Do floodplains give 4fpt under Rep? (That's the value I used for my calculation.) In that case I arrive at 19 fpt from the first 6 citizens, but would still suffice for size 12.
MRG's Random Game of Randomness
- Thread starter MrRandomGuy
- Start date
If irrigated, yes.
Sumeria moves first (move order is bottom to top on the frenemies list on the spaceship launch screen). They got the Colossus, even though Byzantines start on coast. I would have favored America for the Pyramids race, since they start with Masonry and move 2nd. They weren't even building it in one of the saves right before it got completed?
Sumeria, I predict, will have money, not only because they are Sumeria with more commerce acquired from growth, but because they will sell tech more often than anyone else. This looks like 3 billion pangea.
I never experimented with using knowledge of the move order of civs combined with military alliances. It looks like America and Korea are neighbors. America moves before Korea.
Sumeria, I predict, will have money, not only because they are Sumeria with more commerce acquired from growth, but because they will sell tech more often than anyone else. This looks like 3 billion pangea.
I never experimented with using knowledge of the move order of civs combined with military alliances. It looks like America and Korea are neighbors. America moves before Korea.
MrRandomGuy
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Ah, right right. Forgot about the UU.
We should be good with avoiding conflict if we keep a steady military. That's doable with barb busting runs.
tjs282
Stone \ Cold / Fish
!?!
You heretic!
OK, now I'm confused. In detail (under Republic, before rails):
2 Plains, irrigated = 4 FPT
2 Grassland, irrigated = 6 FPT (1 BGrass is available already; the other Grass is currently Forested, but will need chopping — much more for the increased potential FPT than the shields)
2 Floodplains, irrigated = 8 FPT
Site3-town (on Hill) = 2 FPT (Mongols are not Agricultural)
Total = 20 FPT
So how did you end up with only 19 FPT from those 6 tiles? Does your total assume e.g. mining one of the Grass-tiles?
I'm lost on understanding your logic.
FP costs 200 shields iirc. A temple costs 60 or 30 shields. A marketplace 100 shields, and a courthouse 80 shields. You spent 210 or 240 shields before building the FP.
Oh, I guess you're cash-rushing those buildings first, using short-rushing with worker builds then swapping to those buildings before the turn ends? Or forest chopping also?
Finished my turnset, write-up coming shortly. I built a few cities, did some research, made some trades, and braved a massive barbarian uprising when a couple of the AI suddenly reached the Middle Ages (which I think I unintentionally made easier on myself, because I didn't realize that I didn't have NoAIPatrol=0 set until after I finished my turnset, hehe, whoops... 
)
)Spoiler :
Here's the current situation, with a tentative dotmap:
-Assuming you're not like me and didn't forget to set NoAIPatrol=0, a lot of barb Horsemen might be coming your way soon, so uh... have fun with that. There's a barb camp somewhere to the east of Kazan, but I don't know exactly where.
-Like I said, Hovd is kind of in an inconvenient location and we might wanna Settler-abandon it and move it 1E to the coast, but we certainly don't have to do that.
-Given all the barbs, the next Settler or two should probably head to the peninsula to the South for safety before going and settling along the river.
-I was kinda focused on military buildup to fight barbs and also wanted to grow our cities a bit so I haven't built many Workers, we should probably get some more. Most of our size 3 cities can do, in 10 turns, Two Archers/Spears and a Worker, and growing above size 3 means they get unhappy, so keeping them smaller for now is probably good. Eventually we'll wanna let them grow and just raise the lux rate.
-Hopefully there's some kind of strategic resources somewhere in Korea, because so far the closest Horses and Iron I've seen are a couple sources on the coast in Byzantine territory.
MrRandomGuy
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Looks like we've got a pretty good challenge coming. I like the dot map very much. You forgot to post the save though, so please post it when you get a chance.
1. choxorn ====== Just Played
2. Lanzelot ====== Up
3. tjs82 ======= On Deck
4. MrRandomGuy
Also are we at the point where we go 10 turns at a time yet? I can't remember when that starts happening.
