothing new, except for the importance of paying attention to micromanagement. Which isn't NEW, but it reinforced.

Question: I grew to size 3 right when you did, but my size 4 fell a turn behind -- once you hit 3, did you MM back to the FP, or stay on the olives hill for a bit? It's hard to tell since in the save you're on the hill.

I was going to try my hand at a dot-map, but Paint really sucks for this. I gotta find a better editor. Here's my thoughts. All are based on the 3-3.5 Ring.

A city one NE of the FP+Wheat in Karakorum's borders. This gets us close to the furs (should be taken once we have our second ring city (7-7.5? or 6-6.5?)

3 NW of Karakorum on the hill. We could go one NE or one SW of this with the same ring, but this maximizes the food available, and the loss of one hill is minimal in this environment.

South of the olive hill. Gets another wheat, can share it's high production tiles as needed with Karakorum. Looks to me like it'd need a cultural expansion some day to reach real usefullness., but still the best spot on the ring that way.

Last, 2 SE of Ta-Tu. Crowding things. I don't know if it's really needed, but it's a possibility.

Is Karakorum a good capital for us? There's a lot of nice land out that way, that will be too corrupt to use. Do we start thinking about designing rings from a future city to the Northwest somewhere? I've never USED RCP, by the time I discovered it, I was on C3C.

End babbling here. Wait for input.

 

[DJMGator13]

Alan

This is no research game and you have us up techs. Beautiful.


@ nikof - Please do not be offended by my next question. Have you managed a 4 turn settler factory in any of your games? The idea is to keep food at +5 fpt. Since Alan set the governor to emphasize production on the turn the city grow the new citizen will be placed on the highest shield tile available. Once the city grows we want to micromanage the city back to +5fpt. I can post or link you to some examples.

Do not be shy about asking questions. I know this is not a TDG, but we do want to help our Jumpers improve.

 

[Mistfit]

Two techs and a settler.. Not bad...OMG thats awe inspiring. Great turns. I plan to be modded tomorrow (acutally later today) I'll check back in once I sleep some and check the save.

 

[Karasu]

Great going!

A few random thoughts:
- Suggested city sites look good. I would claim the southern wheat first; a city 3S of KK would be perfect, but that's distance 4.5...
- The question on capital placement is very good: we have very little room around Karakorum, so we will definitely have to establish a second larger core somewhere else.
It is clearly a bit too early right now to decide, but we should decide very soon whether we want to build the FP next to KK and jump the palace later, or rely on a GL ro rush the FP far away, or whatever.
In the first case, it will be wise to pay attention to the city placement around the FP city too.
- Military. With our cheap UUs being on the upgrade path of almost every AA unit, we can happily start building all we want for a massive later upgrade.
Not having to buy the early MA techs becomes at this point a strong argument in favour of getting the Great Library.
We may also want to consider an Ancient Age aggression on the Han with Horses and swords, depending on how the game evolves.


EDIT (I always forget...)
- AlanH: built the foundations of a glorious Mongol empire
- Nikof: up
- Karasu: already dreaming of mongol hordes
- Grunthex
- DJMGator13
- Mistfit

 

[AlanH]

After a night's sleep:

Yes, a nice fast start with all those goodie hut techs and the settler. I felt it was important to get a second city producing than to wait around for more information, but in the cold light of day I realise I should have settled on the east coast, near the flood plain wheat. It would have taken a few turns to get there, but with all the food in that area the two cities could have shared the tiles and still produced a settler every four turns, plus rapid worker production. As ever, food is power, and, as we know, power is knowledge BTW, I haven't said yet that I think that's a great strap line

I still like the northern wheat site for more than a couple of reasons:

1, Karakorum can be a four turn settler factory without even using the wheat, and it already has two FP tiles prepped, so another city could use the wheat.

2. It's development towards our only known rival on this land mass. Always a good thing. Our early land grap has to be northwards. The southern site is unlikely to be competed for until Map Making appears.

3. It's heading for the only known lux.

4. I am pre-judging that we will probably build our Forbidden Palace somewhere to the north of Karakorum and plan to transfer our capital to Han territory. The northern wheat city would be a second mature city in the FP's core.

5. The southern wheat will be hard work to irrigate (24 worker turns to chop, irrigate and road to it) so we'd probably use it for a shield and 3 food. Food is power, and we can get 5 fpt food from the northern wheat.

6. I'm still feeling guilty about not having settled there already

@Grunthex: Yes, huts are a real lottery. It sounds like in your game the Han got a settler. What did you get, BTW?

