SGOTM6 - Xteam

[Tone]

Nor have I read the other threads, but I wouldn't be surprised if some teams ran into income problems in Communism - our tight-fistedness served us very well in the end, allowing those several turns of 300-400 g deficits.

I think we (Team tao) were really surprised at how corrupt cities were under communism in vanilla/PtW and we weren't prepared for the severe cashflow problem. It never ceases to amaze me how much there is still to learn about this game so I guess I need to experiment more often. It was a real education playing with my team mates but reading your thread made sure that the lessons continued well after our game had been completed.

 

[AlanH]

@Renata: "I'm pretty sure most of the colloseum rushes were done in towns without universities, but I'm not positive. I don't think we ever did the math the issue. I suppose we were all still in the frame of mind from the exclusively pop-rushing days that earlier culture trumps higher culture, so build the cheaper building first."

Having scanned some of the other threads I detected a trend that right at the end colosseums were being rushed because universities were not going to make it in time to affect the end dates.

 

[Renata]

@Renata: "I'm pretty sure most of the colloseum rushes were done in towns without universities, but I'm not positive. I don't think we ever did the math the issue. I suppose we were all still in the frame of mind from the exclusively pop-rushing days that earlier culture trumps higher culture, so build the cheaper building first."

Having scanned some of the other threads I detected a trend that right at the end colosseums were being rushed because universities were not going to make it in time to affect the end dates.

The point I was trying to make was that by the time the end neared, we would have dozens of drafted units to use each turn. The drafted units could be used to build anything we wanted -- 14 collosseums or 9 universities (pulling numbers out of the air), whichever way, it's still the same shields. So there's not a time issue involved, just a shield-use issue. But I for one never quite realized that until just now. Tone's right -- still a lot to learn!

Renata

 

[AlanH]

Uhuh, but I suspect nothing small was going to change the end dates by then unless you were right on the edge of making it a turn earlier.

 

[Gyathaar]

Actually there can be a shield issue to pick collosseums over universities in the end..
I rushed 2 colloseums in the end.. reason why? they only costed me 1 rifle each..
This is because there were in draft cities that had gotten too unhappy to grow faster than every 5 turns or something.. so with 1 rifle I could use the remaining 5 population to get a collusseum, but a university would have meant using 4 more rifles that was better used on libraries..

 

[AlanH]

BTW. Check out the other teams that have finished - we beat Smackster (C3C) by a turn

 

[leif erikson]

BTW. Check out the other teams that have finished - we beat Smackster (C3C) by a turn

Not again!!

 

[Renata]

Uhuh, but I suspect nothing small was going to change the end dates by then unless you were right on the edge of making it a turn earlier.

Actually we were right on the edge of making it a turn later. It wasn't until just a couple of turns before the end that we were certain Furiey could find enough culture to make 1395 AD instead of 1400.

Renata

 

[Furiey]

I did rush a lot of coliseums in the end. I looked at rushing the maximum overall taking into account both population available for rushing, growth rate and the number of rifles/explorers available for disband. In the time left available our cities were not going to regrow sufficiently if for example I half rushed a University, waited for growth then rushed again. So If I could rush a Coliseum in a size 7 city without any disbands that left me 4 rifles I would have had to use to rush the Uni to go towards possibly 4 Temples or Libraries. I always looked for max culture for minimum disband cost using the population of the city to the max. I would have loved the info AlanH generated - my list consisted of 11 sheets of A4 paper listing ALL the cities in size order, planned by turn with what to rush and the number of disbands needed! But as Renata said, that was just for the last few turns to achieve the 1395 date rather than 1400.

 

[DJMGator13]

Furiey, where you using CivAssist as well? I was using the City tab to check the size of the city without having to actually open up the city. I also frequently saved the game in midturn to make an updated happiness check.

 

[AlanH]

What tools do people think would be useful for future 100K games? I note that Gyathaar felt he could do it all with the in-game screens. Others felt a list of cities and improvements was helpful.

I found the most time consuming bit was working out how to max out the growth rates of the cities. I was swapping tiles between towns to try to make best use of available citizens and food, working out whether a town would grow faster at lower population, all while keeping track of which towns could grow to pop 7 for drafting. I'm not sure what a tool would look like to help with that, but it would be a neat trick to do it.

Anything else?

 

[WillowBrook]

I found the most time consuming bit was working out how to max out the growth rates of the cities. I was swapping tiles between towns to try to make best use of available citizens and food, working out whether a town would grow faster at lower population, all while keeping track of which towns could grow to pop 7 for drafting. I'm not sure what a tool would look like to help with that, but it would be a neat trick to do it.

Same here! Something that could show what tiles are being used by what city as well as the granary situation in each city, showing a whole area of the board at once, would have been really useful - much time would have been saved figuring out how to best use the food and moving unused tiles around to where they could be used.

Also whatever you used to extract which towns had/lacked which cultural buildings could have been useful.

I only used CivAssist's production display at the end of each turn to make sure I hadn't missed anything and had started reasonable numbers of the various things. I ended up scrolling through all towns twice, first (after drafting all size 7 towns) to complete or partial-rush builds already started and start new ones (to be either rushed the next turn or started by disbanding and then rushed this turn), with some food MM. After all the moveable-sheild-assisted builds were complete, I'd go through again concentrating on food.

