Tactics and Strategy T130-T150

[cav scout]

Aktau is a good place for the National Epic and then the Globe Theater down the road. There was a bit of happiness left in Aktau btw so I turned the priests off to grow to max pop. Once their is no happiness left there it's easy enough to turn priests on to get neutral growth. I think the idea of whipping Knights w/ overflow into HE is a good one.

 

[damnrunner]

FYI Slaving the knight will create 1 unhappy face for 91 turns IIRC. When Aktau grows again, it will be at the happy cap again. Building the temple raised the happy cap by one, but slaving the temple created a 80+ turn unhappy face.

Is that really correct - I did not think unhappiness worked in that manner?

 

[Sommerswerd]

Every time you slave the unhappiness lasts longer. When we slaved the temple it was 80-something turns of . If we slave again, it will be 90 turns of . every time we whip a knight, the will last longer and longer. I think we should stop whipping Aktau and start letting some of the faces cool off. Otherwise, we need to build a market, or some other building that will add faces before doing anymore whipping in Aktau.

We should not be turning priests off. Aktau was still growing rapidly (every few turns) even with all three priests turned on. That means we can grow quickly, AND get GP points at the same time. That is what we should be doing. Not to mention that running priests produces extra AND . More are especially useful in Aktau since the base production is low. Each priest gives 1 and 3 IIRC. We need every priest that we can get there.

 

[damnrunner]

Sorry I was not clear in my question.

Is it 80 turns until any of the unhappiness goes away - or 80 turns until all of it goes away? My understanding was that every 10 turns some unhappiness will go away.

 

[cav scout]

I think Damnrunner is correct and it's now 90 turns for all the unhappiness to go away (if I understand the mechanics right- the in-game wording is confusing).

By turning off all the priests Aktau grows in 1 turn instead of like 7. Once we hit the happy cap its easy to turn the 3 priests on to achieve neutral growth.

 

[Sommerswerd]

OK, assuming that we grow every single turn working max food (which we don't) but just for sake of discussion.

If we go max food/ no priests we will grow 2 pop points in 2 turns. That is as far as we can grow because anyhigher, and we will be over the happy cap. However, we lose the GP points towards a priest (9/turn) so 18 GP points. So not running the priests now means that we will get holy building 2 turns later (at a minimum). If we just include our 9 cities with confu, that means 18 wasted for what? (more if we get a market/grocer/bank in Pavlodar).

What is the point of growing the city faster? To work unimproved forests? I thought that was bad We can only run a maximum of 3 priests (3 temples) increasing the city pop does not change this. We can already work 3 priests while still growing right now. However, every additional pop make one additional face for "This city is too darn crowded!"

We can already run 3 priests, there is no point of growing the city any faster if we are maxing out food. More pop just means more food... Which is useless unless we can run more preists / get more happy faces.

 

[Kaleb]

Sorry I was not clear in my question.

Is it 80 turns until any of the unhappiness goes away - or 80 turns until all of it goes away? My understanding was that every 10 turns some unhappiness will go away.

Every 10 turns you will regain one unhappiness until 80 turns when all unhappiness from whipping will go away.

The key is to time population growth with when unhappiness recovers so you grow at your happy cap.

I would go for NE or GT as if we go for GT we should use the city for drafting!

 

[Kaleb]

How long have we had Optics btw? We should have upgraded a Trireme to have started going for the circumnav bonus already.

 

[Sommerswerd]

How long have we had Optics btw? We should have upgraded a Trireme to have started going for the circumnav bonus already.

You must have read the turn log... Anyway, that's done.

We had Optics but had no cash for upgrades. HusCh sent us $$$ for Teching 100%, but I guess it was used for an upgrade to Caravel. So Caravel is exploring now, no harrm done.

 

[cav scout]

We've had it for a few turns. I upgraded one of our Triremes when I noticed the oversight. I renamed it "High Seas Island Finder" so we didn't alarm SANCTA into a naval arms race, not to find any islands.

The plan is to meet up with MS's caravel off the SANCTA coast and get the circumnavigation bonus... Sommers why did you go south? You were a recepient for the PM from Husch explaining everything...

Regarding Astronomy- we should avoid trading techs within the alliance until we really need them in order to reduce the research bonus for SANCTA. Do we need astronomy right now? I suppose we could upgrade our galley to a galleon to race for magellan (by meeting Husch).

 

[damnrunner]

Going south-East makes sense as long as it is not Due south.

 

[Sommerswerd]

So I took another look at Aktau... and Running:

0 Priests (max food) = We get 5 (8 Turns for Knight), 0 GP points (no progress towards holy building), Growth in 2 turns (not 1).

3 Priests (max food) = We get 7 (6Turns for Knight), 18 GP points (I forgot that Philo trait give +100% GP points), Growth in 5 turns (not 7 or 3).

