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

[nikof]

Re: Pusan - if we build a city in the old suggested spot (the X in 'Gator's map), then we only get 8 of our initial workable squares, I think. I don't know if the Temple border expansion would give us control over the coastal square between the X and Pusan. I also don't know if we care much, since the border expansion would give us ample workable coastline - which isn't that useful until we get a Harbor, anyway.

Building a new city with a bit out of its border always makes me nervous. Does it actually affect the chances of a flip? I don't know.

@AlanH - you and Mistfit may well be alone for a while! I'm heading off for 2 weeks (from the 12th to the 28th). If things go speedily, I might be able to play on Sunday night, otherwise you'll have to skip me for a while. Maybe iBook Refugee could fill in.

Cheers,
nikof

 

[AlanH]

We only lose three tiles to Pusan out of the possible 21 for that city. One's a desert the other two are coast. By the time we are worrying about that sort of thing Pusan or its rubble will be ours anyway.

Flip chances are related to the number of overlapping tiles (3 for the desert tile, 1 for the BG), the number of foreign nationals (zero), relative distance from the two capitals, local and global relative culture (currently equal). I don't know where Seoul is - we should actually find out by buying an embassy with Korea - but my guess is it's at least as far from Pusan as Pusan is from KK, as the AI builds at OCP. Look how far the Han cities are from Beijing. So our city will be considerably closer to KK than to Seoul. I'm suggesting we try to flip Pusan by building a bit of culture. No one has any yet. If we can do that we'll have a ready made beach head on Korean/Baekje territory

Let's see how Mistfit gets on. I'll probably play right away when he finishes, in which case you might get another run at it. That's assuming we don't reach a controversial position where we need a team discussion. Depending on Karasu's availablility we then might want to wait until Gator gets back before proceeding.

 

[Mistfit]

Well it looks as if my turns will be pretty boring. But this is my official I got it for today. I will play in 5 to 6 hours time. It's my birthday and my kids are dragging me away so they can dig into my cake. I will switch the temple build and see if I can't start some cultural warfare. I'll post my log and save before sunrise. It's 7:00p.m. here

 

[AlanH]

Happy Birthday! Have a good one

AlanH's first rule of civ3: Don't play when in need of sleep! (first one I always break, that is )

 

[nikof]

Happy Birthday, Mistfit!

nikof

 

[Mistfit]

Pre turn: Ok everything lookin good. Going to use some Barbslinger rules of Playing. #1 get my glass of Gentleman Jack (for sipping ~not swigging) #2 Make sure research is @ 0%. #3 Only change is in Ta-Tu Switch from Temple to Mandingo (or somthing) Bowman and hit enter, done in 8 turns. #4 Mantra ~ Food is Power...Food is Power...

IBT
See a Barb Horse across the straights
Being followed by a Han Warrior just N and E of Ulaanbaatar
Ulaanbaatar worker ---> Rax done in 10

Turn 1 (1475 BC)Warrior NE of Ulaanbaatar S - head him towards Darhan for MP
Move scout and warriors around
Prusan has something called a Ashagaru Footman doing MP duty
Check MM'ing
Karakorum size five growth in 2 settler in 2 - perfect
everyone else seems to be good
Nothing to trade (weird leaderheads, flags?) does A+ next to flag mean that they are happy with us?

IBT
The han warrior heads south towards our cities
The Baekje are building The Oracle

Turn 2 (1450 BC )
Our scout sees a stack of Barbarian 3 Pictish Warriors across the straights
MM'ing
Slide lux to 20% Tabriz grows next turn and has one happy one sad. I've never played at emperor so I son't know if you get the one turn before they riot
Nothing new on the tech front

IBT
Karakorum settler ---> settler due in 5 (actually if I do it right 4)

Turn 3 (1425 BC)
Settler heads south to the 5 spot at the bottom of our island (which I think of as Furland - could BM givin us at least one other different lux to play with? nooo....)
MM'ing
Nothing
No techs yet

IBT
Pictish Horseman shows up to sit with the warriors across the straights
Kazan Granary ---> woker
Hovd worker ---> Rax in 10

