Monarchists' Cookbook I

[futurehermit]

I think we are going back and forth. Would everyone be willing to state their preference for war or peace in one word and then we can narrow down the best ball?

War

 

[OTAKUjbski]

Peace
(10 chars)

 

[OTAKUjbski]

... is a committed approach ... should be discounted ...

That is the lamest argument. EVER! (And it's the same one Diamondeye started to make, so I assure it's not just you.)

If one of us presented a save that was at war with Saladin with a stack of Axes and Catapults outside Mecca, I guarantee it wouldn't be discounted just because it's "a committed approach".

Discounting a save just because it's in the middle of a strategic endeavour is stupid. If anything, a save with no perceived strategic endeavour should be the one more likely for dismissal.

The only reason a save should be summarily dismissed is if it's executing a poor strategy.

 

[Nares]

That is the lamest argument. EVER! (And it's the same one Diamondeye started to make, so I assure it's not just you.)

On a personal level, I agree. But as near as I can tell, that was the rationalization for not picking futurehermit's game in the first round.

I've already raised the issue of comparing games that are in different stages of strategic development.

Just to direct discussion to the bullpen thread, I'm thinking converting the first three rounds into two rounds might be the best idea. Round 1 would be 4000BC to 1000BC, and round 2 would be 1000BC to 700AD.

Round 1 encountered the issue that almost every save was near identical. The only game which really intrigued me in that round from a "I wouldn't have done that, but it looks like it might be successful" perspective was futurehermit's.

Likewise, your save gives me a similar impression in this round, whereas futurehermit's and vale's are more inline with how I would play (outside of the wonderspam).

Hopefully a longer first round and a longer second round can help to highlight how a strategy unfolds, and display where the strategy might be headed.

 

[Bleys]

Haven't you had an espionage lead on him the whole game?

Have you made any attempt to track his tech path at all?

Yes, I have, but just because he didnt tech Monarchy, doesnt mean he doesnt have it. He can trade too, you know, pretty sure thats how he got it in some other games. He traded or teched Alphabet, then traded for Monarchy. Right now in my game, he is still teching Maths, which he has been teching as long as I can remember (at least 5 or 6 previous turns). Come to think of it, I never saw him tech Monotheism.

And I vote WAR. Get him out of the way now, I like a fluid empire without AI cities in the middle, messing up my culture and such.

 

[Winston Hughes]

Looked at the saves.

Peace - OTAKU, vale or futurehermit (best first)
War - futurehermit or vale (sooner or later)
Best Overall - vale

Peace plan: Forbidden Palace ftw (that's some mighty fine exploring OTAKU; you deserved the hut luck).

War plan: Keep Mecca, raze Medina, settle 4S 1E of Mecca? (Why is nobody keeping an eye on Sal's defences? Warmongers' Rule #1 - know your enemy!)

It was at the bottom of my loooooong post on the top of this page.

So it was.

Edit:

And I still haven't seen any response regarding the highest production site on marble island. I know the save I played had no bearing on settling that site. Was I the only one to notice it?

Are you talking about the one myself and v8_mark settled in the first round?

 

[vale]

To be honest, my save is terrible for war. No construction, no people to trade construction from, and I settled my hammer city 4th instead of third like I should have. I think I have 2 total axemen.

It would take a long time to gear up for war from that position although economically it is doing pretty nicely and will improve rapidly with the arrival of the 6th city and civil service.

 

[futurehermit]

Guys my major problem is back

I am starting to suspect that my graphics card is dying/near death. I am getting graphics problems with all of my games and they are freezing up, etc. I am contacting some family members tonight who are computer-savvy to see if it is just a settings problem, but after reading a lot on the internet, I suspect my videocard is dying/near death.

If that is the case I will be ordering a new video card. It should only take a few days to get up and running again, but the long and the short of it is I could be delayed on starting the next round I will still contribute to the discussions here though. I will let you know as things progress.

 

[Winston Hughes]

To be honest, my save is terrible for war. No construction, no people to trade construction from, and I settled my hammer city 4th instead of third like I should have. I think I have 2 total axemen.

It would take a long time to gear up for war from that position although economically it is doing pretty nicely and will improve rapidly with the arrival of the 6th city and civil service.

I took a long look at your save before putting it in the War category. Unlike futurehermit's one, it wouldn't be possible to attack until late in the next round. (Edit: sorry, the rounds get shorter now, don't they? During the round after next then.) But my priority when planning a mid-game war is a solid economic base, and yours is the most solid here.

