SGOTM 14 - Ivan

[eldar]

Bad news: the PC I've been using to play Civ appears to have died.
Good news: there's my wife's MacBook (if she can find her Civ3 Complete disc...) or at a stretch my father-in-law's laptop. However I'd rather not use that, and my wife would rather use her MacBook.

This leaves me waiting for my own PC, which is currently sitting in a warehouse in New Jersey waiting to be put on a truck and delivered to me.

I should be okay by the time my next set comes round, just warning everyone.

[Edit] Apparently all it needed was a damned good dusting....

 

[nerovats]

War is very easy thus far. I'd buy Emerita rax's on pre-turn, Sagres next trun. Get units asap, 15 warriors is enough, connect iron and upgrade. Next city between Emerita and Oporto, on the border. Then rest of red dots. I'd wait our 5 turns of MA then make peace (they will pay worker and gold now). Then when we have our 15 swords attack Otto's first. Raze and replace as our culture is non existent.

 

[DWetzel]

If we're mainly gathering territory, we could move that dot NE (S of Iznik), though settling would have to wait until after Iznik was razed.

I don't know that I like the idea of packing towns in there--would think those settlers could be better used another way.

 

[eldar]

If we're planning on using connect/disconnect, we don't want to build a city directly on top of the Iron.

 

[I. Larkin]

Looked at Save. Where babylons settlers go? may be ask them remove?
And go NE ourself? It may be good spot near Horses.
We may reduse lux and use 4-6 fpt scheme at NC2.
Better not delay with Iron connection. We most probably will have cash for 6-7 warriors to upgrade.
NC1 Build Warrior, but forest will go there! Change to Horse or Archer.
Othniel up.
Irrigate more, we have some hills...

 

[ignas]

There's no rush to have barracks in Emerita and Sagres:1)these towns produce just 2 spt so we won't get high warrior numbers very fast from them; 2)we need to save some cash for upgrade.Currently we earn ~40 gpt so it's not even upgrade warrior to sword a turn.
We produce warrior a turn so in 12 or so turns we can connect iron and upgrade. 12 swords +2 archers currently we have should be enough for Otto's.

If we're mainly gathering territory, we could move that dot NE (S of Iznik), though settling would have to wait until after Iznik was razed.

I don't know that I like the idea of packing towns in there--would think those settlers could be better used another way.

We are going for Domination but it doesn't mean we should space very loosely in our core. We need to have strong core and in order to get it we should exploit rivers/lakes (no need for aqueduct=more pop, commerce), so it means tighter spacing.
We have 2 good settler factories so getting settlers is not a problem.
Also towns outside core (corrupted towns) will produce settlers and workers all the time.

 

[I. Larkin]

cash-rush settler in Lisbon for 88 gold as it will grow to size 7 next turn;
set 'emphasize production' in governors screen;

You could use short rush via spear.

Arab spear pillages horses;

How it happend? You had enough warriors to build continues screen...

How about founding few towns tightly near rivers or lakes? These won't need aqueducts to grow past 7 so more commerce, pop and unit support.

It is good idea. Also, we have to irrigate more to get Core Cities size 7.
But currently I see only 2 potential sites with fresh water: 2 South from NC1 and 3 NE from Emertia. And Inzik...

Note, that any new City in inner core will increase cooruption in ALL outer Cities!

Curraghs far North are useless as barbarians kill it. Better combine Lisbon or NC2.

South Korea is too close to South pole. Better return tu central location: big black area.

 

[DWetzel]

I don't disagree with that, Ignas, but either way a town there is not going to be on the lake. Where the red dot currently is, it gets one BG (if taken from Lisbon), one forest, and two hills (one of which Oporto could work in theory). Moving it out brings three new hills into the radius, saves the forest for a chop, and doesn't seem to cause any other problems (of course, we don't know what land lies to the northeast, but I'm guessing it's cold and forested). Either way it won't be a great town right away, but it could end up as a powerhouse with a few irrigated grasslands. Plus, of course, it eats up a few more squares.

How does that town placement affect the rank corruption of the other towns (e.g. Oporto)? Should we be looking to build it farther out to preserve rank corruption in those other towns, or are we screwed either way?

I haven't looked at the save--is the forest chop for NC1 coming this turn? Assuming yes, I'd rather see a horse than an archer. If not, then we could temporarily set it to a wonder. I'm guessing from Ivan's comment that it is though.

Really, until we are ready to start a war with Ottos, I don't see the need for any more settlers. Maybe one, but after that workers. We have a lot of land that needs developing.

