Regarding the tundra towns: a fish can support 4 forest tiles, so we would get quite a bit of production down there: 9spt before corruption. But still I suggest to not build any improvements down there, except for our excellent half-priced harbors. It'll take ages, before a Market+Duct (200s!) will pay off.
All those Tundra-town sites are 2nd- or 3rd-ring, so we won't get much (if anything) out of them unless we build our FP, and give them Courthouses. And if you want to get them up to at least Pop5 (1 Fish + 4 Forests), they are likely to get overwhelmed by war-weariness much quicker without Markets (not to mention, those towns will be high-commerce, so Markets will give us quite a bit of cash once we turn off SCI%)
We should better use these towns for Galleys. (200s are almost 7 Galleys, that'll be a better investment. The core can then concentrate on the Berzerks.)
I wasn't thinking to build anything else in those towns, except Galleys: the western towns can build ships for the conquest of Arabia, Carthage and Byzantium, the eastern ones for the conquest of north Holland, Russia, Azteca and Osmania. The ships can be hand-built, but who said anything about hand-building the Ducts and Markets? That'll take ages. Once we start conquering and/or zero SCI%, we should be able to cash-rush them, we won't have anything else to do with our gold...
SpoilerCost-benefit analysis :
Say we get a 2nd-ring Tundra-town to Pop6 with a Harbour and CH. If we cash-rush a Duct after a 1T Forest-chop using 4 Workers, we will pay (100-11)* 4 = 356 g. We can then add those Workers to the town, getting it to Pop10 working 10 2*FPT tiles, mostly Coast+Sea, giving us ~25 CPT, and at Pop12, the roaded land-tiles and city-tile will give us another ~8 CPT, totalling 37 CPT, before corruption. Conservatively, we will have ~30% corruption in a 2nd-ringer even with a CH (and our FP!), so that's 26 CPT net => 23 GPT at TAX%=90% (allowing LUX%=10%, if we need it), so we'll pay off the Duct-investment in 356 / 23 ≈ 15-16T. If we then do the same 1T chop+rush trick with a Market, the 50% TAX%-boost will give us ~35 GPT at TAX%=90%, and we'll break even after 10-11T. Whether that will be worth it or not, will depend on how close we are to finishing the game after getting Invention...
SpoilerPlaying away :
In parallel to this SG, I am also playing a 'sloppy' game using Start3, but essentially the same strat. Due to the effectively landlocked start, the large areas of Hills/ Mountains/ Deserts/ Jungles/ Marsh close to Trondheim (the SG start is dreamy compared to Start3!), and, yes, my less-than-optimised play, I was kind of forced to wait until later in the game before I could start Zerking (it's now around 1200 AD), and several of the AIs have made it a lot further through the tech-tree than in our SG. Turned out that my Continent is actually quite large (possibly the largest on the map), but sparsely populated: it originally contained only me plus Portugal, and has therefore also attracted a lot of colonists from overseas. Every nation on the planet (except China) has dropped off at least 2 Settlers on the farthest points from my core, even the tiny French.
Nonetheless, my Continent is already effectively under my complete control -- I halved the Byzzies' holdings early on, annexed a couple of German and Bab Lux-colonies, and gutted the Portuguese Empire using Archers+Horses initially, then Zerks + Pikes, now Knights (I traded for Chiv) after they DoW'd me (ta for the GA, Henry!). I have just finished expunging the Japanese presence from my land, after they were also dumb enough to DoW me, and begun the overseas offensive against Japan. All further boarders have been repelled so far, and I will mop up the remaining Tundra-trash-type colonies of everyone else as and when they are stupid enough to DoW or MA against me. My plan is now to continue killing the Japs, then DoW Mao in 4T, after our RoP expires, take back the Jap + Portuguese cities I gifted him, then take China by sea as well, and also re-declare on Henry in about 15T (WW forced a halt to that one, because I was trying to do it overland -- but soon I will have Cavs...), which will net me some nice Continental Wonders. After that, if I still haven't reached 66% of the territory, I'll look around for further victims (likely France, Babylon, and/or Germany).
Re CPT: After getting Invention, I researched Gunpowder using a lone Geek, and with SCI% = zero, LUX%=20% and minimal GPT-trading, I was still making >200 gpt. I rushed a lot of CHs, Markets and Ducts so far...
I don't think the tundra towns should be a priority. It'll take 20-30 turns just to get the Harbor built in each one (I'm assuming bad corruption there), and then another 15 turns per Galley. Maybe the black or blue dot could be worthwhile, but we'll get better results from taking AI city sites and settling in any gaps for the next several turnsets.
tjs, don't get too carried away... If you want to build or rush all that stuff in the tundra -- Forbidden Palace, Markets, Courthouses, Harbors, Aqueducts... -- the game will drag on to 1500 AD. If we just concentrate on the "essentials" -- Galleys and Berzerks -- victory can be ours by 500 AD.
