RL1 - Readylander's Training Day Game

[MingTheMerciles]

Pre turn
Changed Iron Bluffs to warrior. It's going to grow a little slower, so don't want to use it for population depleting units.

Changed Salamanca to worker from Settler. It would've taken forever to complete the Settler sitting at size 1.

1790 - The Scout scouted south. Worker set to mining. I realized next turn you intended him to be there to finish the road to iron bluffs. Shielded grasslands are very hard for me to pass over though....

1750 - Settler moving North. Warrior currently to the south moves North to fortify Munith. I don't like having all these uncovered cities with barbarians out there. Plus if the city grows again, which it's set to due in a few turns, we'll have to raise the lux rate to keep it out of disorder.

1725 - Writing discovered. Literature started. Worker set to mine near Niagara Falls.

1700 - Worker complete in Salamanca, sent west to help with the road to iron bluffs. Warrior started.

1675 - scouting, Embassy established in Rome

1650 - Grand River founded. Given the Roman push, I really didn't want to leave them all those lovely shielded grasslands. It still leaves the orange dot for settling.

Barracks complete in Munith, Spearman started

1625 - Warrior complete in Iron Bluff, temple started, feel free to veto this, a granary would probably be better in this spot, but the temple was cheaper to build.

Science rate dropped to 70%, move from -1 to +4 gold per turn.

1600 - Salamanca completes warrior, temple started. If we want this to be a Settler factory, this can be vetoed in favor of a granary. If we'd rather use it as a production city, leave the temple as we'll need high population there.

1575 & 1550 Warriors & Spearman move to cover all open cities. Worker begins road from Niagara falls to Grand River


In general, I think we're OK. I think it's going to be a tough call how to proceed from here, expansion or military buildup. If you'll notice in the picture, the Romans are close and they have iron, I suspect if we don't keep growing the military, good ol' Caesar will be sending hoardes of legions our way. Actually, I think that's going to happen no matter the case, so we should prepare for it. With the massive Jungle to our south, I think we don't need to worry about the Aztecs as much, famous last words.

file
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads/RL1-1550BC.zip

screenshot

 

[Readylander]

I probably won't get my comments posted for awhile due to Mother's Day obligations.

Ziggy if you get a chance to take your turn before my comments go ahead. I am hoping to get my comments posted by 11PM my time.

We should create a new dot map before establishing any more cities. Do one or both of you want to give it a try?

We are still looking for another player. If your interested let us know and you can follow Ziggy.

 

[Ziggy]

Got it..but i wont be playing for a few hours...so Readylander..if u post yer comments first...i'll probly see them...if not..oh well

Glad to see this game going again!

 

[Ziggy]

preturn (1550 BC)
swap iron bluff worker to the iron...reducing temple to 14 turns at expense of slowing growth to 14 as well.expansion gets us way better tiles
swap grand river from warrior to temple for locking our roman border faster
swap Salmanaca back to settlers...due in 5 will grow to size 4 in 4
up science rate to 100% ...now learning literature in 8 turns but running -1 gpt...sell pottery to the backwards romans for 45 gold giving us 81...finally hit enter

1525BC (1) workers start last leg of road to iron bluffs

1500bc (2) our southern scout discovers that the green border he is walking along is light green not dark green and discovers the GREEKS! and as well we meet an Egyptian warrior

the Greeks are on par with the Aztecs...they lack writing horse riding and mathmatics...but are willing to tell us of the Americans for a mere 35 gold

The egyptians are broke and again have the same techs.not surprising

The Americans again have the same lack of techs...but Abe agrees to sell one of his workers into Iroquois slavery for the princely sum of 26 gold

None of these guys know the Romans...and i dont tell them ....yet
the new american worker is sent north to connect up the horses which should be done about the time Niagra falls expands to reach them

between turns.the aztecs DEMAND contact with rome!...i tell em i have no idea who they mean and they go away...then the romans move a warrior right next to grand river...do i ask him to leave?..hmmm

1475BC (3) Niagra falls completes temple...starts a spearman (front lines and all)
i nudge science down to 80%...adding a turn back to literature but now gaining us 2 per turn (we were losing 2 per turn with the new temple)
worker by niagra falls finishes road segment to grand river..i move him to connect horses.will divert american slave to finish road to grand river instead.we NEED those horses asap i think
i decide to hope the roman warrior is on his way home since the city is only defended by a warrior...rome is polite so with my fingers crossed i hit enter

