RB1 - Cuban Isolationists

[Sirian]

Specialists are nice, but I have to spend way too much time micromanaging them. Is there some way to tell governors to emphasize a particular type of specialist, perhaps in a certain order, like engineers then merchants then scientists? Sometimes my governors set a priest, but I'd rather have a merchant or scientist. And is there a way to tell the governor to set no specialists until all the tiles are used up? Perhaps in advanced settings somewhere.

If you are running the governor, you can choose to emphasize Food, Production, and Commerce, and this will result in the governor using a lot less specialists without disrupting the use of the best tiles.

I wish there were more and better control over the specialists, believe me, but some decisions were made to keep things simpler and less confusing, even at the expense of less control. That's a point of view I can appreciate, as it tries to look after the interests of the majority of players. :shrug:


- Sirian

 

[Sirian]

Yes excellent thread.
Sirian... what do you like to have for a garrison, strictly from a militaristic point of view?

Enough to survive, at least; enough to deal with pillagers, preferably.

What we've been running in this game, I consider to be thin! Until I did the drafting, we had cardboard cutouts manning the walls, hoping to fool the enemy in to thinking we had a lot more forces than we actually had.

The days of Civ3's cavalier indifference to military on Deity+ are gone for keeps. Train more units!


- Sirian

 

[Ozymandous]

If we go on to win this by domination, how legendary will this island hopping exercise become??

Just make sure you add some Marines to the mix in your island hopping campaign. Especially if you take more Japanese cities.

 

[oljb007]

None of the pictures are showing for me on this thread?

any thoughts?

 

[quail]

That's what it adds to the tile, only. I agree it's ambiguous and not very useful info. :shrug:

Ah right, thanks

Pretty pointless to tell you that in cities that are nowhere near it though, huh. It tells you the health and happiness bonuses which makes sense, so this confused me. They might wanna take it out.

 

[pvzh]

... Until I did the drafting...
- Sirian

Sirian, I missed the rationale behind the drafting spree. You and Sullla went a long way setting up the specilized city plus several other cities with barracks and good production capacity to build your invincible armies yet you have ended up drafting without being directly threatend. Is it because:

• drafting is more cost efficent, i.e. much more effective than Civ3
• could not wait -- AIs gonna grow too strong by the time army is ready
• you were affraid that Sullla would not build a unit on his sequence of turns

 

[Tidus4444]

If you are running the governor, you can choose to emphasize Food, Production, and Commerce, and this will result in the governor using a lot less specialists without disrupting the use of the best tiles.

I wish there were more and better control over the specialists, believe me, but some decisions were made to keep things simpler and less confusing, even at the expense of less control. That's a point of view I can appreciate, as it tries to look after the interests of the majority of players. :shrug:


- Sirian

Do you think the emphasize Great Person tab helps with specialist management?

 

[Sullla]

Sirian drafted because it's a good way to pop an army out of thin air, provided you have the happiness to compensate it (especially for Spiritual civs - pop into Nationhood for a few turns, draft one unit out of each city, pop back out to something else again in 5 turns). If he was afraid I wouldn't build any military units on my turn - well, wait 'til you see what happens next.

(0) 1860AD OK, how can I sum up our current situation? We have a large tech lead (although Financial-boosted Vicky is closest), we're in a golden age, our civ is running smoothly, and virtually every city is working on a factory or coal plant. Just to give you an idea of that, here's the F1 screen:

I'd say we're putting our Golden Age to good use! And I have a plan for what to do with all that production down the line... Just need to wait for a few more techs and for the current round of builds to finish...

Oh, and as far as the demographics go, we've topped 30 million people before the average AI civs topped 8 million. And our production? 112 for the AIs, 882 for us! That's in a golden age, but it's still ridiculous. Don't mess with us Cubans!

(1) 1862AD More factories/coal plants complete. There is a Japanese caravel sneaking around our borders that we can't attack in the south!

