TGOM 02 - The Grumpy Old Monk and the Ancient Crone go to Alpha Centauri

I'm with gmharriet here, when to go for max vs min is something that I haven't figured out yet either. What I normally do is go min on the first tech I research if I can't get it in under 50 turns, and then go max from then on unless I can't get a tech under 50 turns.
 
gmaharriet said:
Which brings up an additional question for me. How do you decide whether to go for max or min research? I've seen both recommendations in various threads, but never a direct comparison in a single thread. In my SP games I generally go for 50% science as a compromise, but I've read comments that it is the worst way to go and don't understand why.
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well, if you go minimum research you will get EVERY tech in 50 turns. so it is sometimes worth it.
an example in the AA would be writing, which will almost always require 100% sci, for a 45 turn research. so by losing those 5 turns, you gain a LOT of gold.
OTOH, going for MAX sci will reduce research time. PHILOSOPHY is another example (u can save about 30 turns), where you stand to gain a monopoly tech. well worth the investment.

MIDDLE research will not gain you that much gold, nor speed up the research.
that is why you would want to either burn your way to the tech or simmer to it.

the venerable monk can probably expand and explain further....
 
Pre-turn: Change Salamanca from Settler (to build population back up) to Barracks, due in 5. Leave reseach at 70%, getting CoL in 33 whilst breaking even. Moving up to 80% only saves 3 turns and the -$1 per turn will leave us high and dry in 5 turns.

IBT: Bedeville warrior >> warrior.

2110 BC: Since barbarian threat is gone for now, send Bedeville warrior (renamed MP#1) off to police the lovely people of Salamanca. Worker starts road on BG tile Bedeville is working, since he is there anyway and the money will help with the research.

2070 BC: Salamanca grows to 4, set lux to 30%, which leaves us losing $1 pt, but that will be remedied as soon as worker finishes road, so it won't bankrupt us. Move new citizen to forest to get barracks 1 turn earlier and slow down growth a bit until we get our silk roaded.

IBT: Guess who wants to come to dinner?

2030 BC: MP#1 heads back to Bedeville to protect against our visitor.

IBT: Visitor changes course to Salamanca, which barracks >> warrior and I move citizen from forest to irrigated plains.

1990 BC: Bedeville highway is completed, worker moves to silks. MP#1 polices Salamanca. Blue Feather reveals the extent of this lake near Egypt:

IBT: Bedeville warrior >> granary

1950 BC: MP allows reducing lux to 20%, which gives us breaking even research at 70% and one pathetic gold piece left in the treasury. Worker begins silk road (har har). MP#2 moves to road south of Bedeville, ready to cover worker if necessary.

IBT: Barbarian fortifies, guess we scared him. Salamanca warrior >> settler.

1910 BC: Send barb to meet his maker with MP#2. MP#3 stays in Salamanca, allowing us to reduce lux even further to 10%. Push research up to 80%, shaving 3 turns off of CoL (due in 18) and still breaking even.

IBT: Stupid! :cry: Bedeville riots because I am stupid.

1870 BC: MP#1 goes to Bedeville to stop rioting, while MP#2 goes to Salamanca fresh from his victory over the yokel to keep a lid on things there. Blue Feather finds the Babylonians.
They have 5(!) cities and the same 4 techs as our other neighbors. The fact that they are broke and the nearby Egyptian warrior explain the tech parity.

1830 BC: Salamanca grows. Feel free to tell me this is stupid, but I make the new citizen a scientist. This shaves three turns off of CoL (to 13) while allowing us to keep lux at 10% and research at 80% while still breaking even. The alternatives are to either slow down research until the settler finishes or sell Writing, which I'd still prefer to put off until we have CoL. Salamanca is now food neutral.

1790 BC: Nothing exciting. Red Feather spotted this guy:

Summary: We still have a monopoly on Writing, but our treasury is in a dire state. Silk road due in 2, which will help quite a bit. CoL in 12 at status quo. Blue Feather still heading south, Red Feather checking out a mountainous peninsula which is almost certainly a dead end -- could send him south along coast instead.

Our vast empire:
Exploration:

The save
 
:( :mad: :cringe: :aargh: [pissed] :gripe: :shakehead

:woohoo: It's TGOM time.....

I think I managed to fit in all the "rant" frownies. :mischief:

And I think I know who has the Edifice Complex.