Turn 4 (1400 BC)
Workers work
MM'ing
The best I can do at Kazan is Growth in 5 worker in five so I change queue to a Rax for the time being to see if it works better between size 5 and 6.
Nothing new in tech
Notice "Mistfit's weedy moment #1" I Did not road the hill NW of Karakorum while the workers were there...have to hit that when we head back that way with a crew

IBT
Koreans are building The Oracle
Another Han Warrior pops out of the fog NW of Ulaanbaatar

Turn 5 (1375 BC)
Workers work
Play tag with the Han warriors NW of us
Nothing to MM
No New Tech - these guys obviuosly are not Scientific

IBT
Darhan Rax ---> Chariot in 10

Turn 6 (1350 BC)
Settle Mandalgovi in the south - starts on rax due in 20
Mothing to MM
No new tech

IBT
Ta-Tu Mangudai Bowman (MB) ---> MB in 10
The French complete the Pyramids

Turn 8 (1325 BC)
MB head towards Tabriz for MP
No MM
No New Tech

IBT
Katakorum Settler ---> settler
Dalandzadgad (see I typed it during my turns) worker --- rax (veto-able) in 20

Turn 7 (1300 BC)
Settler North to last 5 ring city
MMing - Lux to 30 until MP shows up for Tabriz (I should have gotten one here earlier )
No New Tech

IBT
Tabriz Rax ---> Chariot in 7
Ulaanbaatar Rax ---> Chariot in 5
The English complete The Oracle

Turn 9 (1275 BC)
Settle Choybalsan start on worker in 10
worker work
MB to tabriz next turn
Hey Korea learns Horseback Riding - kinda nice they have no horses yet
I can pick it up for 286 this turn - I'll wait to see if he sells it to anyone else to drive the price down
Han learns Codes of Laws he's annoyed with us and wants 620 for it. I did have a warrior in his territory for one, that may be why he's ticked at us. I'll wait because besides the 984 we have there is less than 300 gold between the other 3 so I could not make my money back.

IBT
Kazan rax ---> worker in 3 groth in 3 prolly the best we can do seeings that it is not on a river
Baekje are building the Colossus

Turn 10 (1250BC)
MB arrives in Tabriz

Hand down info:

We should be able to turn down lux slider pre turn

Am I correct in saying that we do not have to do anything to our settler pump to make it work (no MM'ing) or am I doing somthing wrong and causing the settler to come out late?

We have some trading possibilities with Korea and the Han. I forgot to check to see what they'd take before I saved and shut diwn the game.

The workers got back to the hill I neglected in the begining of my turns and should road it while they are there

The irrigation project for the south has started and can continue to the wheat if the next player thinks it wise

I've been keeping the scout in the NE on hold to see if anyone fights the barbs that are amassing on the land across the straights. I'm beginging to believe it may be an island because no one has shown up. AI tends to like to play Whack-a-Barb

The rax in the south that are due in 15+ turns might make good pre-builds for harbors or galleys if the AI would get off their buts and actually learn somthing. The problem with units coming from the south is they are slow to move with all of the rivers to the north
<<<Save>>>

Next better player

 

[AlanH]

Good stuff, Mistfit. Good to see you've got your installation running.

I've downloaded the save and this is a GOT IT. I'll try to play today. Here are some initial comments, I may come back again after I've looked some more at the save.

I like your delay in trading, you've learnt a key lesson at Emperor, that it's OK to be behind in tech at various points in the game. Right now there's nothing on the table that's critical to our immediate success, so we can afford to wait for better prices or other opportunities. In fact we do better to hold off on buying HBR. We can build 20 shield chariots and then upgrade them later rather than building 30 shield horses. We'll have 50% more horses at the point when we upgrade.

does A+ next to flag mean that they are happy with us?

Yes. The flags have no facial expressions or era clothes so there are +/- signs to indicate mood (+ is polite or gracious, - is annoyed or furious, nothing means they're cautious) and letters to indicate era. You'll see the letter A's change to M's if they ever drag themselves out of the Ancient era.

Am I correct in saying that we do not have to do anything to our settler pump to make it work (no MM'ing) or am I doing somthing wrong and causing the settler to come out late?