1. choxorn ====== Just Played
2. Lanzelot ====== Up
3. tjs82 ======= On Deck
4. MrRandomGuy
Also are we at the point where we go 10 turns at a time yet? I can't remember when that starts happening.
Woopsydaisy, here you go:
You have two plains in the list of your tiles, I only one. I thought we cannot afford taking a plain tile from Kazan?!
Yes, all of that. After Republic, one can usually set research to zero for a short while and rush/chop/anything(even disband some reg warriors might be ok here, since we don't have iron) to get these buildings done asap. They will be needed later anyway, so why not get them now and let them speed up the FP? The FP cannot be rushed in any way, so getting uncorrupted shields is the only way to get it faster. If we do happen to get an MGL early on, I would much rather use it for an Army in this kind of game, than for the FP.
We knew from MrRandomGuy's accidental selling of Writing...
Keeping towns small is never a good idea... Let them grow. We need them at size 7 asap, otherwise our Republic won't get off the ground...
Well, the barb uprising came sooner than expected... But you handled it quite well. I'm checking the save now and will post a preflight shortly.
Ok, not much to discuss in terms of preflight. The plan is:
Naissus (Byzantine) has horses. So that should be our first target. And the good thing is: it's not a direct neighbor!
Ok, here it may be necessary to get troops to Mandalgovi and fend off the uprising. But usually it's a bad idea. We should rather improve those three plains tiles, so that Mandalgovi can finally start growing.
- Keep handling the uprising without suffering too many losses... I will retreat the exposed archer, send our spare warriors into the mountains (good chance of winning on defense, and if we lose one, it doesn't hurt as much as losing an archer) and also build a few more spearmen. We'll need them later anyway.
- Keep researching Rep at max. Currently it says it needs a total of 28 turns, that's faster than I hoped for.
- I will prepare Mandalgovi as future FP site, i.e. try for a courthouse asap, maybe a temple. (Market is not useful yet, as we have no luxuries.)
Naissus (Byzantine) has horses. So that should be our first target. And the good thing is: it's not a direct neighbor!
- We prepare a shipchain to Naissus, together with a bunch of spears&archers and a settler.
- Once we have managed to get their free tech, we declare war on them
- We sign up Korea (and maybe America) on our side and let them fight it out for a while...
- After Byzantium has shifted their troops to the Korean/American front, we start our landing at Naissus/Nicaea, raze&replace it (culture pressure of Byzantium is simply to high) and start building lots of horsemen, while slowly researching Chivalry.
- After the three AIs have worn each other down, we attack Korea from the south with Keshiks. The GA will hopefully carry us through Korea, America and the remnants for Byzantium...
- Then let's see, how things have meanwhile developed in the rest of the world...
Ok, here it may be necessary to get troops to Mandalgovi and fend off the uprising. But usually it's a bad idea. We should rather improve those three plains tiles, so that Mandalgovi can finally start growing.
We knew from MrRandomGuy's accidental selling of Writing...
I guess I didn't properly convey that I was being sarcastic in that statement.
Fair point, but we also totally do need some more workers and building them in the cities that will get sad if they grow isn't the worst idea. But yeah, probably the only town we might actually want to keep small is Hovd if we want to settler-abandon it and move it so it's on the coast.
We could also start with Korea if it turns out they actually do have Horses or Iron close to us somewhere in the fog of their territory, but it's somewhat of a longer-term plan regardless.
BTW: three workers on one tile...?
Ok, here it may be necessary to get troops to Mandalgovi and fend off the uprising. But usually it's a bad idea. We should rather improve those three plains tiles, so that Mandalgovi can finally start growing.
Yeah, that was the idea, stack the three workers together to build roads to Mandalgovi as fast as possible, I had them stacked like that a turn earlier to build the road 1E of Almarikh and moved them towards Mandalgovi for that purpose.
(I also had them in a stack of 3 earlier to road+mine the hill by Ulaanbaatar, because it'll be a while before we can get much of anything else around that city improved)
MrRandomGuy
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We should get a ROP with Koreans and scout their territory to see if they have closer horses. If they do, see if they'll trade them to us. We should still declare war on Byzantine then get the other nations we've met to dogpile them as a distraction. Once the ROP is up and the trading with horses is about to expire, end the agreements and attack Korea (or keep the agreements if we don't care about trade rep.) City with horse access would be priority 1 depending on where it is.