Where to start? There are so many choices.

With the tools available city disorder is almost inexcusable, and I am sure you know the proximate cause for the Bedeville riot so I won't belabor the point. But I will point out the real cause: building buildings instead of MP's and yokel supressors. And the deficit treasury is partially the result of building buildings when the economy is not in a postion to support them but can easily support more warriors and workers.

Worker moves were less than optimal as well. There is no real hurry to connect Bedeville, but there was a real need to get those silks on line to Salamanca and get the plains irrigated and roaded at Salamanca.

Bedeville should have built a warrior first and then a worker then started a barracks. Salamanca could have built a couple-three warriors for escort, MP duty and yokel suppression while it grew back to four or even five for its next settler.

If you are farming settlers in the capitol, you need to make sure you don't sacrifice the economy to do it.

What I am getting at here is that not all towns need all buildings and some towns don't need any, ever. And while Salamanca needs a barracks and Bedeville a granary at some point, maybe, now is not the time.


Okay, now that I have that off my chest I feel a whole lot better.

Something to think about when you are doing a research burn: leave the spigot wide open to the very last possible moment. As long as you have one gold in the treasury and one gold per turn coming in you are golden. If you have to you can even go to zero on the science slider for a couple of turns until the kitty builds back up, then go back to max. The accumulated beakers remain accumulated.

You did show confidence in your judgement, which is a good thing. We just need to hone the razor a bit. Consider carefully what each structure contributes before building, and if the contribution is not positive, build a worker, a settler or or cannon fodder.

And it looks like I got it, so sharpen your pencils and practice your rants 'cause your turn is coming up..... :D
 
As long as you have one gold in the treasury and one gold per turn coming in you are golden.
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cause the AI is almost always gonna research something u can trade around for more cash to keep your research up. one of your better rants
 
Lesson learned. For what it's worth, I was reluctant to build more than a few warriors without a barracks first. But I suppose for MP and barbarian suppression, that's not as important -- correct? Also, when I got the save, switching from a settler to a warrior would have wasted 5 shields -- could have switched to worker, but I thought we were trying to let the popuation of Salamanca build up. Barracks did not waste already accumulated shields nor did it shrink Salamanca. The granary in Bedeville was because I thought that a more promising place to pump out settlers, given its greater potential for speedy growth (surrounded by grasslands) and decent production (lots of those grasslands are bonus, plus the nearby forests). Also, that granary is very early in its build so can be changed.

All of that is my way of saying that I did think through these decisions. I am aware that not every building must be built in every town. Admittedly, this is a lesson I've only recently learned and I'm still trying to incorporate it more fully into my playing style. It is certainly true that I'm pretty bad at taking maintenance costs into consideration.

On the research burn, I think I did let it go as fast and as long as I could. I didn't slow down on research until we had $1 left in the kitty and would've run a deficit on the next turn. At that point I scaled back to break even -- are you saying it's smarter to scale back to zero or nearly so and let the treasury build up for a bit instead?

As for the worker, I know General Mayhem had to run from the barbarian, and I found him on the BG where I built the road. I didn't build it to connect our towns (realizing that a road on the silk would do that just the same) so much as to not waste a worker turn when we came back to that spot later and to get more commerce out of the Bedeville citizen working that tile during the 6 turns it was going to take to build the road on the silk. In other words, if the worker had been starting in say Bedeville, I would never have moved to the BG first. But since it was already there, I pondered for a bit and eventually decided to road before moving.

I hope this doesn't sound too defensive. I'm more than willing to take my medicine. But on the other hand, I don't want a reputation I don't deserve and would much prefer my actual logic critiqued instead of what I was presumed to have been thinking (or not :) )

Edit: Looking at screenshot again, I see that the upcoming road on the silk will not connect to Bedeville -- I misremembered its location. Connecting the towns was the least important of the three reasons I decided to road before moving (the other two being the ones I listed above).
 
I'd have done the last set slightly differently, but I can't say it would have been any better. I would have built another warrior in Salamanca to allow some pop growth plus MP (with a barracks the next time Salamanca's pop got too low), but in Bedeville, I'd have built first a worker (to stimulate our economy) and then a barracks for producing vet warriors, so we still wouldn't have obtained a warrior from Bedeville. And I too would probably have made connecting the two towns a priority before the silks. I guess the main error here that we'd have both made was Salamanca's growth needing happiness long before Bedeville could grow. This is as much a question as it is a statement.