I'd switch research to Monarchy (might be able trade for it with a discount, if the opportunity arises) and build galleys in Cologne and Hamburg. In the other cities, I'd concentrate on economic builds for a little while, then start building axes.

With HR, the units would allow the better cities to grow larger (I'd farm the flood plains for now), speeding progress to the other necessary techs. I'd be looking to attack with lots of cats and axes, plus a few last-minute maces for cracking the top defenders.

I'd also invest a few turns of full espionage against Sal before attacking, for taking down the cultural defences of Mecca and Medina.

Would this be as good a use of your save as a peaceful approach?

Probably not. Your economy is well set up to cope with the costs of peaceful expansion, and not so well set up to move towards war.

But HR and expansion beyond Arabia will also require a lot of units. Plus, if we want to block Sal off, we'll need to get settling parties over to the eastern island asap (so we'll need units sooner). Allowing your existing economy to mature while making preparations for war doesn't look that bad in comparison.

 

[Nares]

Are you talking about the one myself and v8_mark settled in the first round?

Where was that?

 

[Winston Hughes]

Where was that?

3SE of Berlin, on the plains hill east of the floodplains.

 

[Nares]

3SE of Berlin, on the plains hill east of the floodplains.

That would be the site.

 

[vale]

I figured it might be nice to show a little of the micromanagement steps that can be done based on general principles. I did a clean run from the 4000BC save with lots of screens to show a few ideas about whipping that I think some people missed. Wouldn't be a best ball save as a religion spread to the capital is much more important than a few turns shaved on some production. You should be able to follow along and get the same results (+/- random events). Anyway here goes (in spoilers cause it looks like a round result).

Spoiler :

Start the "round" like everyone did, settling Berlin on the spot. Commerce is key early. We have lots of techs that we need to get running with maximum efficiency: Fishing, Bronze Working, Pottery (and The Wheel as a result), and Sailing, just to start. Rather than micro around a bunch of tiles, the city governor is actually useful for this. Contrary to popular belief you can get him to do what you want most of the time, saving the hardcore micromanagement for key moments to be discussed later.

First tech researched is Fishing for the obvious reasons. Build a warrior. Second tech researched is Bronze Working as we will slave out our work boats. The city governor is smart enough to work our clams as soon as fishing in, less work for us.

After Bronze working is in, there is an immediate revolt to slavery followed by a whip of the first work boat. There is no need to dump the overflow into a worker, all the accumulated overflow from both work boats will eventually make it to the worker after the second whip (i.e overflow goes right into a second work boat).

First bit of micromanagement, but it is first principles of whipping:

Whip when you can regrow the lost population immediately.

As you can see we get a fair amount of overflow into the worker that is built next. Since it all came dumped in one bit, we only get screwed by the game rounding our 25% bonus once.

Meanwhile we have been teching The Wheel and Pottery. Since we are expansive, we go for the cheap supercharging granaries earlier rather than later. The timing is nice and we finish the worker right as Pottery finishes allowing us to immediately start on this critical infrastructure.

The worker chops rather than mines the north hill as we are following another first principle of whipping:

Get granaries early.

When we hit population 3, the chop is in but the granary will not be built fast enough without some actual tile micromanagement:

So a little bit of toggling to get production up to finish the granary in 2 turns rather than 5. Note that we start prioritizing food when possible here as we can split it as 1 turn on the grass hill forest, one turn on the grass forest. Another general principle is being applied here:

Once the Granary is up, food is a more powerful production tool than hammers if you can manage your growth.

Then

Back over to the city governor's control with a slight update of his priorities while building a warrior to garrison a future city (note I am being prescient here. When my settler pops, it will head straight to the marble even though I don't know where that is technically and the timing here won't let me scout out the area ahead of time):

Meanwhile we have been researching Sailing, and the second that is in we will build a lighthouse for one turn and whip it immediately despite the fact that we have just grown. There are a couple of reasons, one which is a general principle:

Extended periods of no whip anger should be avoided.

And one of which goes back to our prioritizing of food.

After the whip is done, we allow the warrior to complete and start on a Galley which is all well and good until uh oh:

We don't particularly want to stack whip anger like that and cap us at 3 for a while even though we can build a Settler to work it off. Much better is to start building the Settler in preparation for the only real hardcore bean counting micromanagement of the round.

In general, choose a path that allows you to work more tiles rather than fewer.

