Training game emphasizing trading - Emperor

Everybody plays twenty to start, posts a screenshot and save then dl and I can run them through the "Great Comparator". We can review the logs once everybody has posted their saves and screenies, so please keep a detailed log.

And my momma would whack my butt for my bad manners:

Welcome to CFC, dl. Nice to have new blood around here
 
I hope this will show my screenshot. If it works I'll edit it to include my save. Unfortunately, my computer fan failed on turn 15 and I had save my turnlog so I'll try to recap it. If this works.
SCREENSHOT

ok. how do you make the image appear in the body of the message and not just a link? It shouldn't be hard but the img tags aren't working (for me anyway) :D


edit: ok I figured it out but didn't do it after reading the next post. :goodjob:
 

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Thank you for the welcome Bede.

To answer your question I'm more of a builder. Usually production->money->what ever else I need.

Military wise I'm defensive until I need to be offensive. I tend to blitz more but have been trying to combine arms.

@All trainees: When you finish put your turn log and screen shot as a upload instead of posting them directly into the post. This will avoid any 'spoilers' about the map, ai locations ect.
 
here is the summary of my turns, since i lost my notes:
settled in place.
irrigated and roaded the first cow. mined and roaded the second cow. mined and roaded the BG (that's twenty worker turns with movement).
built, warrior, warrior, warrior(started as curragh switched after barbarian problem) curragh, settler, working on warrior at twenty.
warrior 1 east to mountain, found goody hut. popped barbs, killed one barb, died IBT to 2nd barb. warrior 2 went W then came back when warrior 1 died. warrior 2 to mountain killed 2nd and 3rd barbs IBT but didn't become a veteran. kept moving easterly and can now see a second goody hut. warrior 3 garrisoned until barbs were dead then went west and north. curragh followed coast west and north. settler has moved one NW looking at possible settlement on coast by river, 3 moves from capital, but that can be debated if we like my turns.
city grew to size 4 and luxury up to 30% (i think :confused: ) Science was set to CB so that we wouldn't pop the cheapest tech. I just realized that I forgot to check the F10 screen to see who our rivals our, but since my exploration was curtailed by barbs it doesn't really matter yet anyway. I think that's everything. Notice I remembered everything. Proof that I really did keep a log and lost it :lol: .
 
@trikos, you can builld starts for me anytime. This one's a doozy.

All that river gold.....not to mention the cattle.

So here are my answers to scout's questions:

How would you describe your style of play?

I am opportunistic and commercial.

What do you tend to seek first, military strength, commerce, production, or science?

Above all things else I enjoy trading and diplomacy so I am always looking for competitive advantage. So it's food in the early game, then cash, then, military. Resources and luxuries are important throughout. Science is a tool to get all the other things needed to sustain competitive advantage.

Do you have preferred civ traits?

Nope. Each combination of traits presents both opportunities and challenges. Finding the ways to enhance the opportunities and mitigate the challenges is the most fun.

In warfighting, do you prefer to "blitz" or use a "combined arms" approach?

Overwhelming force, however attained. I usually seek the weakest opponent who holds something I need, hit 'em hard and take what I want.

Do you have a favorite Age?
Every Age has its own set of challenges and opportunities. Though if forced to choose I would say the Middle Ages. Techs get really expensive at that point and the development of the empire is stalled, so the challenges are the greatest. Trading your way through the tech tree in the AA is fun, too. By the time an Emperor game hits the Industrial Age it is time to pick the victory condition and manage to that rather than seeking advantage over the opponents, so some of the challenge is gone.

General coments
In general, I tend to overbuild things like courthouses, libraries and marketplaces.

My military is often inadequate to the task at hand and I occasionally over-commit and forget to provide for defense.

I view corruption and waste as personal affronts so will try too hard to eliminate them.

On the other hand I really love squeezing the last minim of juice from the pomegranate. Hand me an empire with lots of towns, and a really big problem to solve, like getting oil for tanks, and I can spend hours tuning and trimming to get maximum output and minimum waste.

There are lots of things I don't know about this game so I prefer playing SG's to solo games: I learn a lot from fellow players and don't get that middle of the night, it's dark and I'm lost feeling when confronted with a nasty challenge.

And did I ever boob up my start....I saw all that food and cash and shields and went hog wild...will have to replay as I forgot the variant requirement :blush:
 
oopsy I looked at your save after I played 20 turns myself (I'll post mine after all the trainees are done :p). However, without a turn log its hard for the trainers or anyone else for that matter to figure out what you did and why.

Few things to think about when playing:
What are short term goals (within your turns) and long term goals (after your turn).
Micro manage as much as sanity will allow per turn (remember you have 24 (or more if you need it) hours to play), take your time and think about your choices.
The reason why everyone is playing the first 20 is these are the most important turns in the game. A mistake/missed opportunity here could and does hamper your late game especially on high difficulties.
Remember this is emperor :king: unhappyness will be a large problem, 65% of the time huts will pop barbarians and the ai gets a large bonus. If an ai starts on our island this game will be much harder.

