Qsc20-Spain Results & Strategy Discussion

[hotrod0823]

Despot pop rushing is using a single pop point and changing it to 20 shields. I believe it is effective in corrupt cities to get much needed culture or a quick baracks or in some cases a galley. I most likely use the too much but find it works as intended in most cases. It can create happiness issues but those can be resolved using lux tax or MPs, or in the case of a temple is self correcting.

Short rushing (I used a lot in GOTM20) a 80 shield cav can be rushed for 640 gold if the box is empty.

Lets say you have a size 12 city with a factory and Hoover. Most of my cities were producing 50-60 shields after corruption. I was able to change to a worker and rush its 10 shields for 80 gold. Swap to a settler and rush its remaining 20 shields for 80 gold more. Then swap to a cav. The 50-60 shields of normal production will complete the cav in 1 turn with as much as little as no waste or as much as 10 shields waste but you will get it 1 turn earlier at a cost of 160 gold. Vs. in 2 turns with as much as 40+ shields of waste without rushing.

Just as effective is going from worker to explorer to cav works well for all civs except Spain to help even the 40 shield cities get a cav in 1 turn.

By "short" rushing for 160 gold you have the same effect (a cav next turn.for 480 less gold. This means you can do this in 3 more cities for the same cost in gold that it would be for you to rush a single cav in 1 city.

I am sure there are more effective ways to use cash but this just one I used recently.

 

[DaviddesJ]

I don't think short rushing has much effect in the QSC period, just because most players don't reach Monarchy or Republic in the QSC period. By the time Monarchy or Republic is reached, I think most players have plenty of gold to do all of the short rushing they have time for: the main issue is how much micromanagement you want to do, for how long.

When pop rushing (rather than using gold), I think it's rarely worthwhile to short rush: at this stage of the game, most cities are only producing a few shields/turn, and it's more efficient to keep the citizen active for as long as possible, and rush on the last turn, and accept a few shields of overproduction (which might be minimized by shifting citizens off high-shield tiles and emphasizing food and commerce in that city).

Personally, short rushing is one of those things that annoys me (I think it's a defect in the game), and so while I use it, I try not to overdo it. I'd rather have more enjoyment and less hassle and get through the game a bit faster, and so I'm trying to learn to do less micromanagement. I do think it helps, but I don't think it's huge, and actually, spending the same amount of time on the "big picture" rather than on micromanagement detail would probably buy me more (just an opinion). Looking several turns ahead, and repositioning citizens to increase/decrease shield production in order to come in "right on target", rather than overproducing or underproducing shields, is less annoying to me and has a similar effect. (But is anyone else praying for a Civ4 in which excess shields just carry over, and none of this micromanagement is necessary??)

Something that I do think is useful, and is less like "micromanagement" and more like "efficient use of gold", is to set up highly corrupt cities to maximize food production so they grow quickly, and then spend gold to rush workers out of them, which can either improve terrain for other cities, or be joined to core cities. A town with 4-5 pop can easily be producing a worker every 4 turns this way, in the midgame, which is a lot faster than waiting for the shields to build a worker every 10 turns. But, again, this is well past the QSC period, so is this the right place to discuss such things?

 

[DaviddesJ]

Originally posted by hotrod0823
Lets say you have a size 12 city with a factory and Hoover. Most of my cities were producing 50-60 shields after corruption. I was able to change to a worker and rush its 10 shields for 80 gold. Swap to a settler and rush its remaining 20 shields for 80 gold more. Then swap to a cav. The 50-60 shields of normal production will complete the cav in 1 turn with as much as little as no waste or as much as 10 shields waste but you will get it 1 turn earlier at a cost of 160 gold.

Upgrades are much more efficient. Disconnect your iron and saltpeter, and put six workers and a military unit on your saltpeter tile. Have your city build a horseman (1 turn, 0g). At the start of your turn, have your six workers build a road to connect your saltpeter, and upgrade all of your horsemen to cavalry (50g, with Leonardo). Then pillage the saltpeter tile to disconnect it, so you can build horsemen again, and repeat.

Presto, 1-turn cavalry for 50g, and you may not even need that factory or hydro plant. (My games don't last nearly long enough to build those anyway---but the same principle applies at almost any point in the game.)

I'm coming around to the view that this is an exploit, and should be disallowed. But, I guess I think short rushing is an exploit too; the one seems about the same as the other.

P.S. If you have enough money, you can take this even further. Take a size-1 city with 95% corruption, and build horseman. Wait 1 turn until you have a shield in the box, then rush the horseman for 116g. Then upgrade it to cavalry on the following turn, for 50g. So you can get cavalry for 166g even without investing any significant number of shields. (And with lots and lots of small, corrupt cities, you can essentially get any number you want, as long as you have the gold.)

