Phaedo's 1st basic skills training game: patience required

[Salarakas]

Some more comments/questions before I go to bed...

1. When to revolt to republic? If we strike the hittites we should wait of course. We have very few towns so we'll drown in unit support until we get some aqueducts built and our research would be very slow without any multiplier buildings. If we manage to get some extra luxuries from the Hittite territory we might even want to build marketplaces before libraries in our core cities.

2. Do we go for knights or not? If not, we can switch research off after we get feudalism. Or do we go straight towards cossacks and skip knights altogether (meaning 2 techs less to research ourselves)? Before looking at the save I'd go for max speed towards cossacks.

 

[Bucephalus]

Edit: What do you think of the idea of capturing Amsterdam before signing peace and then gifting it to the Arabs? They (the Arabs) are the last AI on our continent that we'll attack and capturing the Dutch capital would a) further decrease the flip risk and b) permanently sign the Dutch death warrant. They will never recover from that even if they could settle the whole eastern peninsula by themselves.

I think that is very sound reasoning. The only flaw that I can see is the possibility that there is a high chance of Amsterdam flipping back to the Dutch; as far as I understand it (I'm no expert on the subject, so this is pure conjecture), holding down a capital is more difficult than other cities. And the Arabs wouldn't have a garrison for some time. And Mecca is a long way off.

Having said that, it wouldn't really matter to us if it did. No, on balance, I think it's an excellent plan.

 

[Bucephalus]

Some more comments/questions before I go to bed...

1. When to revolt to republic? If we strike the hittites we should wait of course. We have very few towns so we'll drown in unit support until we get some aqueducts built and our research would be very slow without any multiplier buildings. If we manage to get some extra luxuries from the Hittite territory we might even want to build marketplaces before libraries in our core cities.

By the time that we have the Hittites effectively beaten, we will be able to afford to switch from Military builds, to Marketplaces, Aquaducts; I suggest revolting, immediately after securing the second luxury.

2. Do we go for knights or not? If not, we can switch research off after we get feudalism. Or do we go straight towards cossacks and skip knights altogether (meaning 2 techs less to research ourselves)? Before looking at the save I'd go for max speed towards cossacks.

I agree. We don't need Knights to secure this continent, we can pretty much steamroller them, one after another, especially if we are first to Feudalism. We should strike while the Iron is hot.

Also, that fits perfectly with the strategy for the GL.

 

[Aabraxan]

Obviously, I can't download the save my my civ-capable computer, but the turnlog looks excellent. Personally, I would not have thought about giving away Amsterdam, but, then again, I never give cities away. Looks like the SoZ is serving us well!

 

[Salarakas]

Here are some thoughts now that I've taken a look at the save.

1. Amsterdam needs to be captured, we can't leave it to the Dutch. It's their only city currently making any culture so once they lose it the risk of it flipping back to them should be minimal (at least if we starve it to size 1 before gifting it to the Arabs)

2. Arnhem must be razed. It's right next to Amsterdam.

3. The Dutch only have 4 cities left. If we capture Amsterdam and raze Arnhem they'd only have 2. Groningen is close to The Hague and could be taken out easily if we want to. This would leave the Dutch to 1CC. Then again the city would most likely autoraze so probably not worth it.

4. We still need a lot more workers. We are working some unimproved tiles in our core.

5. It will take at least 4 or 5 turns to capture Amsterdam and raze Arnhem. We have enough troops to start the war against the Hittites right after this.

 

[Salarakas]

Some screenies:

 

[Phaedo]

Great Set Buce! You definately showed that we had the strength for war.

Taking Amsterdam seems good but I like the idea of gifting it to someone. The obvious choices seem to be the Celts or the Arabs. I guess the Arabs would be better as if we want it while fighting the Celts they could use it as a staging position behind our front line.

I really don't understand the whole culture flip dynamic but better minds than mine have said civ culture is more important than city culture. Might not the Dutch give us Anheim for peace after we take the 'Dam? We seem to be even with the dutch culturally now but way ahead of the Arabs. Once ownership changes, that should change (or is culture cumulative? ). Razing Anheim and hoping for that Gxxxx city for peace could work too. (I might be to hopeful about peace demands but I just got 3 French cities for peace in my Diety game).

If we persue the Dutch to 1CC militarily, it will draw all our forces down south and leave us with quite a logistical hurdle to get them back into position to take on the Hittites. I think leaving the Dutch with 2 and striking the Hittites earlier might be preferable.