After looking at your save I have a few questions:
1: How often did you look at luxuries bar, on turn 20 you could have saved 2 gold by lowering it from 40% to 20%, as Bede said every bit of gold will help.
2: What do you plan on doing with all those built warriors. Was there something better way to use the production. Remember were on an island ;).

Your worker moves look good but would connecting the ivory be better? This is the type of question you should ask yourself before you start.

You did good with your choices however you should always be finding ways to improve.
 
My answers to Bede's questions:

How would you describe your style of play? Builder? Warmonger?

Builder. I try to expand (peaceful and only non-peaceful if necessary) to a huge empire and out research the opponents. Not a great strategy on the higher levels...


What do you tend to seek first, military strength, commerce, production, or science?
I would say science or commerce. Not military strength, but that would be fun to do in this game.

Do you have preferred civ traits? (This is not intended to start a 'best civ' sub-thread...)
Agriculture and industriuos.

In warfighting, do you prefer to "blitz" or use a "combined arms" approach?
Honestly, I am not totally sure about the difference. I should probably try to find an article about warfare in civfanatics.. :)

Do you have a favorite Age?
The first two ages, because that's usually where my games a won (or lost).


And now time for some playing :)
 
How would you describe your style of play? Builder? Warmonger? - I'm a builder at heart, who is currently exploring the warmonger-parts. I', currently playing often 32 civs on a 26x26 tiled map, "always war". This weekend I had a game in which in 2015 AD my best unit was: "the horseman" :lol:

What do you tend to seek first, military strength, commerce, production, or science? - Commerce / production and science. Those things go hand in hand.

Do you have preferred civ traits? (This is not intended to start a 'best civ' sub-thread...) - nope

In warfighting, do you prefer to "blitz" or use a "combined arms" approach? - - depends on the game.

Do you have a favorite Age? - The age of trade.
 
Pre-gaming Objectives:

Worker
- Work land to setup a settler factory (we need granary at some point)
- Connect luxury

Military
- Find out if we are alone on the island (takes at least one warrior) and find goody huts
- Get a ship in the water and explore to find contacts. We need them badly with this variant.

Research
- Research what we don't want

Log
4000 (1):
- The minimap shows we are located south. It could be a bit cold here.
- Move worker to cow to explore. Another cow shows up.
- Carthage is settled. A cow, wheat, ivory and sugar are found. The best start I have seen for a long time.
- Research set to 0 percent and the Wheel (the least needed right now)
- Carthage set to build warrior. We need to now the land around us.
- I press F10 and watch the space race - is that considered cheating? I guess it should...

3950 (2):
- Worker starts irrigating the cow. I thought about mining the cow, but decide to go for the pop growth.

3900 (3): Zzz

3850 (4): Zzz

3800 (5): Worker finishes irrigating. Starts roading the cow

3750 (6): Carthage: Warrior -> Curragh
Warrior is send west to explore, because our next city most likely settled north-west due to the cows and the wheats.

3700 (7): Carthage grows. Lux to 10%
I MM Carthage and plan to do a 4+4+3 shield to prevent loosing shields (it might hurt a bit food wise though).
Worker goes NW to road to the lux
Warrior goes west

3650 (8): Worker roads grassland
Warrior goes north

3600 (9): Warrior goes north.

3550 (10):
Carthage: Curragh -> Curragh
MM Carthages and takes culture expansion into consideration. It will take 3 turns to grow no matter what I do, so I max production, which cost 1gp.
Curragh goes south
Worker moves to lux
Warrior goes north

3500 (11)
Carthage expands due to culture
A goody hut and ivory shows on the map :)
Worker roads lux
Warrior goes east
Curragh goes south. Finds another goody hut.
MM Carthage - both workers on cows

3450 (12)
Warrior goes north
Curragh follows coast

3400 (13)
Warrior goes north
Lux slider goes to 30 percent

3350 (14)
Carthage: Curragh -> Settler (I might change it to a warrior)
New curragh goes north along the coast
Warrior east - inland
Still no contacts. We might be alone on the island.

3300 (15):
Worker finish road. We get lux. Lux slider goes to 10 percent.
Move worker east towards cow (perhaps I should have cut the forest to get the settler sooner?).
Curraghs moves along coasts.
Warrior east. Sees the other coast line.

3250 (16):
Worker to cow
Warrior goes south - we need to know the area around Carthage to settle cities.