If you're getting them out every 4 turns that's the best you can do. If you are not having to MM it then it's worth looking to see if we have enough excess shields that we can build a warrior between settlers, maybe by running 5-7 instead of 4-6. I'll check that, but I don't think it's likely. The other thing I'll check is whether we can hand off some excess shields to another city. This is a big advantage of close builds - the ability to share tiles makes for very efficient use of the terrain. Cutting KK down on shields may mean we have to MM it, or do some tile switching between cities, but if you can build more units faster it's worth the effort.

Re the southern irrigation project, I still think irrigation near Ulaanbataar would have been a better use of worker turns and should have higher priority. The wheat will only deliver one more fpt for three irrigation actions. Ulaanbataar can get 2 more fpt just from two irrigations. However, the upside of doing will be that we can grow pop a bit faster in Mandalgovi and maybe pop rush a temple there to push back the culture border.

Some egg-sucking lessons re. worker stacks. Please feel free to ignore the following if you've heard it all before. I haven't looked at the save in enough detail to even check if it applies, but I do see worker stacks in operation, so it may be a useful review at this point. .

It's generally not a good idea to stack workers on road works. They each lose a turn getting to the tile. If you have 3 workers and you move them to a flat tile to road it the road will be done in 2 turns - one to move plus one to road. That's 6 worker turns. If you use one worker he takes 4 turns - 1 to move plus 3 to road. It only took two extra turns but you've saved 2 worker turns in 4 - 50%. Doesn't sound much, but it adds up over the total core development time. The percentage inefficiency is not so bad for roading hills (later mountains) with *small* stacks because the move turn can be a smaller fraction of the total time to build the road. But it still wastes turns.

Stacking is good when you are irrigating or mining terrain that's already roaded and you can move one or two squares and start work in the same turn, but then you have to check the stack size. Irrigation takes 4 worker turns. If you put 3 workers on irrigation it will take 2 turns = 6 worker turns and you waste 2 worker turns. 2 or 4 workers will do an efficient job. But mining takes 6 on open ground so a stack of 3 is efficient and 4 isn't.

Stacks of 2 are versatile, being effective for mining and irrigation, as long as they are moving around on roads. So I tend to use single workers to road, and pairs of workers to mine/irrigate behind them.

Foreign workers confuse it a bit as they count 0.5. So a worker/slave combo is good for mining (1.5 into 6 leaves no remainder) but not so good for irrigation. Pairs of slaves can be treated as normal workers except for the roading movement inefficiency again.

Of course, all efficiency considerations go out the window if you need a road for strategic purposes, and you need it NOW! But we are not in that mode at the moment.

 

[Mistfit]

It sounds like an efficient way to play with the workers. I will have to get back to a game to try it. It sounds like a logistical nightmare. I kept the workers in stacks because it is the way they were when I picked up the game. I do not remember if they were all mining at the time though. Great info AlanH. Good luck. Have Fun.

 

[Karasu]

Good points and nice play -from the little I can see from home, on a lousy internet connection

I also agree on waiting for the trade. Code of Laws should not be going anywhere in the short term.
I would consider selling or gifting Writing around -if someone still lacks it- to encourage them to research MapMaking. The Han are probably doing that now, but they have already surprised us by going for CoL first...

I *may* give in to the temptation to connect again later tonight... if I don't, see you all on Monday!

 

[Mistfit]

Until the last turns (9 and 10) we were at even par in tech with everyone.

 

[AlanH]

More building turns

Preflight
F4:
Baekje polite, 2 gold, no tech difference, dyes hoooked up.
Korea polite, 63 gold, has HBR for 286 gold, 3 dyes hooked up, needs horses.
Han annoyed (what did we do?), 56 gold, has CoL for 558 gold, has furs, no horses
Decide to get embassies with Koea and Baekje to get more map info. We'll leave Han for now, maybe buy embassy as an investigation before war.
Screenshots of Seoul and Ch'ongju attached. Both at 0.10.0 - max research. Note that Baekje has a galley in the city! Map making is not available, are they seafaring?
Confirm that Pusan is equidistant from KK and Seoul.

