Strategy Discussion

[RegentMan]

Aye, get three cities on the home island then expand overseas. A recon warrior (or two) sounds like a good idea.

I've only recently started using the whip in my games, so I'll leave that planning to the professionals. However, I do support that we get the most use out of it as possible, given our "excess" .

 

[TyBoy]

If the explorer reveals the need for the 4th city to land grab something that the 5th will be too late for I absolutely agree. Without even having seen a hint of another civ I don't feel that urgency yet. In general, there's nothing gained by expanding in a strung out fashion. You just end up paying higher maintenance and having inadequate support for your cities which causes you to expand more slowly down the line. It follows with my general theory that any actions should only be evaluated at cusps. If we get our first overseas cities sooner but as a result our economy is slowed so that we found our last city later and have less tech/units then who really cares that we were quick to plant a city down on the other continent.

It seems to me like in multiplayer the value of having land is very low compared to single player. I don't even really see the world filling up with cities or lasting long enough that those far flung cities ever pay off. It's foregone in single player and the game doesn't really start until the known world is completely settled. Here it seems like the way to go is get a strong economic core with a good army. When the risk of actually losing a city location becomes real the other guy could beat you there with his settler and axeman by 10 turns and as long as when you arrived you brought 4 axemen then maybe sent a settler later (less hammers) who would have really won that race? I feel like in multiplayer you can have small skirmishes over limited objectives with the other guy without permanently throwing away your ability to conduct diplomacy of any kind with them like you would in single player.

Calendar is a ways off, even if we head more or less straight for it. It may be the case that we're founding our 4th city well before we get to it, in which case putting in that 4th on-island spot wouldn't make a lot of sense, so it may be a moot point.


There's something that struck me as odd from what I saw of the last MTDG and apparently this one as well. Without representation, specialists are a pretty poor economic return on your citizens and yet they seem to be a pretty popular thing to do. In addition, financial is obviously a highly sought after trait, while philosophical is not. I mean, the large value of financial comes from the huge relative boost it gives to cottages early on, so if we value the financial trait it would stand to reason that we value cottages. If we prioritize working scientists even without pyramids it would stand to reason that we value philosophical.

 

[peter grimes]

The running of scientists now has nothing at all to do with maximizing our research - it's in order to get the Great Scientist we need to build our Academy. After the academy is founded, I agree that there's not much point to running scientists for us.

I'd like to hear more from TyBoy about his view that 'in mulitplayer you can have small skirmishes over limited objectives... without permanently throwing away your ability to conduct diplomacy". In my experience it has been the opposite - the AI will throw a -3 'you declared war on us', but a human player - especially a team of many humans - is very likely to take the war personally. Imagine how you'd feel about another team if you marched a settler to the spot you had chosen, only to have the city razed by 4 axes from the neighboring team. I, myself, wouldn't be likely to trust them any time soon.

Once a city is founded it's a fact on the ground that takes a war to change. And a human team won't simply garrison it with a single axeman. Which means that it would take more than just 4 of our axes to uproot. Which means that another team grabbing on of 'our' spots is a serious threat, and should not be treated as a minor inconvenience.

All of this is not to say it's going to happen any time soon, of course. But if we find a wandering warrior off-island, we'll need to consider the possibility of bumping up our settlement schedule.

 

[Earthling]

We really could do with a bit more knowledge of the map before making final calls...fortunately though we have two workboats and Stonehenge centers everything so that should help.

Regarding wars/diplomacy - it really really depends on the team, but I think we all know that. I've seen multiplayer games where a player/team will shrug off an attack and work together in the future. Or, some people can lock into hostilities till the end of time - way after both teams are at the bottom of the scoreboard neither side is willing to make peace. I definitely would be wary of at least a couple of teams who openly stated they are going with something that might affect diplomacy (AMAZON, MERLOT). But simply having our cities settled first and it being our land the whole time is one way to clear things up

Lastly - for the short-term, I would like to point out it's not that like we're settling *bad* city spots overseas. We have a couple of good clam cities close by - those cities get 5 3 tiles and seem to have a lot of grassland. If we're going to settle far away, it would be for something like a city with 8 Dyes resources or something - something the mapmaker put on purpose with a huge amount of resources, like halfway between two teams. I agree I wouldn't settle far away just to block/aggravate some other nation without such a reason. And I also believe, for reference, that we would get our fourth city well before Calendar - so again I like cities #4 and maybe #5 overseas, we fill in the SouthWest of our home island as #6.