 

[hotrod0823]

Other than disconnecting being in the "gray" are of exploit land. What if you have many sources of those resources. Sure it is cheaper but I think I would rather have those worker turns for something else. I wonder how much 12 worker turns cost ???

As far as short rushing with a whip I have never tried it and may next month just to see if I can see an effects.

 

[DaviddesJ]

You're saving several hundred gold every turn, and you're worried about the cost of 6 workers? I think 2g would be a generous estimate for the value of a worker turn in the late game. I always seem to have more than I can use, before and after railroads (i.e., there are several turns of converting roads to railroads, where I can use all of the workers I can get, but before and after that they are just sitting around doing stuff of marginal value).

 

[Txurce]

hotrod, thanks for the specifics on short rushing. I periodically use pop rushing to hurry something along, but I am totally haphazard about it. Is there a strategic perspective on it - the sort where you say (as you did with cavalry): it's often helpful to pop rush in these circumstances?

 

[hotrod0823]

Okay maybe worrying about the workers is extreme but I never brought myself to disconnect a resource just to upgrade. Yes it is a cost savings but it is not intuitive. As far as wether short rushing is an expoit I think it is no more an exploit than using a prebuild. That is effectively what rushing a worker and then swapping to something more useful is isn't it.

As far as Pop rushing Txurce I may not be the best to explain all the cababilities but you drive your city so hard to finish a project that you kill one citizen for 20 shields. The effect of pop rushing is to trade a citizen for 20 shields and 20 turns of unhappiness.

In corrupt cities lets say you are spain where temples cost you 30 sheilds. You foud your city and start a temple ASAP because it is on a cultural boarder with Egypt. You want to establish your cities culture quickly so you really want that temple but the city is corrupt and only producing 1 shield per turn as size 1 with 2 excess food from a shielded grass land that is unimproved. You will grow to size 2 in 10 turns.

In those 10 turns you add 10 shields to your production and 20 food to your city. You are now at size 2 with 20 shields left on your temple but because of corruption you are not gaining any additional shields it is still at 1 spt. Meaning you have 20 more turns to get the temple you need now.

Break out the whip, kill a pop point that will be replaced in 10 turns. Gain 20 shields to finish your temple NOW and take a happiness hit that will be countered by your MP or even the temple itself. By getting the temple now you will gain a stronger cultural position by expanding in 10 turns rather than the 25-30 from now had you not whipped the temple. 15-20 for the production and 10 more for the expansion.

This same idea works for a much needed galley to beat the AI to contacts or a barracks to get some vet units sooner for an archer rush or just effectively gaining a better shield position. With a granary it is even more effective you are only trading 10 food for 20 shields a good trade IMHO. Some say the population is better but if I see a whip opportunity I usually take it.

Cracker if I read this correctly using a pop short rush to get settlers out sooner or instead of waiting for a city to be 20 shields from a unit or a building he will do it even sooner.

 

[Mr. Ego]

9 p121 conq mr_ego

Wow!

I can't believe I managed to do so well on my first QSC attempt!

I give you guys all the credit! I've learned so much by reading all your discussions and strategy tips.

Too bad I decided to take a last-minute vacation to Greece, which meant I didn't have time to finish the entire game. Ah well, this month I most certainly will.

Thanks again! Keep up the good work!

 

[Qitai]

Originally posted by DaviddesJ
Personally, short rushing is one of those things that annoys me (I think it's a defect in the game), and so while I use it, I try not to overdo it. I'd rather have more enjoyment and less hassle and get through the game a bit faster, and so I'm trying to learn to do less micromanagement. I do think it helps, but I don't think it's huge, and actually, spending the same amount of time on the "big picture" rather than on micromanagement detail would probably buy me more (just an opinion). Looking several turns ahead, and repositioning citizens to increase/decrease shield production in order to come in "right on target", rather than overproducing or underproducing shields, is less annoying to me and has a similar effect. (But is anyone else praying for a Civ4 in which excess shields just carry over, and none of this micromanagement is necessary??)

I started a thread in conquest request/fixes about the removal of the wasted excess shields and food. But does not seems to be getting enough support. Please show your support over there. I am praying it will be change in civ3 conquest but I think we need enough voices to make them change the code. From the coding point of view, I think they can fix it easily.

 

[Qitai]

Anyway, I too think that the recource dis-con trick is an exploit. Would be happy to see that being disallow. I have no problem dis-allowing palace jump too. These are simply over-powering.

