smegged
Psi Cop
*caugh*solodeityreport*caugh*
PROD Shadow - Sirian's TDG "Alternate Timelines"
- Thread starter Sirian
- Start date
Sirian
Designer, Mohawk Games
4000BC: Good job with the scout. However, why move the worker? I could see doing it for info if you had no scout, but the scout move you did opened up most of the terrain. You can peek under the fog to see what else is nearby, as I showed with my maps in the official thread. You gave up two turns of worker production, and was the info you gained (that couldn't have been gained peeking under the fog) worth it? You could make a case for it, I suppose, since choosing where to settle can't wait. That is a lot to give up, though. It's not just two worker turns lost on the first worker project. It's two turns of delay on ALL of that worker's projects for the rest of the game.
3950BC: Good job on getting science going on the first turn. Only one other player knew to do that. I also agree with your capital location, although the starting spot was also good.
3900BC: Road before mine? Later in the game, I usually do build roads first, because I use workers stacks to do irrigation, mining and rails, but right at the start, it's usually more helpful to get mines or irrigation done asap. Faster production of scouts or warrior explorers, even by one turn, can make the difference on a race to a goody hut, or get free settlers into action a turn sooner, etc etc. Every little bit matters.
3800BC: Good choice. Get the scout going first. On Emperor/Deity with a religious civ and no food bonus, I've even been known to build temple first. Very rare situation. Never a granary first. Must get explorers moving and cope with military policing. If there is a time to build a second or third scout, its ASAP to get the most benefit out of them on huts, early contacts, and early trading between civs before they make contact.
3750BC: More roads? No mines?
First job of the worker is to locate the best Good Tiles at the capital and improve them to the max, so that at size 2, 3, perhaps even 4, the city is at its best growth/production rate asap. Everything else, even luxuries, can wait for this to be done.
3650BC: Hey, this looks pretty familiar.
Did you get any peek at my results or any of the shadow turns or critiques before you played? If not, then you made a lot of great decisions on your own, here, and well done.
3600BC: Scouts moving to high ground.
Overall Grade: B+
count: Five. (Scouting, Capital Location, Research, Granary timing, York Location)
count: One. (Workers)
I've posted my second turn, and you're late again, now with your second shadow turn. You'll need to get them in sooner as time goes on or it may start to look like you're benefitting from spoilers before playing your turns, if you know what I mean. That won't be an issue in regular SG's, but in general you don't want to end up in suspicious circumstances, as losing credibility in the community would be a Very Bad Thing to have happen as far as playing SG's. Likewise with a reputation for being late with turn results, you don't want to end up there, either. If you can get your shadow turn posted before I get to critiquing ChrTh's turn (won't be long now) I'll review it. If not, and especially if you have not played it yet, just move on to the third round and try to get your report posted more quickly for that one. OK? Thanks.
- Sirian
3950BC: Good job on getting science going on the first turn. Only one other player knew to do that. I also agree with your capital location, although the starting spot was also good.
3900BC: Road before mine? Later in the game, I usually do build roads first, because I use workers stacks to do irrigation, mining and rails, but right at the start, it's usually more helpful to get mines or irrigation done asap. Faster production of scouts or warrior explorers, even by one turn, can make the difference on a race to a goody hut, or get free settlers into action a turn sooner, etc etc. Every little bit matters.
3800BC: Good choice. Get the scout going first. On Emperor/Deity with a religious civ and no food bonus, I've even been known to build temple first. Very rare situation. Never a granary first. Must get explorers moving and cope with military policing. If there is a time to build a second or third scout, its ASAP to get the most benefit out of them on huts, early contacts, and early trading between civs before they make contact.
3750BC: More roads? No mines?
First job of the worker is to locate the best Good Tiles at the capital and improve them to the max, so that at size 2, 3, perhaps even 4, the city is at its best growth/production rate asap. Everything else, even luxuries, can wait for this to be done.3650BC: Hey, this looks pretty familiar.
Did you get any peek at my results or any of the shadow turns or critiques before you played? If not, then you made a lot of great decisions on your own, here, and well done.3600BC: Scouts moving to high ground.
Overall Grade: B+
count: Five. (Scouting, Capital Location, Research, Granary timing, York Location) count: One. (Workers)I've posted my second turn, and you're late again, now with your second shadow turn. You'll need to get them in sooner as time goes on or it may start to look like you're benefitting from spoilers before playing your turns, if you know what I mean. That won't be an issue in regular SG's, but in general you don't want to end up in suspicious circumstances, as losing credibility in the community would be a Very Bad Thing to have happen as far as playing SG's. Likewise with a reputation for being late with turn results, you don't want to end up there, either. If you can get your shadow turn posted before I get to critiquing ChrTh's turn (won't be long now) I'll review it. If not, and especially if you have not played it yet, just move on to the third round and try to get your report posted more quickly for that one. OK? Thanks.
- Sirian
ChrTh
Happy Yule!
Since the game handles food first, shields second, in dealing with cities, if you grow on same turn as a granary is built, the growing comes FIRST, before the granary, and that's not good. We will SAVE eight food if we delay the city growth by one turn, so that the granary is done a turn before the city grows. (Gosh I hope ChrTh has sense to see this, since he's Up. If not, 8 food down the drain and a point added to his count! LOL!)
Hey! Hey! Whoa! That's not fair! That shouldn't be! If we don't know things like that (and I did not know that)...we're supposed to learn them. That's the whole point of the Training Day games...
Of course, I honestly don't know if that happened in my turn... *sigh* another![[pimp]](/images/smilies/pimp.gif "Pimp [pimp]")
...
EDIT: Just checked my thread...London didn't grow during my turn (will grow after you hit enter)...so someone might be able to save the 8 food...otherwise
count! LOL!) Hey! Hey! Whoa! That's not fair! That shouldn't be
! If we don't know things like that (and I did not know that)...we're supposed to learn them. That's the whole point of the Training Day games...Of course, I honestly don't know if that happened in my turn... *sigh* another
...EDIT: Just checked my thread...London didn't grow during my turn (will grow after you hit enter)...so someone might be able to save the 8 food...otherwise
ChrTh
Happy Yule!
Sirian,
I'm going to training this week; I'll be back on Friday. I'll have Internet access, but no Civ III access (must...get...laptop...)
So I'll follow the next turn, but I don't think I'll get a Shadow in on time (if it turns out that the Shadows/official turn aren't done by Friday night, I'll do my shadow).
EDIT: I'm an idiot. It just occured to me that since we're using my save game...I could've just played the next ten turns yesterday and just saved my results to post later...stupid stupid stupid...
I'm going to training this week; I'll be back on Friday. I'll have Internet access, but no Civ III access
(must...get...laptop...)So I'll follow the next turn, but I don't think I'll get a Shadow in on time (if it turns out that the Shadows/official turn aren't done by Friday night, I'll do my shadow).
EDIT: I'm an idiot. It just occured to me that since we're using my save game...I could've just played the next ten turns yesterday and just saved my results to post later...stupid stupid stupid...
Sirian
Designer, Mohawk Games
3400BC: Problems at York.
York is working unimproved land. What's more, there is only one bonus grassland tile in range, so any further population working tiles will either be working with no shields (halt to production) or with low food (forests, meaning slowing of population growth).
Either way, what can't wait here is improving the land. Running 20 or 30 turns on unimproved tiles is disastrous. Think of workers like settlers: they are an investment in growth. In this situation in particular you want another worker asap. By the time the city regrows to size 2 again, you could have a second tile coming online, or shortly thereafter, and the benefit of the worker doing mining would make up for lost productivity and then some, looking down the road at where you would be after 30 turns, one way vs the other. If you postpone the worker, you'll still need to train him later anyway, right? Can't play the whole game on unimproved tiles, and the better tiles might still make for the granary coming in about the same time. Maybe if there were cattle around, a second tile would SPEED growth and production per turn, then sure, the worker could wait, and what can wait SHOULD wait. But with these tiles? Another population point in the city either brings no extra shields OR slows food, either of which are not good.
If there was a dire military threat, like raging barbarians or some AI's poking around the border, getting a warrior up could not wait. If strong tiles (food bonuses like game, wheat, cattle) were sitting around, you'd want to be working them asap. In the absence of these factors, a worker would speed growth. Three scouts should be enough for any civ, usually. Maybe more would be good on a large map with a pangaea or pangaea-like formation, but this is a standard map.
The granary at London is a different situation. London has strong tiles and a worker working them. London has to produce settlers, as founding more cities can't wait. York... does not have the land in place yet to sustain that. It really needs at least one worker first, and probably could stand to build some warriors so that London can stay on settler production, and maybe also more workers. Imagine what the cattle area could do if you get a worker over there as the settler arrives, and irrigate those cattle so that the third city has improved tiles to be working with almost immediately!
The early priority is on expanding city count AND on improving the best tiles around your starting cities. Judgement calls come into play on this, as there is also exploration to be doing, and enough security to fend off barbarians and/or nearby neighbors. There are all kinds of good choices to be made at York, any of which might work out well, but locking into a granary this early would not be one of them.
There are limits to even the farmer's gambit. At some point, it behooves you to get some military. Higher difficulty will force you to it anyway. You can let slide in your capital and make do with luxuries there to keep growing, but you can't afford to spend 5gpt at less developed, more corrupt city just to keep it from revolting because it's got too much population and too little happiness patrol.
Often the BEST thing to do on Emperor/Deity with a new city that is only pulling in one shield is to build a worker first. With two shields, a scout or warrior then a worker. A lot depends on the land, and there can be different things to be doing at newer cities. Temples to expand borders may be VITAL to pull in the good tiles, but if not, maybe a worker first is better. Or maybe you need military. Or or or or. Lots of options to juggle, and the juggling comes into play in balacing the needs of the city vs the needs of the empire. Still, some choices are clearly good, some clearly not, and some fall into the middle range of debatable.
(Going first on these critiques is a real Bee Hatch, isn't it?
Sorry about that. ).
