P666-01 Fix the Trash Game

[cabert]

Cabert,

Thanks for your awfully quick and insightful reply.

Pigswill and Cabert,

Thanks for the thoughts on the avatar! I'm not sure if I prefer Paul Stanley or Lil Billy (that was the idea anyway!) myself. The new one looked great as a full-sized image but lost a lot in translation when it went down to 70 X 70.

since i don't know Lil Billy, i prefer Paul Stanley. I thought it was some kind of reference to someone, but it's not the same when you don't know the reference

I guess I should tag this blurb on my game w.r.t. Cabert's views with spoilers for William's and Petrucci's sake ...

right

Spoiler :

I would like to wait a day - everyone's been posting early imho.

for my defense, i know i posted early (i even said so), but i was not sure i could get to post later. It turned out i really could have done it today, since i had a quiet week at work, but i thought better safe than sorry...

I still fear them ... we're not far off Machinery and while we are not China, I'd still like Crossbows ( ... let alone Maces).

You're a fearful guy aren't you
crossbows are really nice, but require iron. You've got iron. So you're in a good shape. Better than armstrong who lacks the iron.

I think that 'food counting' is an important tool to bear in mind.

true, but it would be better done right

I don't feel that I'm 100% wrong here, but more like 50% wrong!

Priesthood is not where I want to go tech-wise, and I think that we could easily pick the cheap religious techs up as give-aways in a later trade with someone like ... Isabella ... while at the same time The Oracle would act to distract resources away from Settlers and Archers, which is what I think was needed in these turns. With the Silver+Silver+Gold+Cottages in Berlin, I'm thinking that our tech' rate will be more than good enough to keep up with the AI, and I suspect we are the tech leaders without The Oracle anyway.

true, 5 precious metal mines in our cities fat cross, and enough food to work them is a lot.
But a free tech is always welcome, all the more so when it's an expensive tech. + denial for AIs on this continent AND on the other continent.

I also have an inclination not to become Wonder-obsessed in this succession game. If this is to be largely a 'community education thing', then Wonder addiction is one aspect that I'd like to address.

well, an industrious leader not building wonders is a waste IMHO. Forges are nice but still not enough to make up for other traits we don't have. I used the industrious trait to get stonehenge and Oracle, making up some part for missing creative (early culture) and philosophical traits (early great prophet).

about elephants :

Well, not so excited when they're up against fortified Spearmen with at very least the Combat I promotion - and Mongolia has both Copper and Iron. Or shouldn't I know that?

well, your screenies don't show them...
Elephants were here thought as counter to keshiks. For this, they are better than pikes. About attacking cities, it's the catapults that do most of the job. Elephants do the clean up work.

about magyar

I was >50% on taking the city ... but I was more than a little pleased when I first saw those black borders, and even more pleased when the garrison turned out to be Warriors and not Archers.

that's luck, but the result is great

'Yes'! One Worker was heading there, but I decided to start on the Iron instead.

Magyar is only size 1, you've got all the time you want to send workers there.
I usually keep them in pairs, because they build roads in one turns this way.

We have the only Wonder (Stonehenge).
The Hamburg thought crossed my mind - even possibly Berlin so I don't contaminate any Great Person pools further?

Well, Berlin would be better for the GPP, but hamburg lacks culture to grab the rice, and you've got nothing to build there right now, aside from the oracle, that could give you some (a library maybe?).
The only other solutions there are :
1) killing the mongols right away (swords may be enough)
2) going straight to music, and settling the GA in Hambourg

 

[pigswill]

Cam-H. Any chance of a screenshot of your full size avatar (says I, still not having worked out screenshots even though they've been explained to me).

Thoughts on thoughts on thoughts (heading towards infinite regression)

Spoiler :

Iron is certainly useful for crossbows and swordsmen. I find myself rarely building swords but I do like crossbows. On the other hand I would expect to be at war before crossbows and would probably have picked up iron-working through trade or research by then so an iron city is not an initial priority with me. I'd be looking at a CR cat stack with shock axe and medic spear for protection; with ivory available I'd change escorts to elephants.
While I've largely overcome my wonder addiction I'm still a fan of oracle and Glib; and as cabert noted we are industrious so make use of the trait.