I don't recall the precise citizen allocations for the pop increase to 4, but I do recall sticking to the flood plain for a bit longer than was intuitive after the pop 3 increase. I think I moved back to the olives shortly before pop 4. I was also juggling it with the forest chop timing. I didn't do a thorough analysis of the decision to start chopping - it started when the worker came free, and I knew ten shields would help either with the granary or the first settler. The options around Karakorum are really superb for mm, as I said in my log. You can tune it to deliver food at any rate you want with pinpoint precision and with options on shield production as well, so I knew I could manipulate it to use those ten shields, and I did. As it is they will arrive on the first turn of the settler build, after the granary is completed.

I didn't build much military as it became obvious that we have a fair bit of breathing space before the AI starts looking for blood. They seldom attack until they are running out of free space to expand, and there's plenty of that. I figured a barracks was going to help our research program more than one or two more regular warriors.

More on Palaces. Here's my understanding of the corruption implications of a Palace move.

It looks like Karakorum is a temporary capital. It doesn't have room for an efficient two-ring core on our own island, and there's lots of space to our north. My guess is we'll build an FP - by hand if we can't find a leader to do it for us - somewhere north of Karakorum. Alternatively we could jump our palace, but I've never been happy about abandoning a city early in the game. We don't need RCP around the FP. The corruption deal is that once we move the palace, cities near the FP get a corruption ranking equal to the number of cities nearer to the Palace than they are. So, for example, if we set up our Palace in Beijing and we have a typical AI OCP ring of 5 cities at RCP distance 5 then all cities closer to the FP than 6 will get zero rank corruption. If there's a second ring of Han cities at radius 9 then all cities between 6 and 9 from our FP will have rank 5 - the number of cities in the Palace's first ring. So placement round a potential FP site looks more like Disc City Placement ("DCP" [tm]), as it is not important to stay *on* a circle, only *within* a circle to achieve a particular rank relative to a Palace with an RCP layout.

Of course, if we take over Han's cities and they are not in an RCP layout, and we don't rearrange them, then it doesn't matter where we put our FP core cities, and they can go wherever the best resources are.

There, I hope I've succeeded in confusing everyone. I did warn you about my mathematical leanings Please feel free to comment, up to and including telling me I'm talking rubbish

 

[nikof]

Got it!

@ AlanH - great start!

@ DJM - not offended at all. I have done a 4-turn factory, but will check in if I get confused.

I should be able to play tonight/tomorrow morning, and will probably have some questions before I take the turns. Things a bit crazy on the home front today...

nikof

 

[DJMGator13]

I haven't studied the map yet regarding city locations. If we are going to hand build FP (saving a GLeader to relocate Palace in Han terrirtory) in our initial core should we plan our rings around our proposed FP city? Here is some wisdom on the FP that akots bestowed on our team in SGOTM2.

RCP around FP, however tight it is, is not influenced by corruption as long as the cities around FP are closer to that FP city versus the cities around Palace. For example, if there is RCP 5 from Palace and RCP 3 from FP, all these cities are rank 1. However, if there is RCP 5 from FP and RCP3 from Palace (6 cities for example0, then RCP5 from FP would be rank 7 for all cities. As a general rule, build around FP should be dense and build around Palace should follow OCP pattern. Therefore, we can build FP somewhere in the original core to gain OCN bonus and then jump Palace with a leader to AI-settled core with OCP.

We built on a RCP3/6/9 in our core and later rushed a new Palace in captured lands that provided a RCP5/8 rings.

 

[AlanH]

... and will probably have some questions before I take the turns

Please do, I'm sure I must have missed some key information in my turn log. There are no stupid questions .. except the ones you don't ask Of course, there's no guarantee you'll get sensible answers

Just a quick PS on city planning. Given our current small land area in all direcions except north, I think we need an initial tight cluster of cities. Here's a suggested dot map for a tight layout at 3.x and 5.x that takes reasonable advantage of the available fresh water, avoids building on bonuses, and snags the horses and furs:

Green dots are radius 3.x, Yellow dots are 4.x, pink are horses/furs.

When we move this core's center north with a Palace move or FP we can thin it out if we like, or leave it as is for a while.

 

[AlanH]

I haven't studied the map yet regarding city locations. If we are going to hand build FP (saving a GLeader to relocate Palace in Han terrirtory) in our initial core should we plan our rings around our proposed FP city? Here is some wisdom on the FP that akots bestowed on our team in SGOTM2. ....

