Tactics and Strategy Turns 70-80

[damnrunner]

@Smoke:

We don't want two holy cities in a production city which it what everyone wants for Pav. The only reason we founded confucianism in Pav was that it was the best choice at the time.

We want our next holy city in our super commerce city that will have all those cottaged flood plains and Market/Grocer/Stock exchange/Wall Street/Spiral Minaret.

Plus I don't think we can get Judaism to found in Pav anyways since its already a holy city. So unless we set it up to found in the commerce city it will end up in Oskemen or Aktau- not desireable.

@Everyone:

1. Can we get consensus on founding Judaism in the commerce city?

2. Has anyone tested my suggestion of switching from a settler to a worker in Pav and then whipping the settler 1 turn after we whip the settler in Aktau? This allows us to found Judaism in our commerce city and gets us the Iron much quicker.

Instead of a settler Haz can build a worker so there is no loss of workers. The only opportunity cost is 2 pop in Pav which regenerates very quickly. This is TOTALLY worth it to get the critical Iron city sooner.

I disagree - if possible a double holy city in Pav would be great. While a holy city in a commerce city is nice, we hope to be running 100% science most of the game. Therefore a commerce city really does no give much contribution to gold. However shrines, merchants, GMs, and corporations always contribute gold and will see a greater benefit from Wall Street. A double holy city will get the greatest benefit.

Granted I don't think we will be able to get a double holy city. But we should try to.

 

[damnrunner]

Temple in Actau? we want chariot not expensive buildings....1 hapiness from temple is irrelevant at this point..we want more military to deal with barbs and puch to the center.

As for running a priest...a sole priest will take 50 turns to pop...can we wait 50 turns to get a priest without getting another great person?

The point is to run a priest, not for happiness.

This is our GP farm city. We need to start with one GP and we will add more as we go. Priests are the best place to start as we already will be getting lots of Scientist from Haz.

I support whipping Aktua - the city can regrow very fast.

 

[Kaleb]

2. Has anyone tested my suggestion of switching from a settler to a worker in Pav and then whipping the settler 1 turn after we whip the settler in Aktau? This allows us to found Judaism in our commerce city and gets us the Iron much quicker.

Not been able to test yet I'm afraid :/ will try asap though. And I think you mean "switching from worker to a settler"

We wanted holy city in actau exactly because it has high production and can build all those buildings fast. Also there is only 1 wall street, and having the benefit of getting a double holly city to put it on is massive.

Right I think you mean "holy city in Pavlodar" (what are you guys smoking?). I agree, it would be best to have both holy sites in the same city, but I'm not sure this is possible..

 

[cav scout]

We wanted holy city in actau exactly because it has high production and can build all those buildings fast. Also there is only 1 wall street, and having the benefit of getting a double holly city to put it on is massive.

I'm assuming you mean Pav not Aktau. If you look at the hills around the commerce city you will see that it has great production potential to get the necessary buildings as well.

I do understand that a double (or triple) holy city would be great with wall street. But how do you plan to force a 2nd (or 3rd) religion to found where a holy city already exists? This is highly unlikely to the point of being fantasy. If we can't get a double holy city that leaves these choices:

a) Aktau (city 3 GP farm)- sheep, deer, corn
b) Oskemen (city 4 production)- horses, wine, cow
c) city 5 commerce- gold corn, floodplains
d) city 6 production- iron, fish, maoi

-> b) commerce city is the obvious choice


@damnrunner- the way the game is going I don't think we will be running 100% tech for long. We are REXing right now which is going to drive us down to 50% by city 6. People are also screaming for production over commerce right now so as we continue to REX our tech rate is going even lower.

Regarding temple in Aktau- I like the idea of getting a priest going so we can get Great Prophets (we need 2 if we found judaism, 3 if we pick up a 3rd religion). BUT I think it might be too soon to build a temple. Aktau should make workers/settlers and whip for a while. When we switch to caste system at some point we can then run unlimited priests and get great prophets much quicker.