F1: We are at 30% lux tax That's unncessary. Can't afford to keep the people happy at this stage. We can reduce to 10% with a MP in Kazan, so I move a warrior from Choybalsan to Kazan. Various MM to optimise food and shields. We are now at 9.0.1 with 39 gpt.
Hit next turn.

IBT KK settler -> settler

Turn 71 1225 BC
Readjust MM to try to get Kazan's worker + growth next turn.
Slider 9.0.1 for 38 gpt.
F4 - No change in deals, Han has RoP with Korea, and they all know each other. All is peaceful. I guess we should leave it that way to promote tech rate? We awant Monarchy and Mapmaking as soon as possible.

IBT Settler pair heads south from Canton under the nose of our warrior.
Kazan didn't produce its worker Governor asleep? Find he's set for Production AND commerce. Not sure what that does

Turn 72 1200 BC
Worker stack in the south can't reach any roaded locations and work, so might as well move to the wheat.
Warrior harasses Han settler pair.
Settler moves north heading for the northern flood plain.
Slider to 8.0.2 for Kazan at pop 6. 35 gpt

IBT Kazan pops a worker -> worker

Turn 73 1175 BC Settler continues north. Slider back to 9.0.1
F4: Baekje has hooked up iron. Han's gold is creeping up a few gpt.

IBT Hovd Barracks -> chariot

Turn 74 1150 BC Continue MM everywhere. Slider 8.0.2 again

IBT KK settler -> settler. Kazan worker -> worker

Turn 75 1125 BC Settler heads NE towards fish.
F4: han now has RoP with both other AI. Slider 9.0.1

IBT Tabriz chariot -> chariot

Turn 76 1100 BC Build Erdenet on the northern river nar horses. Start barracks.

IBT Forbidden Palace is now available.
Ta-Tu bowman -> bowman. Dalandzagdad barracks -> temple. Cholybalsan worker -> barracks

Turn 77 1075 BC Build Tsetserleg in NE near fish. Start worker.
Han's culture is starting to grow in F8.
Switch Almerikh to Forbidden Palace (30 turns)
Slider 8.0.2, 44 gpt

IBT Our settler has been shadowing Han settler pair and trying to get in their way. They've now turned back north!
Ulaanbataan chariot -> chariot

Turn 78 1050 BC Han has HBR. The price has now dropped to 137. We don't want it yet as we would like to build some more chariots for upgrade.

IBT KK settler -> settler

Turn 79 1025 BC In F3 we are weak vs. Han, average vs. Korea, strong vs. Baekje
Han and Korea both now have CoL and Philosphy, price for the pair is 427. Decide it's not urgent and we can talk about it. Han has 160 in the bank and Korea is broke. Baekje still at tech parity with us, with 2 gold.
Slider 9.0.1 with a taxman in Kazan (building settler in 5) 49 gpt.

Turn 80 1000 BC Nothing much.

After Action Report
I was trying hard to MM the cities and worker turns. We have a number of workers roading forests right now. Roading a forest takes 6 turns. If you chop it first it costs multiple worker moves to get a stack to it or it takes 10 turns. It's difficult to plan a 10 turn chop to happen right with units taking 10 turns or less each and changing players every 10 thruns, so I figure it's best to road first then a player can move a stack in and time 10 shields to help him with a build. The cost is 3 extra worker turns compared with a single worker chopping and then roading, but I think it's better in this situation.

We could mine the grass where we've irrigated to the wheat if we like, or leave it to become productive in Monarchy.

There's a settler heading north towards a blue dot site on the west coast. Here's a shot of our F3 screen:

We still need lots more chariots. I'm not sure it's worth building bows now, as we can always build them later if we want some to upgrade at Invention. We can create chariots for the same shields and we know HBR is available for 160 gold or so to give us 2.1.2 horses. We have over 1300 gold in the bank for upgrades.

The cities around KK all need constant attention to ensure they are not wasting food and shields. KK needs 6 fpt this turn to keep on track. I switched the wheat fp between KK and the others to optimise food and shields when it's at pop 4, and this needs to be done again now to grow KK this turn. Kazan will pop a settler this IBT, so bear that in mind when juggling. We have one settler in trasit towards the west coast blue dot, then we should go after the lambs and sheep north of that, and some river sites between us and Han.