3150BC: Crossing into AI territory is generally not a good idea. I did it, too, in this case, but on Deity I would not have. Then again, on Deity he'd have so many free units wandering around, it wouldn't be necessary to go in and knock to say Hello, so that wouldn't really apply. The thing to consider is whether or not you'll lose too much time by going around or backing out, vs going through. In some cases, if you don't go through you can't get to the area beyond, because they are on some kind of choke point. Still, unless there is a CLEAR benefit to parking for a turn or more on enemy ground, don't do it.
3000BC: Don't worry about being verbose. The more detail you give, the better I can understand what you did and why, and how to offer constructive insights. This is NOT practice time for your SG reports, rather an exercise in feedback on your strategic and tactical choices and decision-making.
One thing you didn't mention, which is some drastically bad -- no word of slowing food growth at London for a turn.
The way Civ3 operates when handling cities between turns, it first processes any external events: disease, attacks, and any city shrinkage due to starvation, along with enemies moving onto and disrupting use of tiles. Any tile changes forced by these events are handled next. Then it checks happiness to see if unhappy faces exceed happy ones and if so, civil unrest. Then it processes the food (and whether or not a city grows). IF a city grows on this turn, it then assigns another tile to use. THEN it processes shields, including any completion of projects (if the city is unrest, no shields are processed). THEN it handles culture for the turn, including any border expansion. Note that cultural buildings built on this turn start adding to culture right away.
Because food and growth become before shields, this is how you can get "free" shields with food micromanagement. If you can toggle tiles, say to grow a city in size with ten total food, pulling in four surplus food per turn. You can work food 3-3-4 for 10 total, pulling in higher shields during the 3 and 3 turns, then lower shields on the 4 turn BUT the game may assign a shield tile on growing so you get higher shields then, too, anyway. This is high level city micromanagement, but over time it can add up.
Unfortunately, one side effect of shields being handled AFTER food, is that unlike in Civ2, if your granary comes in on the same turn as your city grows, you do NOT get the benefit of it on that turn. You must delay city growth until AFTER the granary has been completed, to benefit from it.
I didn't look far enough ahead to calculate this in advance, when I started the granary. That would have been possible, but in my own gaming I know what to do if this happens, so I didn't worry about it.
Here's the deal. You can either let the city grow on the same turn as the granary, and get to size 3 one turn faster BUT with no food in the box, or you can slow food for one turn without lowering the shield (by swapping to a forest tile), LOSING two food in the process AND getting to size 3 one turn later, BUT getting there with ten food in the box. Since the granary is finished on that turn either way, no shields are at stake. Also, since the next tile to work is not on a river and has no road, there is no trade at stake. So the choice is clear: one way saves 10 food by losing 2 (net gain of 8). The other way loses all ten from the granary effect.
Now this won't happen until 2950BC, and I see that ChrTh made the same mistake in the official thread. Luckily for our game, this can be fixed at the start of the next round, even in the official game. 8 food is a HUGE deal this early in the game. Growing sooner means either a settler produced sooner, or more tiles coming online sooner for more shields and trade sooner. The benefits of higher population sooner rather than later are many and huge, IF there are good tiles available to be working, and if the city is not so corrupt it doesn't matter anyway. (Some cities are so far away, the only thing they produce is food. In all other cases, though, larger population means better results).
With no military police and no temple in London, after the granary is built, a warrior could be trained in just two turns. Until then, luxuries would have to be increased (likely to 10%) to prevent civil unrest. If the warrior is skipped and the settler done first, lux would have to be run the whole time. Either way, luxuries have to be run for at least a short bit. Anything else wastes production and/or food and would be -- that's for next round, though.
As for trading ceremonial burial, that's fine. It's such a cheap tech that waiting to try and trade it later COULD mean not being able to trade it at all. And since you can trade it to both civs, for deflated tech they both have, that's a good deal. Warrior Code is worth MORE than Ceremonial in absolute costs, but you got WC and cash for CB? That's a very good trade! It also may not be able to wait, so making it wait would actually be risky and could have ended up with nothing for it. On that basis, not knowing whether or not it CAN wait any more, it's never wrong to take the safer path. Only when you are sure something can wait, should you always make it wait.
At the same time you trade to one, you want to trade to all (if they are in contact). It doesn't look like Russia and Germany are in contact yet, but on Emperor or Deity they surely would be by now since they have more units (free ones) to send exploring. Cathy has nothing much to offer, but better to take 10 gold from her than nothing, IF you knew she was in contact with Otto and he would sell or trade to her anyway. Doesn't apply here, but something to keep in mind.
Overall Grade: C-
count: Three. (Exploration, Research, a good Trade)
count: Two. (York Granary too soon, mismanaging London growth vs Granary completion).
- Sirian
York is working unimproved land. What's more, there is only one bonus grassland tile in range, so any further population working tiles will either be working with no shields (halt to production) or with low food (forests, meaning slowing of population growth).
Either way, what can't wait here is improving the land. Running 20 or 30 turns on unimproved tiles is disastrous. Think of workers like settlers: they are an investment in growth. In this situation in particular you want another worker asap. By the time the city regrows to size 2 again, you could have a second tile coming online, or shortly thereafter, and the benefit of the worker doing mining would make up for lost productivity and then some, looking down the road at where you would be after 30 turns, one way vs the other. If you postpone the worker, you'll still need to train him later anyway, right? Can't play the whole game on unimproved tiles, and the better tiles might still make for the granary coming in about the same time. Maybe if there were cattle around, a second tile would SPEED growth and production per turn, then sure, the worker could wait, and what can wait SHOULD wait. But with these tiles? Another population point in the city either brings no extra shields OR slows food, either of which are not good.
If there was a dire military threat, like raging barbarians or some AI's poking around the border, getting a warrior up could not wait. If strong tiles (food bonuses like game, wheat, cattle) were sitting around, you'd want to be working them asap. In the absence of these factors, a worker would speed growth. Three scouts should be enough for any civ, usually. Maybe more would be good on a large map with a pangaea or pangaea-like formation, but this is a standard map.
The granary at London is a different situation. London has strong tiles and a worker working them. London has to produce settlers, as founding more cities can't wait. York... does not have the land in place yet to sustain that. It really needs at least one worker first, and probably could stand to build some warriors so that London can stay on settler production, and maybe also more workers. Imagine what the cattle area could do if you get a worker over there as the settler arrives, and irrigate those cattle so that the third city has improved tiles to be working with almost immediately!
The early priority is on expanding city count AND on improving the best tiles around your starting cities. Judgement calls come into play on this, as there is also exploration to be doing, and enough security to fend off barbarians and/or nearby neighbors. There are all kinds of good choices to be made at York, any of which might work out well, but locking into a granary this early would not be one of them.
There are limits to even the farmer's gambit. At some point, it behooves you to get some military. Higher difficulty will force you to it anyway. You can let slide in your capital and make do with luxuries there to keep growing, but you can't afford to spend 5gpt at less developed, more corrupt city just to keep it from revolting because it's got too much population and too little happiness patrol.
Often the BEST thing to do on Emperor/Deity with a new city that is only pulling in one shield is to build a worker first. With two shields, a scout or warrior then a worker. A lot depends on the land, and there can be different things to be doing at newer cities. Temples to expand borders may be VITAL to pull in the good tiles, but if not, maybe a worker first is better. Or maybe you need military. Or or or or. Lots of options to juggle, and the juggling comes into play in balacing the needs of the city vs the needs of the empire. Still, some choices are clearly good, some clearly not, and some fall into the middle range of debatable.
(Going first on these critiques is a real Bee Hatch, isn't it?
Sorry about that. ).3150BC: Crossing into AI territory is generally not a good idea. I did it, too, in this case, but on Deity I would not have. Then again, on Deity he'd have so many free units wandering around, it wouldn't be necessary to go in and knock to say Hello, so that wouldn't really apply. The thing to consider is whether or not you'll lose too much time by going around or backing out, vs going through. In some cases, if you don't go through you can't get to the area beyond, because they are on some kind of choke point. Still, unless there is a CLEAR benefit to parking for a turn or more on enemy ground, don't do it.
3000BC: Don't worry about being verbose. The more detail you give, the better I can understand what you did and why, and how to offer constructive insights. This is NOT practice time for your SG reports, rather an exercise in feedback on your strategic and tactical choices and decision-making.
One thing you didn't mention, which is some drastically bad
-- no word of slowing food growth at London for a turn.The way Civ3 operates when handling cities between turns, it first processes any external events: disease, attacks, and any city shrinkage due to starvation, along with enemies moving onto and disrupting use of tiles. Any tile changes forced by these events are handled next. Then it checks happiness to see if unhappy faces exceed happy ones and if so, civil unrest. Then it processes the food (and whether or not a city grows). IF a city grows on this turn, it then assigns another tile to use. THEN it processes shields, including any completion of projects (if the city is unrest, no shields are processed). THEN it handles culture for the turn, including any border expansion. Note that cultural buildings built on this turn start adding to culture right away.
Because food and growth become before shields, this is how you can get "free" shields with food micromanagement. If you can toggle tiles, say to grow a city in size with ten total food, pulling in four surplus food per turn. You can work food 3-3-4 for 10 total, pulling in higher shields during the 3 and 3 turns, then lower shields on the 4 turn BUT the game may assign a shield tile on growing so you get higher shields then, too, anyway. This is high level city micromanagement, but over time it can add up.
Unfortunately, one side effect of shields being handled AFTER food, is that unlike in Civ2, if your granary comes in on the same turn as your city grows, you do NOT get the benefit of it on that turn. You must delay city growth until AFTER the granary has been completed, to benefit from it.
I didn't look far enough ahead to calculate this in advance, when I started the granary. That would have been possible, but in my own gaming I know what to do if this happens, so I didn't worry about it.
Here's the deal. You can either let the city grow on the same turn as the granary, and get to size 3 one turn faster BUT with no food in the box, or you can slow food for one turn without lowering the shield (by swapping to a forest tile), LOSING two food in the process AND getting to size 3 one turn later, BUT getting there with ten food in the box. Since the granary is finished on that turn either way, no shields are at stake. Also, since the next tile to work is not on a river and has no road, there is no trade at stake. So the choice is clear: one way saves 10 food by losing 2 (net gain of 8). The other way loses all ten from the granary effect.