 

[Cam_H]

Pigswill,

Getting completely off topic, and please bear in mind that I'm no whizz with the graphics software but ...

A cropped picture of Kublai Kahn from the Civilopedia ...

Using a graphics program (I use PaintShop Pro) I selected his hair, beard, mo', and eyebrows and recoloured them to a black-like colour, dropped the brightness, and increased the saturation ...

And then just played around with the drop shadow and the air brush to colour around the eyes (this example is very rough) and used a sphere and drop shadow to vaguely do the studs.

My first attempt was much better than this.

Again, I'm not professing to be great at this stuff! Just playing around.

 

[Petrucci]

Sorry about lack of communication on my side, its been crazy here! SO much has happened and some great games submitted and new avatars! (coss post with cam, but rofl at Kublai, too bad we are going to be whopping his booty!)

I played my round the other day but it was pretty Hawked as i remember it , I tried rushing through it late morning after work! Good thing this wasn't for worst round or im sure i would have recieved it lol. Ill participate in open discussion as i have just went and looked through all the games submitted and once again it's tough, you guys are really good I will be in the next round however.

 

[Cosmichail]

lurking here/off topic

Cam I have to admit I like the other avatar more but this one is cool too. That last picture makes Kublai look like a funky gothster.

 

[mice]

I played my round the other day but it was pretty Hawked as i remember it ,.

What does "Hawked " mean, and where does this expression come from?

 

[mice]

IMO Would have been closer if Mice had played the round a bit more seriously.

Fair comment. And as Cabert said, it's hard to keep the feel of the game if you dont play. Actually I tried pretty hard. ( BTW I tracked Caberts game after playing mine out).

Looking forward to the next turnset, but not looking forward to voting on this one. Im trying to wrap my head around the differences between the teching choices and slings.

I like Cam_H's great city placement and find the 'avoid the wonder' approach interesting. however I think it's great that Cabert did your first CS sling (I think you said that).
Further more I'm surprised that Pigswill is planning to move the capital. I thought it was really good because of the metals to get it to beauracracy, but maybe I'm just thinking too short term .To be honest I dont envisiage cities so far ahead in my games.Something I need to do maybe. Pigswill's Berlin is generating more beakers than anyone else's I think

Then Amstrong's MC sling with the focus on using the ivory and metals to lift the happycap for whipping... GE, pyramids and police state This is really interesting to me. However, no iron/copper, so it doesn't compare well to Cam's save with a good military set up and plenty of production/food . Also how do you judge the best option, pigswill city, or pigswill city split in two ?

So to sum up im completely flumoxed. Hope there is a scientific indicator.

 

[pigswill]

Re moving capital. Two reasons; first distance maintenance from capital is radial distance; at the moment half of it is wasted on icecap. Second reason in the long term a city full of cottages maturing into towns is going to give you more commerce; I'd rather have a commerce rich capital than a production rich capital or a hybrid capital; we are talking long term on this, 1000 ad at the earliest.

Edit: It's also worth clarifying that in my normal games I don't give this much conscious consideration to city placement/specialisation.

 

[Petrucci]

What does "Hawked " mean, and where does this expression come from?

Kinda like I hawked it up like a loogie, lugie, loogy (don't think ive ever spelled this before, but its a spit ball) sorry for the graphic nature of this post . Dunno where it came from but I've used it a few times, but to put it in other words, I didn't do nearly as well as everyone else!

 

[Cam_H]

OK, unfortunately I don't think that we can wait for William any longer.

Petrucci,

Seeing that you didn't submit an entry, would you mind tallying the votes and advise which was the overall 'most successful'? I don't think that we need to have a breakdown of votes-by-game or anything like that. You can vote, and if there's a tie for the top spot, you can also have the casting vote.

Everyone else,

Please review the games, and using any criteria that work for you, send a "3" vote for the 'most successful' submission, "2" for the next 'most successful' submission, and a "1" for the third 'most succesful' submission from the games other than your own to Petrucci by private messaging.

Do not vote for your own game!

