Monarch Training 2

[Keiji]

Euhm, why is London building a granary? I though London was going to be our military factory? If so, a barracks would seem more logical. IIRC York was going to be our settler factory, which means we should build a granary there and get it's lands developed ASAP.

 

[danz]

Euhm, why is London building a granary? I though London was going to be our military factory? If so, a barracks would seem more logical. IIRC York was going to be our settler factory, which means we should build a granary there and get it's lands developed ASAP.

I thought about that a bit, and precaution got the best of me. It just seems that food is so tied to production in despotism, that even a good military factory should have a granary so that we can whip some pop into shields if need be or produce a worker every once in a while. It didn't feel right to build a barracks in a pop 2 town that was growing so slowly. With a granary, our productive base and our income grow twice as fast, and our options grow to include whipping. Plus, this is our capitol. It's not corrupted, so it needs to be as large as possible in order to maximize its potential.

That article, "food is power, case for food, etc." keeps reverberating in my mind. I'm thinking, in despotism, every town should focus on food, even more so in a no-reseach game.

 

[Detlef Richter]

I'am not shure if this can count in despo (especially for each city).
The goal have to be, to switch as fast as possible to the next gov. I think it is useless to manage every city to grow as crazy. At a later stage of the game it is necessary for milking, but in this early stage you need shield, shield and again more shields (to build units and city improvements for your later growing). We can't handle coruption in despo if we grow too fast. That means, we loose too much productivity and cash.

 

[danz]

I'am not shure if this can count in despo (especially for each city).

This is especially true in despotism, for the following reasons:
1) Expansion. More pop = more settlers.
2) Land improvement. More pop = more workers.
3) Shields. More pop = more whipping. Think about it this way: it takes 10-20 turns to build something of value in an average town under despotism. In that time, if we concentrate on population growth, we can grow the city at least 4 times and whip 4*20 = 80 shields as a result. The math will vary from city to city depending on the amount of available food, etc. but under despotism, the only resource that doesn't get corrupted all to hell is food! Please take a look at the war academy article on food. It's eye-opening, at least it was for me.

The goal have to be, to switch as fast as possible to the next gov. I think it is useless to manage every city to grow as crazy. At a later stage of the game it is necessary for milking, but in this early stage you need shield, shield and again more shields (to build units and city improvements for your later growing). We can't handle coruption in despo if we grow too fast. That means, we loose too much productivity and cash.

Even under the most optimistic scenario, we can not be under any other government until the end of this era! We are relying on others to do the research for us, and then we have to buy or steal the tech from them. Government techs are expensive. We can not count on getting the tech th we want at the time that we want. Chances are we will remain in despotism for 30, 40, 50, 60 turns? Who knows! We can take over our island, start on the next one, and have the game in the bag long before then.

And how do we maximize our potential in the meantime? Food = settlers + whipped units! We'll never be able to produce enough shields by working tiles anywhere else except London and 1-2 other cities. The rest will be 1-2 shields per turn + what we can whip out of the growing population.

 

[Sir Clive]

I tend to go along with the Danz viewpoint . Food is v important early on
and it doesn't really matter if you're producing a few regular (reather than vet) units early on provided you have enough to defend yourself.

I'm therefore inclined to go with Granaries before Barracks.

Just about to play my 10 turns now.

 

[Sir Clive]

Well that didn't go according to plan at all

The original plan was as follows

Next city founded will do some regular warriors / workers, York will
buils granary for settler pump, London will complete granary then
barracks to be out military building town. Would like to get a settler
out to the cows north of England but we do need more military and we
do need workers roading so that the military can move about.


Unfortunately there were 2 barbs - the westernmost one threatening to do nasty things near London (possible destroy all the shields we had put into Granary) and the eastern one possibly able to attack
our undefended settler. Our military consists of 1 warrior. We had hardly any roads built so no way our single
warrior could protect the whole of our empire so I'm afraid I just concentrated on getting some defence . Next up may need to rush the warrior in London when London reaches size 2 otherwise be may lose the granary.

So turns went like this

Pre turn check.

Why is tile east of London irrigated ? We can't get more than 2
food in despot .

Need to decide where next city is going to be . Decide
on the orange spot on Viper's dotmap 2NE , 1N of York.


2170 (1) York builds settler, switches to granary

2150 (2) Worker moves east . Need to cows near York irrigated / roaded

IT - Russians are building Colossus

2130 (3) Nothing

2110 (4) Nothing

2090 (5) Nothing

2070 (6) Barb appears out of blue and is only 4 moves away from
undefended London. Nearest (only) unit is 6 tiles away .
Whip Granary so that we can get a military unit built before barb does damage.
Switch York to warrior otherwise we are in danger of
our undefended setterl being killed by the barb

2050 (7) Nothing

2030 (8) Curragh moving north uncovers 2 silks. Found Nottingham . Set build
to warrior.

2010 (9) Nothing

1990 (10) Nothing

 

[Sir Clive]

Saved game 1990 BC

 

[Admiral Kutzov]

Unfortunately there were 2 barbs - the westernmost one threatening to do nasty things near London (possible destroy all the shields we had put into Granary) and the eastern one possibly able to attack
our undefended settler. Our military consists of 1 warrior. We had hardly any roads built so no way our single
warrior could protect the whole of our empire so I'm afraid I just concentrated on getting some defence . Next up may need to rush the warrior in London when London reaches size 2 otherwise be may lose the granary.