 

[DJMGator13]

The sort feature on the F1 screen could be better. But I did utilize the population sorting from there alot, in an effort to limit my cycling thru all the cities to a single pass at the end where I would poprush the moveable shields, set build orders for next turn and try to mm for extra food. I must admit I did less mm for food in my last turnset knowing the end was near and that cities did not have time to complete anything on their own.

The biggest tool for Civ III would be an ability to sort the F5 screen which shows each cities cpt. In C3C you can sort the F5 screen and quickly see which cities need improvements. I should probably request that in Dianthus' thread. He lists the cities that are about to culturally expand, but not the cpt of each city. EDIT: Request has been made.

Of course being able to alphabetize the F1 city list in Civ III would be extremely helpful. Once again you can do that in both PTW and C3C, I have already requested this change to Dianthus. The Shift L works nicely but we really should have limited the number of "New..." cities, it made looking thru the "N" a chore.

As for an automated tool for which tile to work isn't that what the Governor does (poorly at times)? The high priority tile needs for each city will vary too much to make a single program, I think (I'm not a programmer so it may not be). In some cities you would want to max food, while in other cities you are trying to max shields at the same time. So in writing a program you would have to specify which cities to max food in and which to max shields. And that's without adding the commerce effect into the puzzle.

 

[leif erikson]

Something that combines the F1 and F5 screens would be helpful so that one can see the status of each city. Somehow, it would be helpful if we can list the cities in groups so that, at a glance, I would know which city needed attention and what effect my action would have on the surrounding cities.

I used CivAssist to make a list of pop and build so I could prioritize what I needed to pop-rush, where I needed to draft and figuring out how to most efficiently use the mobile shields available. After the pop-rushing was done, then I went through every city to check on maximizing fpt. The problem for me came, with so many cities, having to recheck certain groups of cities that shared resources in their common area and deciding which one got what.

To me it is a data overload problem and the tool should try to present the info one needs in an easy to read format that allows a user to see the status of neighboring cities and call the user's attention to opportunities that exist.

The more I played, the easier it got to recall what was where, but when I first opened it, it was overwhelming!!

Edit - BTW, I picked this up from M-B in Smackster's thread.

It's an AWD as the Ottomans on a small map next - so should be somewhat different.

 

[AlanH]

As for an automated tool for which tile to work isn't that what the Governor does (poorly at times)? The high priority tile needs for each city will vary too much to make a single program, I think (I'm not a programmer so it may not be). In some cities you would want to max food, while in other cities you are trying to max shields at the same time. So in writing a program you would have to specify which cities to max food in and which to max shields. And that's without adding the commerce effect into the puzzle.

I wasn't thinking automation - that's for the Civ programmers - but rather improved information. And I was thinking of the rather specialised needs of this particular situation. Shields were always 1 spt per town, so didn't come into the equation. Gold was important, but secondary to population growth.

Population growth rate was the primary element to maximise across the empire, then gold. Pop growth is a subtle combination of what tiles are available, how many food are needed to grow in each town that can use each tile, which towns would grow faster with smaller population, and which with larger, which towns can use pop rushes for their own improvements and which have all the improvements and should produce mobile shields for other improvements. I'm pretty sure the governors would have done a rotten job of managing that lot for us.

 

[DJMGator13]

I see. CivAssist shows overflow food on growth but not whether growth could be achieved faster thru mm. Some of our cities had unused tiles, but alot of them had no free tiles to use and with 400 cities trying to figure out how to maximize every city would be like trying to solve one of those childhood sliding puzzles where you had 1 empty space and had to slide the pieces around to solve it. You may have to move a tile in 10 cities to be able to create a 1 turn faster city. Personally I just focused on the draft cities and the cities not on wealth in that last turnset, but I can see where earlier in the game you could use the info.

BTW, Team Bede just posted a winning save. I haven't seen what their final culture total is yet. I'll check it out tonight. The question is did they hit 200K or were they able to finish under it.

 

[Tomoyo]

I did a lot of the MMing from the main game screen. I left all the cities on the project they were to buil next to remind me instead of a list, or anything like that. Of course, that method isn't very good for the economy, since it wastes a lot of potential "wealth" turns...

 

[Gyathaar]

I went to culture screen.. scrolled down and switched all towns that lacked a culture building from wealth to the building.. then I went to city screen, sorted by city size.. drafed all size 7 towns, then scrolled down and rushed the culture builds in highest pop cities first.. once all shields was used up.. switched all builds that was still max turns left back to wealth.

 

[Furiey]

I used both CivAssist and MapStat, but when it came to those final 3 turns I actually had them all planned out before I started. I sorted by population and dealt with what was required and what could be done in each city in turn; size 7 which could draft, size 6 which could be grown to size 7, size 6 which couldn't grow etc working my way down through the cities. Being able to sort better in F1 and F5 and the utilities would have been useful. Whether a city was coastal or not affected what population was required for rushing improvements as the naval units gave additional short-rush options - being able to identify coastal cities without having to look would also have been useful. Even having a Market affected short-rush options and caught me out - I ended up selling them on the last turn to allow the rush without using up our mobile shields. I ended up going through the cities twice, I would do the rushing/drafting/mm for growth or wealth on the first pass through, but would then do a final run through at the end to pick up anything missed or where I'd mmd one city only to mess it up when I mmd a neighbouring one. The number of city names basically the same was just a real pain.

 

[WillowBrook]

The number of city names basically the same was just a real pain.

That's why I took to naming new towns anything but the defaut name.