[BTS] Noble Shadow Game for @guyyee #2

[guyyee]

Turn 126/500 | 275 AD

[ Tlatelolco ]

Two barbarians in immediate vicinity, should have gotten rid of them so that the wheat tile can be improved. Farm tile 2S1E is not worked.

Spoiler Tlatelolco :

Please look at your cities and tell me by city what could be different.

[ Mutal ]

Mutal has grown out of happiness cap. Need to manage this unhappiness but not sure how. I know you mentioned not to whip good tiles; but possibly could whip out 2 unimproved tiles (1S and 1W)?

Spoiler Mutal :

[ Bibracte ]

Same thing happening in Bibracte: city has outgrown happiness limit. again, not really certain how to address this problem.

Spoiler Bibracte :

[ Uxmal ]

Instead of working the lake tile, better to work on cottage tile 1S1E of city. Also, Uxmal has reached its happiness limit, will grow into unhappiness next turn. I'm not sure I should build a worker to stave off unhappiness since we are at war.

Spoiler Uxmal :

[ Chichen Itza ]

This immediate helper city east of Mutal has a couple of unimproved tiles worked. But because its primary function is to help grow cottages for Mutal, so this is less of an issue?

Spoiler Itza :

You are still fixated on those grass cottages. Mutal is fine for them, but elsewhere you have far more important things to do. Please stop.

This is an area where I struggle. I'm really trying to see what needs to be prioritised here but I have chopped all forests (at least those that are within my cultural border). What should I be doing instead of improving tiles?

I would not have razed those Carthaginian cities. Not great cities but you could gift them back to Hanny once he bends the knee.

I see. Never thought of that. What is the advantage of gifting back cities after the enemy capitulates?

 

[Pangaea]

What kind of barbs is it? I see you have two HAs in the city. The barbs will pillage the gold and wheat next turn if you don't deal with them.

This late barbs shouldn't be invading your lands. You probably need to spawnbust the land better so that this doesn't happen. I'm seeing uncovered black tiles right next to the city as well, which indicates less-than-stellar exploration of your closest surroundings.

(Not followed the thread lately so not sure what has been going on, but these are some comments based on the screenshot)

 

[guyyee]

What kind of barbs is it?

They are both warriors.

You probably need to spawnbust the land better so that this doesn't happen.

Lesson learnt.

 

[guyyee]

I have no clue what you are doing with that great general ...was that your first GG or second?

Speaking of GG, that was a downer. The great GG you are seeing is the second one. The first one got killed on the way to Carthage. Since hills confer a good defensive advantage, my plan was to move all units to the hill 1NE of Carthage as the attack point. I think because of movement points difference, the GG and a HA arrived on the hill first. It was killed on the following turn. What a waste... sigh. I attach the game save for your reference.

Spoiler GG killed :

 

[Pangaea]

They are both warriors.

Easy then. Dead warriors and tiles restored.

Wow, you lost a GG like that? Need to be more careful then

 

[WLanky13]

Speaking of GG, that was a downer. The great GG you are seeing is the second one. The first one got killed on the way to Carthage. Since hills confer a good defensive advantage, my plan was to move all units to the hill 1NE of Carthage as the attack point. I think because of movement points difference, the GG and a HA arrived on the hill first. It was killed on the following turn. What a waste... sigh. I attach the game save for your reference.

Always keep your GG unit with your main stack, especially if it is a HA. Since spears have such a bonus against mounted units, try not to leave a HA without a melee unit defending it; either an axeman or a maceman, unless you are doing a HA rush. Also, you don't have a medic unit and so your GG should go to a medic. I will let Lymond talk about your city management problems.

 

[lymond]

Speaking of GG, that was a downer. The great GG you are seeing is the second one. The first one got killed on the way to Carthage. Since hills confer a good defensive advantage, my plan was to move all units to the hill 1NE of Carthage as the attack point. I think because of movement points difference, the GG and a HA arrived on the hill first. It was killed on the following turn. What a waste... sigh. I attach the game save for your reference.

Yep, this brings up a point that a meant to address...and I have alluded to before. I see this a lot when looking at your saves when I play a turn or two and realize you had units moving automatically via go-to. You are setting units on a path..that includes workers as well. Not only is that simply a bad idea but in many cases dangerous. And you should absolutely should not do this in enemy territory when at war. Move units and stacks deliberately. Think about the moves before you make them. Keep stacks together. Obviously reinforcements units will move to the front, but don't set these on automatic paths. Think about what the unit is and how to safely move it to the front. You may have to adjust movement based on how the enemy reacts. And yes, pay attention to enemy units.