This is why you build military before the granary except in the settler IMO. I'll do a got it as soon as Clive posts a save. Hint hint EDIT: xpost

I'll post my thoughts after I look at the save.

@lurkers - could use a comment or 2 here, hint, hint.

 

[Sir Clive]

This is why you build military before the granary except in the settler IMO. .

Yup I agree . My point in the original post was the debate between Barracks and Granary , not between Military and Granary. I would normally try to get Granaries going before Baracks but obviously you will need a few workers (to build roads so that you can move your military if need be) and a few regular warriors in case of barbarian attack.

 

[Admiral Kutzov]

Looked at the save, things aren't bad. Somehow, we are on turn 44? If we MM London to work the mined BG instead of the IG, we get warrior in 3 instead of 9. Wake the clans in York and send them E to the mountain to see if the deranged barb will attack. York is covered by a warrior in one. Switch the cow york is working to the other cow and then put Nottingham to working the aforementioned york cow. Unless there are strong objections, I'm going to switch nottingham to a boat. London is going to build warrior, warrior, archer. archer will go to the chokepoint to keep Cathy from getting ideas. York is going to build a granary to become our settler pump. I may sneak in a worker after the 2nd warrior at London.

we need a plan. pursuant to the above, mine is to build military (not rax yet) in London, boats in Nottingham and settlers in York.

I'll hold on playing for commentary.

Thoughts and opinions expressed above should be taken with grain of salt and valued around two cents.

 

[Sir Clive]

we need a plan. pursuant to the above, mine is to build military (not rax yet) in London, boats in Nottingham and settlers in York.

I'll hold on playing for commentary.

.

Sounds good to me although we definitely need a few workers as well.

 

[Admiral Kutzov]

Sounds good to me although we definitely need a few workers as well.

That hill, north of the lake, NW of London, think worker factory.

 

[Admiral Kutzov]

pre-flight: see previous posts

1950 York => granary
1910 Livingston discovers new barb camp in north
IT Cathy demands 30g, cave
Lost turn
1830 zzz
1790 Livingston finds more barbs on west coast
1750 zzz
1725 zzz
1700 zzz
1675 zzz
1650 zzz

pretty much following my prior thoughts, although we'll pop a worker at nottingham before the next boat.

We need to find someone else and start trading!

 

[danz]

Well, the good news is we have granaries and decent pop growth in our first two cities, so we can whip a warrior for barb defense if need be. That irrigated grassland next to London is not of much use, granted. I had to cancel another irrigation project and tell the worker to mine the bonus grassland instead, otherwise you would now be looking at two irrigated tiles. This won't kill us, but the thing to watch out for is that whenever the population of London changes, a citizen will probably head on over to the irrigated tile. That's probably what happened at the end of Sir Clive's turn. We just need to keep an eye out on that, and eventually mine that tile so the governor doesn't start any of this funny business.

Not to beat up on D Richter too much, I used to do the same thing myself, spacing cities out planning to get no overlap, irrigating everything, and generally building everything with the modern age in mind. Once I started playing Emp and Deity, I had to abandon this approach in favor of "mine geen, irrigate brown", "food first", and "expand as if all available space will be filled in by your enemies next turn".

That's why I usually don't even pay attention to barbarians much. If one happens to appear 3-4 spaces away from an undefended city, so be it. I'll just rush the cheapest military unit that doesn't waste any shields. I hate to give up on the idea of a quick settler/worker build just because a barbarian might show up. If he does, so be it, I'll whip up a defense. If not, I'll postpone the useless warriors in favor of building horsemen or swords a few turns later, when I can get units that can actually fight. I hate to pay opportunity costs up front.

By the way, road access is one of the reasons I wanted to build our second city to the North, not to the East. North means grass, roaded quickly, making an easily defensible core. East means slogging through forest, which means wasted worker turns and larger military requirements. What we should do is focus on the area to the North and West of London, working our way toward Moscow. We can colonize the "Wld East" later. By going West, we can focus settlement toward Russia, closer to the front, and we can leave 1-2 warriors defending the Eastern core against barbarians. By spreading out all over the island, we have no defensible front, and we are in a weaker position to put pressure on Russia.

 

[Detlef Richter]

This confuses me a litle bit, because i heared from other players what i wrote too. But i'am open for all, let's see how this works. I'am here to learn something new. Danz sayed he does so on deity, could it be that you need diferent strats on Monarch/Emperor or deity/above?

Edit: I forgot, it's my turn. So i've got it.

 

[Keiji]

I would tend to agree that we should expand W first. Those Russians seem to be running out of space, so they'll probably want to cross the landbridge pretty soon. With only a single warrior guarding it we definetly need more military units there. Oh, and like Mauer said, a few extra workers would be nice as well.

 

[Admiral Kutzov]

D. Richter (pikeman) - on deck
danz
Sir Clive
keiji
AK - just played
viper275 - up

 

[Detlef Richter]

Keiji, you looking confused too. Mauer doesn't play this SG:

 

[Keiji]

Doh, I meant to say sir Clive ofcourse

Euhm, regarding the roster. I'm pretty sure I'm not confused when saying that I haven't played any turns yet. It seems someone was a bit premature on taking his turns .

 

[Detlef Richter]

Hmmm, you are right. Viper have not posted yet, so i would say take it and play and then we can go on with viper.