I don't know much about dealing with barbs, since I always play with them sedentary only, so I am looking for an opinion from anyone. Have we seen enough barbs to think they are roaming or worse? or could the ones we've seen have come from GH's popped by the other civs? If they are from more than just GH's, how do we prepare for the turn of age?

Edit: Oops! I was writing while you were posting, eotinb. I didn't see your reasoning on connecting the towns. :blush:
 
lurker's comment: discussion stimulator of the night. you all need a dotmap for future cities. Talk about your priority to get a boat out. when should you do it and why? hint, refer to the trading rules
 
Ah, the rant cascade. I love it when people get to put their reasoning out to air. It tells me that you are indeed thinking. I suspected it but wasn't really sure. :goodjob:

@eotinb, you could have dumped the shields into a chariot and sent him out to earn his veteran's whip, or die, hunting down barbs in the plains to the east. At any rate it all worked out for the best as it turns out that Salamanca makes a nicely tuned archer/settler farm (eight turn cycle). And if we think we are going to be stinking rich we could make it a chariot/settler farm and then do a mass upgrade to mounties. I happen to be partial to archers at this stage as they do earn us some respect from the neighbors who do seem to be far away, though.

I would have burned the worker turn and jumped on the silks road. Bedeville had lots of riverside bonus grass to work so the extra 1gpt from the roaded grass wasn't worth it compared to the costs of the luxury tax at Salamanca.

Like I said, just need to hone a little. And if I was a little too abrasive, I've never known a hone that wasn't.

Anyway on to the story:

First thing I do is check the trade options screen and realize that Hammi knows how to write, let's hope he is not working on how to think.

Next thing is look for x-fer opportunities and there are none. But there is a pile of coin and two techs that give us a window on military techs. So, I sell Writing to Cleo for her 121 gold. She won't include a tech with that amount which tells me she is working on Writing. Alex will give Warrior Code and 76g, but won't give us as much cash if we ask for Bronze Working, so I take the money and the bows and arrows and leave. I'd rather have archers than spears any day and Warrior Code is the door to Horseback Riding.

We now have a healthy treasury and can afford to keep the shamans in the sweat lodge a little longer. I do not have a real good feeling about this gambit but we are like the pig in the ham and egg breakfast: the chicken may be involved but the pig is committed.

Then I switch Salamanca to an archer and Bedeville to a worker. When Salamanca finishes the archer she starts another settler.

Salamanca gets its settler out, then trains an archer. It looks like we can do an 8 turn archer/settler cycle.

In 1575 Harriet Bay goes down on the coast and starts the first boat.

Code of Laws comes in in 1525 so the treasury gets replenished and we pick up Masonry, Bronze Working and 75g



but Alex won't give up Mathematics for anything short of everything. Hammi will give Iron Working for Code of Laws, though.




And look what we control:




This is Salamanca in the settler building phase at the end of T1. The town will grow in three, pick the roaded forest and spit out the settler, dropping to size four.




Put the fourth citizen on the soon to be roaded forest to the NW for the archer training phase. The town will grow to five in four, spit out the archer and should then be configured as you see it here for settler training.

Red Feather went down the peninsula and busted a barb camp while Blue is wandering through Egypt trying to find the coast line.

That first archer has been heading north to deal with bogies. And the second is in the garrison at Harriet Bay.

And here we are:



Roster check:

gmharriet - ready or not, you're up and the barbs are getting restless
 
lurker's comment: I think you should try the goody hut south of salamanca, if its bad, reload the autosave...you never know. ;)
 
OK, got it, but haven't yet opened the save.

A few comments/questions.

1) I noticed that during trade negotiations we had +18gpt and no research. I'm assuming that was just to encourage the AI that we could meet any suggested gpt commitments, right?

2) Looks like settlers will need escorts, right? I don't usually play with active barbs and I think I spotted a camp or 2.

3) We haven't had an updated dot map since we've been able to see our eastern territories. There appears to be a nice riverside spot 3 NE, 1 SE of Bedeville behind the mountain that would guarantee claiming the iron, but it would be widening our empire and harder to protect. Should we try to build there or rely on Bedeville's later expansion to aquire it? Do we still want the red dot on the hill S of the silks? Which order?