As for the scoring changes, I agree the point on reviewing it later. Reviewing it every time someone voiced their opinion may not be the right approach since it just takes too much time of the administrators. But if the voiced opinion are logical, it should be valued, although changes may not be made immediately. Dismissing the opinion just because the player is new just puts people off.

 

[Qitai]

pop-rushing in highly corrupted cities makes sense but not those who are productive. I rather have that extra pop for either working the tile, getting a worker to improve the land or get another settler out to settle a city. But usually, by the time I get highly corrupted cities, I am out of despotism. So, I have not use it for a long long time now.

P.S. The only exception is perhaps a flood plain start where you have too much food and not enough shield.

 

[DaviddesJ]

Originally posted by hotrod0823
As far as wether short rushing is an expoit I think it is no more an exploit than using a prebuild.

Yes, I agree, I tend to think prebuilds are exploitative too. I think it would be better if the tactics available to the human players were limited to the same things that the AI players do; that way, we wouldn't have to give the AI such huge handicaps to make the games interesting/competitive. (And it certainly doesn't make much sense to say that you can build one thing faster just because you've mostly finished building something else.)

Unfortunately, the GOTM does tend to encourage using these tactics, because everyone else is using them. I find it hard to decide not to use certain tricks, even if I think the game would be better without them.

As I recall, Civ2 had a penalty for switching production from one thing to another, which would be better.

 

[jeffelammar]

Just a thought on scoring discussions.

It might be worth having a Sticky thread to discuss these topics. Then when in 3 or 4 months it is time to review the current system, we would have a record of the various ideas that have come up.

Another advantage would be that there could be a big bold statement at the top of it stating that no changes will be made in the next 4 months.

 

[Smirk]

Pop-rushing has been fixed to be not much value except in special cases, like the corrupt small city with 1s production and a ten turn temple. The temple case can be very heavily used for a culture victory, but you don't need to repeat this many times so can mostly ignore the unhappiness.

The short rushing, and specifically the strategy to get around the doubling-cost-for-rushing-without-any-prior-production rules does not seem exploitive at all to me, the fact that you can so easily avoid this effect shows that the effect shouldn't exist to begin with. Why is the cost doubled without prior production?

I like the 1s=1g=1f scoring, this keeps the flexibility so you aren't forced into a particular method of play, that is to play to the score. However, I am not too sure where David was going with the reduction in gold value. What do you consider to be a better use of gold (as opposed to saving it) and/or how are you not ending up with large amounts of gold? Even if you don't plan on upgrading, and if your sliders are not set low (low science, low entertainment), where is your gold going?

It seems the only real difference between well played game A and well played game B, where the gold amounts differ is city placement and worker efficiency. Naturally if you run max science your gold will be lower, but you are hoping to gain more down the road, and may get some of that payoff during the QSC with more techs. For some reason I tend not to play any fast tech games in gotm, which may be simply because we rarely have a good tech start position (ie with rivers). So I don't know much about the balance between gold and tech rate. I do know that the tech costs were recently changed which may have effected that sort of game.


To me, it seems that gold is the closest thing to a real score that exists in the QSC period. There are very few occasions where you can use it effectively and even were you to upgrade warriors you can do the before-and-after submit and get that value adjusted. In fact, even thought I almost always do the early warriors to upgrade at least in some number, I have yet to get to this before 1000BC. It may be also because most of the gotm games are designed to start a bit slower (for the human).

 

[Svar]

Originally posted by DaviddesJ

As I recall, Civ2 had a penalty for switching production from one thing to another, which would be better.

If I remember correctly Civ 2 had a 50% loss penalty for switching production. Civ 1 didn't have any penalty and the Civ 2 penalty was an attempt to correct what we see now in Civ 3. Maybe in Civ 4 we will be back to the 50% penalty.

 

[DaviddesJ]

Originally posted by Smirk
However, I am not too sure where David was going with the reduction in gold value. What do you consider to be a better use of gold (as opposed to saving it) and/or how are you not ending up with large amounts of gold?

What makes you think I don't have large amounts of gold? In my GOTM20 975BC save (which I posted a link to earlier in this thread) I have almost 2000g.

The only place I'm "going" is trying to make the QSC score as accurately as possible reflect the actual strength of the position. If the points awarded for gold are greater than what it's really worth, that throws the scoring off, and makes it less meaningful. That's it. Any deeper search for hidden motives on my part will be fruitless. I don't particularly think that my own games will rank any higher in a more accurate scoring system, nor do I care if they do.