BTW: what war weariness are you talking about? We'll be the ones calling the shots, so WW is something for the AI to worry about...
Of the 9spt before corruption, 5 may be left in a 2nd ring town and 3 in a 3rd ring town. That's a Galley every 6 or 10 turns respectively. That's plenty. Will give us the ships necessary for victory much sooner than if we build Markets, Ducts and Courthouses first...
(And consider: while we build all that stuff, the AI only becomes stronger, making victory more difficult. Cash-rushing is not an option either: we'll need lot's of cash for the Archer upgrades. (150g a piece.)
I don't think the tundra towns should be a priority. It'll take 20-30 turns just to get the Harbor built in each one (I'm assuming bad corruption there),
I wouldn't prioritise founding and developing them over, say, Green-dot (which will 'complete' our 1st-ring -- of 5 towns -- once it's been founded), but we currently have a functioning Settler-pump, and free space that only we can get to easily, so why not use it? We're still only at war with the Arabs and the Aztecs, who are far enough away that we're not likely to be settling their lands any time soon. And since Cathy already wasted her Wonder-shields, it will be a while (20T or so?) before she gets SoZ done for us, so it's unlikely we'll be DoWing her before we do Willy.
Black and Blue will be distance 6 and 7 from Trond, respectively, making them comfortably second-ring (along with Stockholm, Oslo, and Yek'burg [after capture]), and giving us a total of 11 1st- and 2nd-ring core-towns (providing us with additional free unit-support, and also triggering the FP-build pop-up). So even without a CH, they should certainly be able to build stuff faster than 1-2 SPT -- especially if we found them while they can still use available land-tiles near Trond, Reyk and Green-dot (i.e. before those towns have reached Pop12 and thus need most/all of their adjacent tiles for themselves).
Sure, Purple-Tundra (distance 8) and Red-Tundra (distance 10 if moved 1NE) will be 3rd-ring and thus less useful, but still, better to have the towns planted and growing as early as as possible, surely? Chox's imminent Hill-spot is (also) distance 10 (or 11, depending on where the river runs) from Trond: Purple-Tundra would therefore actually have given us more raw CPT (although admittedly will also need more Worker-/ cash-investment...)
Don't we get WW-points just for having units in hostile territory over multiple turns? I certainly seem to be getting that in my Start3-game, even when I've been the 'victim' of AI-DoWs...
My original game-plan also called for a Leos (pre)build, which would give us our GA after we've turned off SCI%, and thus generate lots of cash (+50% if we have Markets in all productive towns) prior to upgrading all our remaining Archers, as well as halving the upgrade-cost to 75g per head...
I also still think we should at least consider using a (M)GL to rush our FP. While I agree that investing shields into units rather than the FP makes sense, for the reasons you've given, having our FP will still double the size of our (productive) core, allowing us to produce Zerks + ships faster from twice as many towns, and giving us more CPT-cash for beakers now, and upgrades (or rushes!? ) later. Sure, not our first MGL: he should make an Army (a Horse-Army? No use on defence, but can certainly take down fortified Spear-garrisons on attack). We only need one Army-victory to be able to build HE, and increase our chances of getting more MGLs afterwards. The 2nd MGL could rush HE (because that 200s could probably also be better invested in Archers/ Horses). So maybe our 3rd MGL could do the FP? Or if lightning strikes twice, and we get another SGL, maybe use him to do the HE or FP?
SpoilerNote (particularly for Robbus -- and Nathiri?) re. Leader-generation :
IIRC; elite-unit victories can only generate MGLs, if there are no other GLs active, including SGLs. So any SGL which appears while at war, should ideally be used ASAP, rather than kept 'in stock' in the hope of rushing a GWonder when a(nother) tech is acquired at some indeterminate point in the future.
If for some reason you feel compelled to hold an SGL for a couple of turns after it appears (e.g. because your preferred candidate for the Wonder-city has some chopped/ disbanded shields in its current build, preventing you from switching and rushing immediately) that's not ideal, but you can usually still get away with it at Emp and below (when AI [Wonder-] production is slower, and unit-stacks are smaller/ fewer)*. If you decide to do that, though, then until the SGL has been used (and if feasible), only r+vUnits should be used for further attacks: eUnit attacks will be 'wasted'.
*Yes, given what happened on my turnset, I do appreciate the apparent irony of this statement, but when the Byzzies built the Pyramids, I was caught by surprise: I had not expected them to be so far along.