3200 (17)
Carthage grows. Lux slider goes to 20 percent
MM Carthage: 16s left for settler. Carthage produces 5spt. That means we will loose 7s. I MM to plus 4 foods and 6s.
Worker road cow
Warrior moves east
Curraghs still moves along coasts
We have 100 gold

3150 (18)
Warrior south
West coast curragh discovers that the island is fairly big.
MM Carthage - food back on +5. We should MM to food +6 for one turn after settler is produced.

3100 (19)
Warrior south
Worker mine cow
West coast curragh discovers third goody hut. I guess we are alone on this island.

3050 (20)
Carthage produce settler
Lux to 0 percent
Warrior south
Settler left un-moved, so we can discuss were it should go.

3000:
Move settler west
East coast curragh discovers another island

Comments:

- I haven't popped any goody huts to prevent us from getting barbs as long as we only have one warrior. We should pop them when we have the military to do it.
- Military is weak right now and we could use MP in Carthage. A warrior is produced in 2 turns.

Save EDIT: NEW SAVE
 

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Couple of housekeeping notes:

@trikos, your turnset starts at turn 0 for that set, so your save is one turn short.

@o-p, if you could add your nick to the save file name it will help us all keep things straight

Technical notes:
I'll be using Dianthus' CrpStats to track progress. It provides a handy spreadsheet format for reviewing various metrics like treasury, income, maintenance costs, support costs etc. It also tracks diplomatic and trade and tech data across multiple save files.

Now for the fun stuff: replayed my turns and stuck to the variant and didn't turn the science slider to max but followed the same development path.

Then I compared the three saves. Two opening sets are very similiar domestically (income and treasury) and militarily (though for different reasons). The terrain developments are very different, however, and this difference will have an impact on population growth, shield production and net income in the future.

But here's where the fun reallly starts: starting in the same place with the same resources, my situation at 3000BC is very different, not necessarily better, though.

And this is where dl's question comes into focus (at least for me):

dl123654 said:
What are short term goals (within your turns) and long term goals (after your turn).

So I think it is important as we carry this forward to state the goals for each turn set and include a brief explanantion of how those goals fit to the overall objectives of the game at that point.

But I will reserve my own until all have been heard from....

:mischief:
 
Bede said:
Couple of housekeeping notes:
@trikos, your turnset starts at turn 0 for that set, so your save is one turn short.

I know. I did not play the last turn because I had to move the settler. It is probably fine to move it west without limiting city placement too much (if we choose my save :) ), so I will do that and post a new save.


I don't think I played the turns with many long term goals in mind besides setting up a settler factory. We should probably consider whether we want to go for commerce in order to buy research or focus more on building military units. I did not consider this a lot in the beginning because the first city is going to be a settler factory. But Bede might have proved me wrong (I like the systematic way people work with figuring things out in civ). I will take a look at CrpStats after I play my final turn.
 
thanks for the heads up about the luxury dl. I did miss it after the settler was produced, but that was only one turn. In terms of goals, I wanted two warriors for exploration and possible goody huts (granted after barbs I built a third), figuring on an arch map one would only scout a short distance until it hit coast and be able to be used for barbs and defense, while hopefully the other could find some goody huts. I haven't played emperor so I didn't realize how often goody huts will pop barbs. In terms of the ivory, I was looking for a quick 4 turn settler pump, which in retrospect with all the food available and an island maybe isn't the best strategy. Anyway, our city(2extra food+1shield) a mined cow(1+2), an irrigated cow(2+1), a mined bg(0+2), and the sugar(2+1) for pop growth equals 20 extra food and 30shields in four turns, a settler pump from 3 to 5 straight out of (i forget whose) strategy article on settler pumps so the explanation is probably redundant lol. so that was my short term goal and it's almost ready. To get to the ivory required roading at least one tile that I didn't want to use right away. I built the settler instead of another curragh so that the first city can pump out a few more settlers while the second city generates exploration and defensive units. If the barbs are raging we are gonna need those even on an island, right? I do appreciate any comments on my moves or the strategy since that's waht I'm here to learn and again I'm sorry about the detailed log, but I had a night of scariness with my computer. My roommate works at a computer store and we're hoping I can get the fan replaced today, otherwise I can only turn it on for shorter periods (thank god for work computers).
 
I have posted the latest save.

Here is my babbling on long(er) term strategy.

I guess the main question for a long term strategy is: How do we win this thing?
I think it is worth thinking about what are our main constrains and how do we overcome them.

How do we win?
Well, I guess we all know the different winning conditions in Civ.
Culturel: Will be hard, because we want build libraries, universities and research labs for research.
Space race: I have only won Space races when I was in front with research. Might be difficult to do, but I don't know.
Domination/Conquest: This is what I will prefer. We take over an island, establish on the island and build up for the next, take next island, ...
Diplo: ??