If the Koreans don't have horses, then your plan is a good one and we'll go with that.
If the Koreans don't have horses, then your plan is a good one and we'll go with that.
I took a look at the save. It's worth considering that everyone so far at least might be rushing with their plan.
It looks like clearly your only contiguous neighbor is Korea. So far. I predict someone else will land units and settle in your area before all territory is filled, but that might not matter for trade route purposes. Korea is also the only civ with a surplus luxury or resource... so far. Naissus has horses, yes. BUT, there is no contiguous path from Naissus to your capital that does not go through Korea's territory via coasts and roads. Ulsan also might have a cultural expansion blocking off a sea square route. If I understand correctly, if you had control of horses at Naissus, you would not have access to horses in the rest of your empire, until you have the ability for units to travel over sea and/or ocean squares without sinking in all cases. In other words not until you have Magnetism or Navigation (you can check the civiliopedia on this... it says something about harbors being able to connect differently when you learn Astronomy, Magnetism, and Navigation). At the very least, I remember having access to some luxuries in my best scoring histograph game, which I think they were from Korea and/Sumeria. Carthage lay in between my empire and theirs. I went to war before I had Navigation or Magnetism. And then I no longer had access to those luxuries for a while. Once I learned Navigation or Magnetism (don't recall which it was), or I had taken norther Carthaginian cities, then I could trade for those luxuries.
And looking again the Mongols don't even know what a luxury or strategic resource is! (so far)
So basically if you want to get luxuries or resources from any AIs you will need to do one of two things:
1. Not go to war with Korea.
2. Go to war with Korea only once you have Navigation or Magnetism or at least Astronomy.
Otherwise you will miss out on all luxuries and resources you might get from the AIs, or at least those which have to travel through the western waters.
It also looks like you have a substantial amount of territory that you might still grab. So my advice, which admittedly wasn't asked for, so perhaps I speak out of turn, would be to:
1. Clear out all the barbarians while getting in as many cities as you can. If I understand correctly, barbarian camps will not spawn in any spot with a unit with attack and defense.
2. Get as much territory as you can and/or put granaries in your cities. Like I look at Ta-tu and Kazan and think that they need granaries, and then settlers. Good that you have military that you do, to clear out/protect against barbarians, but there's a balance here.
3. Build up your infrastructure of markets, courthouses where useful, markets, and libraries/universities or banks. In other words play more builder. This map especially with how much territory you can grab favors a more builder type style from my read. Also, your combined arms attack of artillery type units and offensive units. Hopefully, that's cavalry and cannons at least. And some defensive units.
4. Attack Korea only once you have a rail network up ... or even later going for mobilization/replaceable parts. Not only is there the no trade route issue before Magnetism/Navigation/Astronomy, it will also be a substantial amount of time before replacement units can get to the front to help out.
Now, I guess you might be thinking something like "but we're already in a tech hole here! And you want us to wait for war Spoonwood? How will win if we stay behind?"
Well, I do note that, by checking the wonder build screen, that no one is building The Great Library so far. You all might swap to Literature now and go for it despite already having a decent amount of research into Republic apparently. Or capture it later, though that could become a tricky issue.
Techs also cheapen in cost as more civs that you have contact with know about the tech.
Also, as a reminder, you can steal technologies by espionage missions. Oystein wrote a study of Espionage missions a while back. If you plan on that sort of strategy, foregoing libraries and universities would make sense until the point you could become the tech leader, if you wanted to do research.
Additionally, you don't agree to supply gpt to AIs under all conditions via the trading table. You never agree to supply gpt to them if they declare war on you. One tactic used by Moonsinger, others, and myself has been the "leave or declare" trick. This works out as follows (how much the "furious" part has gotten used though, I can't tell):
1. Basically, the AI has units in your territory, so that you can tell them to "leave or declare".
2. Your military advisor tells you that are "weak" or "average" to that AI.
3. You send them gpt only in exchange for technologies and/or gold
4. You make them furious with an outrageous demand like repeating requesting a technology for free from them. Then you say "leave or declare".