3 Priests, 1 Engineer (max food) = We get 8 (5 Turns for Knight), 24 GP points, Neutral Growth.

At Pop 6 Aktau was already working all the improved tiles, so to quote a famous Kaz'er...if it grows, "it would be working unimproved tiles, what would be the point of that?" Even with the grassland farmed, it only produces food. So we would get another pop point that would work a tile that only makes food which = no benefit. Better to run a priest or engineer at neutral growth.

If we grow one pop point, we will be at happy cap, but that pop point will have to be applied to food to prevent starvation. There is no point in doing that. We can run 4 specialist RIGHT NOW and be growth neutral. Once the graslands are farmed, and a face goes away, we can grow the city again, while still running specialists.

Running an engineer gives us more (3) then we could get from working any other combination of tiles that would give growth. It also speeds along our Prophet (with more GP points), and creates a possiblility of a Great Engineer, which would be good for rushing Apostolic Palace.

After considering all of this, I went with option 3. Once grassland is farmed by worker near Aktau, and happy cap is more, we can grow the city again.

AND yes I sent the Caravel South-East to put it outside of SANCTA's view.

 

[cav scout]

Going southeast with the caravel makes sense as long as it starts heading northeast in time to meet Husch's caravel.

 

[damnrunner]

Going southeast with the caravel makes sense as long as it starts heading northeast in time to meet Husch's caravel.

Do they have to meet? My understanding was that circumnavigation was triggered once a team went all the way around the world but did not have to form a contiguous loop.

 

[cav scout]

I thought it was just the first team to have a clear path through the fog from one end of the map the other. You can use map trades etc to get there. The idea is that Husch gets like one tile of fog away from completing it and then we finish it off. He thinks we would benefit from the bonus more than him or he would just get it himself.

 

[damnrunner]

Oxford is done in 9 turns at which point we switch to Theocracy correct. Are there any other civics we would want to switch to at that time? The only one I can think of would be Free Market should we have Econ by that point.

Micro managing idea. Once we get Theo our units get +2exp. For the units we are currently producing, it would make sense to switch production to a 2nd unit when they have 1 turn left to complete. Then when we switch to Theo, we can generate several units in quick succession that gain the +2exp bonus. The downside is that we are left with a slightly smaller army for a few turns.

Sancta is ahead on esp. Do we want to build any esp generating buildings? Or just live with it? I think we have to live with it.

 

[damnrunner]

I thought it was just the first team to have a clear path through the fog from one end of the map the other. You can use map trades etc to get there. The idea is that Husch gets like one tile of fog away from completing it and then we finish it off. He thinks we would benefit from the bonus more than him or he would just get it himself.

In Vanilla Civ 4 circomnav is determined by having at least one tile exposed along the entire horizontal axis. They do not have to be contiguous. So we can go south and MS can go north.

I don’t know the mechanics of how determining who gets the circumnav bonus is done when teams share maps.

 

[Sommerswerd]

I think damnrunner is right about Circumnavigation. I used to think you needed a path through fog but I noticed in SP that the AI would get circumnav bonus, and then I would trade for maps and there would be no path through the fog... so that seems to suggest Damnrunner is right, all you need to do is reach the same X-axis/Longitude point as one that is exposed on your minimap regardless of whether the fog connects.

I wish we could finish Moais (11 turns IIRC) before switching to Theocracy.

 

[damnrunner]

I wish we could finish Moais (11 turns IIRC) before switching to Theocracy.

Slavery?

 

[Sommerswerd]

Our caravel can just proceed due East from now on, it does not need to go North. TBH Circumnav bonus is not really all that important... If Cavalieros or MS gets it, that is OK, really... Even if SANCTA gets it, so what? Anyway, all we can do now is go due east with the Caravel, out of SANCTA's sight.

We can't quite slave the Moais yet, but I guess we could slave some units and put overflow into Moai. Is that what you meant? I think we have to complete the unit though to get the overflow... so no waiting until Theocracy to finish the unit.

I think that SANCTA is building courthouses, to get ahead in espy. Makes sense since their empire is so spread out... At least they are not building army... Unless they got infiltration on us with a great Spy somehow... I guess that would be obvious by looking at the espy point spread. They could have also settled the Spy for the espy bonus. Either way, they dont have the Great Wall and I doubt they are sacrificing tech% for Espy%, so they must be using Courthouses.

After the NE is built, we should really consider getting some of the religious wonders in Aktau. Yes they will build slowly, but we can use engineers/priest specialists to boost production. Maybe we can even switch back to Org Rel once the army is done to maximize production. We should be able to build a lumbermill/ workshop by then too. We just can't miss out on getting our three holy buildings. It is too much potential $$$ to ignore.