The loss of the GG was completely avoidable and should never happen.

I was also a bit curious why your new GG and apparent future super medic HA were set on an automatic path to a dead stop on a desert hill with no road.

I will try to address the other big post later and the game, but football.

 

[lymond]

Turn 126/500 | 275 AD

[ Tlatelolco ]

Two barbarians in immediate vicinity, should have gotten rid of them so that the wheat tile can be improved. Farm tile 2S1E is not worked.

Barbs should never have even gotten that close to your city. You have 2 HAs sitting in that city. At least send one out earlier to spawnbust and dance around picking off barbs. Maybe promote flanking>visibility. But just letting warriors walk in like that is not good. My guess is you were very preoccupied with the war.

Wasn't that wheat improved?

Anyway, kill them now.





[ Mutal ]

Mutal has grown out of happiness cap. Need to manage this unhappiness but not sure how. I know you mentioned not to whip good tiles; but possibly could whip out 2 unimproved tiles (1S and 1W)?

Adjust tiles for one thing. Mutal is working two unimproved tiles while there are juicy cottages to work. Growing into unhappy can be managed in a myriad of ways, but first you need to start recognizing when cities are going to do so. (Although you might have wear weariness now from some losses, so you might have an unhappy from that)

Anyway, it all goes back to micro your cities. And your Bureau cap should always be heavily monitored...each turn

One problem though is you never roaded that incense earlier

[ Bibracte ]

Same thing happening in Bibracte: city has outgrown happiness limit. again, not really certain how to address this problem.

It's not Mutal...2 or 3 pop whip some units. Unhappy citizen is still a citizen worth 30

[ Uxmal ]

Instead of working the lake tile, better to work on cottage tile 1S1E of city. Also, Uxmal has reached its happiness limit, will grow into unhappiness next turn. I'm not sure I should build a worker to stave off unhappiness since we are at war.

Not actually looking at the game at the point I first wrote that question, so I don't have context on all cities. Uxmal seemed in pretty good shape (it is a great city now and would be a key city and GP producer in a long game). For one though, it should be giving that nice cottage to Mutal now as mentioned. The lake can certainly be worked, but the easy way to manage unhappiness is to 2 or 3 pop something. I forget what was in the queue at the time and where that build was in relation to being able to whip (hopefully you are understand whip benchmarks on builds now)

If the current unit is only a one pop whip now then queue up something else like a mace or treb and 3pop whip it next turn. Mace is 70 cost, so benchmarks are <10 for 3 pop and >40H for a 2 pop whip. A Treb is 80 cost so <20 3pop and <50 2pop. Thus, either one could be started in a city with 6 pop or greater and 3 popped whipped the following turn in a city with less that 10 base + OF (if there is any at the time)


[ Chichen Itza ]

This immediate helper city east of Mutal has a couple of unimproved tiles worked. But because its primary function is to help grow cottages for Mutal, so this is less of an issue?

Well, as said, I think Mutal can work the remaining shared cottage. Itza can whip off unimproved tiles. I think there was still a forested grass hill there which can be chopped/mined.

This is an area where I struggle. I'm really trying to see what needs to be prioritised here but I have chopped all forests (at least those that are within my cultural border). What should I be doing instead of improving tiles?

Well, very good question. First there are still forests in some cities like in old Aztec land. But you also have some good improvement like that bananas to the S over there.

Another than one can think at this point where worker turns on improvements themselves becomes less a priority and forests are mostly gone is logistics. Starting roads toward future enemies to speed troop movement. Great idea when one is going fast Conquest.

Basically boils down to thinking about what your goals are and what your needs are. Most cities are whipping so things like extraneous non-river cottages are far from what I consider a priority here. Might be different if you were playing the long game.

I see. Never thought of that. What is the advantage of gifting back cities after the enemy capitulates?

Well, in my playthrough, I kept those cities. Not sure if you looked at that save yet. Cities not worth a great deal but not necessarily bad. But main reason I kept them was they were not under cultural pressure (which can create revolt issues), so there was no reason not too.

But there can be an advantage of gifting back cities to a vassal to just make them stronger vassals, whether than be teching stuff for you or helping in wars. I tend to keep good cities though like cities with key wonders - as long as I don't have to deal with severe cultural pressure. However, if I keep a vassal rather than killing them off I generally want them to be somewhat functional and more cities means functional.