Now this won't happen until 2950BC, and I see that ChrTh made the same mistake in the official thread. Luckily for our game, this can be fixed at the start of the next round, even in the official game. 8 food is a HUGE deal this early in the game. Growing sooner means either a settler produced sooner, or more tiles coming online sooner for more shields and trade sooner. The benefits of higher population sooner rather than later are many and huge, IF there are good tiles available to be working, and if the city is not so corrupt it doesn't matter anyway. (Some cities are so far away, the only thing they produce is food. In all other cases, though, larger population means better results).
With no military police and no temple in London, after the granary is built, a warrior could be trained in just two turns. Until then, luxuries would have to be increased (likely to 10%) to prevent civil unrest. If the warrior is skipped and the settler done first, lux would have to be run the whole time. Either way, luxuries have to be run for at least a short bit. Anything else wastes production and/or food and would be
-- that's for next round, though.As for trading ceremonial burial, that's fine. It's such a cheap tech that waiting to try and trade it later COULD mean not being able to trade it at all. And since you can trade it to both civs, for deflated tech they both have, that's a good deal. Warrior Code is worth MORE than Ceremonial in absolute costs, but you got WC and cash for CB? That's a very good trade! It also may not be able to wait, so making it wait would actually be risky and could have ended up with nothing for it. On that basis, not knowing whether or not it CAN wait any more, it's never wrong to take the safer path. Only when you are sure something can wait, should you always make it wait.
At the same time you trade to one, you want to trade to all (if they are in contact). It doesn't look like Russia and Germany are in contact yet, but on Emperor or Deity they surely would be by now since they have more units (free ones) to send exploring. Cathy has nothing much to offer, but better to take 10 gold from her than nothing, IF you knew she was in contact with Otto and he would sell or trade to her anyway. Doesn't apply here, but something to keep in mind.
Overall Grade: C-
count: Three. (Exploration, Research, a good Trade) count: Two. (York Granary too soon, mismanaging London growth vs Granary completion).- Sirian
Sirian
Designer, Mohawk Games
Hey! Hey! Whoa! That's not fair! That shouldn't be
If you were in an SG, ChrTh, nobody would be there to inform you of these things. Civ3 never promised you "fair".
Weedage is based on the quality of the move, or lack thereof, without regard to whether or not you knew the game mechanics. I made a couple weedy decisions in RBD23B over fine points in the rules I had not known about or not updated my knowledge of through a patch. There are tons and tons of undocumented little details about the game, and yes, you are here to learn about some of them, so it's all good.Don't worry about it. This point WILL be a
on your report card, but yes, there will be time (barely) for next player Up to change it before it takes effect in the Official Game.Sorry you may miss out on a turn, but the critiques for the others may cover most or all of the same ground, so you probably won't miss out on much. And yes, you or anybody could play the next round once the official save is posted, just NOT say a single thing about your results (NOT... ONE... THING...) until the new round is started and the shadow thread opens to your report.
- Sirian
Sirian
Designer, Mohawk Games
3500BC: The token 1g is generally useless. Unlike previous civs, Civ3 does not seem to give you credit for number of times you do something friendly, but rather for the quality of the gifts you give. There is no penalty for closing a talk without taking any action. If you want to improve relations, give a substantial gift. If you want to give a small gift for a specific purpose, OK. If you are giving away 1g after every talk, you're just throwing away gold. I've seen enough of this move in games with Charis to be sure that it doesn't matter.
3400BC: A warrior next? That would be OK. Placeholder for settler (as it turned out to be)? Reason is simple. There are four and only four 2-food tiles in current range. Three of those belong to London. York can borrow the extra one WHILE London does not need it, but once London reaches size 3 it MUST be given the shared tile. This would then have your York sitting around waiting to finish a settler, or else giving the priority to York (which is corrupt and can't even USE the shield from the tile) at London's expense. Either way, the growth curve is hindered.
Your reasoning against a worker is faulty. Workers are investment in growth the same as settlers, and frankly, it's almost never too early to train some more. You start with one and that's good enough at the capital, so more there CAN wait (and so they should) but at second and third cities, more often than not, workers can't wait. Often the best time to get them going is ASAP! The total benefit to production, growth, etc, from getting more workers out very early, inevitably more than makes up for the temporary slowdown in the second and third cities. It may even be a good idea to sacrifice growth at one city to churn several workers and stay at size 1 for a goodly while (especially if its tiles are mediocre or need development -- too much plains, jungle or forest, or if the city needs to expand borders to pull good tiles into range, and not being religious, a temple will take a while during which a worker could make many improvements for much faster growth later).
Even so, a warrior next would not be a bad idea. Just that a settler next?
The whole point of the granary at London was to allow it to churn the settlers. York is wasted on immediate settler production. Far FAR better for it to pick up the slack on priorities London is ignoring, like workers or military, or both. And since that bonus grassland nets NO extra shields for York at size 2, it's JUST AS WELL OFF at size 1 as size 2, for the time being, so anything else BUT a worker can and should wait, in my view. This is almost forced on us in this situation by lack of 2-food tiles to keep the cities growing at their best pace. York only "owns" one such tile in its range at the moment, so chopping one of those forest down (as part of building a temple, perhaps) might be a good idea in the near future, get another grassland tile (maybe or maybe not with bonus shield on it) along the river.
If you play your turn out from your own shadow save a couple more years, you'll see the conflict between London and York. Let London build the settlers while York builds workers and warriors.
3100BC: York governor keeps his head? Don't be too sure!
Correctly for the moment, but something's got to give here. Either London will be shorted some food unnecessarily (delaying it's programs) or York will be delayed a LOT on getting to size 3 with that settler, OR York will have to swap off the settler to switch to temple (not the worst plan, actually, but not the one you laid out).
None of those situations are good, they all involve some waste.
Also, you wasted a worker turn to pass over a tile to get to the tile next to York. That may be worth doing in a few situations, such as hurrying to get irrigation to some cattle, but generally the cost of wasting a worker turn to work THIS tile vs THAT one is not worth it. If you are in a hurry to get somewhere, at least build a road on the tile you are passing through, along the way. In this case, that's especially true, since that tile is one of the Good Tiles you need to improve ASAP, and the only thing better about the one next to York is that it's on a river. Maybe if you had passed over a mountain or jungle or forest to get to the target tile, then it would have been too wasteful to stop and wait for the road, but that wasn't the case here.
3000BC: Superb trade with red, giving up Pottery (a tech the other civs to the north have, and a cheap tech to boot) for Warrior Code AND cash. Very nice deal there!
You, too, missed the clash at London between growth and granary completion, and would lose the 8 food. See my shadow turn and the critique for Zot for more details on this.
Overall Grade: D+
count: Three. (Exploration, Research, a great Trade!)
count: Four. (Workers, London Growth before Granary, and York mismanagement that counts as two 's)
- Sirian
3400BC: A warrior next? That would be OK. Placeholder for settler (as it turned out to be)?
Reason is simple. There are four and only four 2-food tiles in current range. Three of those belong to London. York can borrow the extra one WHILE London does not need it, but once London reaches size 3 it MUST be given the shared tile. This would then have your York sitting around waiting to finish a settler, or else giving the priority to York (which is corrupt and can't even USE the shield from the tile) at London's expense. Either way, the growth curve is hindered.Your reasoning against a worker is faulty. Workers are investment in growth the same as settlers, and frankly, it's almost never too early to train some more. You start with one and that's good enough at the capital, so more there CAN wait (and so they should) but at second and third cities, more often than not, workers can't wait. Often the best time to get them going is ASAP! The total benefit to production, growth, etc, from getting more workers out very early, inevitably more than makes up for the temporary slowdown in the second and third cities. It may even be a good idea to sacrifice growth at one city to churn several workers and stay at size 1 for a goodly while (especially if its tiles are mediocre or need development -- too much plains, jungle or forest, or if the city needs to expand borders to pull good tiles into range, and not being religious, a temple will take a while during which a worker could make many improvements for much faster growth later).
Even so, a warrior next would not be a bad idea. Just that a settler next?
The whole point of the granary at London was to allow it to churn the settlers. York is wasted on immediate settler production. Far FAR better for it to pick up the slack on priorities London is ignoring, like workers or military, or both. And since that bonus grassland nets NO extra shields for York at size 2, it's JUST AS WELL OFF at size 1 as size 2, for the time being, so anything else BUT a worker can and should wait, in my view. This is almost forced on us in this situation by lack of 2-food tiles to keep the cities growing at their best pace. York only "owns" one such tile in its range at the moment, so chopping one of those forest down (as part of building a temple, perhaps) might be a good idea in the near future, get another grassland tile (maybe or maybe not with bonus shield on it) along the river.If you play your turn out from your own shadow save a couple more years, you'll see the conflict between London and York. Let London build the settlers while York builds workers and warriors.
3100BC: York governor keeps his head? Don't be too sure!
Correctly for the moment, but something's got to give here. Either London will be shorted some food unnecessarily (delaying it's programs) or York will be delayed a LOT on getting to size 3 with that settler, OR York will have to swap off the settler to switch to temple (not the worst plan, actually, but not the one you laid out).
None of those situations are good, they all involve some waste.
Also, you wasted a worker turn to pass over a tile to get to the tile next to York. That may be worth doing in a few situations, such as hurrying to get irrigation to some cattle, but generally the cost of wasting a worker turn to work THIS tile vs THAT one is not worth it. If you are in a hurry to get somewhere, at least build a road on the tile you are passing through, along the way. In this case, that's especially true, since that tile is one of the Good Tiles you need to improve ASAP, and the only thing better about the one next to York is that it's on a river. Maybe if you had passed over a mountain or jungle or forest to get to the target tile, then it would have been too wasteful to stop and wait for the road, but that wasn't the case here.
3000BC: Superb trade with red, giving up Pottery (a tech the other civs to the north have, and a cheap tech to boot) for Warrior Code AND cash. Very nice deal there!
You, too, missed the clash at London between growth and granary completion, and would lose the 8 food. See my shadow turn and the critique for Zot for more details on this.
