[BTS] Need Help on Monarch

[krikav]

Abit distracted now, sorry if rambling or touching points multiple times.


Tech giving bonuses to other techs, it's just to look at the research tree and follow the arrows. Some techs have no arrows leading to them (hunting, the wheel, astronomy + many others).
Some have only one arrow to them mining -> BW.
Some have multiple arrows to them, pottery has two (from fishing and agriculture), writing has 3, from pottery, AH and priesthood.
Each of the starting ones give you +20% beakers when researching the next tech, so if you are doing 10bpt researching the weel, you get 10 beakers per turn (or 11 perhaps, only @sampsa knows).
If you research pottery with only knowing Agri, you get 10*1.2 = 12 beakers per turn. If you have fishing too, you get 10*1.4=14 beakers per turn.
It matters here and there, and it's also an explanation for why it's so good to bulb astro, and why you really really want to trade for flight.

Lakes are a pretty awful tile past turn 100 or so, but in the very early game, they are quite nice. Especially when you want to grow and you don't care much about hammers anymore, working a 2F1H tile when you have no use for the hammers isn't that exciting, much better to get some coins in that case.

Roading toward new cities, or at least making sure cities have some connection is usually an easy way to get some commerce early on. But if it's the right thing to do depends alot on the circumstances.
What you need to be doing is to try and figure out what your empires current needs are, and how your micro-choices can best satisfy those needs.

You said second city should start a worker...? No, thats wrong I think. Let it grow on the corn instead, at least to pop2 so that it can help out and hold the food-hungry but still very good copper tile.

Copper tile doesn't need to be improved until city2 is at pop2 and ready to build a settler or worker, or perhaps until capital is at size4 ready to do the same.
The copper tile is sort of awesome, sort of awful. It has the charakteristics of a plains hill mine.
It's a 6yield tile, which is super, but it's also at -2F, making it very hard for a city to grow while working it.
So ideally that tile should be swung back and forth between capital and second city, and used each turn by a city that is currently not growing.
When building settlers/workers, that copper is as good as a pig or wet corn.

 

[crashmon]

Turn 36

Spoiler Settler is built :

Settler is built now, will move to city 2 spot 1E of corn
Worker 1 is on way to irrigate corn as soon as city is settled
Worker 2 is 1NW of cap ready to start to chop (has not started yet)
Warrior has uncovered sheep to NE. could have 2 nice cities to East, but it looks like tundra to north, coast to East, so I think we are in NE of continent, so looks like most of the other land will be west..

Question

In capitol

• if I work the Gold + pigs + farm warrior is 2T, growth is 6T, Pottery is 4T
  
• if I work the pigs + farm + lake warrior is 3T, growth is 4T, Pottery is 5T
• if I work the pigs + farm + Forest warrior is 2T, growth is 4T, Pottery is 6T

I am thinking that as key aim is to get to size 4 asap, we should work pigs + farm + lake, as this grows us fastest, and still has us on Pottery in 5T, and means we can put one turn into a barracks or something before switching to either a worker or settler when we hit size 4.

Also should we chop here, as key is getting to size 4, chopping is two turns but do we need to rush the warrior as it will build anyway before we grow

In 2nd City

• @Kirkav mentioned not to build worker here until size 2, so do I start a 2nd warrior here, or into barracks and switch to worker at size 2?

We are still in Tribalism right now, and not switched to slavery yet as we not ready to whip right now

 

[coanda]

Your immediate step is clearly double-chopping that settler. 17 hammers now, 40 from 2 chops, and 48 from 4 turns of production gets you 105/100; settler pops out on turn 36 with 5 overflow hammers. As soon as the second city is settled (turn 38) it's going to want to steal the pigs from the capital to grow to size-2 building a warrior. That'll be done around turn 42, around which time you'd ideally have corn and copper both improved so it can sit on size-2 building a worker using corn + copper while the capital takes back the pigs. Which means you probably want to start working on the corn farm and copper mine after the two chops (I'd sink a single worker-turn into a road with the worker SW of the capital then cancel the build, then it can do corn while the other worker does copper - that gets you one extra worker-turn).