As soon as he moves into our borders, the frigate we have on hand will snatch him up. I also bumped science to 90% last turn, guess I should mention that. We're proceeding along at a nice little pace of 1454 beakers/turn (although this is in a golden age). At 10% wealth, Havana makes 246 gold/turn. Not bad.

(2) 1864AD Greece DEMANDS our world map. Well, the rules of the game say that we can never trade for anyone else's world map, but if we can't do that, I'm certainly not going to give ours out! Alex gets turned down, he goes to Annoyed. We'd be happy to fight him, if we can just manage to reach his island!

Looks like Tokugawa just can't get enough of these islands!

There's no reason to capture this one, since we have a settler on hand. As soon as Shimonoseki's borders expand, I'll move in and take the city with our infantry, then refound a city in its place. Just how far do these little islands extend, anyway? Sirian, you wrote this map script, any ideas?

(3) 1866AD Alex cancels the deal that gives us wines. This is not a particuarly big loss, IMO. What a sourpuss. Electricity discovered, research into Industrialism (due in just 2 turns at 90% science!). Tokugawa signs peace with Huayna Capac. We'll have to get them fighting again, but better to bribe Tokugawa to fight Huayna than vice versa, and we'll need to be at peace with Japan first for that to happen. So no deal for the moment. Tons of factories and coal plants completing, I'm also using our Golden Age production to have many of our coastal cities complete drydocks. We'll have a navy second to none in a short while.

(4) 1868AD More buildings complete. Last turn of our golden age... Forces land outside the Japanese city of Shimonoseki. Just for the curious, we did manage to top 1500 beakers on this last turn of our golden age. Nice.

Where are we going next? El Presidente Sullla has some plans for a radical shift in direction!

 

[Sullla]

(5) 1870AD Golden Age comes to a close. Industrialism finished, start research into Flight. Research turned OFF temporarily to upgrade units (income skyrockets to 757 gold/turn!) Major civics swap takes place:

We return to Vassalage and Theocracy, swap religion back to Judaism. Builds all across Cuba are turned to military matters! A half-dozen tanks go into production immediately. We're going to evict Vicky from our island and see how she feels about that! Redcoats stand up well to rifles and even infantry, true, but let's see how well they do against our tanks!

More good news in the north islands: as Sirian predicted, we can in fact reach the Roman city of Setia:

The way I see it, we should secure our position on the home island first by taking out England, then we can shift most of our military forces overseas (hopefully it will be possible!) later. Airports should help out a lot in that regard too.

(6) 1872AD Vicky adopts Vassalage and Theocracy too. Does she see the writing on the wall?!

Matsuyama is destroyed:

Our settler moves into range to found next turn. It doesn't look like we can go any further to the west by island hopping, but at this point I'm not about to rule anything out.

A shot of the core of our civ prepping for war. With Pentagon due in just 2 turns out of San Roberto, we'll be getting 10XP units out of every city. (City Raider III tanks right off the bat! Ha!) Not too shabby.

(7) 1874AD First couple tanks roll off the assembly lines, I begin setting up military depots in the western desert. Gah, Rio de Oro became unhappy! I slip in a temple build real quickly, although it's going to need a cathedral too after it finishes its Ironworks. Matsuyama II founded, and guess what? Sure enough there's another possible sea passage extending further to the northwest!

Can we get there? Only time will tell, but after the island-hopping exercises we've pulled off here, I'm not willing to rule anything out. I sign peace with Tokugawa for all of his 40g (hey, he's got nothin' else!) There's currently nothing we can do to get Tokugawa and Huayna to fight each other again, oh well.

(8) 1876AD Saint Bob builds us something else nice:

More XP for our units! It starts cranking some tanks (feel free to change to infantry or marines later if desired, but San Roberto is the only city that can get ONE-turn tanks, and that's quite impressive!) After several turns of having research at 0% for upgrades, I turn it back up to 80% this turn. Our colonies in the north islands are now much safer than before (infantry in every city, several destroyers prowling around the area).