Lastly, with barbarians on - there is a real possibility of barb cities springing up. In one way easier, since taking them with military costs less than settlers, and we get experience on units and so on, but at the same time just something to watch out for since they can throw things off.

 

[TyBoy]

I just think the on island city would be better if we have calendar and I'm trying to dispel the notion that it is inherently valuable to found a city overseas earlier as though it represents our intentions to expand. The more I think about it though, we'd have to expand pretty slowly to get calendar in time, so from here on out I'm more talking about game philosophy than that particular city.

I'm envisioning a situation where you encounter another civ who may race you for a city spot and we send them a message saying "dibs on that spot." If they choose to settle it anyway and we choose to take the city or pillage all its improvements for 40 turns then they might not be happy we did that, but it's not exactly like we betrayed them either. While they might not like it, I bet the next time you said dibs they would probably just let you have the spot.

Really though, I wouldn't found a city that had an enemy army already at its gates and I don't think another team would either, even if we were friends as far as I knew. As an extension of that, by the time I'm founding cities that might border on the cities of civs (which is the cusp where your expansion speed really matters) I expect to need to send a few defenders with it. The ability to do that is a long ways off from the founding of the 4th or 5th city, so the thing that we can do in the near future to get us to that point sooner so we win the race is build the empire that generates the most hammers and beakers now.

This long multiplayer game opens the doors to some methods of diplomacy that are wildly different from the single player options of peace, war, allied in war and tech trading. I don't mean the ability to make trades that aren't perfectly beaker balanced or are delayed in time, which is all I really saw in my perusal of the last game. I'm envisioning blackmail and extortion, backstabbing. Maybe we let them keep the good city spot, if they pay us. Or maybe the other way around.

Something else I see coming, though it is a ways off now, is the inevitable appearance of sea based attacks, particularly from the dutch who cannot be defeated at sea and the vikings who are very difficult to defeat if they can get their boats to your coastal cities. I'm not totally sure at this point how to properly defend against such a thing

 

[Provolution]

On the choice of strategy, I think we got a fair happiness centric strategy which would help us a lot, thanks to:

Charismatic, 1 happiness
Stonehenge, leverages Charismatic trait with monuments in all new cities until Calendar, 1 happiness
Buddhism, 1 happiness
Temples, 1 happiness when we need to.

Right away, we have a 3 happiness lead to the average competing civ.

This means we need to establish food-rich cities.

We also need specialist cities amplify that with a granary in expansion oriented areas on the mainland.

There should be a barracks in the mainland city as well.

Continuum should get a library, monastery and other gold boosters, for research and wealth.

The big advantage by our 4 in happiness lead, is that we do not need to have monarchy or inflated city garrisons, we only need a strong navy for the Dutch and the Vikings.

We should right away head for iron working, metal casting, compass for the UB and so on, plus we need to get to caravel at the earliest opportunity for the circumnavigation bonus. The two work boats enables us to connect west and east much quicker than comparable civs.

Finally, we need a more clear cut strategy for developing our coastal cities with UBs, and ensure the mainland is handled for the interim with our UU. The added trade routes for the coastal cities will amplify our financial trait, whereas land battles may be handled by our competitive merc cavalry.

Wonders for the next 100 turns should be the following:

Colossus if possible (happiness lead allows us the highest production in the game), we should also consider pyramid. The outer, Western island city we should put on a Moai statue project, as we need the culture border to prevent sudden naval invasions from the west plus added production. I really think we should consider Pyramids, as the Government Civics would firmly put us in the lead with flexibility regarding our happiness lead, financial trait and our relative defensive spot.

