RBD9 SG - Five Russian Cities

[Jaffa Tamarin]

Originally posted by Zed-F
3700 BC (0): I guess our turns are going until we are ready to found another city, that being why Jaffa stopped short.

That's the plan. Doesn't anybody read stuff that I write?

Do we want another coastal city? With this map, do we have much choice? Coastal cities are good for science and the treasury, but we do need some of our cities to be able to produce stuff.

I see Tamaringrad should have been founded 2 squares NE, on the other side of the river delta and getting the wheat (which I couldn't see, of course). Drat. Still, it does get horses from its current location.

Cy, you're set to found the last city. I'm sure the team could manage to recommend a site or two for you

--
Jaffa

 

[Zed-F]

Red dot square is a coastal city but without many coastal squares, so it should still be pretty good production-wise. We probably want 2 coastal cities so that 1 city can build infrastructure/ships while the other builds a coastal wonder.

 

[Sirian]

We only get five cities. I give a hearty nod to blue and yellow dot locations Zed marked. Those look superb. Red would overlap yellow, and overlap in THIS situation is entirely unwanted unless no other choice. Also... we might want to postpone founding the last city until we can see where the iron is, make sure we secure some. Just a thought.

- Sirian

 

[Zed-F]

Red vs Yellow was an either-or choice, not both. Yellow has river but more coastal squares for less long-term production, while Red gets a slower start but has more long-term potential. I considered it a wash between the two, but others may have different preferences. Blue is potentially a good spot if we decide to move our capital.

Hopefully we can get another city in on semi-decent terrain on the other side of the incense, otherwise our last city will have to hack itself out of the jungle. I don't think we want to do that as it would be too far from our capital anyway.

 

[Sirian]

UPDATE: I've discovered that the severe trade penalties of the new patch apply to difficulty level more than anything. Monarch games seem wholly or largely unaffected. Emperor games are getting the shaft.

On this basis, I would have to downgrade us from Charis's pronouncement of "Emperor-Capable" crew. Emperor has gotten a LOT harder now with the player effectively isolated as a diplomatic pariah now. The folks in RBD8 really have their work cut out for them, as do we here. I'm thinking that any more new games we start should back down to Monarch for a while, unless we find the crew rolling over RBD SG's 8 and 9 so badly, that Monarch loses its appeal.

The sad breakdown comes at the industrial age. The game is either too easy at that point, or too hard prior to that. There just doesn't seem to be any such thing as "a good challenge" that holds up through all stages of the game. (You might say that's what my Environmentalists variant idea was aiming at: hogtying the players more effectively in latter stages, to see if that is worth anything).

OK, news flash over. Now back to your regularly scheduled 5CC.


- Sirian

 

[Charis]

So far it's looking decent but not super -- our production might become an issue. Too many mountains, and they as a clump, and too few hills.

The yellow dot stood out as pretty nice, I like that spot and would have no problem founding there. I don't care for the red nearly as much. How about...

The spot 3 spots due south of the current settler position? ("Green dot" to give it a name, although no such dot exists )
It's got wheat (key! we're short on food++ resources), two hills, three mountains, and is coastal. Central to palace but no overlap.
Alas, you wouldn't want to do that one AND the blue square.

One other thought is the very southern tip - whale and cattle, and JUST no overlap with palace.

That west warrior is near unknown territory. If we get lucky and have a bonus resource there we're good, else our focus will be westernly. Up north, that's a pretty vast jungle. Founding a city up there would not stand up to the cultural pressure it would one day feel when surrounded.

Red and blue dots are good 'pairs', and yellow and green are good pairs. Yellow and blue are exclusive, red and green are exclusive. So... ack... we need more info (Not to mention knowledge of iron)

Or... do we need to see iron first? It can *only* be in hills and mountains, and those locations are quite sparse. Zedropolis covers the northern hills/mtns. Green dot covers all the southern iron spots, red dots covers a good chunk of them, and blue covers a good chunk. Either of those are close enough that if off-by-one space, we can build a colony and extend road one further out.