 

[mikotian]

Hi guys, I'm new to the team (joined today). Here's my take on whether to found a holy city in Pav or along the river with the floodplains/gold:

I think it's much better to found a religion in the floodplains city. As far as I can tell, the debate goes something like:
PAV pro: have 2 shrines in one city to use wall street on
New City Pro: commerce city, with shrine to use wall street on

However, it seems that we would generate eventually much more gold in the new city if we founded a religion there and used wall street in it. Pav is a poorly situated city without a large amount of food and is cramped for space. It is unlikely to have more than 1-2 cottages, probably none, since the best use for it is production. It's a decent production city.

However, the commerce city will have gold + maybe 7-8 cottages minimum (depending on exact number of mines we work), PLUS very good production when we need it if we mine the hills next to it. In my mind, the 7-8 cottages, with financial trait, with a river, will eventually produce more gold than 1 shrine. This is a standard map (if the simulation game is correct). How many cities can we convert even in mid-late game? 30?

Also having a shrine in the commerce city will give us the flexibility to not spread both Judaism and Confucianism to every city we have access to as we would have been forced to do if Pav was a dual holy city. Instead, we could only spread Judaism and not take a major gold hit. We could probably save the hammers of 20 missionaries if we wanted to divert them into military production or a wonder.

I just feel that given Pav's location, its best use is a powerful production city, primarily geared for military units.

 

[Sommerswerd]

Also there is only 1 wall street, and having the benefit of getting a double holly city to put it on is massive.

I disagree - if possible a double holy city in Pav would be great. Granted I don't think we will be able to get a double holy city. But we should try to.

Remember the Founding Formula for religion? It tells us where religion is going to found and was the reason we were confident that religion would found in Pavlodar.

As a reminder... The bottom line on the formula is... that religion will usually found in the largest city, besides the capital. However, if there is already a religion in the largest, non-capital city the chance that it will found in that city is cut in half.

So while we could be sure that Religion would found in Pavlodar when Pavlodar was twice as large as Actau, we would have to make Pavlodar at least 4 times as large as the next largest city (excluding Hazrate) to get second religion to found in Pavlodar. I say it's impossible, unless we slave all the cities down and let Pavlodar max population.

 

[Sommerswerd]

@Everyone:

1. Can we get consensus on founding Judaism in the commerce city?

I don't think so... because this is not a high pressure issue for me. What I mean is, that you seem to be leveraging the high pressure Monotheism situation by tying "commerce city first", to making the Commerce city a holy city...

I just don't see it that way. We are going to bulb Philosophy later... (I moved the rest of my response to the city 5 thread).

 

[cav scout]

Well if we win the race to Philosophy down the road it's going to be much harder to control where Taoism founds. We have the opportunity to found Judaism almost guaranteed in city 5 right now wherever we choose to place it (iron or commerce sites).

Also, the formula is a good guide but not an accurate predictor due to the random number generation thing.

 

[Indiansmoke]

Well if we win the race to Philosophy down the road it's going to be much harder to control where Taoism founds. We have the opportunity to found Judaism almost guaranteed in city 5 right now wherever we choose to place it (iron or commerce sites).

Also, the formula is a good guide but not an accurate predictor due to the random number generation thing.

How are we guarandeed to do that...if you read Sommer's post about the formula there is basically 0 chance it will get founded in commerce city. It will propably go in horse city if we slave Pavlodar and it is 50-50 between Pavlodar and horse city if we don't slave.

 

[Indiansmoke]

Ok to get back on track with the most important issues, which are 2

1. Do we settle corn gold firts or iron spot?
2. In any case where does the second settler come from Captila or Pavlodar with 2 pop slave?