 

[VuDu]

Hamburg is going to be the long term money city, aim to put a shrine there, spread confuciainism and eventually wall street so its another city I want to keep primarily farm/production.

Wouldn't you want lots of cottages in the city where you want to put wall street?

 

[armstrong]

Please review the games, and using any criteria that work for you, send a "3" vote for the 'most successful' submission, "2" for the next 'most successful' submission, and a "1" for the third 'most succesful' submission from the games other than your own to Petrucci by private messaging.

Why are we doing it secretly? Isn't it more helpful if we can talk about why we lean towards certain games? I don't think we need to worry about anyone's feelings getting hurt here.

Wouldn't you want lots of cottages in the city where you want to put wall street?

It depends on what percent your research is running at. If you're running at 100% science most of the time, very little of the cottages' commerce would go to gold (compared to a shrine, which generates gold even if you are running 100% science.) It really depends on how high your science rate is and how much gold the shrine (and any specialists) are generating as to if it should go in a commerce town or instead a holy city.

Normally, though, I personally like to make holy cities commerce cities in general for this reason, but I'd agree with making Hamburg a production city in this case since we need one.

 

[pigswill]

VuDu re wall street and cottages. It's probably sub-optimal but the way I've been playing is to run research slider high and use shrine for gold. In this scenario cottages go towards research not gold. I use wall street to boost shrine gold. I also tend to find myself low on production cities so I can combine shrine/wallstreet city with production without affecting research. Hope this makes sense (as an explanation if not as a strategy).
Edit: Having shrine city as production city also makes it faster to build market, grocer, bank and wall street (800 hammers, ouch) to increase income and itcan knock out units in between money making builds. I prefer having monasteries in commerce cities for the 10% research bonus.

In terms of voting I prefer open voting system as long as there's some kind of explanation. As I see it this is as much as a learning experience for me as it is (hopefully) for the Noble Princes. I do agree we need a mechanism for a casting vote in case of a tie.

 

[Petrucci]

Ill go ahead with the plan to tally votes, however will not submit them to the forum unless i get everyone's vote for the reason of contradiction amongst the ranks lol. Doesn't matter to me how we do it, I'll just do as I'm told .

 

[VuDu]

That does make sense, thanks for the explanations guys! I've been putting Wall Street in the city that creates the most commerce, based on the domestic advisor listing. Now I see that column is for commerce, not gold .

 

[mice]

Yeah ! lets get that result and play ! The next turnset is going to be a rocky road.

Having said that I guess a time of calm consideration is in order as so much work was put into the write ups. I wonder if the 2nd turnset players should give advice on how they would proceed from here, or if we nob/prin players should be left to make our own mistakes?

With advice we would learn ,but could just end up following instructions. I'm not sure which is best.

 

[armstrong]

Yeah ! lets get that result and play ! The next turnset is going to be a rocky road.

Having said that I guess a time of calm consideration is in order as so much work was put into the write ups. I wonder if the 2nd turnset players should give advice on how they would proceed from here, or if we nob/prin players should be left to make our own mistakes?

With advice we would learn ,but could just end up following instructions. I'm not sure which is best.

A good compromise between the two positions could be to set a general strategy and then see the differences in the implementation of that. i.e., no talk of MM'ing cities, or exact research paths, ideal tech trades, dot maps, civic switches, army buildup, etc. Just a basic strategy like, "war with Kublai Khan" or "peaceful building to establish technological dominance" to ensure that all the saves are at least on the same page.

 

[mice]

@armstrong, yes I think you're right

 

[pigswill]

One thing that's likely is that we all play slightly different so you'd end up with several sets of plans which may not be so helpful.
We also could do with some decision re length of turnsets from now on.

 

[armstrong]

One thing that's likely is that we all play slightly different so you'd end up with several sets of plans which may not be so helpful.
We also could do with some decision re length of turnsets from now on.

Since I'm not required to submit a game during the next turnset, I figured I'd go ahead and play a number of the games for 20 turns to see how they'd play out, and better decide which really the "best" game. I think in 20 turns there will be plenty of time for a game to differentiate themselves - in fact, I'd imagine that the next 20-40 turns are probably the most crucial to the game, so I'd think that cutting down to 20 at this point would be a good idea.