We should hook up our other ivory at some point. We're not ready to yet, obviously, but when the time comes we'll want to be able to trade that. Right now we can't spare the worker turns though, I suppose.

Eldar makes a good point about not settling that town on the iron. We could perhaps push that 1SE.

 

[ignas]

cash-rush settler in Lisbon for 88 gold as it will grow to size 7 next turn;
set 'emphasize production' in governors screen;

You could use short rush via spear.

Lisbon could have had just 7 shields without delaying growth.

Arab spear pillages horses;

How it happend? You had enough warriors to build continues screen...

Both Arab spears approached Guimaraes so I was forced to move 2 units into the town in case Arabs attack. Also warriors covered wheat, and 2 bgs. Next turn one of spears stepped on a horse tile and I wasn't in a mood to suicide warriors on that spear (in case RNG is not on our side).

Switch NC1 to palace and chop will go to Sagres. Next turn switch back NC1 to archer. We will lose nothing

Black dots would increase corruption in Oporto

 

[I. Larkin]

Switch NC1 to palace and chop will go to Sagres. Next turn switch back NC1 to archer. We will lose nothing

But we losee something if swich back to warrior. May be let it go, but swicht to Horses?

Black dots would increase commerce in Oporto

Opposite, it will increase Corruption. Better capture Iznik. But now we may go behind Iznik. I think we will come before than Babylonians settle there.

 

[I. Larkin]

How does that town placement affect the rank corruption of the other towns (e.g. Oporto)? Should we be looking to build it farther out to preserve rank corruption in those other towns, or are we screwed either way?

If we settle at the same distance (ring 1) or far away then Opporto it will not affect corruption in ring 1 Cities.

City at East is combat settler. Looks that Mekka have contact with pink border. better to focus on it.

Really, until we are ready to start a war with Ottos, I don't see the need for any more settlers. Maybe one, but after that workers. We have a lot of land that needs developing.

I antcipated this. But Lisbon will loose too many schields if build workers. We may use scheme Settler>Catapult>Worker>Settler (when 8spt will be ready).
Othniel may make XLC file for that.

Lisbon could have had just 7 shields without delaying growth.

It was possible to make on Krabs 6 fpt and then 8 spt with 4 fpt, but don't mind...

I'd wait our 5 turns of MA then make peace (they will pay worker and gold now). Then when we have our 15 swords attack Otto's first. Raze and replace as our culture is non existent.

Upgrade costs 60, so to upgrade 15 we need 900. We will not have this money soon.
Let's connect earlier and start with 7-8 Veteran swords, say.

 

[Othniel]

Ok, I'm up next. I'm doing some catch-up reading on this thread and will probably have a few more questions a little later on.

Initially:
1) I've attached my own version of a dotmap. I leaning toward ICSing the area to the southwest of NC1-Guimaries. We can fit a bunch of cities on fresh water there. None of my dots will increase the rank corruption in the first ring. I like the ICS scheme because I don't anticipate getting any better cities in that area if we space them out further. We also have a worse distance corruption modifier because we are Monarch, not Republic, so we are not going to get too big of a low-corrupt core no matter what.

For the dot near Iznik, I'm a little undecided. Capturing Iznik is ok, the flip risk shouldn't be high, and the placement isn't terrible. But if we settle my red dot and then another city 2NE of that (1NE of current Iznik spot) we can fit two more decent cities on that lake. Again, further out north of that will be too corrupt to matter anyway, and the land sucks. So I favor razing Iznik and settling the two new dots.

Oh, and placing the city 1SE of Iznik won't increase rank corruption in Oporto. So I don't think we should settle it any closer to Lisbon than that.

2) I'm not so sure about stopping settler builds in Lisbon. If we follow the idea of ICS south of NC1, we still have a number of spots to settle. Plus having 1-2 settlers ready to march with our army is a good thing. We will be doing razing and replacing, so we need an initial supply of settlers.

We can have all new cities build a worker first, that should help the workforce. By the way, why are we mining a tile near Lisbon? Unless we run a combo factory, I was under the impression we could hold off mining those tiles.

3) Right now we have enough cash to upgrade 6 warriors. I think we should connect Iron soon and start warring.

 

[I. Larkin]

Ok, I'm up next. I'm doing some catch-up reading on this thread and will probably have a few more questions a little later on.