(9) 1878AD Uneventful. Building tanks. Lots of tanks. Lots of em.

(10) 1880AD Santiago got extremely unhappy in a hurry (no clue why). I order up a theatre to mollify the people. More military units being built. That about does it for my turn.

 

[Sullla]

Saint Bob has turned into a monster. An absolute monster. That's the only way to describe it now:

Yep, so Sirian's city has become a shield-cranking military MACHINE! Much of that is overflow from last turn, but it's legitimately at about 140 shields/turn when building miltiary units (and close to 200/turn when building ships!) I think we picked a good site to name "San Roberto".

Sirian sometimes has trouble finding the units , so here's some help:

There's a big stack of tanks next to Matanzas. I've got a mini-stack of cannons next to Santa Rosa, and more being built. You can declare war on England whenever you like, probably within a turn or two. Saint Bob is cranking a tank almost every turn (a 10XP tank, for that matter) which should give you more toys to play with. Vicky is a sitting duck, she just doesn't realize it yet. All tanks are unpromoted, so use them as you see fit. (With all these units sitting around, we'll definitely get a unit to qualify for West Point shortly. Your call as to whether to put it in Saint Bob or not.)

That's the situation in the north. We are very, very close to reaching each of the other three continent, but they are all just slightly out of reach at the moment. Setia will be the key; if we can continue on past there we'll be able to make it, if not we probably won't. It will be easy to take the city whenever we want to, of course.

Even outside of a golden age, our production is 797 to the AI civs' 191. I think we got a wee bit of an edge there! (Also in population: we're about to pass 40 million, the average AI civ is just around 8 million. Big difference!)

Well, I built you an army, Sirian. Up to you to decide how best to use it.

 

[Sirian]

You know how I'm going to use it.







EDIT: PS: Matanzas? WTH is that? Is that anywhere near M-City? Help I'm lost again.

 

[Heroes]

So, is iron works indeed buggy, or correct?

 

[vovan]

Woah. This is a great thread. Much thanks to Sirian and Sulla for investing the time to do the write ups. Waiting with bated breath for more.

 

[ChrTh]

(10) 1880AD Santiago got extremely unhappy in a hurry (no clue why). I order up a theatre to mollify the people.

In your "Core of the Civ prepping for War" pic, I noticed a green face near Santiago. Could that have been responsible?

 

[Speaker]

I noticed a green face near Santiago. Could that have been responsible?

Green face is unheathiness. Red face is unhappiness.

 

[Greebley]

I am curious what level you both are now finding challenging. It is clearly a good bit beyond prince level

I know Sirian was playing emperor level - can you win most emperor games? Immortal games?

My gut feeling is that difficulty level will matter more in Civ4 than Civ3. There are a lot of ways you lose out if you can't be first to something (wonders as with civ3, but also religion). (My guess at the best start for religion would be to be spiritual and go for polytheism all out).

 

[Sullla]

Well, both Sirian and I have won on Emperor before, but there's certainly no guarantee that either of us could win all the time there. (Sirian has won an Immortal game, albeit on an archipelago map with lots of water on it.) The Civ4 difficulty levels are totally different from the Civ3 ones - don't let the names fool you. Civ4's Monarch is at least as tough as Civ3's Emperor, and Civ4's Emperor is about equal to Civ3's Deity - maybe harder.

Just because we're doing well here doesn't mean we always do this well. Monarch is still plenty challenging for me in most games that I've tried recently. A lot (a LOT) depends on where you start and what opponents you draw. Civ4's AI is simply better than Civ3's.

 

[Vol]

Whoooeeee, am I ever excited to see Sirian's next set of turns!

 

[ChrTh]

Green face is unhealthiness. Red face is unhappiness.

Understood, but there's no relationship built in? I would think that persistent unhealthiness would increase unhappiness (at least that's what I would program).

 

[Speaker]

Understood, but there's no relationship built in? I would think that persistent unhealthiness would increase unhappiness (at least that's what I would program).

Nope. They are independent of each other.