Philosophy and CoL are on the table. It looks like the AI are beelining Republic, which is a little surprising. More surprising is the galley you can see in the Baekje capital screenie below

Here's Ch'ongju, Baekje in 1250 BC

... and here's Seoul, Korea the same year

Here's our cute little civilization:

And here's the SAVE for the next greater player

 

[mad-bax]

No matter how many times I see examples of the second picture it never ceases to amaze me. Surely it's a simple calculation to stick in the code.

 

[AlanH]

You'd think, wouldn't you Actually I was going to put a ribald comment in the timeline, then I thought I'd see who spotted it. Wonder how many of the silver wings will, now they know there's something to look for

What I want to know, Mr M-B, is where did that galley come from. Have you been teaching our rivals stuff they've no right knowing at this stage in the game?
PS m-b never could count. It's the third picture that contains the AI blunder.

 

[nikof]

Got it.
I'll play tomorrow, in between packing for a multi-city trip to visit family with the new baby. Either that or I'll drop it!

There's a settler heading north towards a blue dot site on the west coast.

Was there a dot-map I missed? Do you mean the RCP 9 ring? A bit confused, sorry. May be the sleep deprivation.

Makes sense to me to keep building chariots for a while and hold off on HBR, since the Horsemen only cost 20 to upgrade. Plan at this stage is to build lots of chariots, wait for someone to get Mapmaking, buy/take Mapmaking, and sweep over our island with Horses, yes?

I wanted to check people's thoughts on pop-rushing one or both of the SE temples. I don't pop-rush much, but if we want to establish cultural mastery in that area to cause an early flip, it might help.

Techs - if 2 civs have CoL and Philosophy and we don't... we won't know if they get Republic until they have a revolution, I believe. At this stage in the game we'd prefer Monarchy for the cheaper unit upkeep IMHO. But if others jump to Republic, would hate to get left behind in Despot for long. But if they go into Anarchy, that's a great time for a war... Hmm, I'm not sure how to approach this! Could just wait to see if Baekje go the same route? We certainly have lots of gold for the upgrades, so we could buy those 2 techs right now if we wanted to.

Not sure what the AI's huge error is. The unroaded Iron in Chong'ju? That city ruin on the Western edge of Seoul? I saw something similar in my last game - does the AI abandon cities early? Stupid, stupid AI creatures.

Will continue with the directions established. Yikes, that's a lot of workers to manage! Some guidance on city placement would be welcome, even if it's "Hey stupid, read the post in thread 7" or whatever.

Cheers,
nikof

 

[mad-bax]

The AI blunder is to do with the production it Seoul.

Seoul is building a worker. How many turns before it is competed?

 

[AlanH]

Got it.
I'll play tomorrow, in between packing for a multi-city trip to visit family with the new baby. Either that or I'll drop it!

Hope you can make it before you go, but don't get into trouble

Was there a dot-map I missed? Do you mean the RCP 9 ring?

No, here. We're bunching cities around Almerikh - as many as possible in a radius 5 disk, and there's one more spot on the west coast.

Plan at this stage is to build lots of chariots, wait for someone to get Mapmaking, buy/take Mapmaking, and sweep over our island with Horses, yes?

Yes, Leader fishing all the way . Note that we'd like them to be at pop 2 or more in most cities when we attack, then the won't auto raze. Also if they are not in Despot it would be good as they won't reduce pop by pop rushing spears. After the Han we go next door .

I wanted to check people's thoughts on pop-rushing one or both of the SE temples.

I think that's a good move once they get to 20 shields from completion. That will be in another 12 turns or so by which time they'll be at pop 3, I think and lose one to complete a temple.

Techs - if 2 civs have CoL and Philosophy and we don't... we won't know if they get Republic until they have a revolution, I believe. At this stage in the game we'd prefer Monarchy for the cheaper unit upkeep IMHO. But if others jump to Republic, would hate to get left behind in Despot for long. But if they go into Anarchy, that's a great time for a war...

I'm not sure if it would be a good move to jump to republic. We could lose 8 turns and I'm sure we'll prefer Monarchy later. I was part joking when I said they are bee-lining republic. It's hard to imagine they will go up that far before picking up Maths, Poly and Mapmaking.