Because the capital will have minimal food surplus while city 2 is growing on the pigs, growing the capital to size-4 right after the settler isn't really in the cards. I think you're doing okay with your current two workers (one of the benefits of going double worker before settler is that you "bank up" some worker turns by getting that second worker earlier) and your second city will be contributing a worker of its own before too much longer, so I'd go settler - warrior - settler. If you want to live life on the edge regarding barbarian spawns you could simply go settler - settler, get that settler out two turns earlier at the risk of being a little more likely to need to deal with an awkward barbarian warrior spawn. But it'd be nice to have that warrior around so it could move up north to poke into that area and discourage barb spawns right on your doorstep.

Second city can grow to size-2 building a warrior (which, when paired with the warrior already to the west, is probably enough to shut down any barb spawns on that side and push them all towards Ethiopia) then get a worker using corn + copper.

On tech, you might pick up Fishing first or might skip it. I could go either way on that - you don't urgently need Pottery in the next few turns, but you don't really have a use for Fishing until your fourth or fifth city. I'd probably get fishing if I was planning on settler the fish-gold city fourth, skip it if I was planning on expanding elsewhere. The lake tile is 2F 2C, which is not very good, so being able to work that is kind of irrelevant to be honest. But pottery into writing is definitely the mid-term target.

Edit: Looks like this cross-posted with you actually playing the next handful of turns. Well, a lot of the advice is still relevant.

 

[sampsa]

Each of the starting ones give you +20% beakers when researching the next tech, so if you are doing 10bpt researching the weel, you get 10 beakers per turn (or 11 perhaps, only @sampsa knows).

I'm sure a few others know as well. Yes, the hidden 1 is added to the number in the top left corner by the sliders i.e. when at 100% science you are researching the wheel and it shows +9, you are actually generating 9+1=10 towards the wheel. 9,14,19 are key integers you should try to hit to gain max benefit from 20% modifiers, because when you add 1 (the hidden ) to 9,14 or 19 you get an integer that is divisible by 5. (10, 15, 20.)

 

[crashmon]

@coanda
Yep I did most of what was suggested

1) Double chopped settler out, and its ready to move to tile 1E of corn
2) Worker is on way to corn right now ready to start
3) Started warrior in Capitol, once built will put a turn into barracks and switch as soon as I hit pop 4
4) After warrior in Capitol, will start another settler (question, do I chop it out or whip it out?).

Did go fishing prior to pottery, don't think this is a huge mistake, as it gave me extra option on what to do in cap while we are waiting to grow.. No matter what option I take I will get the 3rd warrior out of capitol before I get to size 4, it just a question as I posted in prior thread how we should work the Capitol while building warrior and growing to size 4

So will wait for feedback, won't do any more until tomorrow to give all time to feedback on idea's.

Also if its ok with all, am planning to name Cities after people who help me in this Thread. So 2nd City will probably be called Krikav (if this upsets anyone let me know and I'll use standard egypt names)

Also what to do with 2nd worker while we wait, not sure there is any point chopping warrior (will take 1T to move to a forest tile, and 2T to chop), unless this will overflow into the 2nd settler in which case it probably is worth it.

Still trying to best optimise overflow management in my games

 

[krikav]

4) Settler in capital should almost certainly not be whipped.
This capital I would only whip under the following circumstances:
* Some incredibly good spot is discovered close to Zara, and I need to get it.
* Barb axe or some other danger approaches, need to defend.
* Satellite cities are comfortably holding copper+gold.
* Approaching happycap.
* Granary is built.


*Edit* Oh, if you want to name a city in the honor of my ramblings, I would accept the honor as graciously as I'm able!

 

[coanda]

Between the two cities you have one good high-food tile, the pigs. Which means practically speaking you're either growing the new city to size-2, or the capital to size-4, but not both at once. I'd grow the new city first were I you, which means you've got about five turns here where you're not trying to grow the capital - which means starting to grow towards size-4 now is kind of a waste.

Here's what I'd do: 1 turn working your best tiles with the capital, pigs + cows + gold. 4 turns with the new city working pigs (that lets it grow to size-2) while the capital runs a 1-food deficit working cow + gold + unimproved copper and starves back down to 1/26 food in the granary. If you've been mining copper at the same time, you can now let your second city work corn + copper and your capital go back to working pigs + cow + gold. The five great tiles in your empire are all being worked at this point, so you can stay at size-3 in the capital a bit longer without huge losses. Which means you can build warrior - settler, get that third city settled faster. And because pigs + cow + gold gives 5 food surplus, being at 1/26 food in the granary instead of 0/26 will save you a turn growing to size-4 after that settler finishes - it'll get there in 5 turns instead of 6.