Good luck Jester,
Charis

EDIT in PS: Sirian, at first read of your earlier comments I had no idea what you were talking about. So I fired up a new emperor game. It was revolting. Disgusting. I don't know I would have been able to say what it was that gave a feeling of being cheated, but your comments all made sense now. Civ3 had gone from a pretense of each country out-for-itself to (again) you vs the world and everyone you met would be, from day 1, out to serve no other purpose than screw you over. In my mind, too, this is **not** a welcome or intelligent change. It merely makes MORE painful the part that doesn't need to be more painful, without addressing the real concern of... if you make it to modern era you win. It turns the game into more of a formula. For deity I've come to expect that, but creeping the 'formula win' nature down to Emperor is sad. After playing 95% of games in Monarch and now after rbd7 feeling confident of stepping out into Emperor, I'm not sure I want to. Still, these two emp games now started will be good indicators of if the new perceived pain turns out to be minor or a major "nuissance" factor.

It's like across-the-board phys resistance in D2X -- a simple solution that does not much more than increase the pain in playing, without addressing in a meaninful way how to 'increase challenge and fun'

 

[Zed-F]

Err, I don't see blue and yellow being mutually exclusive at all. In fact, if we can found a decent city in the west (unexplored but what we can see doesn't look too bad) I would say that's probably better than founding in the south near Tamaringrad, considering the fact that we will likely move our capital -- Zedropolis is too far away otherwise. Blue would be smack dab in the center of our empire; perfectly situated. Also, green loses too much production due to being (very) coastal. We don't really want that many coastal cities. In contrast, with rails for irrigation on plains we should have no problem grabbing all the mountains in Blue's radius.

Since nobody seems to like red we'll toss that as a possibility; IMO we should stick with Blue and Yellow.

 

[Sirian]

Yep, Yellow and Blue. (Let's all chant it now: Phoenix and New Bombay! Phoenix and New Bombay! What's that you say? They fixed that in the patch?? Eep! Uh... Yellow and Blue, We Love You! Yellow and Blue, Our cities true! Yellow and Blue, what more can I say? Yellow and Blue, let's found them today!)

Jester, you're up, kiddo.

 

[Iester]

Wow, I didn't know we actually had an order for this going.

I've got it, and I'll play 'er tonight.

Jester

 

[Iester]

"... so came the time of the third ruler, Jestrus Jestrovich Jestrovsky (known first as "Jester the Foolhardy", later as "the Great") and the founding of the port city of St. Jestersburg, or colloquially Jestrograd. A city under mountain, bordering on the coast; a favorite tourist destination..."

Yellow dot is now Jestrograd. The next settler is ready. Who's on deck?

Jester

 

[Jaffa Tamarin]

Charis up next. Will need a save file, though

 

[Iester]

There we go...

 

[Charis]

The cry rings through the ears of the incumbant "Yellow and Blue! Yellow
and Blue!" The incumbent had campaigned on a platform with Red and Green,
trying to be more primary, and yet... with Yellow founded, Blue is the
best choice and the pair will do swimmingly, I'm sure (The only problem
is... where to put the fifth and last city??? I see several ok choices, but
none really stellar. Iirc Cy's comments, input from others on this would
be good!)

3000 BC (0) - Looks like Tamaringrad is our best Colossus candidate.
With Burial about to land, let's pop a temple and rock on it.
I see spears being built, but on emp diff we really can't afford
expensive non-vet units -- better to build a barracks and have one
city crank out vet troops for the others. Warriors are ok non-vet,
they're more like entertainer-scouts

2950 BC (1) - Southern hut give maps, northern one by scout gives Settler
(yay!) I'm going to at least bring him back to the homeland and get some
quick turns before hand off.

The NW goody huts gives us Warrior Code. (Better than maps anyway!)

Persia. Why do we have to be next to Persia. Why are they ALREADY annoyed??
This does not bode well. Urgh nasty silly ugly new trade screws, Persia
won't consider trading Masonry or Iron Working, even though they have
nothing. Persia already knows where the iron is??? Uh oh!

2850 BC (3) - Charistroika is founded at... Blue dot!

2800 BC (4) - Crud, barbarian camp appears next to settler. I start running!

2750 BC (5) - Run Logan run!

2670 BC (7) - Whips the temple in Tamaringrad, now off to the races on
the Colossus.

2630 BC (8) - Zedropolis completes road to incense and happily starts to puff!

2590 BC (9) - Finally our warrior running North meets Logan running South.
He defeats the chasing barbarian and becomes 'regular'.

2550 BC (10) - All done except the settler has his move left.

Zedropolis is set to get whipped next turn (at 39 shields) for its temple,
unless you don't like whipping. Next up for him would likely be barracks
and five spearmen for the nation. The workers are trying to first get all
cities connected via roads, then mine some hills. Tamaringrad has its temple
and is ok for happy until size 3. Charistroika will likely need another warrior
right away to send down there. We're 10 turns from alphabet, heading for
literature and the Great Library.