I'm not practiced with dot maps, but I think we need to discuss the order of settlement again before I play my turns. I'll have a go at a map, but anyone else can feel free to jump in. Mine generally look like kindergarten drawings. :rolleyes:
 
CAII is a nice dot map maker with the place city feature. I'd make one, but I'm posting right now during a 5 minute break in homework which is probably going to take up the rest of tonight :(
 
gmaharriet, try the planned city feature in CAII. I think I recall you saying you have not used CAII much -- on the World Map tab, hit spacebar to toggle a planned city in the currently selected square. Very nice feature -- much better than dot maps, IMHO.

I'll take a pass at an updated empire plan as well. We can compare results.

Edit: The General and I are on the same wavelength. Unlike him, I have no responsibilities getting in my way. ;)
 
lurker's comment: Salamanca can send out a spare unit to the hut. Barbs may be restless, but I just got done with a scenario that pitted one Archer against, what, 25-30 barbs? And that was Warriors and Horseman; these are just Warriors! What I'm saying is Salamanca has a unit to spare, IMHO.
 
Don't forget these are Imperial Barbarians. You don't get any breaks against these guys and they get a defense bonus IIRC.

@gm, always turn the sliders to zero for a negotiating session. Just makes it easier if you do in fact have to mortgage the economy, just don't forget to reset when you close.

Settlers will need a vanguard rather than escorts. Send the frontrunner out before the settler. That way if there are any baddies in the fog you know about before your settler stumbles over thirty-two barbarian horsies and when you build the town you r garrison is right there waiting for you.

In a perfect world we would settle that whole eastern plain before the era change. That should deal with the baddies. But since this is not the perfect world we will need to have troops roaming around out there and in the mountains to the north to keep the era change uprising bottled up. Or we could put a town or two out there as barbarian bait, empty the treasury and let them have their way with the outposts. That way you lose some corrupt population and a little coin.

The worst thing that can happen is to have them come raging into the inner ring. That can hurt. I seem to remember a game that was lost because the barbarians sacked the city that was building the crucial wonder that was only a few turns from completion. Had to build it twice, and that meant we couldn't build the military we needed to fend off the enemies.
 
Well, while you guys have been busy posting, I was making a (sloppy) dot map. I basically used eotinb's town placement with his colors and added two of my own (white and yellow) near the iron sources. Also moved the earlier red SE to to the next hill over. (How do people get those totally round circles?) So I'll post this to begin the the discussion. Mine are not perfect knight's moves, so feel free to make alternate suggestions.

I agree that CAII does nice maps, but when they overlap, the colors blend, and I find that confusing because it blurs the background terrain. I'll need more practice with CAII...and/or Paint as well. :hmm:
 

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Here's my take on a revised dot map. What's the relative importance of hooking up the iron vs. the wine? It seems to me that as long as we're confident that we can get the iron when we decide we want it, the wine is actually more important in the short term.



Edit: Wanted to point out that the city in the far northwest but on our side of that narrow strip is actually on the wine. On second thought, the hill directly S of its current placement may make more sense, as that is L-move from the next city down the coast and then we can take advantage of the food and gold bonus from the wine.
 
eotinb said:
Here's my take on a revised dot map. What's the relative importance of hooking up the iron vs. the wine? It seems to me that as long as we're confident that we can get the iron when we decide we want it, the wine is actually more important in the short term.

Edit: Wanted to point out that the city in the far northwest but on our side of that narrow strip is actually on the wine. On second thought, the hill directly S of its current placement may make more sense, as that is L-move from the next city down the coast and then we can take advantage of the food and gold bonus from the wine.
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I can't see the wine on any of these maps, and I have to reboot my computer each time I switch between programs or my screen freezes. I can, however, run both paint and Civ at the same time, but can't look at your map while Civ is running. :crazyeye: (Really need a new computer, I think!)

I agree that we will get the iron, as it's unlikely that the AI will settle so close to us so as to grab our nearest source. Would love to deny them all 3 sources. :satan: My consideration without a better look yet would be to settle the iron behind the mountain, because it's closer. If I'm understanding you correctly, we would need 2 towns north to get the wine and, with all the barbs running around, it could be a problem to go for the wine first and then backfill...hard to defend the wine city. It seems our fellow civs on this continent are all to the south and our backyard will be safe until the AI has galleys....hmmm, maybe not so far off. :hmm:

I'll go take another look at the save and return. :)
 
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