Initially:
1) I've attached my own version of a dotmap. I leaning toward ICSing the area to the southwest of NC1-Guimaries. We can fit a bunch of cities on fresh water there. None of my dots will increase the rank corruption in the first ring. I like the ICS scheme because I don't anticipate getting any better cities in that area if we space them out further. We also have a worse distance corruption modifier because we are Monarch, not Republic, so we are not going to get too big of a low-corrupt core no matter what.

For the dot near Iznik, I'm a little undecided. Capturing Iznik is ok, the flip risk shouldn't be high, and the placement isn't terrible. But if we settle my red dot and then another city 2NE of that (1NE of current Iznik spot) we can fit two more decent cities on that lake. Again, further out north of that will be too corrupt to matter anyway, and the land sucks. So I favor razing Iznik and settling the two new dots.

Oh, and placing the city 1SE of Iznik won't increase rank corruption in Oporto. So I don't think we should settle it any closer to Lisbon than that.

2) I'm not so sure about stopping settler builds in Lisbon. If we follow the idea of ICS south of NC1, we still have a number of spots to settle. Plus having 1-2 settlers ready to march with our army is a good thing. We will be doing razing and replacing, so we need an initial supply of settlers.

We can have all new cities build a worker first, that should help the workforce. By the way, why are we mining a tile near Lisbon? Unless we run a combo factory, I was under the impression we could hold off mining those tiles.

3) Right now we have enough cash to upgrade 6 warriors. I think we should connect Iron soon and start warring.

I will disconnect soon, but I think before you play better to discuss dot map better.

1) Monarchy has no distance corruption penalty, only Rank penalty. The more City you put the more Rank will be. We should pick best possible places like coast near fresh water and let grow cities to size 7+. It is difficult to grow at ICS.
2) For a while I'd like to pump settler from Lisbon, but, use it as Combo with Workers.
For effective war at our continent we need roads. Now even communication in the centre is very difficult. Road second Ivory for faster communication.
Workers should go only from Cities with Granaries. It takes 2 turns vs 10 turn to recover. Also better to have cities approximately the same size.
3) Agree with that. But it take time to make road. MCMg, irrigate...
4) we need Curragh from Lagos to meet Celts and behind.

 

[Othniel]

I can't look at the save at the moment, so my comments are based on screenies only.

Curraghs far North are useless as barbarians kill it. Better combine Lisbon or NC2.

South Korea is too close to South pole. Better return tu central location: big black area.

Ivan, I don't totally follow what you're saying here, especially about combining Lisbon and NC2. You want to make curraghs in settler factory cities?

As far as curragh exploration goes, agreed on going after the big black area. But we have a curragh up in Emerita that looks like it has to go NE along the map edge to go anywhere. There are barb galleys blocking the way back west.

City at East is combat settler. Looks that Mekka have contact with pink border. better to focus on it

Ok on the combat settler. What do you mean about contact with pink border?


In other news...

We seem to have a lot of contacts oversees. Should we try to fit in a couple of embassies into our cash spending plan and get some MA/WH fun going? Of course we should be careful not to dogpile a weak civ and get them eliminated.

Do the Ottos have Iron? We can check even if we lack trade route.

Oh, and booting the Babs might be a good idea. If we are successful on getting a DoW, should we sign in Arabs against them. Also, should we sign in Arabs against Ottos?

 

[Othniel]

I will disconnect soon, but I think before you play better to discuss dot map better.

Yeah, I probably won't play until tomorrow evening so we have time to plan.

1) Monarchy has no distance corruption penalty, only Rank penalty. The more City you put the more Rank will be. We should pick best possible places like coast near fresh water and let grow cities to size 7+. It is difficult to grow at ICS.

My idea on the ICS was to only ICS those few cities. The rest of the cities, further out, should go back to CxxC or CxxxC. The spacing pattern would be like this: CxxxCxCxxC (Capital, first ring, second ring, third ring).

If we ICS just those few cities, they should grow ok. We just have to arrange tiles with the inner Cities that were CxxxC, you know, "borrow" the outer tiles from the first core cities while the first core cities work mostly inner tiles.

The ICSing is simply to get more fresh water sites.

2) For a while I'd like to pump settler from Lisbon, but, use it as Combo with Workers.

Ok, what sort of pattern did you have in mind. Like 2 settlers-1 worker-2 settlers, or something else?

Workers should go only from Cities with Granaries. It takes 2 turns vs 2 turn to recover. Also better to have cities approximately the same size.

Good points. I'll set new cities to non-corrupt cities to build barracks, probably.