A few turns later, a check on the status of the Settler shows this:

Seeing as the galley has 15 hammers invested in it, it will overflow 30 hammers plus the hammer output this turn into next turn. So if we whip it now and work a clams and a mine this turn, next turn we can work clams + clams + mine to finish the settler a turn earlier than we could have legitimately.

So we whip:

And once again have to override the city governor who wants to work 2 improved clams (which would not work for our purposes).

And the turn after we can again rehire him. This is an odd screenshot as the Settler doesn't look like he will build out by the bar, but he will.

Meanwhile, the worker, who has had nothing better to do after mining both hills has chopped a forest while waiting for the galley. It came in the turn after the settler and is applied to the Great Lighthouse. You can see in this screenshot that the micromanagement of working the hill the turn of the galley whip was critical. Only 2 hammers of overflow, so that was by the skin of our teeth.

And the 2000BC position:

Tech path was:
Fishing
Bronze Working
The Wheel
Pottery
Sailing
Mysticism
Masonry
Start Polytheism

Not the greatest amount of research done there, but the point was a demonstration of production and micromanagement (although I like to think there wasn't that much micromanagement involved.

 

[Nares]

I figured it might be nice to show a little of the micromanagement steps that can be done based on general principles.

Thanks vale.

I was hoping to see that kind of information more heavily demonstrated in this series than in others, if only because there's more emphasis in looking at others' saves themselves, rather than just the report.

 

[OTAKUjbski]

Diamondeye: tiebreaker: Peace (OTAKUjbski) / War (futurehermit)

Bleys: War (Bleys) over Peace (OTAKUjbski)
futurehermit: War (futurehermit) over Peace (OTAKUjbski)
OTAKUjbski: Peace (OTAKUjbski) over War (Bleys)
r_rolo1: unknown

Nares: War (Bleys) over Peace (no preference)
slobberinbear: unknown
Solon70: unknown
Vale: unknown
Winston Hughes: Peace (OTAKUjbski) over War (futurehermit)

 

[Nares]

Is the plan to still stick with roster saves?

I'll give yours the nod for peace, btw, with war the preference.

Not that I think anyone's starting a war before 700AD (end of round 3), mind you.

 

[OTAKUjbski]

Guys my major problem is back

If you have Windows auto-update (crap) turned on, you might want to check if any recent updates were installed.

If Windows has been updated recently, you'll want to ensure your video card drivers are up to date.

And finally, if you're running an ATI video card, then you deserve to have it go bad ... nVidia FTW!

Is the plan to still stick with roster saves?

Not sure. Personally, I don't mind either way ...

--------

Spoiler A running tally of votes :

Diamondeye: tiebreaker: Peace (OTAKUjbski) / War (futurehermit)

Bleys: War (Bleys) over Peace (OTAKUjbski)
futurehermit: War (futurehermit) over Peace (OTAKUjbski)
OTAKUjbski: Peace (OTAKUjbski) over War (Bleys)
r_rolo1: unknown

Nares: War (Bleys) over Peace (OTAKUjbski)
slobberinbear: unknown
Solon70: unknown
Vale: unknown
Winston Hughes: Peace (OTAKUjbski) over War (futurehermit)

 

[Winston Hughes]

@OTAKUjbski

Mine wasn't a vote at all, just some observations. I didn't play the round, so I don't think it would be fair to count my opinion as anything more than advice to those who have submitted saves and reports (and thus have earned the right to a say in the best ball decision).

And, if I was going to vote, I'd vote for WAR!!

That said, a peaceful (well, kind of peaceful - there'll be lots of barbs that need killing) expansion into the big continent might make for a more interesting strategy over the coming rounds, if not necessarily a stronger one.

 

[r_rolo1]

Peace : Vale or OTAKU
War : Futurehermit

 

[OTAKUjbski]

Spoiler A running tally of votes :

Diamondeye: tiebreaker: Peace (OTAKUjbski) / War (futurehermit)

Bleys: War (Bleys) over Peace (OTAKUjbski)
futurehermit: War (futurehermit) over Peace (OTAKUjbski)
OTAKUjbski: Peace (OTAKUjbski) over War (Bleys)
r_rolo1: Peace (Vale, OTAKUjbski) over War (futurehermit)

Nares: War (Bleys) over Peace (OTAKUjbski)
slobberinbear: unknown
Solon70: unknown
Vale: unknown
Winston Hughes: ("soft vote"?) War (futurehermit) over Peace (OTAKUjbski)