 

[cracker]

David,

I'll just sort of end this conversation sequence and ask us to move on to helping players play the game by observing that you do not think that gold is as powerful as shields or food and that may or may not be valid assessment.

You need more demonstrated experience to credibly back up this assessment because what we currently see is that a strategic use of these three elements in combinations is what leads to dominating success. Implying that gold is only worth 1.2 or 1.2 of shields would be a bad leadership choice.

Gold is the one truly portable commodity and is basically the the medium of transfer between other measures of power. You can trade shields and you can buy of give food. I think you are underestimating the strategic power of gold used conscienciously and with forethought.

I will share with you that my general assessment in the early game is that food is more powerful than shields and both those are more powerful than gold but this is not an absolute rule that should be applied to every case in every city.

There is a designed in reason that every square worked by a citizen that has roads added to it will produce one extra gold unit per turn.

Devaluing gold would de-emphasize worker tasking and trade leveraging plus would totally degrade the value of wealth accumulation for strategic upgrades, tech brokering and other important strategies. This proposal just does not reinforce key game play concepts and does not represent you strongest contribution to the process.

Fundamentally it still makes good gameplay sense to have a system in place that encourages players to maximize their power output from each individual worked square by valuing the power of food, shields, and gold equally. A great deal of thought precedes you in the determination of scoring food=shields=gold power. In the early game, roads are often the most powerful tool that a player has and gold output is one of the reflections of the worked distributed road network. It would not make sense to say that roads are always worth less that 1/4th of mines or irrigation.

 

[DaviddesJ]

Originally posted by cracker
A great deal of thought precedes you in the determination of scoring food=shields=gold power. In the early game, roads are often the most powerful tool that a player has and gold output is one of the reflections of the worked distributed road network. It would not make sense to say that roads are always worth less that 1/4th of mines or irrigation.

I'll just add something that you may find more satisfying as a "strategic observation": I think income is considerably more important than gold in treasury. The reason being that you can't research above 100%, even though this would often be very desirable. So boosting your commerce (e.g., by building roads on the spaces your citizens work) is very important even if you're swimming in gold from trades, because generating more commerce lets you research faster (which, among other things, lets you make more gold!).

You've also made your own opinion clear, that 40-turn research is very often a false economy, because spending several hundred gold to research faster can be worthwhile even if it only speeds your research by a relatively small number of turns. I think this is quite valid and I don't mean by my comments to attack this point of view in any way. I do think, though, that the best way to demonstrate the truth of such a proposition would be to test it, and part of that (ideally) would be to put all research approaches on an equal scoring basis, rather than having the QSC implicitly reward one over another.

 

[DaviddesJ]

In QSC20 (which this thread is about, right?) I did pop rush a granary in my 2nd city. I did various computations, and this was the best way to start pumping out workers quickly.

IMHO the pop rush is primarily useful in three cases: (1) where it gets you something that increases your productivity, by more than the cost of the citizen you lose; (2) when you really need something quickly; (3) when you outrun your improvements.

Point (1): Building the granary effectively doubled my food surplus on every subsequent turn; over the next several turns, I ended up with more production because I had the granary than if I'd had the extra citizen, and I caught up on population with where I would have been with the slower route to the granary.

Another case where pop rushing can increase your production is if rushing a temple or library (depending on whether you are religious or scientific) lets you expand your borders and work a more favorable space.

Point (2): Sometimes you're just in a hurry. Usually you can do better by planning ahead, though.

Point (3): If you don't have enough workers, then you can end up working unimproved spaces. If the best space you can work is an unimproved grassland, then your extra citizen isn't doing anything for you. It can be even worse: the best space you have to work with your extra citizen is an unimproved hills, and your population growth is actually slower with that extra citizen without it. In such cases, pop rushing can be a no-brainer, because you get extra population growth which lets you catch up with where you would have been anyway!

In theory, there's also point (4): highly corrupt cities which aren't going to produce more than one shield/turn. I rarely have those in despotism, though. And even if I did, I think it's more powerful to build workers from them, than to pop rush from them. They wouldn't be highly productive under any circumstances, because I'm not going to prioritize improving their underlying squares with my limited worker pool.

 

[jeffelammar]

Originally posted by DaviddesJ
In QSC20 (which this thread is about, right?) I did pop rush a granary in my 2nd city. I did various computations, and this was the best way to start pumping out workers quickly.

Absolutely. There is no doubt in my mind that this was one thing that would have made a big difference for me. Unfortunately I did not make use of pop rushing in the early game.

Given the large amount of food and the easy availibilty of luxuries to offset the unhappyness, this was a prime example of an opportunity to pop-rush.