Prince Nightmare

[JujuLautre]

There's so many questions I have I wish one of you could be an advisor while I played. I guess one would be city placement; which I lack on. I know that rivers, grasslands and such are great; so are resources. Now keeping that in mind I still end up sticking them in the wrong places, even with resources near, keeping in mind that not all cities can be in good spots with food. Concern comes with lack of cities equals death o_O On the other hand, too many poor city locations equals a economy strain, how best to manage this?

Poor location is another problem actually; you can do a good city placement in a poor location, it's just that it won't be as effective as in a good location
I still also have problems with city placement (I hardly dotmap ), but I took lessons already:
- Imho, Food is #1: either one (with lots of grassland) or two good food ressources, or floodplains, ensure that you will be able to work good tiles AND grow your city at the same time. Irrigation is often NOT sufficient.
- Always imho, production is #2. I sometime have a city with very limited production (like a ex-jungle city with lots of new grassland cottages), but I usually try to include at least one, if not two (or more) production squares. Mines will do (and see #1: you need food to work mines and grow). And this, especially in the early game. But all cities do not need production: either buildings are not needed, or you can whip from time to time.
- Specialization gets #3; see next.

My next question comes to specialization. Emphasizing seems important to you all and i'd like to get it right. I seem to be giving an emphasis on the wrong type: commerce, production, science etc. to my cites. I'm not sure what the best way to determine it would be. The other gripe, and maybe you could help is that with commerce emphasized and no production squares hardly at all, it's often the case I have one production to build my health, science, and gold buildings. There's only a limited number of tress to chop, and after that it's all downhill.

I often read that land will decide the speciality of the city. I begin to think that both land AND your plan will decide that, or even more, that land will have an influence on your plan.
Ideally, you want:
- at least one production city: especially in the beginning, to defend from barbs. Goal: pump units. Means: barracks, forge, heroic epic, and production tiles (do not forget food!)
- commerce cities. Goal: produce science (and wealth, but mostly science). Means: library, university, cottages! (less food than production city if grassland cottages, but still important)
- a GP Farm. Goal: lots of specialists to produce GPs. Means: + buildings, national epic, food ressources first, farms later.
But all this has to fit in your plan: you want to axe-rush a neighbour? Privilege production and metal/horses; you want to expand peacefully? Get a good food/production city (capital?) and do not forget to upgrade, eeh, improve your land asap! Want to do both? Eeh, good luck

Now, good to say all this, but irg (in real game?), how would this fit?
Even if I'm not good enough to comment games after they have been played, I will try some comments on your game (all of this, still IMHO). I will not consider any particular plan, I consider you have yours:
first discovery: capital is food-heavy, but land around is poor and no river . Consider then expanding far away and perhaps moving your capital. I would in this case be driven by the food resources:
1 - fish south of Edirne. Good choice for a second city: not too far away from the capital, grassland for cottages (of ex-grassland, don't know what was over), and a river not far away. I would make it either an early production city (mines + fish + 5 pop) or a commerce city (cottages!). Perhaps production -> commerce, replacing the mines with windmills as the game goes.
2 - Corn north of Pangsan. Looks not *too* bad as a commerce city. would perhaps have placed it 1E (to work the dye)
3 - Corn on the east, near copper: at this point, if I have Bronze Working and Animal Husbandry and see this is the nearest source of militaristic resource, I would run for it Asap. Perhaps future commerce city, with two dies, river, and copper/mines to help for the buildings.
4 - Sugar near the capital: Perhaps a city could have been placed later NE of the capital, sharing the sugar for growth. Not sure about this one.
5 - Cow and elephants: too poor it seems
I did not check south but someone talked about a good spot there also. And the gold is really really poorly located... No food resource, poor land, and difficult to irrigate. I would not make it a priority.
So here:
- 1 is decided by the plan (commerce of production; I would make it commerce, since the capital can have huge production).
- 2 also: it's all about expansion. Nearer to the opponent and to better land.
- 3 definitly
Others (and 2 a little) are more about "do with what you can"

Now I did this study, I really understand it has been a pain to play this small peninsula

My other question, is there a good answer as to where and when to build stuff like workshops, watermills and windmills, or is it better to always build mines, farms or cottages?

Windmills are good substitute to mines for commerce cities, once they are available. They are also good to provide food to tundra/snow cities, founded just for the sake of resources.
As for Workshops and Watermills, they are both good to provide production to cities who lack it. But it's all case by case. Consider them more if running state property (watermills can easily replace farms in this situation)

 

[Mango]

A good way to identify a city early is just scouting. This is what you look for basically.

Production cities - You can live with a production city on marginal land because your intention is not to grow the city to a large size, but rather to grow the city to the point that it can comfortably work all of the production tiles. This means that a city can be on the coast and still pump units at a high rate. I have a nice example of this which I will show you.



I identified this as soon as I popped iron. Normally you don't expact a production city to have 10 sea tiles, but two of them are seafood and I had corn to the north. I also had iron plains, a plain hill and three grass hills (plus I settled on a plain hill). I farmed the forests to the east but I'm going to leave the one to the west because I can't spread irrigation to that corn. That gives me 5 mines and a plains forest for hammers. I had to fight Cathy for that corn because she settled north of me, so after identifying this as my future production mecca I decided that my first early war would be against her and the first target would be St. Petersburg so that I could grow my production city faster. Also, notice my priorities with this city? Food and hammers. There are no cottages, and I might even consider yanking one of those farms in favor of a workshop if I actually micromanaged a bit more (but I don't because I'm too busy warmongering).

edit: In fact, yes if I micromanaged a bit more I'd have noticed my production city is working two seatiles which, by all means, is a big no-no. I should go build a workshop or two ASAP so that I maximize my production. I tend to be a bit careless.

 

[Uncle E]

Hi fellow civ fans! It's been a long time since i've posted...I am an avid reader of the site though.

The reason for my post today was that no matter how much I read in the war academy or through this strategy forum, I don't have the right knowledge to apply what i've learned in-game. This is pretty apparent as you'll see if you take a look at my uploaded save game. This is one i've worked on the past few days and it went fine and well until I got blocked in by two civs. I used to have iron but lost it halfway through my war with Shaka. This pretty much ended all possiblity of a positive outcome. I've tried to do the best I could with just three cities, one production, one great person farm...though I haven't been able to farm without biology and the other is a coastal commerce. What could I do to possibly survive? My research isn't terribly far behind, in fact I thought I had been keeping up kinda lol Without strategic resources, i'll never increase my land any ideas?

Oh ya, I don't like to play easy difficulties because it's boring...but I cannot survive on the highers ones. What does everyone recommend because for having this game for almost 2 years you'd expect i would be at Monarch by now!! haha

I've come across some ALC games on here and was thinking about sersiously reading those entire game posts to maybe learn something more.

Anyhow, I hope a few looks at my game and can provide some positive feedback and criticism, thank you

Read more & play more! Follow those ALC games! Play the easier difficulties to practice what the others have been advising until you truly dominate those levels. Take 1 or 2 bits of advice, go play a game and then quit and restart it when you've got those new techniques down as sometimes digesting everything takes a while.