The Conquest Training Game

[AlanH]

In despotism any tile producing 3 or more of anything per turn is reduced by 1. So anything that produces 2 is not worth improving to produce 3 because it will drop back to 2. But if it produces 1 or 3 or more then improving it will increase production to 2 or 4 or more.

Grass on its own produces 2. Irrigate it and it produces 3. Reduce these 3 by 1 for despotism and you get back to 2. Irrigating plain grass is a waste of worker time.

Grass with deer produces 4. Irrigate it and it produces 5. Reduce these numbers by 1 for despotism and you get 3 and 4. So irrigation works.

 

[ainwood]

What Alan said!

I guess I should make an effort to explain myself more. Sorry about that!

 

[Mauer]

Thanks for clearing that up for me AlanH. This is all just too much to remember. How in the world do all of you retain that. Scores like 11-10,000! I have never even got half of that. Guess when (if) we ever finish this training game, I'll go ahead and pre-register for the next one.

 

[Mauer]

@mabellino: Let's forget about the first hundred and forty something people ahead of us. We'll see who can get above the 140 mark next time. How about it?

 

[ainwood]

Personally, I don't remember all the intricate details. I remember a few key points as 'rules of thumb' and use reference material.

EG: this 'rules of thumb' would be:
* Early game, always mine the grassland (rather than irrigate), starting with the bonus grassland.

I also use spreadsheets for quick calcs, including city distances.

Anyway: Who's playing? Shall we 'get on with it'??

 

[Mauer]

Anyway: Who's playing? Shall we 'get on with it'??

I don't guess anybody is playing. Thanks to the new COTM! Think there might be too many pots on the stove right now.

After going back to read the last few pages, I'm pretty sure Berrern has the last save.

 

[Detlef Richter]

I played the last ten turns and posted the save.
FriendlyFire is the next in the row, but he didn't post anything for a long time.
So i think it's time for the next.

Ahhh, by the way congrats to mauer and mabellino they are the best in GOTM31 from our group.

 

[mabellino]

@ Detlef
I would hardly call 145 a good position! I broke into the top 100 once or twice previously though! Hmmmm playing conquests for 4 months has clearly depleted my ptw skills (what little I had!)

Congrats to Mauer who IIRC placed ahead of me. I was sure I'd get the lowest scoring space victory medal this time... I launched in 1953... now that's just pathetic! Blunder of the month was staying in monarchy through the whole industrial age cos I forgot to switch to Democracy I missed building the UN by 2 turns and that was my ticket to win cos all the other AI's loved me. Oh well you can't win them all!

I've learnt a lot about mm now (mainly from this thread!) including how to run a settler factory so my new aim is to be in the top 100 for GOTM32.
CGOTM1 is going abysmally... might not submit this time

@Mauer
Aim higher! I'm sure we can both place in the top 100 this time thanks to Ainwood and co (esp AlanH!)

 

[Berrern]

It seems that both Spleen and FriendlyFire are absent - they haven't posted here for a while

Anyway, I'd be happy to play the next 10 turns!
I plan to interrupt the Worker and send him to the Game to start chopping.
Should we build a Granary before the Settler? That would help us grow more, so the next Settler will be produced faster. Also, the Forest will provide extra shields for the Granary.

What do you think?

 

[Mauer]

I think ainwood has hinted around quite a few times that we should go ahead and build the granary. Alanh hinted that we should build a settler, and or a granary. Berrern wants to build the granary I think. And I suppose I will jump on the band wagon too. The first settler now would be nice, but this isn't a 30 turn game, so maybe we should go ahead and shoot for the granary. Chop the forest, and irrigate the game. I think this is pretty much what I have picked up after reading through everybodys post.

I think the order is like this. Please feel free to correct me.

1 Spleen (if he isn't lost in COTM land)
2 Maurer
3 Detlef
4 Berrern (it's your ball now)
5 mabellino

 

[Mauer]

Congrats to Mauer who IIRC placed ahead of me. I was sure I'd get the lowest scoring space victory medal this time... I launched in 1953... now that's just pathetic! Blunder of the month was staying in monarchy through the whole industrial age cos I forgot to switch to Democracy I missed building the UN by 2 turns and that was my ticket to win cos all the other AI's loved me. Oh well you can't win them all!

That's pathetic!? I launched 18 years after you did.

I've learnt a lot about mm now (mainly from this thread!) including how to run a settler factory so my new aim is to be in the top 100 for GOTM32. CGOTM1 is going abysmally... might not submit this time

Well your a step ahead of me. I am still scratching my head about keeping up with all of the tile bonus. My game as well doesn't seem to be going as great as expected. I think we should submit anyways.

@Mauer Aim higher! I'm sure we can both place in the top 100 this time thanks to Ainwood and co (esp AlanH!)

Definately! The ol' blood thirsty Alanh has taught me alot in here. And his patience with all of us thread surfers is amazing.

 

[FriendlyFire]

Sorry I had to work extra computer format and swapping comps == hella fun.
Ok I'll play my 10turns in about 1hr and post the results on.