Overall Grade: D+
count: Three. (Exploration, Research, a great Trade!) count: Four. (Workers, London Growth before Granary, and York mismanagement that counts as two 's)- Sirian
Sirian
Designer, Mohawk Games
3150BC: I wouldn't call overlooking this as weedy. Sure, you threw away a few gold with inattention, but that's going to happen from time to time. What this will do, though, is take away the thumbs up you would otherwise have gotten for research.
3100BC: So far, so good. Everything looked good up until this point. A settler out of York? It doesn't have enough good tiles to work. You'll get into conflict over that bonus grassland with London, same as TBC did. That's distinctly not good. A worker at this point, or a temple maybe, or more military, but either York or London's growth will be SLOWED when that tile comes into conflict, unless a worker would have been trained ahead of that warrior, as I did on my shadow turn. Of course, you intended the warrior for MP duty and THAT could not wait, either (although it could be skipped at the cost of a few trade used on lux, so it was not a dire emergency need that only an MP unit could fill), so it was a judgement call on worker vs warrior first. But a settler next? The main point of the granary at London was so it could pump out a settler every ten turns instead of every twenty. York needs to fill in the gaps. Relying on just one worker for an extended time is not the best idea, since not only York's growth will ultimately be slowed, but so will that of the third city. York should at least be doing a worker by now, if not sooner, and having worse tiles than either London or the third to-be-founded city on the river at the cattle, it's the ideal worker-making city for the early going, until the workers improve its tiles enough to justify letting it grow larger.
3000BC: Good job with the MP unit and with the initial worker. I'd give you a thumbs up for workers on this round IF you had started a worker at York in there somewhere, but part of managing workers wisely involves efficient decisions about when to add to the work force, and postponing workers at York in favor of longer term projects when its only got ONE good tile to use is definitely an iffy move.
You also missed the London growth vs granary completion problem.
Overall grade C+
count: Two. (Exploration, MP unit support from York)
count: Two. (York settler too soon, mismanaging London growth).
- Sirian
3100BC: So far, so good. Everything looked good up until this point. A settler out of York? It doesn't have enough good tiles to work. You'll get into conflict over that bonus grassland with London, same as TBC did. That's distinctly not good. A worker at this point, or a temple maybe, or more military, but either York or London's growth will be SLOWED when that tile comes into conflict, unless a worker would have been trained ahead of that warrior, as I did on my shadow turn. Of course, you intended the warrior for MP duty and THAT could not wait, either (although it could be skipped at the cost of a few trade used on lux, so it was not a dire emergency need that only an MP unit could fill), so it was a judgement call on worker vs warrior first. But a settler next? The main point of the granary at London was so it could pump out a settler every ten turns instead of every twenty. York needs to fill in the gaps. Relying on just one worker for an extended time is not the best idea, since not only York's growth will ultimately be slowed, but so will that of the third city. York should at least be doing a worker by now, if not sooner, and having worse tiles than either London or the third to-be-founded city on the river at the cattle, it's the ideal worker-making city for the early going, until the workers improve its tiles enough to justify letting it grow larger.
3000BC: Good job with the MP unit and with the initial worker. I'd give you a thumbs up for workers on this round IF you had started a worker at York in there somewhere, but part of managing workers wisely involves efficient decisions about when to add to the work force, and postponing workers at York in favor of longer term projects when its only got ONE good tile to use is definitely an iffy move.
You also missed the London growth vs granary completion problem.
Overall grade C+
count: Two. (Exploration, MP unit support from York) count: Two. (York settler too soon, mismanaging London growth).- Sirian
Sirian
Designer, Mohawk Games
Hotrod, I almost overlooked your turn! Bad Sirian. Bad. 
I should have done your report first since it was posted first, but I too overlook details sometimes. You get the "last in class" gentle "see the other critiques" references for most of this.
3450BC: Interesting research choice! Not bad, not good, but off the beaten path. You rather negated the worth of this with the later trade, but at this stage this was a cool decision and I liked your plan.
3350BC: YES! Train those workers at York NOW, because everything else can wait! This is especially good considering that even borrowing the bonus grassland from London as TBC and Zot did, does not gain an extra shield. That third shield at York is wasted so it's of no use, the city is the same productivity at size 2 as size 1, and doing the worker sooner buys FIVE whole worker turns (or more) with which to be improving the land and getting better Good Tiles in use sooner.
3250BC: Traded away too much. The trade for Bronze Working was part of your plan, and trading Ceremonial Burial (a cheaper tech) for that, OR even trading Wheel for it (and hopefully some cash) is a good move. Trading a second tech for a mostly-finished research project on the Warrior Code is where the came in there. That part was not good, especially since you traded a tech none of your neighbors yet had, for one they all had, which you were almost done researching? That part of it wasn't good.
Your clever "I'll research something else and trade for Bronze with Russia" plan kind of went up in here, when you also traded for Warrior Code. You'd have been better off researching writing all that time, if you were going to make THAT trade the way you did it.
Once upon a time, Civ3 gave some partial credit on what you were currently researching, but as of 1.21f that no longer seems to be the case, so that makes this even worse. Your research on the Warrior Code went for naught.
3100BC: The granary at York is too soon. It doesn't have expanded borders like London did when I started the granary there, AND it doesn't yet have enough good tiles. Plus, you have no military yet in the home land and that's going to be a problem more so at York with no MP on duty than London, which can substitute 10% lux for an MP unit. It's also riskier, and there's something to be said for not taking risks that don't offer strong benefits. That won't work at York. This granary is too soon, there are some more urgent problems remaining even though you DO have a worker there working the lands (which no one else on this shadow turn managed to do).
3000BC: London doesn't need a temple yet. It might, on higher difficulty, but then it could also be making settlers and keeping population below the unhappiness level, and that was my plan for it when I started the granary. See, without food bonus tiles, pulling in 2 food per turn, it would take TWENTY turns to grow two sizes without a granary. That would mean at most a settler out of London every twenty turns. The granary speeds that to every ten turns, you see? Food, not shields, is the limiter on settler production, when there are no food bonuses. The granary is the move that cuts the food needed in half, and the point of doing THAT is to then pump settlers every ten turns until all the lands that CAN be grabbed have been grabbed, or until other cities can take over settler production duties efficiently.
If you were going for a wonder in this game it would have to come at London, and there would have been no granary built. We'd be building Pyramids or something else, and have started them after producing one or at most two settlers, and not done the granary at all.
Since we're not going for a wonder, not for any wonders at all, any plan other than chunking out settlers EVERY ten turns bam-bam-bam-bam-bam is going to eat into our growth curve.
For example, in GOTM7 Deity Iroquois, I opted to build temple first (religious civ mean cheap temple, and after a scout popped maps out of a hut and I saw my local lands were thin), then a warrior, then a granary, then eight settlers in a row bam-bam-bam every ten turns, with some warriors squeezed in there. My second city was not founded until 2390BC -- very very late, all the other civs had at least five cities apeice by then. (If you won't be affected by spoilers, because you're not playing GOTM7 or you have already seen the whole world map, check This File and compare the 2390bc map to the 670ad map. All that land in 670, I had control of by 250BC). I had spread out to thirteen cities by 250BC. So between 2400BC and 250BC I pulled twelve settlers, eight of them from my capital, going almost nonstop. This led to a victory on Deity. It was, overall, the fastest way I could expand, with a dry start, no food bonus, and no free settlers out of huts.
Since we are NOT going for wonders in this game, there's not much to be doing besides rapid expansion and early production of infrastructure. London should handle the settlers early while York and other cities improve themselves, train workers and military units, and build temples to expand their borders. How to juggle the priorities could be done a number of ways, but there's no doubt that cities with granaries and Good Tiles and/or food bonuses are better suited to settler production than cities like York, which still lacks for any culture and has only one good food tile in range for the moment.
The question for York is, what can wait? Improving the land can't wait, but you took care of that with a worker. So what next? A temple? Some military? Another worker? I'm not sure the military CAN wait much longer, but maybe it could. You could take a chance on that. The temple would pull in one bare grass, some plains and lots of jungle/forest. Should it wait? Maybe not, now that a worker is out there. Would a warrior and a third worker help more? I think so. That's the route I took here on my turn, to go another round as-is, making a warrior next and then after that a third worker. The temple next could be doable, NOW that you have one worker doing improvements at York, but still probably a better idea to make a warrior next and have some military.
The farmer's gambit can be pushed too far, postponing military for too long, and it's less valuable when you've popped a free settler out of a hut. Nothing in the entire game compares to early free settlers, those are about equivalent in impact to kicking the difficulty level DOWN a whole notch. No kidding. That's why I expect us to blow this map away, even if plenty of mistakes are made along the way. Our growth curve should way exceed that of the AI's, I expect.
Finally, you too missed the growth vs granary completion problem at London. Everybody missed that one!
Also, setting the luxury to 10%... it's not needed on that turn. Unlike Civ2, you don't go into disorder in Civ3 ON the turn you grow too large, but rather on the next turn. So if playing solo, you could wait until it's actually needed. On the other hand, in SG's, it rarely pays off to PRESUME that the next player will catch something like that, so your move here in an SG might actually be a very good one. You "waste" 1 trade spent on lux a turn early to ensure that a whole TURN (or more) of production at London is not wasted. That's a judgement call that is worth taking in an SG, but you seemed not to be making it as such, but doing it because you feared the city would go into unrest on the next turn. It won't, it would happen the turn after that.
I really liked your results here, overall. Some good thought into the research end and the trade there. I liked the worker training at York, since that was the best path there IMO, and what I did on my own turn. I also liked that you gave thought to when to build a temple at London, and second guessed your own initial thinking in your own 'critique' post that followed. That trade was pretty bad, though, and you're really pushing it on going without military. One concript warrior running around, but he's not close to home, so you can't really count him yet in that regard. On the other hand, as far as AI's go, they count workers as military units, so getting some workers going early AND having at least one unit in your cities, is a good way to reduce threats and avoid surprise attacks.
Overall Grade: B-
count: Three. (Workers, Exploration, Analysis)
count: Three. (Bad Trade, Not Enough Military, mismanaging London growth)
- Sirian
I should have done your report first since it was posted first, but I too overlook details sometimes.