1450BC (4) roman warrior walks on by...
salmanaca finishes settler.starts another
munith produces spearman.starts temple
settler and spearman head north to niagra falls.plan to check SE of it to see if i can find a good spot.looks nice over there plus will continue to seal off Rome from our south
southern workers finish road to iron bluff.one moves to connect iron.other to improve future spots for the city

1425BC (5) barbarian warrior spotted heading for niagra falls
scouting spearman moves to defend worker
other worker starts to road to grand river
settler continues north
southern scout finds egyptian lands to the sw of greece

1400BC (6) Another barb warrior appears behind first one! the spearman digs a trench and hurls obscenities from across the river
Grand river grows to size 2...i swap workers so the temple comes online in 10 turns at the expense of slowing the growth a bit

1375BC (7) one barbarian warrior flings itself at the walls of niagra falls to no avail
spearman and worker move to connect horses...and the borders expand to bring them into radius
our southern scout tries to sneak over a mountain in aztec lands.plan to claim "maneuvers"

1350BC (8) Cleo calls us up and we do indeed claim Maneuvers...but while talking to her i notice she only lacks Mathmatics as a tech now..grr..hope she hasnt traded around yet.everyone still needed horseriding and writing at end of my last turn
other barbarian dies at our feet (no promotions )
We discover Literature!...set course for Polytheism (on way to Monarchy)...but at 17 turns at break even this can be changed)
Send some smoke signals and sure enough...EVERYONE (except rome of course) managed to acquire the 2 techs..ack!

1325BC (9) spearman discovers incense but still not hut
settler moves to into that area.im thinking on the river claiming the wheat and fish..or one over to also claim the incense

1300BC (10) spearman spys a freshwater lake by the incense...hmm.settler considers replanning...not my choice lol

notes...there is a barb camp somewhere where the spearman is searching...keep an eye out...its about to go postal on us i think
the roman warriors are just scouting i think...havent seen any settlers yet...you have another settler due in 2 turns...suggest somewhere up in that area...we need a dot map! (dont look at me)

the southern people will pay us BIG bucks for contact with rome...we must use this to our advantage and choose our time wisely...ditto with our techs...we really had no need for $ yet so i didnt really bother...annoyed that i let the one trade sneak by me though

 

[Ziggy]

Readylander <---- just completed his last round for this game, will now offer advice only
MingTheMerciles <---- on deck
Ziggy
Slave ? \_______up
Open ? /

 

[MingTheMerciles]

Nice Job.

Careful with those Roman scouts if they're heading past us. I've had a couple of games where I tried to isolate an enemy like this only to have them get a scout past me, make contact with the rest of the world and get caught up in techs instantly. Quite annoying when I could've sold that contact off for big $$.

 

[Readylander]

Sorry guys. I lost power yesterday afternoon and didn't get it back until sometime last night. I will get to work on my comments shortly.

 

[Readylander]

Ming,

Hopefully you have read the entire thread by now. Please realize that my comments are intended to be educational, this is a training game after all. I realize that there are many approaches to playing the game and mine is not necessarily the best as can be noted by some of Ziggy's and my discussions.

Salamanca was only size 1 but has very high growth due to the irrigated floodplain. It would have grown to size three just before the settler was completed. I feel that getting some more cities established to create a solid border against Roman expansion is a high priority. Plus we have some good sites near our capital that have yet to be founded so settlers are a high priority in my eyes right now. The worker produced in Salamanca could have been produced in Iron Bluff at about the same time. I know Iron Bluff is slow growing but after it produced the worker it could then have started building into a productive city.

As to the research choice. To me there are two reasons to research Literature early:
The Great Library - This is my usual reason for getting Literature as early as possible. But as noted, we have a significant tech lead with our known civs. The Great Library therefore will not be a target of ours at this point.
Libraries - Again, we have a significant tech lead. And I think that we are going to want to take out the Romans as soon as possible. For these two reasons I don't think we want to expend shields towards libraries at this point.

Not sure why we established an embassy with Rome. The two benefits of embassies at this point, RoP and military alliances, I don't think we will want with Rome considering we will probably go to war with them soon. Not a big deal but the money spent probably could be put to better uses.

The site of Grand River does give more shielded grasslands but it leaves more tiles between it and Munith that will not be within the city radius of our existing city plan. The plain with the ivory, especially, is a tile that should be somehow worked. We'll get a new dot map and make sure that those tiles are worked.