More complex concepts pertain to the area of vassals in this regard, but probably not beneficial to go into too much detail on something that is more confusing than helpful at this stage, and really not near as important as other things you are learning now.

 

[guyyee]

If the current unit is only a one pop whip now then queue up something else like a mace or treb and 3pop whip it next turn. Mace is 70 cost, so benchmarks are <10 for 3 pop and >40H for a 2 pop whip. A Treb is 80 cost so <20 3pop and <50 2pop. Thus, either one could be started in a city with 6 pop or greater and 3 popped whipped the following turn in a city with less that 10 base + OF (if there is any at the time)

A month ago, I'd have understood all these as utter gibberish. But now those sentences make perfect sense.

I kept them was they were not under cultural pressure (which can create revolt issues)

I faced this issue before in my last game. This seems like an important point. How do I know if a city is or will be under cultural pressure?

btw, can you expound on the Golden Age mechanics and how to exploit it? thank you!

 

[Nick723]

I’ll have a go at the Golden Age (GA) question.

A golden age can be triggered by any great person, or by building the Taj Mahal. Ignoring the GA from the Taj (which counts separately) the first GA requires a single great person, the second two, the third three, etc. Furthermore, for GAs after the first, the great people have to be of different types. A golden age lasts 8 turns on normal speed (this can be increased to 12 with the MoM wonder).

A golden age has three main effects:
1) It increases the yields of your tiles. Every tile that produces at least 1 commerce produces 1 more in a golden age. Similarly every tile that produces at least 1 hammer produces one more in a golden age. Food is unaffected.
2) It increases the amount of Great Person Points (GPP) your wonders and specialists produce by 100%. So a normal specialist would produce 6 GPP per turn rather than 3 (before any other bonuses such as being philosophical).
3) It allows you to swap civics / religions without going into anarchy (note spiritual leaders can already do this, so this benefit of a golden age is not important for those leaders).

So that’s great, but when to use it and what to use it for?

When:
- if you want to make civic swaps, it’s a good opportunity to do so without anarchy
- you should trigger a golden age when your population is high, and your food bars are full (more on this later). If you trigger one after a whipping spree to build an army, the bonus you get from benefit 1 is much reduced as you’re working many fewer tiles. Better to wait until you’ve regrown.
- to an extent, when there isn’t a better use for that great person. For example, the music tech gives a free great artist that is commonly used to trigger a golden age (outside of cultural victory, the other uses for a great artist are minimal).

What to use it for:
- Swapping civics. As above, but consider that you might want to use a certain set of civics during the golden age, and then swap again at the end into your desired new civics.
- Great person generation. This may seem counter intuitive (since at least one great person is needed to start the GA in the first place) however, at least for the first couple of golden ages, you can actually generate more great people in the golden age than you use to start it. The general scheme goes like this:
— at the start of the golden age, swap into caste system and pacifism. This allows you to run unlimited specialists and create even more GPP from them (assuming you’ve spread your state religion)
— in your high food cities run as many specialists as possible, even to the extent that your cities are starving down (typically say only work tiles that give 4+ food). This is why it’s good to start with full food bars as it maximises the starving potential.
— produces lots of great people!

This sort of approach to golden age would typically be done once these key civics are available (eg tech code of laws, bulb philosophy) and allows you to for example generate two great scientists to bulb education, as well as a great merchant for troop upgrades, as well as to switch into bureaucracy for free. So quite powerful!

 

[lymond]

I faced this issue before in my last game. This seems like an important point. How do I know if a city is or will be under cultural pressure?

First of all, one can see the revolt risk in the tool tip by hovering over the culture bar in the lower left of the city view screen. Revolt Risk is measure from 0% to 9.99%, which is a factor of the culture of that civ (or other civ's) and culture pressure from nearby cities on that captured city.

9.99% or less may seem very low, but honestly as long as there is even 1% revolt risk there's is a pretty good chance that the city will go into revolt on any given turn.

Generally any city you capture from an enemy that is surrounded by culture from nearby cities will likely have some revolt risk. The likelihood of this grows as the game progresses because city culture continues to grow and a leader may build more wonders and culture buildings during that time. Also, culture of buildings doubles over 1000 years so, for example, a library goes from 2 to 4 at some point. Thus, when capturing cities later in the game you may encounter this quite a bit, with culture pressure extending beyond just 2 or 3 tiles distance.