You get the "last in class" gentle "see the other critiques" references for most of this. 3450BC: Interesting research choice! Not bad, not good, but off the beaten path. You rather negated the worth of this with the later trade, but at this stage this was a cool decision and I liked your plan.
3350BC: YES! Train those workers at York NOW, because everything else can wait!
This is especially good considering that even borrowing the bonus grassland from London as TBC and Zot did, does not gain an extra shield. That third shield at York is wasted so it's of no use, the city is the same productivity at size 2 as size 1, and doing the worker sooner buys FIVE whole worker turns (or more) with which to be improving the land and getting better Good Tiles in use sooner.3250BC: Traded away too much. The trade for Bronze Working was part of your plan, and trading Ceremonial Burial (a cheaper tech) for that, OR even trading Wheel for it (and hopefully some cash) is a good move. Trading a second tech for a mostly-finished research project on the Warrior Code is where the
came in there. That part was not good, especially since you traded a tech none of your neighbors yet had, for one they all had, which you were almost done researching? That part of it wasn't good.Your clever "I'll research something else and trade for Bronze with Russia" plan kind of went up in
here, when you also traded for Warrior Code. You'd have been better off researching writing all that time, if you were going to make THAT trade the way you did it.Once upon a time, Civ3 gave some partial credit on what you were currently researching, but as of 1.21f that no longer seems to be the case, so that makes this even worse. Your research on the Warrior Code went for naught.
3100BC: The granary at York is too soon. It doesn't have expanded borders like London did when I started the granary there, AND it doesn't yet have enough good tiles. Plus, you have no military yet in the home land and that's going to be a problem more so at York with no MP on duty than London, which can substitute 10% lux for an MP unit. It's also riskier, and there's something to be said for not taking risks that don't offer strong benefits. That won't work at York. This granary is too soon, there are some more urgent problems remaining even though you DO have a worker there working the lands (which no one else on this shadow turn managed to do).
3000BC: London doesn't need a temple yet. It might, on higher difficulty, but then it could also be making settlers and keeping population below the unhappiness level, and that was my plan for it when I started the granary. See, without food bonus tiles, pulling in 2 food per turn, it would take TWENTY turns to grow two sizes without a granary. That would mean at most a settler out of London every twenty turns. The granary speeds that to every ten turns, you see? Food, not shields, is the limiter on settler production, when there are no food bonuses. The granary is the move that cuts the food needed in half, and the point of doing THAT is to then pump settlers every ten turns until all the lands that CAN be grabbed have been grabbed, or until other cities can take over settler production duties efficiently.
If you were going for a wonder in this game it would have to come at London, and there would have been no granary built. We'd be building Pyramids or something else, and have started them after producing one or at most two settlers, and not done the granary at all.
Since we're not going for a wonder, not for any wonders at all, any plan other than chunking out settlers EVERY ten turns bam-bam-bam-bam-bam is going to eat into our growth curve.
For example, in GOTM7 Deity Iroquois, I opted to build temple first (religious civ mean cheap temple, and after a scout popped maps out of a hut and I saw my local lands were thin), then a warrior, then a granary, then eight settlers in a row bam-bam-bam every ten turns, with some warriors squeezed in there. My second city was not founded until 2390BC -- very very late, all the other civs had at least five cities apeice by then. (If you won't be affected by spoilers, because you're not playing GOTM7 or you have already seen the whole world map, check This File and compare the 2390bc map to the 670ad map. All that land in 670, I had control of by 250BC). I had spread out to thirteen cities by 250BC. So between 2400BC and 250BC I pulled twelve settlers, eight of them from my capital, going almost nonstop. This led to a victory on Deity. It was, overall, the fastest way I could expand, with a dry start, no food bonus, and no free settlers out of huts.
Since we are NOT going for wonders in this game, there's not much to be doing besides rapid expansion and early production of infrastructure. London should handle the settlers early while York and other cities improve themselves, train workers and military units, and build temples to expand their borders. How to juggle the priorities could be done a number of ways, but there's no doubt that cities with granaries and Good Tiles and/or food bonuses are better suited to settler production than cities like York, which still lacks for any culture and has only one good food tile in range for the moment.
The question for York is, what can wait? Improving the land can't wait, but you took care of that with a worker. So what next? A temple? Some military? Another worker? I'm not sure the military CAN wait much longer, but maybe it could. You could take a chance on that. The temple would pull in one bare grass, some plains and lots of jungle/forest. Should it wait? Maybe not, now that a worker is out there. Would a warrior and a third worker help more? I think so. That's the route I took here on my turn, to go another round as-is, making a warrior next and then after that a third worker. The temple next could be doable, NOW that you have one worker doing improvements at York, but still probably a better idea to make a warrior next and have some military.
The farmer's gambit can be pushed too far, postponing military for too long, and it's less valuable when you've popped a free settler out of a hut. Nothing in the entire game compares to early free settlers, those are about equivalent in impact to kicking the difficulty level DOWN a whole notch. No kidding. That's why I expect us to blow this map away, even if plenty of mistakes are made along the way. Our growth curve should way exceed that of the AI's, I expect.
Finally, you too missed the growth vs granary completion problem at London. Everybody missed that one!
Also, setting the luxury to 10%... it's not needed on that turn. Unlike Civ2, you don't go into disorder in Civ3 ON the turn you grow too large, but rather on the next turn. So if playing solo, you could wait until it's actually needed. On the other hand, in SG's, it rarely pays off to PRESUME that the next player will catch something like that, so your move here in an SG might actually be a very good one. You "waste" 1 trade spent on lux a turn early to ensure that a whole TURN (or more) of production at London is not wasted. That's a judgement call that is worth taking in an SG, but you seemed not to be making it as such, but doing it because you feared the city would go into unrest on the next turn. It won't, it would happen the turn after that.
I really liked your results here, overall. Some good thought into the research end and the trade there. I liked the worker training at York, since that was the best path there IMO, and what I did on my own turn. I also liked that you gave thought to when to build a temple at London, and second guessed your own initial thinking in your own 'critique' post that followed. That trade was pretty bad, though, and you're really pushing it on going without military. One concript warrior running around, but he's not close to home, so you can't really count him yet in that regard. On the other hand, as far as AI's go, they count workers as military units, so getting some workers going early AND having at least one unit in your cities, is a good way to reduce threats and avoid surprise attacks.
Overall Grade: B-
count: Three. (Workers, Exploration, Analysis) count: Three. (Bad Trade, Not Enough Military, mismanaging London growth)- Sirian
Carbon_Copy
Elemental
As I said in the main thread, here's the screenshot I have of 2 settlers at once in 4000 BC. I started on the hill, and moved the worker to a goody hut just to the east and the settler SE to the coast.
Unfortunately, my 4000 BC save from that game is at the end of the turn and not the beginning (so we can't test whether 1.21 changes these rules or if popping the hut by founding the city would have made a difference), but it still is proof that not popping the huts in 4000 BC because you don't think you'll get a settler out of it just might be
Unfortunately, my 4000 BC save from that game is at the end of the turn and not the beginning (so we can't test whether 1.21 changes these rules or if popping the hut by founding the city would have made a difference), but it still is proof that not popping the huts in 4000 BC because you don't think you'll get a settler out of it just might be
Mardoc
Warlord
The second reign of Mardocs shadow, although much delayed compared to expectations, continued as follows:
Mardoc took power in 3500 BC, with a civilization considerable better off than he had left it, in an alternate timeline. The first technology was almost complete, and we had met a fur-clad people in the west. Although he reviewed everything to understand the State of the Despotism, he felt no need for changes.
In 3450, Ceremonial Burial was finished. Bearing in mind advice about goody huts, he chose the cheapest technology to research: Bronze Working. At this point, the first evidence of the Englishs high culture was witnessed. Some scouts discovered a coastline.
3400 Gems discovered to the east, while in the west, the scouting party noticed a profusion of rivers; Irrigation will never be a problem, in the soon to be homelands of the English.
3350 York finishes another scouting party, and commences on a worker, to finish in 5 turns when the city grows. There is too much to do, and not enough people to go around.
3300 The western scouts discover furs! If their strength at arms or quick expansion suffices, the English will be a luxurious people.
3250 Scouts discover the Gepids, who teach us about the Code of the Warrior.
3200 The worker finishes the mine near London, begins a road. A blue border is sighted north of the English civilization.
3150 Contact is made with the Germans; no deals are made.
3100 York produces a worker, and begins on a warrior. This could be shifted to spearmen in 2 turns when Bronze Working is discovered. We discover a deserted village, and the Germans order our scout out of their territory.
3050 Londons worker finishes a mine, moves north to the other shielded grassland to start a mine and road. As Yorks worker has started in the shielded grassland near York, York will soon be connected.
3000 We finish Bronze Working, and start on the Wheel, both to find horses and because its the cheapest; we do still have 3 scouts out looking for huts. York is turned to a spearman. We contact China; but we do not trade anything here, either.
I'll catch up, really!
Ten turns doesn't take as long as I keep thinking it will.
prod-shadow-Mardoc-3000bc
Mardoc took power in 3500 BC, with a civilization considerable better off than he had left it, in an alternate timeline. The first technology was almost complete, and we had met a fur-clad people in the west. Although he reviewed everything to understand the State of the Despotism, he felt no need for changes.
In 3450, Ceremonial Burial was finished. Bearing in mind advice about goody huts, he chose the cheapest technology to research: Bronze Working. At this point, the first evidence of the Englishs high culture was witnessed. Some scouts discovered a coastline.
3400 Gems discovered to the east, while in the west, the scouting party noticed a profusion of rivers; Irrigation will never be a problem, in the soon to be homelands of the English.
3350 York finishes another scouting party, and commences on a worker, to finish in 5 turns when the city grows. There is too much to do, and not enough people to go around.
3300 The western scouts discover furs! If their strength at arms or quick expansion suffices, the English will be a luxurious people.
3250 Scouts discover the Gepids, who teach us about the Code of the Warrior.
3200 The worker finishes the mine near London, begins a road. A blue border is sighted north of the English civilization.