5. The AI should then declare on you cancelling the gpt deal. Except the exchange of hard goods of technologies and/or gold (or maps) doesn't go back to the AI... you get to keep it!
Another trick lies in doing 1. to 4. above, except you engage in an espionage mission against that AI. Actually, you don't need their units in your territory for this. If you fail the espionage mission, they probably declare war on you, with you getting to keep those hard goods. And that seems best used against an AI who has some technology that you don't. Because if your espionage is a steal attempt, and you succeed, then you get to keep the tech.
Furthermore, if an AI supplies you a luxury or resource to you, and they can't supply it for any reason, then the AI is responsible for failing to live up to the promise of supplying you the luxury or resource under all possible moves you make and all possible moves that other AIs make. Correspondingly, don't supply an AI a luxury or resource unless you are sure as you can that you can maintain a supply of that resource for 20 turns, or else you'll hurt your trading reputation a good bit if you can't maintain control of it.
That combined with the fact that supplying gpt to AIs can be conditional, can get leveraged to your advantage in several ways. In case you want to try to figure this sort of stuff out for yourself, I'll use a spoiler tag:
And there's some other ways to catch up in technology from behind if I recall correctly.
Which would I do? I'd pick the last one. Or at the very least, since according to Soren Johnson the man who programmed civ III's AI, they tried to design the game so that players could win every game that they played, or at least understand why they lost. So, the last one, should at least remain on the table as a possibility, if other tactics fail and seem preferable. I certainly made the mistake of taking that sort of idea off the table in some solo games I played, and quit later, because I was stubbornly refusing to use such tactics when I knew about such and had used them before.
Oh, and trade routes fail if they don't go to your capital. Even if an AI can supply say wines to 95% of your empire, if it's not supplied to your capital, then it's not supplied to your empire. And well, there's only eight tiles of roads directly adjacent to your capital on any map as opposed to possibly many more at your borders. You can also build harbors if one pillages around one's capital instead of one's borders. Though, for now, those roads may make sense. It will be a while before you have a trade network up.
It looks like clearly your only contiguous neighbor is Korea. So far. I predict someone else will land units and settle in your area before all territory is filled, but that might not matter for trade route purposes. Korea is also the only civ with a surplus luxury or resource... so far. Naissus has horses, yes. BUT, there is no contiguous path from Naissus to your capital that does not go through Korea's territory via coasts and roads. Ulsan also might have a cultural expansion blocking off a sea square route. If I understand correctly, if you had control of horses at Naissus, you would not have access to horses in the rest of your empire, until you have the ability for units to travel over sea and/or ocean squares without sinking in all cases. In other words not until you have Magnetism or Navigation (you can check the civiliopedia on this... it says something about harbors being able to connect differently when you learn Astronomy, Magnetism, and Navigation). At the very least, I remember having access to some luxuries in my best scoring histograph game, which I think they were from Korea and/Sumeria. Carthage lay in between my empire and theirs. I went to war before I had Navigation or Magnetism. And then I no longer had access to those luxuries for a while. Once I learned Navigation or Magnetism (don't recall which it was), or I had taken norther Carthaginian cities, then I could trade for those luxuries.
And looking again the Mongols don't even know what a luxury or strategic resource is! (so far)
So basically if you want to get luxuries or resources from any AIs you will need to do one of two things:
1. Not go to war with Korea.
2. Go to war with Korea only once you have Navigation or Magnetism or at least Astronomy.
Otherwise you will miss out on all luxuries and resources you might get from the AIs, or at least those which have to travel through the western waters.
It also looks like you have a substantial amount of territory that you might still grab. So my advice, which admittedly wasn't asked for, so perhaps I speak out of turn, would be to:
1. Clear out all the barbarians while getting in as many cities as you can. If I understand correctly, barbarian camps will not spawn in any spot with a unit with attack and defense.