We have the following plans

1. Settle gold first and get settler from capital. This plan gets iron 5 turns later than settling iron directly, but we get better overall development/tech and more improved land
2. Settle iron first get settler from capital. Iron comes 5 turns earlier, but land is less improved and tech worst
3. Settle gold first and slave pavlodar for settler. This plan gets iron 2 turns later but pavlodar is reduced to 2 pop and the worker delayed...hence less land improved/development slowed
4. Settle iron first slave settler from Pavlodar, this does not make much sense IMo but it is an option

So unless there is a fifth option that I missed, can people say what they prefer?

I prefer option 1..I don't think 5 turns later iron will hurt us.

 

[damnrunner]

Regarding temple in Aktau- I like the idea of getting a priest going so we can get Great Prophets (we need 2 if we found judaism, 3 if we pick up a 3rd religion). BUT I think it might be too soon to build a temple. Aktau should make workers/settlers and whip for a while. When we switch to caste system at some point we can then run unlimited priests and get great prophets much quicker.

CS does not let you run priests. Though I think we should use it for merchants.

 

[donsig]

1. Settle gold first and get settler from capital. This plan gets iron 5 turns later than settling iron directly, but we get better overall development/tech and more improved land

This is the best plan presented so far and currently holds my vote.

 

[Provolution]

support smokeys proposal there, though, I was already for gold first.

 

[Garand]

Plan 1 seems to me to be the best option at this point as well. One thing we will have to consider is how settling all these new cities in such a short time will affect our maintenance costs. Until these smaller cities get developed, particularly with cottages (which then take time to reach maturity) or other income-producing improvements, we may see ourselves struggling to remain in the black without temporarily lowering research again - especially if we have cities continuing to experience disorder.

All that aside, I think the gold city will help with that issue, and with the food output it could be a useful settler/worker production city until we can actually develop it properly as a money-maker or research area, whichever route we choose.

At this point, since there seems to be little to no threat from the other teams, I think the iron can wait. Even though I'm one of the louder voices regarding increasing our defense and observing the other teams, I think it's best to put it off for now. Five-10 turns won't make much of a difference, as long as we make a concerted effort to get the iron hooked up and defense production rolling AS SOON as that iron is available.

 

[Kaleb]

I also agree with settling gold-corn city first with a settler from Haz. We don't have the workers to develop two cities at the same time quickly.

 

[cav scout]

How are we guarandeed to do that...if you read Sommer's post about the formula there is basically 0 chance it will get founded in commerce city. It will propably go in horse city if we slave Pavlodar and it is 50-50 between Pavlodar and horse city if we don't slave.

A new religion doesn't want to found in a city that already has a current religion if it doesn't have to. So if all of our cities have Confucianism except for our new 5th cit then when we tech Monotheism Judaism is sure to found in the 5th religiously "vacant" city.

Also Smoke:

Plan 3 doesn't delay the worker because Haz will build a worker instead of a settler after it reaches pop 7.

 

[cav scout]

CS does not let you run priests. Though I think we should use it for merchants.

Arrgh, your right of course. Silly mistake for me to make after pointing out the CS doesn't allow engineers!

 

[Sommerswerd]

If we switch back to 100% now we should have enough money to make it to Monotheism in 4 turns without moving slider back down. See attached Screenshot.

Yes, I moved the slider back to zero before exiting...

 

[Kaleb]

That's right, and this means we'll get Monotheism before the 5th city is built (be it the gold or the iron city). If we keep Osk at pop 1 and whip the settler we can use the missionary to spread Conf into Osk and then Judaism will most likely found in Pavlodar.

 

[WilliamOfOrange]

Sorry if this isn't the right thread, but I was curious as to which religion we would be running. I though that most of our cities were under Confucianism right now and we are talking about getting the OR bonus. If we are talking about getting a shrine or Double Holy City in which to build Wall Street or building WS in the purely Judaism Holy City, depending on what happens, I was just wondering if there will be much benefit if still under Confu and not being "the Jew" as Borat would say.