I also argee that we don't need knights. We are using artillery and that seems to be working well (Thank you Buce ). And we have the ACs (Thank you Sal). Moreover, as we research the the bottom of the tech ladder, we will pick up all the defensive units possible. The Acs are only 1 attack less than knights but have 5hp and our trebs and cannon will make that extra attack irrelevant

I guess that's my 2 cents

Who's up now, moi?

Yup (as Aabra is still without Civ )

 

[Bucephalus]

Great Set Buce! You definately showed that we had the strength for war.

Thanks, but the AI is so bad at warfare that I think it must have been programmed by an Italian.

 

[Salarakas]

Turn 0 - 350BC
-do some massive micromanagement and change something in almost all cities
-there's a worker fortified in Rotterdam so wake him up, he's gonna build a road on the hill 1S of Vladivostok which will help in our oncoming Hittite war
-move a lot of troops around
-not sure about the Rotterdam build (library) but don't change it as there's already a lot of shields invested in it and a forest chop will bring 10 more next turn
-there's 3 workers mining a hill next to St. Petes. The mine won't help us much but I won't cancel their orders


IBT:
-the Hittites aren't happy about the sword in their territory so they kick us out
-the Dutch launch a massive counterattack by moving a veteran warrior next to the Hague (on top of the pillaged iron)


Turn 1 - 330BC
-republic is in, do not revolt yet. Turn research slider to 0% as we'll get MM soon and we don't need/want monarchy
-one sword is on go-to mode again and moves right into the Hittite territory


Turn 2 - 310BC
-we get another AC
-move 3 workers to the Hittite territory to do some roading. This will help to speed up our advancement in the near future. Both tiles which I'm going to road will be filled with our troops after I declare war.


IBT: The Americans complete the Great Wall in Washington. Great news, we don't have to deal with many towns with walls on our continent!


Turn 3 - 290BC
-we'll be ready to attack both Amsterdam and Arnhem next turn
-decide to build a library in Moscow. It's our best commerce town and we'll soon be going full speed towards cossacks. It's also only 40 shields compared to the 100 of a marketplace

IBT: The Hittites are building Sun Tzu's Art Of War! That means they have feudalism already

Turn 4 - 270BC
-capture Amsterdam and rename it to Great Library



-Arnhem autorazes
-start moving our units towards the Hittites
-make peace with the Dutch, we get feudalism as our free tech. Start research on engineering at full speed (21 turns)



Turn 5 - 250BC
-zzz


Turn 6 - 230BC
-the roads in the hittite territory are finished so move both workers out. We now have a trade route with the Hittites and can see that they have no iron. Declare war and move a whole lot of troops next to Tyrana and Harran.
-get 4 slaves from a settler pair and some captured workers

Turn 7 - 210BC
-we get another AC
-capture Harran and Tyrana


Turn 8 - 190BC
-no counterattack but they do move a settler pair right next to Tyrana


Turn 9 - 170BC
-capture Aleppo which had their horses. They can't make any more three-man chariots unless they trade horses from someone


Turn 10 - 150BC
-capture Tarsus which I rename Silk Town. I had planned on razing and replacing it as flips in luxury resources cities are a pain but it's already size 1 so the flip risk is very very small, especially once we capture Hattusas which has the Pyramids. We can use the settler soon to fill a gap between Hattusas and Hattusha


Some notes:
-I only lost 1 unit and that was on the last turn attacking a redlined spear with a 4/4 sword. I didn't see a single sword during the turns. The toughest unit I had to deal with was a Hittite three-man chariot (2/2/2 stats) so that says something. It was just butchering the crap AI units

-we have 3 settlers, 17 workers (plus all the slaves), 16 swords, 17 catapults, 3 medieval infantries, 6 AC, 8 warriors and 2 spearmen. In other words a lot of units. We need to disband all the warriors once we get to republic and build aqueducts to get our core cities to at least size 7

-I only saw one boat (Hittites) and it turned back right after I declared war on them. It was next to the great library town then. We need to be careful with the boats though as we have very little units in our core at the moment.

-we are ready to revolt to republic. We have 3 luxury resources so we shouldn't have problems with unhappiness. The unit costs will hurt big time until we get some aqueducts built. I built a settler in Moscow to bring its size back to 6 so it doesn't have to starve during the anarchy period. I would switch at least half of the core towns to aqueducts, libraries or marketplaces.

-I haven't given the great library town to anyone yet. I first wanted to starve it to size 1 and after that I didn't feel any need to give it away yet, just in case we want to do something else with it. The Arabs have built a town right next to it (the same place where Arnhem was)

-I totally forgot about the forbidden palace so I didn't start building it anywhere. I think we should hand build it rather than use a leader for it (if we get any). Iron Town would still be my suggestion for its location.

-Aleppo still has 2 resisters and should be starved to size 1 asap.