2. Get as much territory as you can and/or put granaries in your cities. Like I look at Ta-tu and Kazan and think that they need granaries, and then settlers. Good that you have military that you do, to clear out/protect against barbarians, but there's a balance here.
3. Build up your infrastructure of markets, courthouses where useful, markets, and libraries/universities or banks. In other words play more builder. This map especially with how much territory you can grab favors a more builder type style from my read. Also, your combined arms attack of artillery type units and offensive units. Hopefully, that's cavalry and cannons at least. And some defensive units.
4. Attack Korea only once you have a rail network up ... or even later going for mobilization/replaceable parts. Not only is there the no trade route issue before Magnetism/Navigation/Astronomy, it will also be a substantial amount of time before replacement units can get to the front to help out.
Now, I guess you might be thinking something like "but we're already in a tech hole here! And you want us to wait for war Spoonwood? How will win if we stay behind?"
Well, I do note that, by checking the wonder build screen, that no one is building The Great Library so far. You all might swap to Literature now and go for it despite already having a decent amount of research into Republic apparently. Or capture it later, though that could become a tricky issue.
Techs also cheapen in cost as more civs that you have contact with know about the tech.
Also, as a reminder, you can steal technologies by espionage missions. Oystein wrote a study of Espionage missions a while back. If you plan on that sort of strategy, foregoing libraries and universities would make sense until the point you could become the tech leader, if you wanted to do research.
Additionally, you don't agree to supply gpt to AIs under all conditions via the trading table. You never agree to supply gpt to them if they declare war on you. One tactic used by Moonsinger, others, and myself has been the "leave or declare" trick. This works out as follows (how much the "furious" part has gotten used though, I can't tell):
1. Basically, the AI has units in your territory, so that you can tell them to "leave or declare".
2. Your military advisor tells you that are "weak" or "average" to that AI.
3. You send them gpt only in exchange for technologies and/or gold
4. You make them furious with an outrageous demand like repeating requesting a technology for free from them. Then you say "leave or declare".
5. The AI should then declare on you cancelling the gpt deal. Except the exchange of hard goods of technologies and/or gold (or maps) doesn't go back to the AI... you get to keep it!
Another trick lies in doing 1. to 4. above, except you engage in an espionage mission against that AI. Actually, you don't need their units in your territory for this. If you fail the espionage mission, they probably declare war on you, with you getting to keep those hard goods. And that seems best used against an AI who has some technology that you don't. Because if your espionage is a steal attempt, and you succeed, then you get to keep the tech.
Furthermore, if an AI supplies you a luxury or resource to you, and they can't supply it for any reason, then the AI is responsible for failing to live up to the promise of supplying you the luxury or resource under all possible moves you make and all possible moves that other AIs make. Correspondingly, don't supply an AI a luxury or resource unless you are sure as you can that you can maintain a supply of that resource for 20 turns, or else you'll hurt your trading reputation a good bit if you can't maintain control of it.
That combined with the fact that supplying gpt to AIs can be conditional, can get leveraged to your advantage in several ways. In case you want to try to figure this sort of stuff out for yourself, I'll use a spoiler tag:
Spoiler :
And there's some other ways to catch up in technology from behind if I recall correctly.
Which would I do? I'd pick the last one. Or at the very least, since according to Soren Johnson the man who programmed civ III's AI, they tried to design the game so that players could win every game that they played, or at least understand why they lost. So, the last one, should at least remain on the table as a possibility, if other tactics fail and seem preferable. I certainly made the mistake of taking that sort of idea off the table in some solo games I played, and quit later, because I was stubbornly refusing to use such tactics when I knew about such and had used them before.
Oh, and trade routes fail if they don't go to your capital. Even if an AI can supply say wines to 95% of your empire, if it's not supplied to your capital, then it's not supplied to your empire. And well, there's only eight tiles of roads directly adjacent to your capital on any map as opposed to possibly many more at your borders. You can also build harbors if one pillages around one's capital instead of one's borders. Though, for now, those roads may make sense. It will be a while before you have a trade network up.