There is a mined plain outside Niagara Falls with no road. I almost always first build a road on any tile that I am improving. This helps with movement of the worker as well as movement of troops and settlers. It also helps with income as it adds a gold to the city's production. I also irrigate plains early in the game to help with growth. Niagara 's growth is now quite slow as it is only producing one extra food per turn, we should get some more irrigated plains with roads around there to help out. I also try to first improve tiles with a river border due to the extra gold that a tile on a river produces. The worker outside Niagara Falls is currently improving a non-river tile but could have improved a tile that was on the river (one movement with 9 key on numeric pad from its current location) that would have required the same number of tiles for a road to get to Grand River.

There are borders of an as yet unmet civ to our southwest, this is one of those events that are worthy of note in your writeup. The borders are green and maybe were confused with the Aztecs. The world map in the lower left corner of the screen helps here as the colors are easier to differentiate. I suggest seeking communication with this civ as it will reduce our research time for techs that they have that we don't. We also may be able to trade tech with this civ. Or we might be able to trade for communications with other civs.

Speaking of trading with other civs - did you try to do any trading? I noted that the Aztecs have some communications that they can offer to us. I would suggest that we keep communication with the Romans to ourselves. Better to keep them isolated if we are going to war with them. This will keep them further behind us in tech and we won't have to worry about our reputation with other civs if no one else knows the Romans. But communications with other civs may help us in our research times.

Nothing noted above is big. But as you play more difficult levels every little thing helps. Like I said, these are suggestions that are intended to be educational and by no means do I think my way is the only way.

I agree with your summary. I think a combination of expansion and military buildup are the way to go so that we can prepare for a war with the Romans.

I will comment on Ziggy's turns and then do a new dot map and general advice on where I think we should go from here.

 

[Readylander]

Ziggy,

Another good round.

Not sure why you think you screwed up the tech trading. How were you to know that they were going to be ready to trade. I check the trade screens often but not every turn.

Good call on buying the slave worker from the Americans. I like workers who work for free. One word of caution here. I read something awhile ago regarding factors that hurt your relations with other civs. One of those factors is having slave workers of the other civ's nationality. I remember wondering at the time if this applied to purchased workers or just captured workers, this was not clear. I can't remember who wrote what I read but I trusted it, maybe someone from Firaxis? Let's use this game to try to see if this purchased worker seems to hurt our relations with America.

I think we should keep communications with Rome to ourselves. This will keep them behind us in tech. And it will not hurt our reputation with other civs when we go to war with Rome. We can also milk Rome for some of their gold by selling them some non-military techs. Literature comes to mind as a good one. They will probably pay us a decent price as it has a wonder available. Plus they might waste some of their production on the Great Library and libraries while we build military units to take them out. Masonry is maybe better, it is a cheaper tech to research, but it still could get them to waste production on the Pyramids and granaries while we build a military force. Plus we might be able to capture some granaries whereas libraries are not capturable.

I will work on a dot map and general advice. But I probably won't get them done until late tonight. In the meantime I would like to hear both of your thoughts on whether we should be preparing for a war with the Romans. My general thoughts are that we should get 4 or 5 more cities established while beginning to build our military with the intention of taking out the Romans.

We are still looking for another player. If your interested let us know.

 

[MingTheMerciles]

Readylander,

Thanks for the comments, and no worries about the criticism, it's actually much appreciated, and there's no way I'd take offense over any game. So, while this is all going to sound defensive, I'm really not intending it to be.

You make some valid points which indicate that I'm just not good with the details, which is true in most everything I do.

You also corrected some incorrect notions I had about the game, especially with irrigation in Despotism. I had the belief that irrigation would only work on Flood Plains in Despotism. I've since clarified the rule for myself. (It's no wonder I've been having trouble with early expansion in many games, sheesh)

About the embassy with Rome, this may have been due to my early morning playing time. Here's my thought, feel free to say this is a load of hoo ha. I'm under the impression that establishing an embassy also upgrades the attitude about another civ towards our civ. It was my intention that the embassy, might buy us a little extra time before Rome starts an offensive against us. Upon retrospect, they're going to start that as soon as they run out of space no matter the case. At least it was cheap.

The Literature choice may have also been early morning playing time problems. IIRC, the choices that were available were Polytheism, Literature, Philosophy, and one that I'm forgetting. None would have been helpful in a war with Rome, and Polytheism & Philosophy were twice as expensive. Normally in this situation, I opt for the cheapest tech. To be honest though, techs are a definite weakpoint for me, I normally play "follow the leader", buying techs on the cheap while keeping research minimal.

Finally, about the mined plain w/ no road. My normal priority is to establish the road network first, set up each city with one or two improvements, mines or irrigation, then go back and add extraneous roads and other improvements. I think it was more important to get the road out to grand rivers than to create roads on both the ivory tile and the new mined tile, especially since the gold would likely have been lost to corruption.