 

[nerovats]

It will take very long to grow cities over size 6 as we mostly got plains. Monarchy allready has some unit support, if we take more cities of ai it won't that big a problem. AI will stay small because of lack of room so will not need that many units to cripple any AI.
Could gift tundra cities to ai and claim rest of our island and jump palace to center. Then dotmap should take that into account.

 

[Lanzelot]

If we're planning on using connect/disconnect, we don't want to build a city directly on top of the Iron.

In COTM53 I had planted a city on an iron hill. (Was the only chance to grab that iron before the Incans did...) Connect/Disconnect was still possible: I just connected that town to the rest of the road network with one single road.

This even had one big advantage: instead of 6 workers I only needed 3 workers for the "connect duty"! (Reconnecting the hill takes 6 workers, reconnecting the town via a plains tile takes only 3.)

One disadvantage was: when that town grew bigger, it had to work on one or two unroaded tiles (loosing a bit commerce), because the "local" road network around that city could not be expanded too much. (But I hope, the game will be over, before that becomes a real problem... )

See the attached picture for an example of what I mean. The tiles marked with a brown cross can be roaded, the ones marked with a black circle must not be roaded, and the long brown line will be our "bridge" connecting and disconnecting the iron town.

Regards, Lanzelot

 

[I. Larkin]

We are not going to settle near/on Iron this turnset. And, in general we do not have much cash/Workers to do disconect/connect. For example now I'd rather connect Iron ASAP, with 2 Workers.

Could you focus on current situation and for example consider following: (next turn)
Make Babylons Furious. (Demand all cash, and then Cities). Then ask "Remove or Declare") . We will have WH and 2 slaves. (Archers may take settler). Then drag Russia for MA for Peace renegotiation+ small gpt? And may be zulus?
We are not going to remote war vs Arabs, but it might be difficult to war vs Babs and Ottos atthe same time.
Will answer the posts soon.

 

[I. Larkin]

I can't look at the save at the moment, so my comments are based on screenies only.
Ivan, I don't totally follow what you're saying here, especially about combining Lisbon and NC2. You want to make curraghs in settler factory cities?

Yes, from Lisbon, Lagos too hard. It better pump Workers.
I think you may do spreadsheet for Lisbon like:
Setler>5.0, Curragh>6.0 > Worker (10 spt, 4 fpt)> 5.4, Catapult (6(8) spt, 6 fpt)> 6.0, shortrush, (10 spt, 4 fpt)> 6.4, Worker(6fpt) >6.0, Settler (2 turns via short rush)> 5.0

This Curragh go to Celts and around.

As far as curragh exploration goes, agreed on going after the big black area. But we have a curragh up in Emerita that looks like it has to go NE along the map edge to go anywhere. There are barb galleys blocking the way back west.

I think Curragh in Emertia locked.

Ok on the combat settler. What do you mean about contact with pink border?

If we capture Mekka we manage. But I think we have no intention to continue this war.
May be combat settler now is not a good idea. Inzik is what we need + make weaker Babylons.
I think you will get only 1 City in your turn and City may be diaganal accross lake from Saagres.

We seem to have a lot of contacts oversees. Should we try to fit in a couple of embassies into our cash spending plan and get some MA/WH fun going? Of course we should be careful not to dogpile a weak civ and get them eliminated.

Problem is that we need many Sci AIs for good trade value. From another hand before MMaking they isolated and it will not kill each other.

Oh, and booting the Babs might be a good idea. If we are successful on getting a DoW, should we sign in Arabs against them. Also, should we sign in Arabs against Ottos?

Excelent idea The only think make them Furious before! They make give cash, but not City.
Dont forget about forest cut, Change NC1 to Archer. Do not attack Arab spear, let it heal...

Not sure about MA vs Ottos. We may take Arabs for MA+PeaceTreaty vs Babylons, but more important bring to this war Russians. Not sure about Zulu. Altogether they may kill Bowmen.

 

[I. Larkin]

It will take very long to grow cities over size 6 as we mostly got plains. Monarchy allready has some unit support, if we take more cities of ai it won't that big a problem. AI will stay small because of lack of room so will not need that many units to cripple any AI.
Could gift tundra cities to ai and claim rest of our island and jump palace to center. Then dotmap should take that into account.

We may irrigate GLs and build more Granaries. (If Pyramids will be out of our continent).
I prefer gift foring Cities, not own.

If Pink border near mekka is Paris I'd like to have palace there, or even in Paris.

It is only 15 distance to Mekka, so with courthouse it is small corruption. Istambul at tundra itself, so let it be there.