3150 Contact is made with the Germans; no deals are made.
3100 York produces a worker, and begins on a warrior. This could be shifted to spearmen in 2 turns when Bronze Working is discovered. We discover a deserted village, and the Germans order our scout out of their territory.
3050 Londons worker finishes a mine, moves north to the other shielded grassland to start a mine and road. As Yorks worker has started in the shielded grassland near York, York will soon be connected.
3000 We finish Bronze Working, and start on the Wheel, both to find horses and because its the cheapest; we do still have 3 scouts out looking for huts. York is turned to a spearman. We contact China; but we do not trade anything here, either.
I'll catch up, really!
Ten turns doesn't take as long as I keep thinking it will.prod-shadow-Mardoc-3000bc
Rowain deWolf
King
Shadow-turn 3000BC to 2550 BC
3000BC: changing worked Tiles in London to produce Granary before City-grows.
2950BC: Granary finished Settler started in London; Warrior moved towards London for MP; worker starts mining; East-Scout(ES) moves 1W,1S and spots a red border;
NS moves 1W,1N spots Tundra; WS pops goody-hut and the Seljuk-tribe gives us Knowledge of the Wheel;
2900BC: Warrior reaches London; MM so that the shared Tile is used by London;
ES: 1W,1SW contact with Hammurabi of Babylon they are 4 techs behind;
NS: 1N 1E spots a goody-hut;
WS: 1NE, 1E a cyan border spotted;
2850BC: York finish Worker starts Warrior; Worker moves to bonus-grassland;
ES: 2S;
WS: 1E, 1NE;
NS: 1NE pops GH and the nice Bulgar-tribe teach us IronWorking [dance]
2800 BC: We have Iron on hill next to London;
York-worker starts mining;
ES: 2E;
NS: 1SE;
WS: 2E contact with Mao of China but they have nothing we want;
2750BC: ES: 2SW;
NS: 1S 1SE;
WS: 1E 1NE (to leave china)
2710BC: London fin Settler starts a new; Settler moves 2NW to settle in the desert next to lake and to some scouting;
ES: 2W;
NS: 2S;
WS: 2N;
2670BC: Settler moves 1NW;
London-Worker fin Mine starts road;
ES: 1NW,1W; meets a russian scout;
NS: 2SE:
WS: 2E spots a goody-hut
2630BC: Since the russian Scout moves towards babylon Ideal Cathy and Hammurabi up. Looking at the techs i see that both lack the Knowledge of masonry, Wheel and IronWorking but babylon doesnt know Alphabet too. So since Russia will give them Alphabeth anyways i sell it to Hammurabi for 10 gold(all he had) leaving him broke and coutious instead of annoyed.
York finish Warrior and starts a worker;
Settler moves 1 NW and spots another cattle;
ES: 1SE;
NS: 2E;
WS: 1W; 1S;
2590BC: Settler 1N to discover the last dark spot;
ES: 2S;
NS: 1E, 1SE;
WS: 1E 1NE pops GH and the Burgundian teach us Mysticism;
2550BC: york worker finish Mine starts road;
London-worker moves to Iron;
Settler 1W;
ES: 1W 1N spotts Whale;
NS: 1E, 1S;
WS: 1E, 1S;
EDIT: here is the file:
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads/prod-shadow-rowain-2550BC.zip
Rowain
3000BC: changing worked Tiles in London to produce Granary before City-grows.
2950BC: Granary finished Settler started in London; Warrior moved towards London for MP; worker starts mining; East-Scout(ES) moves 1W,1S and spots a red border;
NS moves 1W,1N spots Tundra; WS pops goody-hut and the Seljuk-tribe gives us Knowledge of the Wheel;
2900BC: Warrior reaches London; MM so that the shared Tile is used by London;
ES: 1W,1SW contact with Hammurabi of Babylon they are 4 techs behind;
NS: 1N 1E spots a goody-hut
;WS: 1NE, 1E a cyan border spotted;
2850BC: York finish Worker starts Warrior; Worker moves to bonus-grassland;
ES: 2S;
WS: 1E, 1NE;
NS: 1NE pops GH and the nice Bulgar-tribe teach us IronWorking [dance]
2800 BC: We have Iron on hill next to London;
York-worker starts mining;
ES: 2E;
NS: 1SE;
WS: 2E contact with Mao of China but they have nothing we want;
2750BC: ES: 2SW;
NS: 1S 1SE;
WS: 1E 1NE (to leave china)
2710BC: London fin Settler starts a new; Settler moves 2NW to settle in the desert next to lake and to some scouting;
ES: 2W;
NS: 2S;
WS: 2N;
2670BC: Settler moves 1NW;
London-Worker fin Mine starts road;
ES: 1NW,1W; meets a russian scout;
NS: 2SE:
WS: 2E spots a goody-hut
2630BC: Since the russian Scout moves towards babylon Ideal Cathy and Hammurabi up. Looking at the techs i see that both lack the Knowledge of masonry, Wheel and IronWorking but babylon doesnt know Alphabet too. So since Russia will give them Alphabeth anyways i sell it to Hammurabi for 10 gold(all he had) leaving him broke and coutious instead of annoyed.
York finish Warrior and starts a worker;
Settler moves 1 NW and spots another cattle;
ES: 1SE;
NS: 2E;
WS: 1W; 1S;
2590BC: Settler 1N to discover the last dark spot;
ES: 2S;
NS: 1E, 1SE;
WS: 1E 1NE pops GH and the Burgundian teach us Mysticism;
2550BC: york worker finish Mine starts road;
London-worker moves to Iron;
Settler 1W;
ES: 1W 1N spotts Whale;
NS: 1E, 1S;
WS: 1E, 1S;
EDIT: here is the file:
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads/prod-shadow-rowain-2550BC.zip
Rowain
hotrod0823
Deity
(0) 3000BC: Change the land being worked in London, Granary to finish in 1 turn, grow in 2.
(1) 2950BC: Granary complete in London start Settler West Scout pops hut learns wheel, horse to the NW of London - site of city number 3? North scout W and see minor tribe, East Scout W/S see red boarder - Babs? Worker begins mine, move warrior toward London, Return London workers to work mined lands growth in 1 turn.
(2) 2900BC: Contact Babs with East Scout, they are behind 4 techs Alpha, masonry, pottery, wheel, Norths scout pops hut learns HBR, York gives London tile back
(3) 2850BC: York builds worker starts warrior East Scout goes west of babs , Russian scout approaches
North Scout heads West
West Scout heads East see Cyan of China
(4) 2800BC: Worker completes mine starts road, Noth scout continues west sees Cyan boarder - China has at least to cities and I see the W and East boarders
(5) 2750BC: West Scout see china capital, East Scout to start trek through Jungle to explore area to SW of London
(6) 2710BC: Settler completed in London starts Warrior but may change to settler if the growth matches the completion of the next settler
(7) 2670BC: Change London to Settler growth to 3 in 5, settler in 5, Move settler along road and will move toward the hills, and the lone dark area NW of London to find a new place to settle.
West Scout to move toward London
North Scout to continue Nw
Southern Scout continue North toward "dark SW of London"
(8) 2630BC: York completes Warrior starts another more scout movement nothing of interest Settler continues moving NW
(9) 2590BC: Warrior from york sent out to meet with London settler, Settler continues to NW to an area with horses and cattle, think that in one more move the settler is in a good position for building city number 3.
(10) 2550BC: Move settler to area with horses, cattle, game and bonus grassland after first culture expansion. looks like a good spot for city 3. Worker completes road and moves N to help york worker for more Mines/roads.
Ahead of China, by alpha.,wheel and CB
Only ahead of Russia by wheel
Ahead of Germany by 3, Babs by 3
Research remains a 100% and writing in 10 turns
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads/Prod-Shadow-Hotrod-2550BC.zip
(1) 2950BC: Granary complete in London start Settler West Scout pops hut learns wheel, horse to the NW of London - site of city number 3? North scout W and see minor tribe, East Scout W/S see red boarder - Babs? Worker begins mine, move warrior toward London, Return London workers to work mined lands growth in 1 turn.
(2) 2900BC: Contact Babs with East Scout, they are behind 4 techs Alpha, masonry, pottery, wheel, Norths scout pops hut learns HBR, York gives London tile back
(3) 2850BC: York builds worker starts warrior East Scout goes west of babs , Russian scout approaches
North Scout heads West
West Scout heads East see Cyan of China
(4) 2800BC: Worker completes mine starts road, Noth scout continues west sees Cyan boarder - China has at least to cities and I see the W and East boarders
(5) 2750BC: West Scout see china capital, East Scout to start trek through Jungle to explore area to SW of London
(6) 2710BC: Settler completed in London starts Warrior but may change to settler if the growth matches the completion of the next settler
(7) 2670BC: Change London to Settler growth to 3 in 5, settler in 5, Move settler along road and will move toward the hills, and the lone dark area NW of London to find a new place to settle.
West Scout to move toward London
North Scout to continue Nw
Southern Scout continue North toward "dark SW of London"
(8) 2630BC: York completes Warrior starts another more scout movement nothing of interest Settler continues moving NW
(9) 2590BC: Warrior from york sent out to meet with London settler, Settler continues to NW to an area with horses and cattle, think that in one more move the settler is in a good position for building city number 3.
(10) 2550BC: Move settler to area with horses, cattle, game and bonus grassland after first culture expansion. looks like a good spot for city 3. Worker completes road and moves N to help york worker for more Mines/roads.
Ahead of China, by alpha.,wheel and CB
Only ahead of Russia by wheel
Ahead of Germany by 3, Babs by 3
Research remains a 100% and writing in 10 turns
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads/Prod-Shadow-Hotrod-2550BC.zip
T-hawk
Transcend
I want to say that that paragraph has become my Civ 3 textbook.
I played Civ 1, 2, and Alpha Centauri for years, but I'm still learning the nuts and bolts of Civ 3 mechanics. Much of this is reversed from Civ 2 and Alpha - in those, shields and completion happened before growth and unhappiness, so an about-to-riot city could be fixed by a temple or holo theater completing on that turn.A question: you omit commerce from that analysis. Is it processed after shields and building, so that a bank gives its benefits on the turn it's completed? (I do wish Civ 3 showed the exact numbers for science as all the previous games did. I guess it doesn't so that it can hide the fudging of the 4/40 turn limits. The numbers must be in the save file somewhere, which could add a whole new level of micromanagement...)