The barracks is a definite no. Barracks is not a high-priority building at all, and should almost never be a default "I guess I need to build something here" choice. If you can't build something like a granary or dump hammers into a wonder for eventual failgold, simply building warrior - warrior - warrior - ... warrior is fine unless you're starting to lose money on unit upkeep. Warriors can garrison cities to avoid unprotected unhappiness, they can scout, they can box out areas to barb bust, they can eventually pile up in cities with Hereditary Rule for extra happiness, you can potentially spend gold to upgrade them to axes if you urgently need an axe somewhere. They're useful units to have around. Having a barracks in your city is really not something to do unless either (a) 50 hammers is a trivial cost at that point in the game (definitely not early-game), or (b) you're planning on making a bunch of units out of that city right away to attack someone - and even then, you need to weigh simply "having more units" off against "having slightly better units," and for really early axe or chariot rushes you generally prefer just having more units.

@krikav went over the reasons to whip (and why not to do it right now) very well already. I would definitely chop the next settler though. After corn and copper are both improved I'd have both workers chop as their next action.

Quick question: do the phrases "binary research" and "fogbusting barbarians" mean anything to you? Are you familiar with those concepts? If not, they'd be important things to talk about before you start your next turnset, but if you already know them no need to explain it again.

 

[crashmon]

Fogbusting yes (but please go over it again as I am going to use this thread as a sort of sticky for myself for future games)

Thoughts on fog busting here
1) Eithopia is west so I only need 2 warrior FB I think to the west (I NW, I SW) after I build 2nd city, then it will be in his lands
2) Looks like coast is S and E, and I think it looks like I am at top of map, so probably only need 1 Warrior to fogbust north
3) Will probably need a warrior for happiness in Cap, but Cap won't be size 4 for a bit

I have a feeling that water to NW of the cap is a coast not a lake, and that the map directly north comes back down to the coastal NW, so only limited land up there in terms of fogbusting

Binary Research not sure (will need to read Fippy's noble guide again), please go into that in more detail.

 

[krikav]

With gold, you can be at size5 w/o a garrison.
"A city at size 1-2 never fears safety.
A city at size 3-5 gets one unhappy from fear of safety.
A city at size 6-8 gets two unhappy from fear of safety.
A city at size 9 and above has 3 unhappy from fear of safety."

So it's a long time still until you need to park a warrior in any city.

Fogbusting:
Each unit covers a 5x5 square around itself, and no barbs can spawn in that square. (Important to note that this also covers coast and barb galleys!)

Binary research:
Keep a 0% slider and save cash, untill you have enough cash to tech through the entire tech you want to get next.
Why? Two reasons.
1) You will avoid some beakers lost in rounding errors.
2) Having cash at hand offers more utility than a half-finished tech which gives almost zero utility.
While saving up cash you will have more turns to gather info and alter your plan and techpath, you also have the cash available to do emergency upgrades or to add into tech-trading deals after currency.

The only downside of saving up cash is that it runs the risk of getting a demand for most of your precious gold.

 

[crashmon]

OFC the 0% / 100% trick on the slider... Never have it at anything else ( at least in early / mid game). Yes I know about this (and I do this in my games), just did not know its term was Binary research

 

[coanda]

Every landmass (island or continent) has a certain number of barbarians it can sustain - this number depends on how many unclaimed tiles are in the area (tiles no civ's culture covers) and the difficulty level - on Monarch, by the way, this is 40 tiles per barbarian. Every turn, for each area independently, the game checks whether that area has fewer barbarians than it can support. If so, it places about 25% of the "missing" barbarians on that area in random eligible tiles. A tile is eligible only if it is not a mountain, not visible to any civilization, and not within 2 tiles of any existing unit. If there are no eligible tiles then no barbs are placed, but if there's even just one tile somewhere on that continent that is eligible and the continent is below its barb limit, that tile will get a barbarian unit next turn. When non-animal barbs are spawned, they can just wander about at random but they also have a good chance of heading towards the nearest city to harass it. So if barbs are spawning closer to you than your AI neighbors, they'll tend to harass you; if they're spawning closer to your neighbors, they'll tend to harass them instead.

