New Game- random leader:Roosevelt

[Jastrow]

(gosh..please stop talking about useless wonders...lets keep this stuff basic and simple)

Agreed... The previous map really called for TGL, which is why I mentioned it. I had not even mentioned Oracle because, while I I was playing the map, I would also be oracling CS or bigger on these settings, that is not the type of basic play we need.

Now that we have a normal map which looks like it can be rexed, there is no need for any wonders.

 

[MarigoldRan]

Man, the Zulus are TERRIFYINGLY good at Noble. [Spoilers in pictures below]

Spoiler :

Wonder-whored. Built TGW, Stonehenge, Pyramids, the Hanging Gardens, and even the Oracle because someone trade me priesthood and I whipped it out. Also, it turned out that the Mongols and the Germans didn't have copper or iron.... The Pyramids make sense on this map because of the lack of happy resources (only 1) and Representation allows mass Impi rush AND a tech lead. Everything else is just pudding on the cake.

City sites for your second and third cities are pretty obvious on this map. Good learning map.

 

[Jastrow]

For the start, as others have said... Settle on the plain hills.

In case you dont know this.. The square you settle on gives for "free" (i.e., without needing to use a population point) 2F+1H+1C UNLESS the basic tile (without improovement) on which you settle is already better in one category. In this case, the plain hill is already 2H, so settling on it will give you 2F+2H+1C.

This is VERY usefull because... First think you will do is build a worker. Worker need 60 units to produce, and can be produced with H+F. Your first population point will work a 3 production tile (2F+H or 2H+F), and eat 2F, so that leaves 1 left over.

If you settle in place, your center square gives 3, plus the 1 for your population is 4. At 4 production per turn, it takes 15 turns to produce the 6 you need for a worker.

Settling on plains hill, the center produces 4, so one extra. That means you get 5 per turn total, and the worker in 12.

You need one turn to move to the plains hill, so you settle one turn later, but still get the worker 2 turns earlier, and therefore the pigs pastured 2 turns earlier. This is a huge advantage which will snowball for the rest of the game.

So:
Settle on PH.
Worker first
AH first, for the pigs pasture

I am not sure of the timing on Nobel. How long does AH take to research?

Assuming it is 13 turns or less, the worker goes to pasture pigs first. IF research of AH takes longer, then Rice first...

In general for worker management, you cannot go very wrong if you base decisions on simply getting the most food possible the fastest possible. That is not always the 100% best play, but it is almost always a very good play.

Mining, BW are likely techs 2 and 3, but you dont need to decide that now. Scoute in a circle around your capital, and by the time you have finished AH, you will have a better idea of the lay of the land. Then you can decide for sure.

 

[UnforcedError]

I totally disagree. If you want industrious leader not to build wonders, you should also play financial without cottages and philo with heavy cottaged cities.

Rossevelt is THE BEST leader for Great Lighthouse (trait combo and starting techs) and playing Roosevelt GLH should be prioritised always if possible, especially with some forests in BFC. I see no reason not to use it. I think limited number of wonders is worth considering, but not to discard the obvious choice for this leader.

The main benefit of an industrious leader are cheap forges and the ability to run a very effective failgold economy. You don't necessarily need to wonder-spam to utilize your trait to full extent (then again failgold economy on Noble is difficult because the AI is very slow at building anything, so you might rather build the failgold into wonders you want and then complete them yourself). Going for certain wonders with certain leaders on any map is the worst advice there is. GLH comes at a heavy opportunity cost just like every wonder. You might be better off investing those hammers into units.

Joe: I think this map will be nice for starters PH and AH as a tech sounds right to me, too.

EDIT: Guys, please be disciplined and stop taking the games apart with wonder-spamming That's really not the way to learn rexing in general.

 

[joe6778]

Spoiler :

Spoiler :

Spoiler :

Spoiler :

Four Screenshots of the area.

Settled on the PH 1E. Four huts yielded 3 scouts and some gold.
BW almost complete. Two workers and a warrior built and I'm about to get a settler.
I thought I would tech Wheel next. Not sure where my next city should go.
I met Vikings, Mayans, and Mongolians to the west. Not sure what to build next.