Sirian
Designer, Mohawk Games
I don't know where in the process the commerce handling comes in, but I also think it doesn't matter. What can you do with that info? Nothing worthwhile or time-effective that I can see.
- Sirian
- Sirian
0)3000BC - Changed London from one of the mined grasslands to a forest, so that the Granary will still finish in one turn but the city will not expand in two turns. This will save on alot of food.
1)2950BC - London finishes the granary, starts on a settler for 6 turns. Change back to working the grassland, expansion to size 3 next turn. Worker starts mining the shared grassland. Warrior moves to fogbush to the west. He will come back for defense. East scout moves west across two floodplains revealing wheat and a red line on the ground. North scout spots two dyes north of Berlin. West scout learns The Wheel from the Seljuk tribe, which teaches us about an animal called horses. Why the wheel teaches this to us is hard to say. There is a horse just one city radius west of London and York. There are more horses closer to Moscow, including one in the square right next to Moscow, which means Cossacks (with saltpeter).
2)2900BC - London expands to size 3, which causes an unhappy citizen, because 3 is just way to crowded. That warrior should have been moved to London to be an MP. :Weed: He will be moved to go to London. In the mean time we will have to create a happy citizen to offset the unhappy one, by redirecting one gold from science to luxury. This adds two turns to writing. SE scout moves south two squares to reveal an elephant. He kept out of the red land, but maybe next turn he will visit. North scout moves north two squares and finds a local village to visit next turn. West scout moves north east a couple squares and finds a light blue line on the ground.
3)2850BC - York finishes a worker. I debat on what to have York do next. Another worker would help improve tiles. A settler for another city may take not take long enough. Five turns to the first expansion then maybe ten, which will put the village back down to size 1. I think a 5 turn warrior for MP duty, then a settler might be the best way to go, so I start training the warrior. New worker in York moves to grassland sw of York so that it can be mined and roaded. Warrior will be in London next turn for MP duty. SE scout walks a couple more squares around red. NW scout moves close to light blue. North scout learns Iron Working from the Bulgar tribe. There is iron in the hills right next to London on the west side, one 5 squares NW of Moscow, and one between us and Berlin. I look at the F# screens and Bablyon(red) and China(light blue) show up in the histograph even though I have not actually spoken to Hammi or Mao. While talking to Hammi, he has one city other than his capital, and no techs we don't have. He only has 10 gold to offer us for our cheapest tech (pottery) so I don't bother. Mao also has a second city to go with the 10 gold. I take that 10 gold for our cheapest tech(Ceremonial Burial), which we offer to Cathy, and Bizzy. Mao is polite, Cathy and Bizzy and cautious. Hammi is annoyed.
4)2800BC - York worker starts mining. Warrior goes on MP duty in London. North scout has found the top of our continent. SE scout walks on the plains. Since London has an MP, science is moved back to 100% - writing is sped up by two turns to 15.
5)2750BC - Scout movement -> nothing interesting.
6)2710BC - London finishes gathering settlers and is now size 1. But will grow in 3 turns. Starts a warrior for MP duty, while the other one will go with the settler. This one will delay a settler long enough to allow London to get big enough to pop out another settler. North scout finds a local village NE of China and NW of Germany. SE scout finds more elephants. Settler/warrior pair move NW toward the cattle and game.
7)2670BC - London worker finished mining and starts road. Settler/warrior pair move NW. NW scout skirts China. Marcommani tribe gives our North scout a map of the area revealing a horse, a game, gold, and a fishing spot all NNE of China.
8)2630BC - York expands and finishes a warrior for MP duty and starts settler, which will be done when York expands to size 3 in 10 turns. Settler/warrior pair reveal another cattle. West scout turns south to look at the Russians. North scout turns west to look north of China.
9)2590BC - London finishes warrior for MP duty. Starts a settler, which will happen one turn after London expands to 3.
10)2550BC - London worker finishes building a road. Moves to mine iron hill. York worker finishes mine, and starts road. Switched York from settler, because now it appears that York will finish the settler before expanding. Weed. Now I change to a warrior, which will be done next turn, and then we can build another settler. I am having a difficult time figuring out where to put the settler. I move the settler/warrior so that they are right in the middle of the cattle and game triangle, so that we can build a high food city. It will over lap with York, but there are so many good tiles around this new city-to-be that york can have them. We can also build next to the wheat on the coast. Another down by the fish and dye. And another up by the iron toward Berlin. Question: if a city is put on top of a hill, will it mine the hill automatically? Because then we could move yellow dot ontop of the iron. I am not sure which is better between orange and purple. It might depend on what is under the fog. I will provide a dotmap.
prod-shadow-zot-2550bc.zip
1)2950BC - London finishes the granary, starts on a settler for 6 turns. Change back to working the grassland, expansion to size 3 next turn. Worker starts mining the shared grassland. Warrior moves to fogbush to the west. He will come back for defense. East scout moves west across two floodplains revealing wheat and a red line on the ground. North scout spots two dyes north of Berlin. West scout learns The Wheel from the Seljuk tribe, which teaches us about an animal called horses. Why the wheel teaches this to us is hard to say. There is a horse just one city radius west of London and York. There are more horses closer to Moscow, including one in the square right next to Moscow, which means Cossacks (with saltpeter).
2)2900BC - London expands to size 3, which causes an unhappy citizen, because 3 is just way to crowded. That warrior should have been moved to London to be an MP. :Weed: He will be moved to go to London. In the mean time we will have to create a happy citizen to offset the unhappy one, by redirecting one gold from science to luxury. This adds two turns to writing. SE scout moves south two squares to reveal an elephant. He kept out of the red land, but maybe next turn he will visit. North scout moves north two squares and finds a local village to visit next turn. West scout moves north east a couple squares and finds a light blue line on the ground.
3)2850BC - York finishes a worker. I debat on what to have York do next. Another worker would help improve tiles. A settler for another city may take not take long enough. Five turns to the first expansion then maybe ten, which will put the village back down to size 1. I think a 5 turn warrior for MP duty, then a settler might be the best way to go, so I start training the warrior. New worker in York moves to grassland sw of York so that it can be mined and roaded. Warrior will be in London next turn for MP duty. SE scout walks a couple more squares around red. NW scout moves close to light blue. North scout learns Iron Working from the Bulgar tribe. There is iron in the hills right next to London on the west side, one 5 squares NW of Moscow, and one between us and Berlin. I look at the F# screens and Bablyon(red) and China(light blue) show up in the histograph even though I have not actually spoken to Hammi or Mao. While talking to Hammi, he has one city other than his capital, and no techs we don't have. He only has 10 gold to offer us for our cheapest tech (pottery) so I don't bother. Mao also has a second city to go with the 10 gold. I take that 10 gold for our cheapest tech(Ceremonial Burial), which we offer to Cathy, and Bizzy. Mao is polite, Cathy and Bizzy and cautious. Hammi is annoyed.
4)2800BC - York worker starts mining. Warrior goes on MP duty in London. North scout has found the top of our continent. SE scout walks on the plains. Since London has an MP, science is moved back to 100% - writing is sped up by two turns to 15.
5)2750BC - Scout movement -> nothing interesting.
6)2710BC - London finishes gathering settlers and is now size 1. But will grow in 3 turns. Starts a warrior for MP duty, while the other one will go with the settler. This one will delay a settler long enough to allow London to get big enough to pop out another settler. North scout finds a local village NE of China and NW of Germany. SE scout finds more elephants. Settler/warrior pair move NW toward the cattle and game.
7)2670BC - London worker finished mining and starts road. Settler/warrior pair move NW. NW scout skirts China. Marcommani tribe gives our North scout a map of the area revealing a horse, a game, gold, and a fishing spot all NNE of China.
8)2630BC - York expands and finishes a warrior for MP duty and starts settler, which will be done when York expands to size 3 in 10 turns. Settler/warrior pair reveal another cattle. West scout turns south to look at the Russians. North scout turns west to look north of China.
9)2590BC - London finishes warrior for MP duty. Starts a settler, which will happen one turn after London expands to 3.
10)2550BC - London worker finishes building a road. Moves to mine iron hill. York worker finishes mine, and starts road. Switched York from settler, because now it appears that York will finish the settler before expanding. Weed. Now I change to a warrior, which will be done next turn, and then we can build another settler. I am having a difficult time figuring out where to put the settler. I move the settler/warrior so that they are right in the middle of the cattle and game triangle, so that we can build a high food city. It will over lap with York, but there are so many good tiles around this new city-to-be that york can have them. We can also build next to the wheat on the coast. Another down by the fish and dye. And another up by the iron toward Berlin. Question: if a city is put on top of a hill, will it mine the hill automatically? Because then we could move yellow dot ontop of the iron. I am not sure which is better between orange and purple. It might depend on what is under the fog. I will provide a dotmap.
prod-shadow-zot-2550bc.zip
Natrak
Chieftain
I can think of a few reasons. If you set entertainment slider to 10% the happiness result in each city is depdant on how much commerce they produce. Same with science. (I could be wrong on both accounts, but it fits with my experience.) So by adding a road to a tile already being worked it would generate more commerce (assuming its not lost to corruption). Would be nice to know if it would be enough to bump up the effect of the sliders.
Then again its so much micromanagement and complex calculations that I will never bother to do the math for each turn. Would be nice to know just to know though.
T-hawk
Transcend
Another not-too-farfetched possibility:
You're 2 turns from a science advance at 50% science. You crank up the slider, but you're still at 2 turns at 100%. You try assigning one scientist in a city, which drops it to 1 turn. But then you notice that City X is due to complete a library this turn which should add 5 to the city's beaker production. Can you reassign the scientist to work the land, and still get the advance that turn?
You're 2 turns from a science advance at 50% science. You crank up the slider, but you're still at 2 turns at 100%. You try assigning one scientist in a city, which drops it to 1 turn. But then you notice that City X is due to complete a library this turn which should add 5 to the city's beaker production. Can you reassign the scientist to work the land, and still get the advance that turn?