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Not sure how much you know. But RoPs also have the advantage of improving AIs attitude with you. One can also sign RoPs with AIs, put units in their territory, renegotiate the peace treaty in a certain way (see above for a hint... in the spoiler tag), and then the AI will declare on the human player, and the human player can attack them without losing time to moving in enemy territory, while keeping the human player's reputation in tact. Though, they'll also have the ability to use roads in your territory with an RoP.
We can still send resources through Korea back to us if we're at peace with Korea, but also agree that we should probably settle the empty area and build up a bit before we think about invading anyone else, and regardless of who we decide to ultimately attack, getting an RoP with Korea to explore their territory sounds like a good idea.
My warning is that if you attack the Byzantines at Naissus with a landed invasion for horses, you may slow down the tech pace. If you go after Naissus, there's an issue that they might sign in Korea against you, which depends on what they can get to trade. They do look like they are in third place, since they are in the middle ages, but don't have gold at the moment. But, that can change, since they might research something different from the other AIs. And they might still sign a military alliance being behind in tech. Maybe you could all handle a war against Korea early. And if you signed Korea in against the Byzantines, it seems even more probable that the tech pace would slow down.
At the very least, a slower tech pace here would mean a greater amount of time getting to navigation/magnetism/astronomy. And it seems that on this map you'll need at least astronomy in order to have the ability to have a trade route along the eastern sea. But, that's assuming that you had a path along sea squares, and you don't even have a path along coast squares so far. And Manp'o may have a cultural expansion soon enough blocking coast squares, and another one after that blocking sea squares.
I can't tell anything about whether the AI is trading resources or luxuries amongst themselves since you don't have any embassies up.
tjs282
Stone \ Cold / Fish
That being agreed, wouldn't it be better to just slow-build (2 FPT, 1 SPT = 10T) Workers out of Hovd until we're ready to remove it, rather than shrinking our core-towns...?
At least in the early game, before I have the gold banked to fund deficit-research, "Maximum Science" doesn't mean "Set SCI%=100% all of the time", it means "After setting the LUX%-slider to obtain "Happy=Unhappy" in capital-plus-first-ring, set SCI% to the maximum possible without using (too many) Specialists, and/or going broke over the next interturn". So it seems like it would be better to let the core-towns grow as large as possible, and deal with any frowns by using the LUX%-slider — which should cover most of our core-towns...?
Not to forget, we get 4 free units per town under Despotism, so if 2 of those are garrisoned rWarriors*, that's 2 people moved from Unhappy–>Content straight away (plus making that town/our Civ look less attractive as a target), which means we should be able to get to at least Pop4 with LUX%=10%. And LUX%=20–30% (i.e. SCI%=70–80%) should, with the MP, be enough to keep most towns happy at Pop5-6 prior to Republic.
Just before, during, or just after we revolt to Republic, most/all of those MilPol-rWarriors can then get brutally disbanded into useful builds (e.g. Courts, Ducts, Harbours, etc.) to save on unit-maintenance while our (river-)towns get to Pop7. With the bonus Commerce under Republic, LUX%=10–20% will usually make up for the lack of MP.
And while it's usually cheaper to pay GPT to import Luxes than to use the LUX%-slider (certainly once we have 3+ Luxes plus Markets, but I think also before that?), that's not even an option until we've got some trade-routes in place. And since we can't trade over water without Harbours at each end, once the Barb-uprisings are finished, maybe we should consider building a Silk Road(!) up to Korea, to trade for theirs (we know they have at least two)?
Even just one Lux would help us reduce LUX%/ increase SCI%, and we'll want/need a road in that direction later anyway, to move our invasion-forces — and bring home our plunder!
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You may have a good point here. My original plan was to stop research after Chivalry (which can be reached reasonably fast without libraries, so we can save those 80 shields and build more military...) But on this map it may indeed happen that Keshiks are outdated before we reach the dom limit, after all, the map is large and the AI is demigod.
But I think that Keshiks will be sufficient for conquering our continent, and after that we can decide on the further strategy. If we see we need to catch up in tech in order to beat the remaining AIs, we can still build a few Libs and fire up research again, or check whether we can capture the GLib somewhere and use the elevator...
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