The Conquest Training Game

[Berrern]

Nice to see the game progressing well

There's only 1 thing I want to ask about - is the Worker located 2 tiles NW of Beijing irrigating? Because there's no point in irrigating Grassland while we're in Despotism - as the food bonus is wasted. Instead, he should (imo) chop the forest and irrigate the Game. Chopping the Forest earlier would've gained some extra shields for the Granary too, so we could've built it before growth, but that's too late now.

Anyway, what next?
There's a lot of unused land north of Babylon, and since they'll soon be blocking access to it, I think we should very soon begin preparations for a war against Babylon, with the aim of killing them completely. This way we'll get a LOT of land (for ourselves?) for expansion
If city 2 is founded in spot #1, I think it'll cater for a good Unit Factory - maybe something to consider?

As for city placement, I reckon our next city should be founded at spot #1. I've made a new map plot for new cities, please check it out:

The red dots will be the inner circle, which is at a distance of 3. If we increase distance for the inner ring, we'll lose a lot of potential city sites, so we should stick with 3 - does everyone agree?
Someone suggested moving spot #1 one more tile NW, however this is a bad idea as it'll ruin the RCP.

The green dots represent an outer ring with a distance of 3, while the light blue dots represent a distance of 4.5. Which do you think we should use?
The green alternative will make our core very compact, and the cities will share a lot of tiles, so maybe it's better to use the blue? However, if we use the blue plan, we'll miss 2 bonus tiles; the Fish to the east and the Whales in the west. I really don't know what would be better for us.

If anyone's interested, I can also make a dotmap where the outer ring has a distance of 3.5 and 4.

PS: Please post screenshots with grids! To turn on the grid, press Ctrl+G

 

[FriendlyFire]

Ah Iam going to decide where to place our second city.

- We finally found the Land size to be a lot bigger than we had thought. Te center being Jungle which acts like "No mans land" slowing down city growth. So we should secure the most productive land first. (simple enough)

- Berren is that ICS stratergy there ? Looks kinda weird.
The numbers dont repersent city build order ???
Once again I advocate spot 6 and roading the lux up asap.

We should next think of securing a corridor / chain of cities into the heart of the continuet. Blocking of Babylon wont be possible. (Risky since we would be relying heavly on luck and guess work)

I'll wait for more comments before procceding.

 

[AlanH]

The green dots represent an outer ring with a distance of 3, while the light blue dots represent a distance of 4.5.

Warning: You can't work out second ring RCP distances by counting on from the cities in the first ring. You have to count from the capital again. I think you'll find the green and blue dots are not on RCP rings.

 

[Mauer]

This is the last save I have, but it will work.

 

[ainwood]

Looks good. I'll give it some more detailed thoughts tonight / tomorrow (I finish work for the week in about 3 hours )

 

[Berrern]

Nice Mauer, that's what I was looking for Any idea where I could get that tool?

@FriendlyFire, it's not ICS (well, some will say that a 3-spaced RCP is almost ICS) - and the numbers are just numbers, they don't represent build order.
Now, look at our options. You say you want to build the next city in site #6, however I'm still standing by spot #1

Let's compare them:
- First 8 (workable) squares:
Spot 1: 2 Forest w/Game, 2 Grasslands, 3 Plains, 1 Coast.
Spot 6: 6 Plains (4 adjacent to River), 2 Hills w/Incense.
This means that at size 1, Spot #1 will produce 2fpt and 3 spt while Spot #6 produces 1fpt and 2spt - while at size 2 the values will be 2fpt/5spt and 0fpt/3spt respectively. Not only will Spot #1 be more productive, but the city will also grow faster. Note that the above examples will of course be changed if we irrigate, but at the moment I feel that we should use our Workers to make Beijing as close to a 4-turn Settler Factory as possible.
PS: I don't remember what tile bonus the Incense gives, so the above calculations might be a bit off (I've assumed that we'll be working River-plains).

- Spot 1 will create a coastal city, good for building naval units to bypass a future Babylon blockade, and also good for exploring, so we can get a valuble map for tech trades later on.
- Spot 6 is farther away, which means more corruption. High levels of corruption should be avoided at all cost this early in the game! We need to get a productive core up and running asap.
- It takes 1 turn to move to spot #1, and 3 to move to spot #6.
- If we pick #1, the city will already be roaded, while if we pick #6 we'll use 6 turns to connect it.
- Spot 6 has a Luxury.

If you look at our situation, an emphasis on expansion and military units (for a war against Babylon) is needed, and because of that and the above, I definitely think spot #1 is the key for our second city.

 

[Detlef Richter]

I can be wrong but i think the distances are wrong. I think an diagonal tile counts 1.5 instead of 1. And all tiles have to be count from the capitol.
Means if you go 2 tiles diagonal you have 3 instead of 2 RCP distance.

 

[Berrern]

I can be wrong but i think the distances are wrong. I think an diagonal tile counts 1.5 instead of 1. And all tiles have to be count from the capitol.
Means if you go 2 tiles diagonal you have 3 instead of 2 RCP distance.

Yes, I know this I didn't know that you had to count second/third etc. rings from the capital though.

Anyway, look at the screenie Mauer posted - that explains it all/
Oh, and btw, the first ring in my screenie is correct

EDIT: Anyone heard from Spleen? He hasn't been online in the CFC forums for a week..

 

[Detlef Richter]

Hmm nice tool, makes it easier to count.

@berrern

You've defnetly right, we should build on spot #1 and as fast as possible the next two citys on our first ring. We can use these citys as war factorys to build enough forces against Babylon.

 

[Dianthus]

Nice Mauer, that's what I was looking for Any idea where I could get that tool?

I know, I know. Well, I should, I wrote it . See the links in my sig.