 

[lymond]

Looks like you have 3 of the same pic. (just hit Print Scr key by the way)

Again, I think you played on a bit too much. I was hoping you'd stop right after the Worker was built so we could talk about how to improve things. It does not look bad though from the screenshot. However, I think you could have grown to pop 3 ..not sure though...I will take a look at things later.

Make sure you really read the advice and pointers.

(again, make sure you turn off huts and events next time)

I will take a look at things soon. I think The Wheel is a good choice next and likely Pottery. Don't play yet though.

 

[enKage]

Hmmmm

You should definitely grow to size 3 before starting settler (build warriors for fogbusting while growing). You have 3 powerful tiles to work to complete settler faster but work only 2 of them

There was no need to build 2nd worker (you dont have plenty forests to chop). What are they doing now? Nothing! At least they should build a mine now on grassland hill

Your capital is very low on commerce, so the choice for the 2nd city is obvious - grassland tile 3SW (floodplains, pigs, gold). The wheel - pottery is a must. But final decision should be made after BW (there can be copper around you would like to have)


I suggest starting again the same game and build only 1 worker, then grow to 3 and start settler then. Settle the same tile and I am sure you WILL see the difference on turn 27. Observing own misttakes and comparing results of different actions is the best way of learning.

early segments should be shorter if you want to improve and want us to give advice

 

[lymond]

I actually agree on 3tile SW. It can share the Pigs at times. But I need to look more closely soon.

yeah, Joe, I might start over and play slower. This is a great time to really practice these turns even if more than once or thrice.

Second early worker is not always a bad idea but it depends on your land, resources and especially forests. In some cases it does more harm than good to stunt your grow that long. You had the right thinking though. Workers are so important.

(the problem with playing so fast is your are still fueled by your own assumptions and preconceived notions. This is really more about you following our directions and asking questions.)

 

[MarigoldRan]

The purpose of workers is to work. If there's not enough work around your capital, you don't need more workers. What's the point of making tile improvements... if you aren't using them?

See?

Also, the larger your capital is, the faster you build settlers. If you have three good tiles near your capital, then you should wait till size 3 to start the first settler. That way you're USING all of the tiles that you worked.

 

[lymond]

Yeah, took a quick look..

4 scouts ( I hope you can see how silly that is, Joe. Hyopthetically speaking, in one game you pop 3 scouts and Fishing and the next game you pop Bronze Working and Horse Back Riding or Metal Casting. You can't compare those two results at all....ha. You just don't learn that way)

Anyway, try this start again. I'd really like to see you get to size 3 before starting the Settler. Get at least 1 if not 2 warriors out, or at least start the second.

Always send your first and second warriors out to spawnbust and guard new city sites. Your cap is not in any danger for quite some time.

 

[UnforcedError]

I agree with lymond on reloading the start for learning purposes. In this case, not growing on all three improvements was a mistake. You can always leave the settler queued and grow on something else to size 3, if you already started on it.
(I'd delete the extra scouts btw. That's quite ridiculous )

 

[Jastrow]

Agreed... the second worker here is a bad move... It idles and does nothing.

YOu might have picked up the idea from what I told you I did in the first rolled game... There I indeed did go worker-worker... This is a good example of the improtance of playing the map, and not falling into "autoatic" plans that "always work", because they dont always work...

In the first map, there were very few good squares to work, and about a dozen forrests to be chopped. The entire early game production was comming from forrests, and we had the right techs to knock them down quickly (that was why we were all skipping AH in the first place). There, even with worker/worker, both workers were always very busy.

Here, the workers are twiddling their tumbs are were a wasted investment (for now), while a very nice wet rice square is sitting unused.

 

[joe6778]

Yikes! I can't even get the first few turns right.

I was following advice: settle PH, explore in a circle, research BW, build worker.

I was building another worker to improve my next city.

I'll start again and post after 20 turns.

 

[UnforcedError]

It's best to stop after the first worker is built so that we can discuss worker micro.