Events:
I made contact with both Greeks and Germans.
No suprise we are the weakest of civilizations.
Babylon has settled it second city.
Map is looking very crowded indeed.
Wheel done and Horses acquired.
Workers have built roads
Second city is built at location 1
(I hope it is Location 1, since I checked and checked since it looks so very close. Add to this I've never played RPS stratergy before. Somehow felt very wrong to place it so close)


Mistakes:
Building the Settler straight away. I should have begun the forest harvest and built a Spearman before creating a settler. (if I had harvested the forest it would have produced the settler at size 2)

Failed to trade for IRON working. Germans have iron working but wont trade techs. Would it help if we gave away a free tech to facilitate trade ? I seem to have made a mistake here by trying to secure a tech for gold per Turn trades. (We have a few spare techs to trade)

Bad choice of tasks for Workers.(Blah why irrigate without building roads ?)
I should have made roading the game piority for our second city. Dont want to waste turns moving workers around until they have at least built roads.


Thoughts
Move west located Warrior down to scout out that area. vs Annoying the Germans off by tresspassing all over their territory.

If the babylons again expand we could find ourselves helmed into a tiny amount of land. Can we build a corridor ? Or isnt that important ?
Also We could find ourselves with only one Lux if Babylon settles cuts of the last of the spices.

To the North is a Breathtaking rescource 2x wheats 1x cow. If only we had our start city here. My guess is the Greeks are going to be the superpower on this Contient.

Germans seem to be expanding into jungle and mountains which will make there expansion very small. Each civ has only a limited amount of good land. We can expect an early war from the militeristic civilizations. With us being the weakest things arent looking so good.




(Can't get images to show ?)
_

 

[mabellino]

We have the wines to SE. I really want to see what's lurking down there! It could be a mega dairy farm fertile peninsula for all we know!
I'm pretty sure Shanghai is where we wanted it

 

[Mauer]

[Second city is built at location 1
(I hope it is Location 1, since I checked and checked since it looks so very close. Add to this I've never played RPS stratergy before. Somehow felt very wrong to place it so close)

I know what you mean about it not feeling right. But the jedi masters have spoken , and Dianthus' RCP tool shows that to be right on target.

Failed to trade for IRON working. Germans have iron working but wont trade techs. Would it help if we gave away a free tech to facilitate trade ? I seem to have made a mistake here by trying to secure a tech for gold per Turn trades. (We have a few spare techs to trade)

They wouldn't trade it for anything? If we have a few more techs than them, maybe we should go ahead and trade a couple for IW. It looks as though we aren't gonna have the beaker support (initially) to help us research. And we are gonna need IW pretty soon I'm sure with old crazy Babylon breathing down our necks.

Germans seem to be expanding into jungle and mountains which will make there expansion very small. Each civ has only a limited amount of good land. We can expect an early war from the militeristic civilizations. With us being the weakest things arent looking so good

.
Maybe after the settler, we should think about a few defensive units. We are looking kind of weak at the moment.

 

[Mauer]

I think the order is like this. Please feel free to correct me.

1 Spleen (if he isn't lost in COTM land)
2 Maurer
3 Detlef
4 Berrern (it's your ball now)
5 mabellino

Correction
1 Spleen
2 maurer
3 Detlef
4 Friendly
5 Berrern
6 mabellino

 

[ainwood]

Maybe after the settler, we should think about a few defensive units. We are looking kind of weak at the moment.

An interesting point.

I actually tend to build very, very few defensive units (attack is the best form of defense!)

Remember that unless you are really weak, or you provoke the AI, they will not normally attack you until they run out of land for expansion. In terms of power, the AI will not consider you weak if you have offensive units.

Given that we are basically hemmed-in by the Babylonians, it does look like we will need to attack them reasonably early, and our strategy should reflect this. I would therefore suggest that we decide what we are going to attack with. We know that we have horses: Iron is an unknown. Horses are also my favourite attacking weapon in the early ages, but don't let my personal opinion bias you! I think that the 'bird in the hand' (ie we have horses) should be what makes the decision.

One thing that you should always try and do is to decide on a strategy, and stick with it: Don't make the mistake of trying four different strategies with four different objectives at the same time! For example: If we decide that we want to attack babylon early, then building temples in second and third cities is pointless: They MUST be set to build units, preferably with barracks.

My view is that we should follow this: tidy-up what we need for Beijing to be a settler factory, and have it build ONLY settlers (also: don't waste time raoding between cities until the necessary improvements in Beijing are complete)

In the other cities, maybe build a warrior for basic defense / happiness control, then straight into barracks. I would also recommend going for horseback riding rather than iron working (for now).

 

[Detlef Richter]

I think it's totally correct what ainwood sayed. As i posted a few posts bevor, it's a bad possibillity to have iron near our citys. The terrain isn't really good for iron.
The only way for us is to use the next three citys as unit factorys to attack Babylon in a short time.

 

[Mauer]

Well it appears that no one has downloaded Friendly Fires save yet. Somebody gonna give it a try?

 

[ainwood]

Well, its up to you guys! I think we should try to keep it moving.

 

[Mauer]

Berrern and Mabellino haven't gone yet. Thought maybe everybody should take a few turns before I butted back in.