So if you can place units in key locations to discourage barbs from spawning near you, not only do you get the benefits of not being attacked by them yourself but you are also pushing some of "your share" of the barbarians onto the AI neighbors.

You want to look at the map and figure out which tiles are not visible to any player due to culture. Each warrior can block off an additional 5x5 box centered on the warrior, so it's just a matter of figuring out where to place those 5x5 boxes to give the best protection from barbs. If you are partially fogbusting a region, just placing warriors to discourage nearby spawns while still letting more distant barbs spawn, you generally want to fortify your warriors in defensible locations like forests and hilltops. If you can completely fogbust a region, of course, you no longer care about how defensible the location is because no barbs will be spawning anyways.

 

[crashmon]

Turn 41

Spoiler Update so far :

• Krikav founded 1E of wet corn
• Worker 1 farm wet corn (now complete)
  
• Worker 2 Mine Copper (now complete)
• Cap is still size 3, now working corn, pigs gold, Settler 5 turns (just switched from Copper as Krikav was working pigs while size 1)
  
• Krikav is just gone size 2 now working corn + copper (just switched from Pigs as just hit size 2)
• Warrior to north has gone father north, no deer or silver is now FB north
• New warrior has explored south (no seafood) , is heading east to help fogbust
• We have teched pottery, now onto Writing

East empire


West Empire


What next

• both workers chop out settler
• Krikav will finish warrior then start on worker
• What to build in cap after settler finishes (either another settler ? or warrior? or granary) thoughts please. My leaning is another warrior than settler, not sure if I need a granary yet
  
• Zara has founded 2nd city away from me (must have gone west), so we have option to either forward settler 2W of wet corn or fill in spot to east which has Pigs and horses and wine.

Any other thoughts on next steps welcome

 

[crashmon]

Hi Guys

So have been trying to make sense of this thread (https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/whiping-a-granary.668214/#post-16047120) in terms of this game, and what to do after I build settler number 3 in Cap, and worker in Krikav.

Basically the question is (if you look at previous post on current status of game), is when should I consider building the granaries in my two (soon to be three cities) vs getting out settlers to REX to the 5 or 6 good city spots I have available, and should I be saving chops for the granaries now

 

[krikav]

Thats a good question. Don't have any good answer for what heuristic I use to determine when it's time to start building granaries.
I wouldn't feel in any rush to get granary in either of those two cities though.
Maybe once capital is up in size and can hold gold+copper alone and slow-build workers/settlers would be a good time to get it in krikav?
Then krikav could be set on a 4->2 cycle with a granary?

In general, when establishing new cities the ideal is to have 3 workers chop 3 separate forests while 2 workers improve the food.
That way after 3-4 turns the granary is built when the food bar is starting to reach half, and when the food is improved.

It's rare when you can do this though, but a more normal good thing is to be able to get some natural hammers and land one chop, so that once the city reaches pop2 you can do a 1pop whip of it.
Here you usually want to wait until the food bar from pop1->pop2 is about half-full before you whip, but sometimes the right thing is to just whip it right away (to make whip anger fade away sooner).
Sometimes the right thing is to not whip it at all, say if you are working corn+grassland copper you wouldn't want to whip away the copper, even for a granary. (Or so I think, math could show otherwise).

The paradoxical thing about granaries, that I certainly was fooled about, and I think most aspiring players are, is that the granary is something that you usually want in cities that are high in food already.
It might be intuitive to want to help cities that are struggling to grow, by adding a granary there, but no. The benefit from the granary is only as high as the food surplus in the city is.
Really food depraved cities can delay their granaries a long long time. And this capital you have here could be such an example.
It might grow to pop5-6 and then stay there and either work gold/copper, or perhaps run scientists and only slow-build it's granary over time becuase it has nothing better to put hammers into.