There are some ways to mitigate this problem:
1) Placing more MP in a city will lower revolt risk. The more units you have on MP (and the more advanced units types) decrease the risk more all the way to 0% with enough. However, this can be an issue if you'd rather have those units fighting.
2) Once you get 50% of your culture in a captured city the revolt risk goes away. However, growing culture in a captured city is a loooong process and usually requires other methods of mitigation in the meantime.
3) Simply take the enemies cities - or raze - that are pressing on a city you really want to keep
4) Eliminate the civ entirely. Once gone their culture disappears
5) If you vassal them, simply gift them back there cities

The main issue is when you really want to keep a city, like when it has important wonders. If that is the case then you just need to work around that with the options available to you.

btw, can you expound on the Golden Age mechanics and how to exploit it? thank you!

Nate did a good job on explaining golden ages. I'd say the primary purpose of a golden age is great person generation. Ideally, on high levels, I look to start a golden age in the late BCs or circa 1AD combined with the a caste/pacifism civic switch to produce as many great scientists as I can for bulbing strategies. But also you are generally boosting your GPP rate in all cities that can effectively run specialists, which can lead to more later during a second golden age like with Taj Mahal. But the first burst of great person production produces likely at least 3 GS or so for Educ>Lib bulbs which can be a fast way to get out to a strong military advantage.

In the case of your current game, a golden age does not really do a whole lot cause you are very close to winning anyway, but you could kick one off with the Great Artist for kicks to see what happens.

 

[Pangaea]

The part chopping and part roading was explained earlier. Did you understand it?

Here is an example from a game I am playing, which is on epic speed, which means the worker actions take longer.

Spoiler :

A couple of examples of how I saved a few worker turns.

#1 Worker is built in Antium. I want to cottage NE of Rome. The path has already been roaded. The worker can move 4 tiles if the path is fully roaded and not crossing any rivers (pre-construction). He can therefore move onto the hill, where a worker is currently present (the red circle), and start chopping that tile. Cancel the worker action so he can move again next turn. He can then move to the blue circle where a cottage has now been built (he helped to build it).

#2 After building said cottage, I'd like this worker to move back to Antium. Because the cottage is unroaded, it costs a full movement point to move into Rome. Then a half to move to the red circle hill due to the road. The worker has a half movement point left, and can spend it to put another chop turn into the forest. Please note that if the tile hadn't been roaded, he wouldn't be able to do this, as he wouldn't be able to do anything after moving into the forest. Next turn, he can move further towards Antium. For example to put a farm on the grassland 1E (an oasis irrigates it, which doesn't show here), or further west where there is a jungle on a sugar tile he can chop.

All these small examples in a long game add up, so I suggest to do things like this. With time it becomes second nature, and you look for such opportunities instantly. It may even hurt your heart to move a worker without him doing anything that turn

As an aside, I suppose it's also worth noting that there is no point to put a road on that corn tile, because it's already connected to my trade network because it is riverside. Same deal with the gold. Riverside, so we already have access to it, despite the tile lacking a road.

 

[guyyee]

@lymond and company

Apologies for the late response, went offline for a while chugging away on my own. finished the game, and played some more. In fact, I just won my first game on Prince level!

Thank you for the amazing learning experience. Shadow play is a great way to acquire gameplay knowledge. @lymond, I really appreciate your time and effort.

Needless to say, there is still so much more to learn. But I'm ready to move up the difficulty ladder and improve further as a serious CIV4 player.

See you at the next shadow game!

 

[odin1981]

In about two weeks I will be playing again. I have to fix my computer. I read through the thread just to see what happened. I saw you mentioned that you where hoping to not go a war strategy. However the reason that quite a few people pushed for that direction was opponent based.

Boudica and Montezuma are warmongers. And high unit maker's due to that. Because you where placed close to them it made sense to take them out, and because you where already in a unit production mode it made sense to continue that line of play. Also because of difficulty level teaching of AI's wouldn't be quick enough to help you advance very well either.

While Hannibal isn't a warmonger, he usually also makes a decent amount of unit's as well. So your map that was forest heavy in your starting spots, and pool of opponents dictated the combat path for your game to take. One diplo option that might have been handy that I didn't see anyone mention would have been after alphabet, potentially trading tech to Montezuma to fight Gandi.

The above mentioned is more for higher levels of play. Gandi is at the opposite end of the peace weight scale, so he naturally hates Gandi and is the likely worst enemy of him if he meets him. That would tie him up (Montezuma) in a war with someone that is not you lol. Peace weight is a scale of aggressive behavior and potential friendlies to other civ's. In case you were wondering.