Next city placement? One more oddball thought is... found it WAY up North,
at the relative choke point. But up a human wall and fortress there, and
claim those dyes Also claim the jungle as our own, and fight/kick out
anyone who lands on our area and settles! There are four squares at the
thinnest point. On the hill is good defense, but third grid, to the NE
of the mine-grassland, gets both dyes, a hill in radius, is coastal, but
lots of non-water squares. That's the non-traditional approach, and would
almost require the FP up there for the city to be productive long term.
Too bad can't spare/get enough units up there to blockade it now.

A second semi-choke placement is up on the jungle river on/near the fresh
water lake. Would take a lot of worker effort but could be made nice, and
has a mountain gold square. This is where the settler is now (on his way
down from his birth hut way up north). The current spot (for more production,
less coast), one to the right (coastal) or one SW (on river and also lake)
or two SW (coastal, still has river in radius).

Then of course are the much more traditional placements to get them as
close as possible to the palace.

Thoughts?

Good luck Cy,
Charis

 

[Iester]

... but we can't actually build a forbidden palace, can we? Don't you need a certain number of cities, which we're way under?

Just checked. This is a standard map, right? So we need eight cities to build one, and we're only ever going to hit 5, unless we cheat.

 

[Sirian]

Jester's right. Thus, I would vote for close to the palace.

 

[Zed-F]

With only 5 cities, I don't think we want to be entertaining the thought of being aggressive defending that jungle. Certainly the AI empires will be able to out-produce us militarily. Look how tense things were in RBD4 when we were jammed in between Babylon and India, and we had at least double the number of cities we will have in this game, and with a smaller map! Better to keep our borders small and try to keep a low profile, IMO.

Looks to me like our best spot for our last city is at new Red dot, located on the following map. No overlap with existing cities, and only 6 coastal squares. Bad news: no hills/mountains in range. We could move a couple squares SE to new Yellow dot to get a mountain and only 4 coastal squares but then we'd overlap Charistroika by its hills.

 

[Sirian]

I agree with the red, as according to Zed. We secure all that incense, improve our defense, it just makes more sense, because that jungle's too dense! We get a coastal city with good lands, a horsie, and a nice tight border. With some luck, we might even expand our borders far enough to prevent any rabid AI settlers plopping down in the gap there.

 

[Charis]

Yes, an obvious brain spasm leading to the FP thought with this few cities. Boo. If it weren't for that I still like the jungle city. As it stands now, the AI *will* be settling cities all around us. We won't have a "front", we'll have a "circle" that will be tough to defend. This thinking is colored by the fact that in my similar CC games, lack of resources with tiny # of cities was a big factor, and having a choke point let me have literally 1/2 the military I would have otherwise needed.

But with FP requiring 8, nope, he's just too non-productive and isolated up there.

Please don't overlap with Charistroika -- it's rough enough I had to take the blue of the yellow and blue when my thoughts were orange and green :crazyeyes: The new-red is a better choice.

I don't know WHEN it will come, but it will come, Persia WILL come a callin' someday with stacks of immortals so large it will sicken our delicate russian sensibilities. We're taking some liberties here in military to get a strong start with workers, a quick temple or two and a wonder, but if we delay too long getting a barracks city and at least ten spears, we're inviting immortal doom. (Especially since we'll soon have a second city going for a wonder after literature arrives)

Again, Emperor diff non-trading is going to be painful. In other days or diffs, trading 2-3 techs and giving good prices turns Xerxes from an assailant-to-be to a decently polite person for a good while (til he runs out of expansion land)

Charis

 

[Jaffa Tamarin]

Red dot looks good to me

We do look to have quite a buffer zone between us and Persia at the moment (is most of that peninsula jungle?) If we don't give him our map (please don't) he's not going to even think of moving his immortals against us until he's had a scouting party down in our little corner. So I don't think we need to worry about him with any degree of urgency, at least until he's got a scouting party or two wandering about our land.

What cost is it to move the capital to Charistroika? Does the cost of a palace-move depend solely on number of cities, or will it go up if we wait?

--
Jaffa

 

[Sirian]

Solely number of cities. Every turn delayed, however, means shields and commerce lost to some corruption at our three distant cities. Then again, there is cost to pausing to build the new palace, so when is the best time? I have no idea. I've never actually moved my capital, at least not since civ1!

- Sirian