 

[crashmon]

Final question before I play next installment later today
Soon Kirkav will have the warrior and worker built, and then I plan to chop out a settler here. As I'm not creative, the two forests in range are 1E and 1NE of Krikav. However they are also in the BFC of cap. I want to ensure that Krikav gets the so do I have to do something special here, or will the go into Krikav as the tile is only 1 plot away but 2 plots away from cap.

Also 3rd City I am thinking 1W of coastal pigs (as it gets pigs, wine and horse) and settler 4 can go 2 W of wet corn. Settler 5 looks like the fish city on the desert, and I'm planning to explore more to the west with another warrior once I FB the NW of Krikav

 

[coanda]

Avoid growth micro to optimize granaries is a pretty advanced technique that I can 100% absolutely guarantee is never, ever necessary on Monarch.

But if you want to do it, we can!

Let's consider what happens if after the settler, you grow to size-4 building a granary in the capital. Settler is 40/100 hammers, adding 12 per turn and 20 from a chop in 4 turns. So 52, 64, 76, 108/100 (settler finishes turn 45 with 8 overflow). Now you start growing on a granary. +5 food, +7 hammers per turn. 6/26 and 15/60. 11/26 and 42/60 when the other chop finishes (might be the turn before or after this, not sure). 16/26 and 49/60. 21/26 and 56/60. The granary is due to finish on turn 50, and the city is due to grow to size-4 on turn 50. Unfortunately, because granaries start out with 0 food in their hidden storage (they only begin filling up to half the capacity after they are built), on turn 50 you're at 0/28 food and then on turn 51 you're at 5/28 if you weren't building a settler or worker after the granary.

Since the granary was not full yet and your growth was lining up perfectly - 26/26 food, no excess that would be thrown away with an "avoid growth" option - you could instead turn on avoid growth on turn 49 so on turn 50 you're at 26/26 food with a granary built. That granary will "store" the 5 excess food and the 5 excess food will overflow on its own, so that food is essentially double-counted. You turn avoid growth off again on turn 50. Start building something like a warrior or library, and on turn 51 you're at 10/28 food instead of 5/28. The two costs to this are that you couldn't switch to building a worker or settler immediately after the granary (which might or might not be a problem, depending on your plans) and that you lose one turn of one citizen working one tile by staying size-3 a bit longer - effectively, 1 hammer gone since all you have are 3-yield tiles.

So you could go settler - granary - warrior - warrior - warrior in the capital growing to size-5. That sets you up to put 2 turns of production into a settler (+26-28 hammers), a single chop (+20 hammers) and a size 5->3 2-pop whip (+60 hammers) to get the settler out in the optimal two turns. Meanwhile your other city could just go worker - (chopped) settler, and by about turn 60 you've got 5 cities laid down and are starting to run out of good spots to put them.

It's not a bad plan. It's not necessarily crucial here; because the only high-food tile is shared with another city, you don't need to be whipping the capital (you certainly want to be setting up to whip at least one of the two cities, though - between the two of them there's enough surplus food to sustain a good whipping cycle). You alternatively could simply build settler-settler in the capital while your second city goes worker - granary. In that case you're probably growing the capital to size-5 on a library build then sitting at size-5 and not really whipping it while your second city is working pigs most of the time plus its corn and doing big whips.

 

[coanda]

If you want to make sure your capital gets the hammers, chop a forest closer to the capital! Just spend an extra worker-turn moving if you have to.

 

[crashmon]

You alternatively could simply build settler-settler in the capital while your second city goes worker - granary. In that case you're probably growing the capital to size-5 on a library build then sitting at size-5 and not really whipping it while your second city is working pigs most of the time plus its corn and doing big whips.

I like this approach.. Learning how to whip correctly is one thing I want to learn, and this I think is a really good play here

Avoid growth micro to optimize granaries is a pretty advanced technique that I can 100% absolutely guarantee is never, ever necessary on Monarch.

My long term goal from all this is to be able to play (and win) NC type games on Immortal, but also I don't want to try too many new things in my first shadow monarch game. So for this game I will go with your suggestion on settler-settler-(warrior maybe)-library in cap, and use kirkav as my whip city

 

[crashmon]

Also my next 2 cities are planned to be Coanda and Sampsa

 

[krikav]

Would probably have been more appropriate if I got my name on the nasty crab/desert spot instead. @coanda deserved the honor of wet corn/pigs/copper city.