We built on a RCP3/6/9 in our core and later rushed a new Palace in captured lands that provided a RCP5/8 rings.

As I said in my previous dissertation, you don't need RCP around the FP in the sense of ensuring that all cities are on rings. The tight build conclusion is correct, though. If the cities on my dot map were around teh FP, instead of teh palace, then a palace elsewhere with its first ring at RCP 5 would set all the cities in my propsed placement at corruption rank one.

Until we move/create new palace positions we need to have RCP around our current palace, and that's what my dot map seeks to achieve. it uses 3/5 instead of 3/6/9 because of our tight space, but it's otherwise similar to your example. Except if we jump the palace to an AI placement of 5/8, *all* my dots would be at rank 1 relative to a FP in Karakorum (which won't happen). I suspect we could hand build an FP in the north western green dot, near the horses, and continue with a tight pattern north of this city. [EDIT] In that scenario, all my dots would fall within rank 1 relative to a Palace ring of 5, except the two most south easterly ones. Another reason to establish and develop the northern ones before the southern ones.

[edit 2 - sorry ] The green dot I've suggested for an FP has the disadvantage that it's not on a river. We'd need an aqueduct to grow it. I'll have to think about that, but it may be it's still the best option.

 

[Grunthex]

After a night's sleep:
@Grunthex: Yes, huts are a real lottery. It sounds like in your game the Han got a settler. What did you get, BTW?

As I recall, I got nothing where you got the Wheel, maps where you got 25g, and nothing where you got Mysticism. I would NOT have been the tech leader.

Off to another 10 hour day on a ball diamond. Knock em dead Nikof!

 

[Mistfit]

Request: At the end of your turn log post a quick note as to where you think the next turns should head. Example: next ten should work on setting up the settler pump, watch out for this guy headed towards this city. And make sure this city does not riot.

Side note:
What do you think about naming cities. I am bad because I am a piss poor typist. So Many times if a city name comes up that I know I will have to type a bunch of times and it ends up being 17 letters long with no vowels, I may end up calling it Mistic Villiage or Mistberg or something. Any complaints to this?

 

[AlanH]

Sorry if my ramblings at the end of my log weren't clear, but that was my intention. The Han warrior is mentioned in my last turn description, but the rest is all in the final paragraph.

I prefer to let the software name the cities as it adds something to the atmoshere of the game. If you want names to be easy for you to type you'll have to dictate some rules on what you like typing (max length, letter combinations ????) that we can all follow. Unless we all do it, any name you avoid will keep being offered until someone like me just uses it, and you still may find yourself typing it later.

As a tip, you might try keeping a scratch text document containing frequently used names and phrases, open it up while you are writing your turnlog and copy paste from it.

 

[Yom]

lurker's comment:

Maybe a better title (rather than Power is Knowledge) would be Ignorance is Strength? (Just as slavery = freedom)

 

[AlanH]

Thanks, Yom, but I think our title is superbly appropriate. We don't plan on being ignorant. We expect to become very knowlegeable through the use of strength, courage, cunning, astute trading, and large amounts of luck. We've already demontrated the latter two methods. Opportunities for the first three will come soon enough.

 

[Mistfit]

Your post was fine Alan. My earlier comment was more for the team in general. Moves can seem strange without a short discription of what your thoughts were. I quite enjoyed your "ramblings". As far as the cities go we can keep them as is but don't be suprised if I slaughter the spellings or start to give them knicknames. I've never played the mongols so I dont know how bad they get. IMO the Aztec are the worst. can you say "Alex I'd like to buy a vowel"

 

[Karasu]

Yes, Aztec names are bad, but you will probably reconsider that when we get to founding Dalandzagdad... I would even go as far as suggesting that we include as an additional variant rule that we have to name it at least once in each turnlog

I totally agree with settling the closer wheat first. Without direct access to the game, I had completely overlooked that KK does not need it. Just imagine, TWO settler factories in the same start...

The southernmost city, with the wheat and the fish, can probably be a worker factory without requiring irrigation.

Alan's proposal for the FP may indeed be the best option, in spite of requiring an Aqueduct. I'm not too happy about moving the Palace either, but if we don't get an early leader we may be well forced to do that. We'll see, I guess

 

[DJMGator13]

Dot map looks real nice. Definately agree on building northward towards Han first, maybe even trying to grab the two northern yellow dots as cities number 4 & 5 before competing the inner ring (city 3 is the green dot N N from KK).