Sirian
Designer, Mohawk Games
IT 3000BC: Russia already has Alphabet. Traded alphabet and 5 gold to Germany for the Wheel. Since I won't leave York on that borrowed tile for three turns, the thing to do is to pull three shields per turn starting now, and get the worker in two turns. Tile swapped to forest along river. Swap London tile to slow growth by one turn.
2950BC: Scout 1 (west of Russia): W N, pop hut, maps, spot cyan border. Scout 2 (north of Germany) W N onto mountain. Scout 3 (east shore): W S onto mountain, spot red border. Worker starts mining. Move warrior toward London to serve as MP. Granary completed in London, start settler, tile returned to good tile.
2900BC: York produces worker, due to grow in 7 turns. York Worker moved to bg tile. Warrior ordered trained. S1: NE E. S2: W W to shore, spot goody hut in forest. S3: SW S into forest. Warrior moves into London, which has grown to size 3, fortifies, no lux needed.
2850BC: S1: E N into cyan territory. S2: SE (can't help it, beelining to hut). S3: W W into red territory, contact Babylon, they are short four techs and have little to offer. York worker starts mining.
2800BC: S1: NE N, contact China, same techs as Babs. S2: S, pop hut, learn Mysticism. S3: S S out of red territory, spot red second city area. Decide that I need to bust some of that fog west of London to best figure out where to settle, so I increase lux to 10% and move the warrior back on out, ahead of the coming settler.
2750BC: S1: N NW, beyond Chinese territory, spot furs. May have to return the same way, as this looks like a smallish peninsula. S2: E N. S3: E SE, open up coastline. Warrior NW, busts two fog.
2710BC: London produces settler, drops to size 1 but due to grow again next turn. Since food is processed first, then shields, we'll pull 5 shields next turn. SCOUT ordered. We have so much land left unexplored to the SW that I deem it worth another unit, scout due in 2 turns.
The thing about settlers is that I'd rather not drop the capital to size 1 for any length of time. The food rate is the limiter on settler growth, so we can either make settlers asap, or we can keep the city at size 2 min and still churn settlers at same rate, but do so for all of them a couple of turns later. It's a judgement call, because you are trading getting other cities started a few turns sooner, vs immediate benefits of higher production at the capital. I've been known to go both ways.
S1: N N, spot hut. S2: N N, spot hut. (I have NEVER seen this many huts. Higher difficulty, the AI's start with free units, spread out quickly to explore, and pop most of the huts). S3: E NE. Warrior: NW, uncover a second cattle.
Looking at the map, I like the horse for third city location. It pulls in the cattle, wheat, dye, is on the river, and minimizes overlap. Fourth city on tile NW of the lake, which pulls in the other cattle, the game, and is on fresh water, and this config minimizes both waste and overlap. It does have one serious drawback, and that's that temples will be needed at both sites to pull in the best tiles, but I would still go with it, and make temples THE first project in both cities (use York/London to supply troops, workers, as applicable).
Settler moves NW along road, then NW.
2670BC: S1: NW, pop hut, free conscript, W. Conscript: N, opens shore. S2: E E, pops hut, maps, this is the north end of the continent. S3: NE N, spot ivory. London warrior: N, busts two fog. York warrior: going to explore east of York a wee bit, moves E. Settler: W, toward horse tile. Notice that I forgot to turn lux back down to zero, so one gold was spent unnecessarily. (The extra happy person scored us higher that turn, so it's not a total loss, but if score is of no concern, then it was a waste. Oops. Hey, I overlook little stuff, too, you try to pay attention, but don't beat yourself up over little things).
2630BC: S1: SW W, have spotted end of the peninsula beyond Chinese land. Conscript: W. S2: E. S3: NW NW. S4, at London, NW along road, W S. York warrior: E, spots gold deposit. London warrior: N, busts last fog bit, revealing the tiny lake. Settler: W. London swapped to spearman.
2590BC: York grows to size 2 and is pulling four shields per turn, thanks to mines being completed and the borrowed tile. If we had more good tiles to work, I'd be sorely tempted to swap it to temple now, but we need to chop down some of those forest to get more tiles to work, and two workers won't make headway on that. I sustain the worker production.
S1: NW SE (yep). S2: S. S3: NW N. S4: S. York warrior: E onto hill. London warrior: SE, moving to meet up with settler. Settler: NW onto horse hill.
2550BC: York produces worker. S1: SE S. Conscript: S. S2: SE S, Leipzig spotted. S3: N N. S4: S. York warrior: N, spots lots of flood plains. TWO workers are ready to move (London's third bg tile finished, new worker at York. I decide to move BOTH onto the same tile, forest south of York, as two working together can chop the forest in 5 turns, and get a new tile for York IN TIME, before it grows again. York ordered to build temple, and the ten shields from the forest will be added to speed that.
Nottingham founded on the horse tile. "London" warrior moves to become Nottingham's warrior, as the new city is ordered immediately to build temple. Writing is due in 9 turns. London is due to complete spear in two turns, and to grow in two turns, then to produce settler five turns later, just as it grows to size 4. I checked diplomacy, but while the AI's are catching up in tech, none has anything to offer us.
Prod - Sirian's Shadow - 2550BC
- Sirian
2950BC: Scout 1 (west of Russia): W N, pop hut, maps, spot cyan border. Scout 2 (north of Germany) W N onto mountain. Scout 3 (east shore): W S onto mountain, spot red border. Worker starts mining. Move warrior toward London to serve as MP. Granary completed in London, start settler, tile returned to good tile.
2900BC: York produces worker, due to grow in 7 turns. York Worker moved to bg tile. Warrior ordered trained. S1: NE E. S2: W W to shore, spot goody hut in forest. S3: SW S into forest. Warrior moves into London, which has grown to size 3, fortifies, no lux needed.
2850BC: S1: E N into cyan territory. S2: SE (can't help it, beelining to hut). S3: W W into red territory, contact Babylon, they are short four techs and have little to offer. York worker starts mining.
2800BC: S1: NE N, contact China, same techs as Babs. S2: S, pop hut, learn Mysticism. S3: S S out of red territory, spot red second city area. Decide that I need to bust some of that fog west of London to best figure out where to settle, so I increase lux to 10% and move the warrior back on out, ahead of the coming settler.
2750BC: S1: N NW, beyond Chinese territory, spot furs. May have to return the same way, as this looks like a smallish peninsula. S2: E N. S3: E SE, open up coastline. Warrior NW, busts two fog.
2710BC: London produces settler, drops to size 1 but due to grow again next turn. Since food is processed first, then shields, we'll pull 5 shields next turn. SCOUT ordered. We have so much land left unexplored to the SW that I deem it worth another unit, scout due in 2 turns.
The thing about settlers is that I'd rather not drop the capital to size 1 for any length of time. The food rate is the limiter on settler growth, so we can either make settlers asap, or we can keep the city at size 2 min and still churn settlers at same rate, but do so for all of them a couple of turns later. It's a judgement call, because you are trading getting other cities started a few turns sooner, vs immediate benefits of higher production at the capital. I've been known to go both ways.
S1: N N, spot hut. S2: N N, spot hut. (I have NEVER seen this many huts. Higher difficulty, the AI's start with free units, spread out quickly to explore, and pop most of the huts). S3: E NE. Warrior: NW, uncover a second cattle.
Looking at the map, I like the horse for third city location. It pulls in the cattle, wheat, dye, is on the river, and minimizes overlap. Fourth city on tile NW of the lake, which pulls in the other cattle, the game, and is on fresh water, and this config minimizes both waste and overlap. It does have one serious drawback, and that's that temples will be needed at both sites to pull in the best tiles, but I would still go with it, and make temples THE first project in both cities (use York/London to supply troops, workers, as applicable).
Settler moves NW along road, then NW.
2670BC: S1: NW, pop hut, free conscript, W. Conscript: N, opens shore. S2: E E, pops hut, maps, this is the north end of the continent. S3: NE N, spot ivory. London warrior: N, busts two fog. York warrior: going to explore east of York a wee bit, moves E. Settler: W, toward horse tile. Notice that I forgot to turn lux back down to zero, so one gold was spent unnecessarily. (The extra happy person scored us higher that turn, so it's not a total loss, but if score is of no concern, then it was a waste. Oops. Hey, I overlook little stuff, too, you try to pay attention, but don't beat yourself up over little things).
2630BC: S1: SW W, have spotted end of the peninsula beyond Chinese land. Conscript: W. S2: E. S3: NW NW. S4, at London, NW along road, W S. York warrior: E, spots gold deposit. London warrior: N, busts last fog bit, revealing the tiny lake. Settler: W. London swapped to spearman.
2590BC: York grows to size 2 and is pulling four shields per turn, thanks to mines being completed and the borrowed tile. If we had more good tiles to work, I'd be sorely tempted to swap it to temple now, but we need to chop down some of those forest to get more tiles to work, and two workers won't make headway on that. I sustain the worker production.
S1: NW SE (yep). S2: S. S3: NW N. S4: S. York warrior: E onto hill. London warrior: SE, moving to meet up with settler. Settler: NW onto horse hill.
2550BC: York produces worker. S1: SE S. Conscript: S. S2: SE S, Leipzig spotted. S3: N N. S4: S. York warrior: N, spots lots of flood plains. TWO workers are ready to move (London's third bg tile finished, new worker at York. I decide to move BOTH onto the same tile, forest south of York, as two working together can chop the forest in 5 turns, and get a new tile for York IN TIME, before it grows again. York ordered to build temple, and the ten shields from the forest will be added to speed that.
Nottingham founded on the horse tile. "London" warrior moves to become Nottingham's warrior, as the new city is ordered immediately to build temple. Writing is due in 9 turns. London is due to complete spear in two turns, and to grow in two turns, then to produce settler five turns later, just as it grows to size 4. I checked diplomacy, but while the AI's are catching up in tech, none has anything to offer us.
Prod - Sirian's Shadow - 2550BC
- Sirian
hotrod0823
Deity
Very quickly - is it better to place city on the horse and not get the bonus grass land to the NW and NE after cultural expansion?
Hotrod
Hotrod