More so, we need a strong

 

[cav scout]

Before we consider working the bottom of the tech tree we need to at least get up to Pottery-> Sailing-> Writing so we can build granaries, galleys and libraries. At that point we can evaluate if we want to continue on the top of the tree or drop down to the bottom.

Right now i'm leaning towards staying at the top until Calendar. And if we meet a few civs we might even go Alphabet and get some early trades going on- always the best way to get techs fast and leave the non-trading teams in the dust

 

[Earthling]

Yeah, I like going to writing at least - we can really evaluate if we actually do want Math or Calendar though.

About wonders - it appears that we may not even have copper which makes the Colossus really expensive; also of course the mapmakers seem to have hidden/removed marble and stone for all, so we'll have to see what's worth the investment. The listed ones aren't bad though, and obviously Maoi is nice somewhere, I don't see a reason against it at this point. We'll have to see if heading the Literature route and trying to get the GL along with the dual epics where they need to go is worth it.

I do think we probably have iron and horses, if not on our home island then still nearby though, so it is worth considering when we need to unlock military. Beating others to caravels also gives us an exploration and military edge along with our UB which isn't shabby so I agree that's worth considering.

 

[TyBoy]

I don't find colossus all that impressive anyway. On a spindly archipelago map where you have to work water tiles anyway it's great, I don't think that describes this map though. If I imagine the cities locations we can see now at around pop 8 I'm not sure I would be working water tiles at any of them outside of clams. Also, it obsoletes at astronomy, not exactly a tech we're going to be able to delay in this game.

Having lots of happiness doesn't seem to be a strong supporter for a specialist type economy. If anything it slightly dissuades going that way to me since it may leave us working suboptimal specialists like merchants or spies, while you can always plop down more cottages. Building pyramids changes that equation drastically, but that is a huge investment without stone or industrious.

I'd like to get math relatively early so we don't waste a lot of hammers, get those cities on our island founded quickly, then chop the flatlands for granaries and libraries while building cottages to turn our home island into a commerce powerhouse that we can use to support any other mischief we want to get into. We would want academies for the capital and other two really good cities, but I wouldn't work scientists beyond that, I don't think it would pay off compared to having those citizens work and develop cottages.

You can't really stop the dutch with a strong navy, once you get to that point in the game. The dutch UU is much stronger than contemporary naval units.

 

[Provolution]

I would like to institute one strategic principle:

The very first continental city should be the main military city, and the first build should be a barracks, and the city should be on a hill for maximum defensive purposes. This allows us to specialize the city for the longer haul as a military center.

The second continental city should be a colonial city, with granary as its first build, this city should mainly concentrate on creating settlers and from time to time workers.

The third continental city, should be producing local workers, as its only objective, as well as from time to time the odd auxiliary unit to stack up the veteran forces.

Other than that, our island cities should either create wonders, navies or special buildings, representing the core of our empire.

 

[RegentMan]

Well the city founding order can be seen in the attachment of this post, so it looks like this doesn't exactly follow your principle.

I like to follow what I heard Sullla say in one of his game write-ups: Let the land dictate your city founding plan, and not vice-a-versa. Well, that's not an exact quote, but basically means to let the land control where you found your cities rather than a pre-game plan in your head.

 

[Provolution]

Well, you get the idea Regentman, not to dictate anything, but I think its a fair principle for the early deployment on the mainland.

 

[TyBoy]

I really like the idea of one of the first cities on the mainland being a strong production city as long as there is a suitable location. I wouldn't want to try and force a city into the role with workshops or anything like that. There will be a lot of advantage to both minimizing the use of cottages on the mainland and producing our units there instead of shipping them over.

 

[Earthling]

One thing I would like to point out though is that we don't exactly have the most land on our home island here. Now, we can always compromise on some things, and the capital is nice, but it's also simple geography. We have a fair number of hill tiles, and most flatland tiles may have resources on them. Concerns:

-if we want to spread irrigation to a couple of the wheats, as some have pointed out, this eats up a couple flatland tiles
-the spices might be easier to build plantations on. Admittedly, we certainly *could* not build plantations on all of them and just get cottages on a couple. A town eventually is worth more than a spice plantation, though the food and commerce in the short term isn't to be overlooked.