 

[Berrern]

Cheers Dianthus!
Great work

 

[Mauer]

Ok, that's 3 of us that vote for spot #1. not sure about spleen, bradley, and mabellino. And the irrigation flub was mine. Not a total loss though. If we plop a city down on spot 1, then it will still need the irrigation for some decent growth right.(?)
Sorry Dianthus, I didn't give you credit for it. I forgot who wrote the program, it was late and I didn't feel like looking.
It is a great tool. I just started trying to figure out RCPs and this tool has really been helping me.
And if you guys look close. Ur is 7 away from beijing. So maybe we capture it and use a 3/7 rcp. What do you think?

 

[Berrern]

And the irrigation flub was mine. Not a total loss though. If we plop a city down on spot 1, then it will still need the irrigation for some decent growth right.(?)

Well it's nothing major to worry about, just a few wasted turns
No cities will be able to utilize that irrigation until we change governments. Normally I always mine Grassland, however if the city stops growing before it's reached size 20, I change some of those mines to irrigation.

I agree with your thoughts about capturing Ur and using a 3/7 RCP strategy for expansion. However, as someone mentioned (I think about a page back), Beijing is far from an ideal RCP centre, so maybe we should just focus on the first ring and conquering Babylon asap for now, and think about RCP more later on.

 

[mabellino]

I also vote for loc #1. Again apologies for the silence lately but I'm kind of tied up with SGOTM2 and the new CGOTM. I think I might have to bow out of playing but I'll definately still pop in and read all the discussion. After all that's the best bit!
Cheers to the old pros and good luck to my fellow trainees.

 

[chill888]

Hi,

Late arrival.

Just finished reading through the 10 pages of this great thread. Hats off to Ainwood and Alan (and others) for patient advice.

Just one thought on recent posts. I just recently started trying to trade for workers - as Ainwood suggested earlier for this game. I know it's too late for this game, but it might have been a good idea to just add the citizen to Beijing instead of using him for terrain mods. Especially if he is from a non-industrious Civ. and given the tough time increasing city size on this particular map

I used this strategy in the first conquest scenario when playing a CIV that wasn't near water in early game. I traded for 3 workers, cut a tree or two, a little road etc. and then used them to increase the capital city size.

The watch out of course is that if you war with that Civ (where the worker came from), you will have a citizen that gets unhappy super easily. I believe that eventually over time (not sure though) the worker becomes a citizen of your country.

Anyway just off-topic food for thought

Regards

chill888

 

[Mauer]

Can we get a screen shot of what we have now. Do we have a second city yet?

 

[ainwood]

Well, I've finished the majority of my other distracting activities, and I come back here to find that you've been having some good discussion, and the game is looking good.

A few thoughts:

Our primary goal at the moment is to get Beijing set-up for a settler-factory. The foundations are laid, but we need to finish it off.

First thing I noticed is that there is a worker irrigating bonus grassland. Unfortunately, this won't provide any benefit => irrigated grassland only gives 2 food in a despotism. Grassland (bonus or otherwise) is normally best mined, certainly in the early game. Mining would give an extra shield (two shields, two food). Perhaps the worker should be interrupted, and changed to mine it (or even moved to cut the trees). What really needs to happen though, is to get those forests cut and the game irrigated, in order to set-up the settler factory. That should be the priority. We need the game on teh plains and one of the game on the grassland to be irrigated, the other can be left as-is. We also need a bonus grassland or two mined.

We are currently building a settler. That is OK, but it will reduce us back to size 1. If we instead build a spearman now, then we can build a settler in 5 additional turns => at the same time as we grow! The complicating factor is that we will be cutting forests down, and getting 10 shields / forest. We may want to consider building something like a temple or barracks to benefit from these shields. Out goal should be to have 'something' complete when the terrain mods are complete with Beijing about size 4.

 

[ainwood]

Just one thought on recent posts. I just recently started trying to trade for workers - as Ainwood suggested earlier for this game. I know it's too late for this game, but it might have been a good idea to just add the citizen to Beijing instead of using him for terrain mods. Especially if he is from a non-industrious Civ. and given the tough time increasing city size on this particular map

I used this strategy in the first conquest scenario when playing a CIV that wasn't near water in early game. I traded for 3 workers, cut a tree or two, a little road etc. and then used them to increase the capital city size.

The watch out of course is that if you war with that Civ (where the worker came from), you will have a citizen that gets unhappy super easily. I believe that eventually over time (not sure though) the worker becomes a citizen of your country.

Anyway just off-topic food for thought

Regards

chill888

Thanks for the suggestion.

When we get Beijing's settler factory going, we will be increasing the size by one citizen every two turns, so at that point I don't think we need to add the worker. Our priority at the moment has to be gettng the necessary forest tiles cut and watered, which is probably the higher need for the worker.

 

[Berrern]

We may want to consider building something like a temple or barracks to benefit from these shields. Out goal should be to have 'something' complete when the terrain mods are complete with Beijing about size 4.

Imo Barracks would be a waste of time for now, as we'll use Beijing for a Settler Factory for probably a long while. Barracks is important in unit factories, but that's it.
If we can build a Temple, we should definitely do that then - helps our culture and happiness

 

[Mauer]

First thing I noticed is that there is a worker irrigating bonus grassland. Unfortunately, this won't provide any benefit => irrigated grassland only gives 2 food in a despotism. Grassland (bonus or otherwise) is normally best mined, certainly in the early game.

What really needs to happen though, is to get those forests cut and the game irrigated, in order to set-up the settler factory. That should be the priority.

There is probably something I'm missing here. I understand now irrigation in Despo is no good. But then why the need to irrigate the game if it is useless at the moment anyways?