Again, thanks for the help, I look forward to more pointers, this is exactly the kind of stuff I was trying to get out of this game.

 

[Ziggy]

There are borders of an as yet unmet civ to our southwest, this is one of those events that are worthy of note in your writeup. The borders are green and maybe were confused with the Aztecs.

Prophetic statement that

Ziggy,

Another good round.

Not sure why you think you screwed up the tech trading. How were you to know that they were going to be ready to trade. I check the trade screens often but not every turn

Thats just the point..i was checking them every turn..both for more workers and for the techs...I dont know why but for some reason i figured i would have a turn where they had the techs but hadn't traded them yet...apparantly this ain't so

Good call on buying the slave worker from the Americans. I like workers who work for free. One word of caution here. I read something awhile ago regarding factors that hurt your relations with other civs. One of those factors is having slave workers of the other civ's nationality. I remember wondering at the time if this applied to purchased workers or just captured workers, this was not clear. I can't remember who wrote what I read but I trusted it, maybe someone from Firaxis? Let's use this game to try to see if this purchased worker seems to hurt our relations with America.

Yeah i have seen this discussion in one of the other threads...for what its worth...in my GOTM i have 6! (purchased) persian workers and they love me (course they in return have my wife, my sister, my first born child and anything else my good friend Xerxes asks for so that may be skewing it a bit

I think we should keep communications with Rome to ourselves. This will keep them behind us in tech. And it will not hurt our reputation with other civs when we go to war with Rome.

I agree 100%.divide and conquer and all that...one question though..does it really not screw up your rep if you do naughty things to a civ noone has met?.has this been tested?

We can also milk Rome for some of their gold by selling them some non-military techs. Literature comes to mind as a good one. They will probably pay us a decent price as it has a wonder available. Plus they might waste some of their production on the Great Library and libraries while we build military units to take them out. Masonry is maybe better, it is a cheaper tech to research, but it still could get them to waste production on the Pyramids and granaries while we build a military force.

Actually..we want the pyramids at some point im guessing..this is looking more and more like a pangea map..unless of course we want to allow Ceasar to build them FOR us

Plus we might be able to capture some granaries whereas libraries are not capturable.

Really?..more info please..what can and can't you capture?.never seen anything on this topic

I will work on a dot map and general advice. But I probably won't get them done until late tonight. In the meantime I would like to hear both of your thoughts on whether we should be preparing for a war with the Romans. My general thoughts are that we should get 4 or 5 more cities established while beginning to build our military with the intention of taking out the Romans

i say to hold off on the actual war for a bit..A) we are very close to getting either monarchy or republic (depending on which way we want to go) B) we will have horses on line as soon as the next person hits enter , whioch means C) we will have mounted warriors very soon after that...and the first combat we win with those will set off our golden age...we should definately have things set up to take advantage of that BEFORE we do anything rash . I agree that we need more citys for sure..our core for starters and finishing off the roman/iroquois border...plus we may want to seal the south off if its possible (no map in front of me)...another scout sent north might be a plan too.we have no map of roman lands..not even sure if they have iron for their legions?

 

[Readylander]

Originally posted by MingTheMerciles
Readylander,

Thanks for the comments, and no worries about the criticism, it's actually much appreciated, and there's no way I'd take offense over any game. So, while this is all going to sound defensive, I'm really not intending it to be.

Glad to hear you are looking to learn. That is one of the things I really like about Civ3, I am always learning. And no you don't sound defensive.

You also corrected some incorrect notions I had about the game, especially with irrigation in Despotism. I had the belief that irrigation would only work on Flood Plains in Despotism. I've since clarified the rule for myself. (It's no wonder I've been having trouble with early expansion in many games, sheesh)

Have you read:

http://realmsbeyond.net/civ/mmguide.html

Section II specifically addresses terrain improvements under depotism. I refer to it sometimes late at night when I just can't remember the rules

About the embassy with Rome, this may have been due to my early morning playing time. Here's my thought, feel free to say this is a load of hoo ha. I'm under the impression that establishing an embassy also upgrades the attitude about another civ towards our civ. It was my intention that the embassy, might buy us a little extra time before Rome starts an offensive against us. Upon retrospect, they're going to start that as soon as they run out of space no matter the case. At least it was cheap.

I believe you are correct regarding the attitude improvement and it may just buy us the time we need to get our military built.

The Literature choice may have also been early morning playing time problems. IIRC, the choices that were available were Polytheism, Literature, Philosophy, and one that I'm forgetting. None would have been helpful in a war with Rome, and Polytheism & Philosophy were twice as expensive. Normally in this situation, I opt for the cheapest tech. To be honest though, techs are a definite weakpoint for me, I normally play "follow the leader", buying techs on the cheap while keeping research minimal.