Buying CoL and Philosophy wouldn't give us much more notice of their anarchy - they'd probably revolt immediately they got republic, so as long as we check F4 every turn we'll know just as soon as they go to anarchy. As soon as they do, and if we are ready, we can buy HBR, instant upgrade and go for it. We should group our chariots in forward cities with barracks - note I started barracks in our new front line towns.

Not sure what the AI's huge error is. The unroaded Iron in Chong'ju? That city ruin on the Western edge of Seoul? I saw something similar in my last game - does the AI abandon cities early? Stupid, stupid AI creatures.

What m-b said
Baekje have the iron hooked now, not a biggie.
That's probably not a ruin. If you can only see one roaded tile it looks like that. It's probably connected to other roads outside the range of vision. Also you can't see workers or other units outside the town. There could be a worker on that tile mining it, or another one roading the tile between it and Chongju.

Will continue with the directions established. Yikes, that's a lot of workers to manage! Some guidance on city placement would be welcome.

Good luck.

City placement is now down to finding good riverside locations. Don't worry about rings now, as corruption will be bad out there, and it'll not apply at all if we can get out palace set up in Beijing. Look north east and north west of Erdenet - lambs and sheep and rivers, and maybe more horses to trade. There's a couple of good spots after the blue one on the west coast, if we can get there before the Han. at that stage our new cities will be as close to Beijing as they are to the FP. Im not sure whether it's better to be closer to Beijing or to KK at that stage. I'll think about that.

 

[nikof]

Hope you can make it before you go, but don't get into trouble

Oh please, who has ever gotten into trouble playing computer games instead of attending to household duties?

Thanks for the city info.

The AI blunder is to do with the production it Seoul.

Seoul is building a worker. How many turns before it is competed?

Oh, I get it. AI completes a Worker in 1, but only has pop1 and won't grow for 3 turns. So it's wasting at least 3 turns (including the current turn, when it got to 8 shields) during which it could have produced a military unit.

I think I used to make this mistake with settlers!

 

[AlanH]

Whoops! Sorry, there are two more blue dots from the previous post to be settled, both on the west coast. They are at radius 5 or less from Almerikh. One of them will be for the settler in transit, then you'll be able to settle the other one, plus one or two more north of Erdenet, using KK settlers and the one coming out of Kazan next turn. I'm just doing an analysis of the rank corrution levels we'd get if we inherit the Han cities with a Palace in Beijing, but don't wait up, as I suspect it's not critical for our remaining city placements. It's much more important to get good food spots on rivers, in forward positions to provide good jump-off points to attack the Han when the time comes.

 

[Mistfit]

Han annoyed (what did we do?)

As I mentioned in my turn log I left our warrior in his territory for 1 to many turns.

F1: We are at 30% lux tax That's unncessary. Can't afford to keep the people happy at this stage.

Again I mentioned in my turn log and pass down report that this should be turned down I Just got a MB there on my tenth turn for MP duty.

IBT Settler pair heads south from Canton under the nose of our warrior.
Kazan didn't produce its worker Governor asleep? Find he's set for Production AND commerce. Not sure what that does

It was My understanding that using govenors was a no-no for SG's. The following is a quote from the Draft Constitution

SGOTM ettiquette
Ask to be skipped, or play your turns on time. Please don't just go missing in action.
Do not automate workers.
Do not use city governors.

BTW I did not touch the govenor settings at all during my turns.

Kazan didn't produce its worker

I also mentioned in my turn report that I had to wait until Kazan got bigger to start popping workers because at size 4-5 it would have taken 5 turns per. Once I let it grow to 5-6 it was ready to start popping them every 3. but it took my ten turns to prep it to do so.

 

[nikof]

I've no longer got it.

I'm really sorry folks, it turns out I was totally unrealistic about what I could get done this weekend. You're not the only ones I let down...

My humble apologies.

Over to Karasu to play next, I think. I'll be back on July 28, and would love to be put back in the game if forgiveness reigns. Will try to check in a few times to see how things are going.

Good luck!
nikof