That's right. But with a bit of care that can be avoided: Don't move into hostile territory, if you can't turn said territory into "friendly" territory on the same turn (or at least the following turn)...
With Berzerks, this can be achieved easily. On our fast ships they only enter enemy territory, when they capture it the very same turn. But even with slower units like Horsemen, where we need to stay a turn or two in enemy territory, before we are able to attack, it takes a long time, until enough WW points have accumulated. But even level 1 WW is not the end of the world, we'll just temporarily raise the lux slider by 10%. And none of the wars should last so long that we reach level 2.
Definitely. With Berzerks, we don't really need Armies. There may be exceptions, e.g. a heavily defended capital, size 7 on a hill, where we would run the risk of high casualties, if trying to storm it with "ordinary" troops. In such a case a land-based size-3 Berzerk Army might be handy, but other than that, using a leader for the FP will be worth it.
However, all this is still long-term stuff. Let's think about the tasks right ahead of us. The next turnset is a very critical one for the course of the game: we will enter the Middle Ages this turn set (with the help of a bit cash collected from backwards and scientific AIs), and then we will need to gift up the Germans, Byzantines and Ottomans and collect their freebees using our optionals (Republic and Literature). With a bit of luck, we can then already start on Invention right away.
@Speedbird: do you know how this is done? If something is unclear, please ask. In any case, please pause right after entering the Middle Age, so we can all discuss the possible tech deals. Sometimes it is quite tricky to get all the freebees. E.g. you may need to use Rep+Lit+a lump sum and a huge amount of gpt to buy freebee X from civ A, then using X, Rep and Lit to buy freebee Y from civ B, then turn back to civ A and sell Y to get our cash and gpt back, and finally get freebee Z from civ C. Or any variation hereof. And this case here is special, as we are only interested in Feudalism and Engineering. So if we would have to pay for Monotheism, without a chance to get the investment back, we would rather skip that one and use the money for researching Invention instead. But sometimes it may be necessary to first buy Mono in order to get one of the other two from another civ.
The good thing is: Literature is still a monopoly, and Republic is known only to Carthage, not to any of the scientifics. So we should have very good chances to collect all the freebees they may get!
PS: when working out the best way to make these deals, we also need to pay careful attention to which scientific civ knows Carthage, and which of the scientifics know each other! If someone does not know Carthage, we still get "monopoly price" for Republic, and if we make a "circle deal" with two scientifics, that don't know each other, we get monopoly prices for both of the freebees when reselling... Sometimes little details like these are important to get the deals started at all, and to get the upfront investment back...
Oops...
Last night I've been continuing my COTM130 game, where the Germans are the only scientific civ that can help out a bit with research. Must have been confusing that one with this game...
I thought being at war was bad for citizen moods even if someone else declared on us ( which is better for our mood than us declaring on them) In our war against arabia I thought we fired first; but yo u did answer my question.
You start out with a boost if they start the war, then it goes down if you have your military away from home for a while, fighting an aggressive war instead of a defensive one. It also goes down if you're losing.
I doubt that Leonardo will pay off in this game: there is no connect/disconnect possible for the Archer->Berzerk upgrade, so we can upgrade only those Archers we'll have completed by the time we get Invention. How many will that be? At the moment we have 5. Leonardo is great, if you can do connect/disconnect, but in this game I think, we'll be lucky if we even reach the "break-even point".
Also: all our towns still have important infrastructure to build and can't afford to build a 600s wonder!
No, Abu DoW'd us (when we refused a demand, IIRC). But since we have killed everything he's thrown at us without taking (m)any losses ourselves (good work, Chox!), the 'war happiness' he gave us, has not yet been overwhelmed by the war-weariness we would get from losing units, towns, etc. Which is why we want to keep the war going -- it's bad for him, but good for us.
If you're interested in the nuts-and-bolts of WW, there's a thread here. But it's basically as Chox describes, although it should be emphasised that when he talks about a 'defensive' war, he doesn't mean hunkering down in your cities and just letting the AI come at them, he means sending out your attack-units to fight the enemy units on your turf, rather than theirs, before they reach your towns -- because you get WW-points from having your (defensive) units attacked, even if they successfully defeat/retreat the attacker.
So once the fighting has started, you'll have much lower WW if you take the initiative on your turn, than you will if you take the punches on the AI's turn (and that's why it's also advisable to build -- many -- more attackers than defenders). This is also why we want to take-and-gift cities. Cities which flip back to their previous owner during wartime are (AFAIK) counted as 'lost' cities, and losing cities racks up the WW-points very fast...
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