I use the same technique in many cases, going for the cheapest. But in this case I had thought a more advanced government type might be worth the extra time early. Not a big deal, we'll get there.

Finally, about the mined plain w/ no road. My normal priority is to establish the road network first, set up each city with one or two improvements, mines or irrigation, then go back and add extraneous roads and other improvements. I think it was more important to get the road out to grand rivers than to create roads on both the ivory tile and the new mined tile, especially since the gold would likely have been lost to corruption.

I do the same, road network, then the couple most important tiles improved, then on to the next city. But I have found that building a road first on almost all improved tiles is advantageous for two reasons: It gives you better mobility. This can especially be important if your worker is more than one tile from a city and there are barbs in the area. Without a road you worker can only move one tile the first move and a horse barb may get it. The other reason is one turn of worker time is spent moving off the tile and then another turn is used when you move back to the tile to build the road. If the road had been built the first time one of those turns would have been saved. Not a big deal, but again, all the little things add up over time.

Again, thanks for the help, I look forward to more pointers, this is exactly the kind of stuff I was trying to get out of this game.

Thank you for the great attitude. I am sure we will all learn from this game.

 

[Readylander]

Originally posted by Ziggy


Thats just the point..i was checking them every turn..both for more workers and for the techs...I dont know why but for some reason i figured i would have a turn where they had the techs but hadn't traded them yet...apparantly this ain't so

I think this is one of those things that sometimes they do it right away.

Yeah i have seen this discussion in one of the other threads...for what its worth...in my GOTM i have 6! (purchased) persian workers and they love me (course they in return have my wife, my sister, my first born child and anything else my good friend Xerxes asks for so that may be skewing it a bit

Other factors probably usually make this impossible to determine. Maybe if we pay attention closely early in the game we will be able to see something.

I agree 100%.divide and conquer and all that...one question though..does it really not screw up your rep if you do naughty things to a civ noone has met?.has this been tested?

I don't know if this has been tested. I have had this idea in my head for so long that I have no clue as to where it came from. Maybe someone reading this can help us clarify this issue?

Actually..we want the pyramids at some point im guessing..this is looking more and more like a pangea map..unless of course we want to allow Ceasar to build them FOR us

As we were beginning to explore the territory I thought we were on a fairly small island. It is now looking like it is a good sized piece of land. So I agree that the Pyramids would be nice. I don't know if we want to build them ourselves or try to capture them. This is something we should decide fairly soon.

Really?..more info please..what can and can't you capture?.never seen anything on this topic

You can't capture any improvements with cultural points, except for great wonders and then you don't earn any culture for the captured wonder.

 

[Readylander]

I am not sold on this dotmap, I threw it together quick and there are some areas that I am not real happy with.

The cities are listed in the general order that I think we should found them.

Red - This site really was determined by dark blue dot. Dark blue is closer to the capital and therefore will have less corruption and waste. I wanted that city to have some growth potential so I placed it to get the fish and access to one of the flood plains on the red dot side of the bay. Red dot then was placed to minimize overlap with dark blue and Niagara Falls, to have access to the incense and to maximize the border lock against the Romans. It will have access to a flood plain and a wheated plain so it will have some decent early growth potential.

Pink - This will seal the border with the Romans. Orange would do this as well but that is getting far enough from the capital that it will have very little production under depotism. Pink will do the trick and will still have some production ability.

Yellow - This city hasn't moved from the first dot map. It is close enough to the capital that it will have little corruption/waste but with so many water tiles it won't be a big shield producer.

Brown - This is in the jungle but it will bring us another luxury, spices.

Light blue - Has some decent growth/production potential.

Gray - Another jungle city but it ties up some iron and horses and due to its proximity to the capital it will have decent production once the jungles are cleared.

Dark blue - see Red above.

Green - This one is going to be a real slow grower.



Thoughts? I am especially interested in Red dot placement ideas as that city will be founded in the next set of turns and it is one that I am not real happy with on my map.

 

[Readylander]

We still need one more player. Anyone new to these games interested? Let us know.

 

[Ridgelake]

Ready,

I would be interested in joining your SG. With no posts in about 2 weeks, however, I am not sure if this one will continue.

A bit about me, I have been lurking (and reading and learning) on these boards for about a month, roughly the time that I bought the game. I have started my own Regent games, but have not taken one into the middle ages yet.

If you are interested in continuing this game, let me know.