-the worker 1N of Rostov is irrigating the grassland tile in order to bring water to the wheat tile which should be irrigated then

-we should continue the war with the Hittites until we control all their core towns. They have a town in the eastern peninsula and a settler pair there as well but we don't need to worry about those yet. After we have the Pyramids and control the gems nearby we should declare on the Celts and start hurting them

 

[Salarakas]

 

[Salarakas]

Considering that this is a training game do you know the following stuff Phaedo?

1. What to do to your cities/citizens after revolting
2. How and why to starve captured cities to size 1

If not, I'd be happy to explain.

 

[Bucephalus]

Nice work, Sal.

Now all roads lead to Mecca (via Entremont).

 

[Aabraxan]

Salarakas, I (think I) know how & why to starve a city, but I'd be interested in hearing your take on what to do after revolution.

 

[Phaedo]

Considering that this is a training game do you know the following stuff Phaedo?
1. What to do to your cities/citizens after revolting
2. How and why to starve captured cities to size 1

1. If you mean what to do when you get the first message that a city is in revolt, there a number of steps I follow, the first is zoom to the city and cycle through the rest of my empire to head off any more revolts. I usually temporarily hire a specialist and then change the slider if that is what i am going to do. I thought I read somewhere that there was a hotkey to bypass the messge and go straight to your advisor screen but I don't know it.
2. Civ is a very xenophobic game. We don't like foreigners and they don't like us. Foreign citizens in a city both increase the chance of a culture flip and are harder to keep happy. Starving them down is taking all your foreign citizens off working tiles and making them some kind of specialist (I go for tax collectors or beakerheads myself) as the game kills off specialists first in starvation. Once the city starves and drops pop all the citizens go back to work so it has to be repeated after each pop drop. If the civ of the foreigners is wiped out, they have nothing to flip to, so the danger is reduced. I'm not sure if they act like nationals in that situation or if they are still harder to keep happy than your own citizens. It seems it takes quite a while to starve out the foreigners completely. Once I have had only 1 foreigner and a couple of locals, I've tried to starve out the foreigner but the pop drop often took my working citizen anyway so I accepted the lone foreigner and a little ethnic diversity in the city.

I am interested in any other insights you have. I have found that immediately starving cities tends to increase the flip risk. It seems it is safer to hold the city for a turn or two before you start starving. If I am in a large war, I often let the govenor mannage happiness in newly taken cities if they are large and I want to keep them. There is probably a better way but I find that if the governor keeps tham happy they don't tend to flip. Possibly hiring clowns instead of the others keeps them happier.

I also read something about hiring specialists when your cities re revolting in anarchy. As you have one turn before the city revolts, in theory you could hire a bunch of specialists to make everyone happy and get cash or beakers in anarchy every odd turn and avoid both starvation and revolt while maintaining research. I haven't been able to do this effectively however so I tend to just do what I have to to keep cities out of revolt and wait for my government change. Changing governments is an area where my game could really improve.

 

[Phaedo]

Just looked at the log and save and thigs look great. Nice work Sal

The bad Dutch start and the Hittites without iron gives us a huge advantage eh? It's good to be king

The Celts don't seem to have iron hooked up yet either. Taking Lugunum and Gervoria first would seem wise. Those Celt swords are tough.

-we are ready to revolt to republic. We have 3 luxury resources so we shouldn't have problems with unhappiness. The unit costs will hurt big time until we get some aqueducts built. I built a settler in Moscow to bring its size back to 6 so it doesn't have to starve during the anarchy period. I would switch at least half of the core towns to aqueducts, libraries or marketplaces.

-I haven't given the great library town to anyone yet. I first wanted to starve it to size 1 and after that I didn't feel any need to give it away yet, just in case we want to do something else with it. The Arabs have built a town right next to it (the same place where Arnhem was)

-I totally forgot about the forbidden palace so I didn't start building it anywhere. I think we should hand build it rather than use a leader for it (if we get any). Iron Town would still be my suggestion for its location.

-Aleppo still has 2 resisters and should be starved to size 1 asap.

-the worker 1N of Rostov is irrigating the grassland tile in order to bring water to the wheat tile which should be irrigated then

-we should continue the war with the Hittites until we control all their core towns. They have a town in the eastern peninsula and a settler pair there as well but we don't need to worry about those yet. After we have the Pyramids and control the gems nearby we should declare on the Celts and start hurting them

This all seems good. Shall we wait before gifting the GL away? I suppose as long as we give it away before Ed, the strategy still works right?