Don't worry about reloading In my first few years I tended to replay games just because I wasn't satisfied with my early game or with the end results. It's good practice, IMO. You can learn a lot.

As for the next worker improving your next city: you don't have another city yet, meaning the second worker has nothing to do. Also, you'd be able to share out the pigs to the next city, so there's time to build the worker later. What you don't want is having a worker sit around, doing nothing. You don't want to invest 60 into anything this early that has no immediate uses.

 

[Zavior]

Yikes! I can't even get the first few turns right.

I was following advice: settle PH, explore in a circle, research BW, build worker.

I was building another worker to improve my next city.

I'll start again and post after 20 turns.

Remember, the first few turns are the most important turns of the game. What you achieve in the early game decides the late game. Wasting precious hammers and food early can be huge, huge difference.

 

[MarigoldRan]

Settle new city first. Then build worker afterwards. As a general rule.

Exceptions exist. But they're exceptions.

 

[joe6778]

I thought a worker would build a road to my next city so my settler would reach it faster. I remember either reading that here or seeing it on a playthrough video.

Oh, well...

 

[MarigoldRan]

You need the wheel to build roads.

Rule 1: All special resource tiles must be improved ASAP (don't count Calendar resources like spice or bananas).
Rule 2: All special resource tiles should be used by a city at all times.
Rule 3: All workers must be working.
Rule 4: Expand as fast as possible.

That's it. All other "rules" or playthroughs involving worker management follow these general principles. By building an extra worker without finding work for him, you have broken Rule 3 and Rule 4. The playthrough you were looking at probably had a special circumstance where rule 4 could be followed by building roads. Your situation did NOT have that circumstance. Try again.

 

[Jastrow]

As with everything else, it depnds on the specif conditions...

Here the key caracteristic has to do with your start city... Consider its production capabilities... In the early game, for production, you can bassically say that 1F = 1H, since much of what you are building are settlers and workers, where that is true.

A "normal" square (grass, plain, hill, etc...) has a production of 2, but each citizen eats 2, so they net you ZERO.

A "decent" square (something with a forrest, or a flood plain) give you 3-2 = 1.

Adding a mine or similar makes it 4-2 = 2, so twice as good as decent... These are "good" squares...

Now, you have 3 squares that, when improoved, yeild 5 (rice) or 6!! (Cow, Pig). With the minus 2, these are 3 and 4. These (squares of yield 5 or larger procution) are "great"! and MUST be worked as much as possible.

Consider that you want to build a settler. It needs 100 production. You get 4 production from the center tile (because you settled on a plains hill!) and does not need to feed a population.

So:

Population-Tiles worked-"Production"-turn for settler.

1 - center+pig - 4+4 = 8 -> 13 turns
2 - center+pig+Cow - 8+4 = 12 -> 9 turns
3 - center+pig+cow+rice - 12+3 = 15 -> 7 turns

Growing:

Size 2 to 3 needs 24 food... At size 2, you can work pig and rice for +10 food per turn... With realistic overflow, you can probably grow in 2 turns!

In other words, you can probably get your settler at the same time, or even sooner, by building at size 3 instead of earlier.

There MIGHT be a case for bulding a second worker before a settler after you are at size 3... By then, the worker might have enough to do with chopping and roading to make that make sense... This needs to be assesed. The key point is that the way you have done it, you are :

1-Not using some GREAT tiles.
2-Have workers bassically idling.

Both of these should be avoided as mush as possible.



(plain or grass forrest,)

 

[UnforcedError]

I thought a worker would build a road to my next city so my settler would reach it faster. I remember either reading that here or seeing it on a playthrough video.

Oh, well...

In the optimal case you want:
1. a road to the city you want to settle and
2. an improvement the city can immediately work on (obviously shared with a previous city) OR a worker ready to improve the best food resource there is in the city OR the production tile if that's what you settled the city for.

1. is not applicable, because you can't build roads yet. This will lose you 1 commerce per turn on the non-existent trade route, which is why you want to tech the Wheel soonish. On Noble this deficit is not much. Sure, it needs to be avoided, if possible.
2. can be done before you settle the new city because you can improve the pigs as soon as AH is in.