But after that - check out a latest screen of the island and you'll see there's just not that much flat land around for cottaging. And in fact, I may be tempted to dedicate a city on our home island to military anyway - it's often really easier to get an early city up and running, it'll have the production to build the HE and infrastructure in place etc, rather than waiting for an "ideal" spot somewhere away for the wonder. Just something to consider.

That all said, I want to be optimistic and do see lots of potentially great land and cities overseas, so of course I agree to play the land. I just don't see us having everything we need on our home continent, nor do I think we have the easiest time cottaging everything - a bureau cap is fine, but realistically, the other cities would be:
-City #2 is heavy on water tiles (get Maoi Statues)
-City #3 I'd make pure production - we have to farm to irrigate the wheat and it has a lot of hills anyway
-City #4 then can pick up the spices and some flatlands for another commerce city I guess.

But really, given all that jungle which eventually clears to grassland overseas, in the long term I could see a lot of benefits of cottaging that "main continent" where we can. I suspect we'll have to maintain a mix of economies and city specializations really is all - we don't have easy access to wonders nor a trait like philo for all specialistics, we don't have a ton of open land on our home continent to cottage etc... Bureacracy is a short term goal though, I would stick with that.

 

[cav scout]

I think Earthing is correct in his assessment of our home island. Cities 2 and 3 are natural production cities and the 4th one is a natural commerce city. Here is the analysis I did earlier: Home Island City Plan

There are some kick-ass commerce city sites with rivers on the mainland, so to reiterate what others have already said- lets play what the map gives us, not try to force some preconceived strategy.

@Earthling- could you move the sign for city three 1W please?

 

[TyBoy]

You can cottage grassland hills as though they are flatland.

I don't think we should try and irrigate all those wheat. They're all well fed enough to work their tiles without it, so it's a pretty direct tradeoff of specialists for cottages. For the southern city you're trading off 2.5 specialists for 3 cottages and for the western one you're trading off 2 specialists for 2 cottages. If it were just me playing I wouldn't make either one of those trades. Consider that they won't come online until civil service. Would you guys?

A commerce based city plan:
Continuum-
2x irrigated wheat plains
1x spice grassland
2x silver grass hill mine
2x grass hill cottage
1x plains hill mine
5x grassland cottages
Surplus of 3, 3 more cottages

Red Dot City-
2x unirrigated wheat plains
1x spice grassland
1x silver grass hill mine
1x plains hill mine
1x horse pasture plains???
2x plains cottage
Surplus of 1, 2 more cottages

Green Dot City-
2x unirrigated wheat plains
4x grass hill cottage
1x plains hill mine
2x grassland cottage
No surplus, 6 more cottages

Purple Dot City-
4x spice grasslands
1x plains hill mine
1x grassland cottage
Surplus of 4, unchanged

Anyway, our home island is as conducive to cottage spamming as any other use. With so much surplus food, bonus resources and grassland hills it could be used well for anything. In my mind, it's all contingent on finding good production city sites on the main island though. From a logistical point of view that would be much stronger if the hills are available overseas.

 

[TyBoy]

Alternatively, we could leave all the hills as mines and just cottage all the flatlands. The decision to irrigate those wheat or not is not a decision to produce hammers or commerce, but a decision between specialists and cottages - post civil service.

Interestingly, shift a couple tiles from continuum to green and green to purple and we'll be able to work every tile on our home island with the happiness from just calendar and a couple temples. That's with cottages before civil service. They wouldn't have the food to grow quickly once we get more happiness and want to work those sea tiles unless we slowed production in them for a while, which I think will also be around the time we get civil service. However, those cottages would easily be villages by that point, which would just make me doubly reluctant to plow them over for a short term burst of growth followed by a couple specialists in the renaissance era.