Our main constrains:
A: No research can be made (variant)
B: We have to cross water to go to war

A: We need money and/or lux for trading (we might also get tech in peace treaties)

B: To attack we need both sufficient units and ships to carry the units. That means it takes longer time to get a descent army than normal. At the same time we will need Map Making to build galleys, which will take a while to get (depending on when our opponents will research it - we have to look and perhaps predict that as part of our planning).

We have to balance gold and trading research with building units.

This raises a new question: Which units should we build? This is constrained by the resources we have, how we plan to attack and how many barbs we have around.

Hope it is possible to make some sense out of my writing - I have to leave for earlier than expected, so you get it as it is. Sorry.
 
I have a question. Do the twenty turns end at the end of 3000BC. My save is right after the IBT from 3050 to 3000 without that turn being played, is this correct for SGs? Should saves usually be at the very beginning of a turn or at the very end of the turn? I ask only because if 4000 is turn 0 and not one then I only played to the end of turn 19 as well. JUst want to make sure so I don't end up messing up the order later.
 
Thanks for completing your assignments in such a timely fashion, o-p and trikos. :D
Good thinnking both.


You are going to make it hard for TGOMOTG (The Grumpy Old Monk of Training Games) to keep up. :lol:

To answer your questions about turn cycles: your turn set begins at T0 and ends when all units which are going to move have moved at T10 (in this case T20) and the control panel is flashing "Press spacebar or enter for EoT". It is acceptable to leave units unmoved so long as you tell the next player that they have movement points left and the reason for it. It is condsidered really bad form to have units on "go-to" orders that carry over to the inter-turn or beyond, though you may do so in exceptional circumstances if you tell the next player what is going to happen when he hits enter to begin his first turn.

And now for someting completely different:

"A note on barbarian behavior patterns"

Goody huts, or barbarian encampments without a sentry showing, may be safely ignored. If you enter them at any time after you have built a unit with A/D rating (Attack/Defense) then one of several things can happen and most of them are bad unless you are an expansionist nation. If at the time you enter the hut you have no unit with an A/D rating then the worst outcome is neutral (useless maps or they are deserted). If you are an expansionist nation then the only possible outcome at any time is a neutral one.

I hope the above is clear as the mud for Java I am presently brewing.

@o-p, bad fans are scary :eek:. You are so right to be careful, like so careful you don't hit the on button.
 
i know i shouldn't hit the on button, but i can't help it i'm a computer addict :lol: . That and as long as the temp doesn't get over 35 (specs say 40 but let's be reasonable)lol. Anyway, hopefully it'll all get worked out otherwise I may be offline this weekend, just a head's up but I'll give you an update tommorrow so we can either stick me at the end or skip me a turn. Worst case I can post a got it from my roommates computer and play monday or tuesday. It better be fixed by then or I'll go out of my mind! :crazyeye:
 
O-P What CPU have you got ?
I got a list of "Critical CPU temperatures". It can tolerate higher temps than most people think.
If you have an intel pentium CPU, don't worry about it. If it gets overheated it will just stop. OTOH If you have an AMD you should be careful; overheating = death to the CPU.
 
I do have an intel pentium and the only reason I found out my fan failed was because my computer shut off and when I turned it out it said alert! previous fan failure. That's when I realized if I listened I could hear it wasn't running. I understand that that should keep it from frying but I'd rather not risk it too much. I just uprgraded from 256 ram to a gig and either the increased processing fried my crappy fan (doubtful), or when I put in the ram I dislodged the fan's wire leading into the board which was less then a cm away from the ram slots, causing intermittent power and eventually no power (also fairly doubtful), or the crappy fan just broke (most likely). I'm hoping I'm just an idiot and the wire needs to be reattached, replaced, whatever, but I don't think that was it. Anyway, I'm sure this is a little OT for an SG forum so I'll stop now. Needless to say I might have a little bump in the road for the beginning of the SG and this weekend, but it'll all work itself out. :goodjob:
 
How would you describe your style of play? Builder? Warmonger?
Before starting with SGs I would have been a builder, but since I started playing Sgs (about a month ago) I'm shifting over to the warmonger side bit by bit.

What do you tend to seek first, military strength, commerce, production, or science?
They all work together (ie without science your military strength won't be that impressive, ...) but what isn't mentioned here and IMHO even far more important (in the early stages of the game that is) is food.

Do you have preferred civ traits? (This is not intended to start a 'best civ' sub-thread...)
It all depends on the map settings, the difficulty level and the goal of the game. (ie seafaring on Arch, expansionist on Pang, ...)

In warfighting, do you prefer to "blitz" or use a "combined arms" approach?
If you're ahead of an opponent, blitz; if you're behind in tech combined arms (and also when taking out metros, ...).

Do you have a favorite Age?
Late medieval - early industrial. (Cavs - Rifles - Railroads)

Greetz Jurimax
(will start playing my 20 now, so will post tonight)
 
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