I guess I'm up. I'll try to get to it today as it is a holiday here in Japan

 

[Phaedo]

Not quite sure how to link uploads so here's that save Buce. I'd e-mail it but I don't know your address. It's a Diety game I'm working on and at a bit of an impasse but if your bored and want to have a look feel free to comment Sal

 

[Salarakas]

Foreign citizens in a city both increase the chance of a culture flip and are harder to keep happy. Starving them down is taking all your foreign citizens off working tiles and making them some kind of specialist

Exactly. When you capture an enemy city it will never flip the NEXT IBT. This means that you can safely put in as many own troops as you can to quell the resisters the SAME turn as you capture the city. Hopefully this will be enough to quell them all because now's the time to move your precious troops out of the city. You can leave some cheap units in there as it doesn't matter how powerful they are, all military troops quell resistance. If you're already in the end game and are capturing cities with tanks you can put all your leftover warriors and spearmen into resisting cities. If the cities flip it doesn't hurt much. Never ever ever quell resistance with armies after the first IBT.

Starving the cities down to size 1 is also a nice boost to your research if you use scientist specialist. E.g. Amsterdam was size 6 when I captured it (I think) so I could make all its 6 citizens into scientists = 18 free beakers that turn. The next turn it was down to size 5 = 15 free beakers, the next size 4 = 12 etc. In other words in 5 turns I got 60 free beakers just from one captured city. If I had used taxmen it would have given us 40 gold. Not bad at all.

I don't think you can get rid of the last AI civ citizen by the way so just starving it to size 1 is "enough".

I have found that immediately starving cities tends to increase the flip risk. It seems it is safer to hold the city for a turn or two before you start starving.

That's not true. The longer you wait the higher the flip risk.

If you mean what to do when you get the first message that a city is in revolt

Actually, I meant what to do during the anarchy turns, after starting a revolution.

First of all, after you have started the revolution you can see how many turns the anarchy will last by clicking the advisor on the F1 screen long enough. Then you need to take a look at all your cities. Shields and commerce are irrelevant during the anarchy turns so you should change all citizens to high food tiles, i.e. from working a forest tile to a grassland tile. Then see how many unhappy citizens there are and make just enough specialists to keep them from going mad. Hopefully none of your cities will starve before the anarchy is over. If your cities are growing be sure to check their situation after the size has gone up and change the citizens again if necessery.

After the revolution is over you have to micromanage all the cities again and set the research and lux sliders in optimal places. In this game our research slider must probably be dropped to something like 50% or we'll lose a ton of cash due to unit costs but lux slider should be ok as 10%.

I also read something about hiring specialists when your cities re revolting in anarchy. As you have one turn before the city revolts, in theory you could hire a bunch of specialists to make everyone happy and get cash or beakers in anarchy every odd turn and avoid both starvation and revolt while maintaining research.

I've read that too but to be honest I've only tried it once (with not good results) as it seems like a real exploit to me.

 

[Bucephalus]

Not quite sure how to link uploads so here's that save Buce. I'd e-mail it but I don't know your address. It's a Diety game I'm working on and at a bit of an impasse but if your bored and want to have a look feel free to comment Sal

To email, just find one of my posts, and click on 'Bucephalus'; you will see an option to 'send email to Bucephalus'.

 

[Phaedo]

Quick question after looking at the save and getting ready to play. I guess the sooner the revolt the better so I was thinking of doing it at the beginning.

Also, what do you want me to do with all those settlers? keep building CxxC into Hittite territory? Also, any priorities for workers other than irrigating that wheat? Just road, mine and irrigate where needed? I guess in anarchy, sticking to roading is best as not much irrigating or mining will get done.

Anything else?

 

[Salarakas]

Here are a few suggestions for city spots. They will all be corrupt cities so shields are irrelevant. What we want is as many cities size 7 or higher and that means founding cities next to fresh water. The green spot is awful but it still helps lower our unit support costs. Don't mine any tiles in the corrupt area, irrigate them instead. We want them to grow fast and then use specialists in them.

I guess the sooner the revolt the better so I was thinking of doing it at the beginning.

Yes. I could have revolted already after capturing the silk town but in SGs it's preferably to leave such actions to the next player just in case someone disagrees. I can revolt and MM the cities for you if you'd prefer it that way.

any priorities for workers other than irrigating that wheat?

Now's the time to start working on those hills in our core and get them mined. The despotism penalty will soon be gone so our towns with food bonus resources are going to have lots of extra food and can work the hill tiles for more shields. Moscow can easily get 20 shields for 2 turn medieval infantries once we let it grow and have mined some hills.

Anything else?

Abandon the southern town in THIS screenshot if the AI sends units to capture it. There's no point in putting any resources in trying to defend it.