I would agree that we don't want to force anything that the terrain doesn't support, but if the terrain does support some of our earliest overland cities being hammer producers that would be a stronger strategic position than building units on our home island and ferrying them over before we can use them. There's a strong incentive to make cottage cities out of the early ones rather than the later, both because cottages take time to grow and commerce cities need more improvements. On the other hand, if it is in a good location you can get a military city online remarkably quickly with a little whipping, forgoing all research and wealth improvements.

 

[Earthling]

Lots of thoughts here, those who want to post screens or do some testing I'd welcome too. For now I don't want to talk at cross purposes or go too technical, so I'll just say a few things I agree on/notice as well:

-I agree with moving "City #3" 1West because I've also been in the camp who thinks that plains hill has some resource.

-I think the NorthWestern wheats, at city #2, should be irrigated. Here's why - to irrigate those wheat we end up farming through plains tiles, and really we're not likely to work those plains tiles anyway (compare to 2F1H3C Maoi statue coast as well). So getting +1 food on those wheat really just puts those plains to use for something anyway, probably not much to do with them till bio anyway. I doubt we would want the effort working non-riverside plains tiles as cottages, while +2 from irrigating wheats is much simpler.

-If we want to cottage the southern grasslands rather than farm for irrigation, I agree it's not a big hit. Cottaged grasslands are fine in otherwords down there, irrigation isn't the hugest deal. Likewise I am open to cottaging hills if you all really want but usually I'd feel the mines pay off; we'll have to see the balance. The city likely to be heavier on commerce, the Southwestern one, happens to have more uncottageable plains hills, while the one with the most hills has a bunch of grass. Anyway, the main concern really is just the overall limited number of land tiles - it's like 40 total anyway. The bright side as just mentioned is that we should be ok on happy caps though, and we're very dense in actual resource tiles due to generosity on the mapmakers there.

 

[cav scout]

I still think city 3 should be an irrigated production city. We should start out by farming the wheats and mine a grass hill or two. Then whip down to pop 2 every 10 turns or so and build that infrastructure! After CS we hook up the irrigation and then grow the pop up quickly to work all those mines for some serious . After pop 9 we can work coastals and engineer specialists. This could be our naval production city.

This city isn't a good cottage site- Tons of hills, no rivers. If we try to seriously cottage here then we'd be passing on the whip (and this city is made for whipping). If we throw in a few cottages in lieu of irrigation then we take forever to grow to work all the mines, then stagnate... Plus our workboats have discovered much better commerce city sites, including one with 2 clams and a river with floodplains... shouldn't we cottage these spots instead?

 

[TyBoy]

Keep in mind that actually being able to spread irrigation won't come for quite a while after those cities are founded. We're going to be founding that first one within the next 20 turns, but it's unlikely we'll be seeing civil service much sooner than 100 turns, possibly significantly later than that. I would expect them to have their basic infrastructure built and be at 8+ pop before irrigating becomes an option, meaning those cottages would be well developed before we plow them over. There just isn't that much infrastructure that you can build early game that is useful to a city that is all farms and mines anyway. The granary and barracks and more even will be built just by chopping the tiles you need to build the farms and mines. What will we have access to that we want to whip after that (in about 35 turns)?

Overseas is still open in my mind. What we can see from the shore there does hint at stronger cottaging cities, but we can only see half the land tiles even those first couple cities would have access to. If no decent options for producers present themselves over there then it is easy (though painful) to farm and mine over those villages/towns very quickly. On the other hand, if we keep that city small by whipping (I'm honestly not sure what we would build, axes I guess, assuming we can get iron soon) and it turns out there are equally viable production cities which are also located in decent strategic locations then we've cheated ourselves out of a strong, early cottage city for a bunch of hammers that we may not be able to use all that effectively.

The southern city location is not bad for cottaging. It's just a very strong location no matter what we use it for.

I think that mantra of letting the terrain dictate what your cities do probably applies great in high level single player where military tactics have diminished importance and raw production is more important, but in a multiplayer game I think it will be a large detriment if our best production cities are located logistically very far from the borders/military fronts and we are trying to develop cottages close to the border. Also, we may not want to be churning out military units nonstop from those production cities for the entire game the way you need to in high level single player.