Training game emphasizing trading - Emperor

[Bede]

Hi guys,
I know this thread says it's full up....but if there's any attrition, any chance I could hop in? (I'll lurk regardless, so you may be stuck answering my questions whether I play or not! ) I'm a decent Monarch player, but Emp is still a challenge. Never done a SG.
.

I have no problem with this; but I'd like to leave the decision to Bede.

peacemonger.

If trikos is ok with it and I think he is, welcome aboard. The more the merrier and the more I'll learn.

@Rik, thanks for the map edits. Looks good, in fact it all looks good.

@o-p, remember this is an arch map. The real science race starts when the AI gets contact with each other [COLORr=red]and[/COLOR] the human player, as it is the trading that goes on that kicks the reserach machines into high gear. The really scary situation is when the AI all have contact and the human is stuck in the boonies..

@team, I'll add plarq's save to the comparison table and post tonight.

 

[trikos]

@peacemonger: You are in. Welcome on the team

I will put up a roster. I make it trainee - trainee - trainee - trainer - trainee - trainee - trainer. Please read TedJackson's guidelines. It is always nice to know in advance if someone can't play - I might have a problem in the beginning of January Now you know.

 

[peacemonger]

Great, and thanks guys! Should I go ahead and do a set of 20 turns tonight (I'm only mildly spoiled as I've tried to stay away from reading too much about others' turns til I knew whether I was in or not) or just evaluate where the group is, participate in city placement discussion, and await my turn in the roster?

 

[trikos]

Go ahead and play your 20 turns. I am looking forward to see if you come up with the same play as I would after I have played and read the posts.

 

[Rik Meleet]

Request to the trainee's on trading
If you are going to make a trade; save the game and then trade. In your turn-report write down very detailed what was traded, how and most importantly why you made that trade. I'd also appreciate it if you send me a PM that there is a save for me to judge.

To keep the pressure off off the CFC-FTP server you can email me the trade-saves as well. Send it to <edit> Deleted my emailadres <edit>

I could as well judge the trainer's trade ...

 

[oopsy poopsy]

@bede: That was exactly what I was worried about after seeing how large our island was and thinking no one was on it. That would force the other civs fairly close together and even if they were on seperate islands they might be close enough to see each other. Then they'd all be in contact with each other long before we made contact with them. Having those green guys around makes me a little less afraid.
@peacemonger: good to have you aboard, I know I'd like to play my twenty again after seeing the other starts.
@rik: emailing the saves is not a problem(remembering to save could be.lol). Before this starts to happen, if you or anyone else has some rules about trade value it would help or just point at an article. I've looked through the editor to see that CB, and Pottery are 2's and other's are 3's and 4's and so on all the way. But what does that really mean in terms of how much gold should be paid for each and how much doesn't the number of people who already know the tech effect the cost/value depening on how you look at it?

 

[trikos]

Rik's and oopsy poopsy's city placement looks good to me although I think there is one problem though. We will not be able to utilize the third cow until one our borders expand. It takes 80 turns before Carthage expand. We could build a temple, but 2 Curraghs are probably more useful than an early temple. oopsy poopsy suggests that we with the dense build (bede's/scoutsout 's map) and then abandon a city when we don't need the settler pump anymore. I think this is a sound idea. We also need aqueducts in the cities except for Carthage and we can probably plan abandon and aqueducts somehow.

As I understand it, our objectives for the cities are:
- 12 workable tiles for each city (preferably land for production)
- Emphasize commerce. We are going to need it badly.

Working water with harbor might not be so bad from a commerce perspective (but in general?). We can also hope for republic, which means we will need cities with 6+ pop, so we don't have to pay for our units.

 

[dl123654]

Rik's and oopsy poopsy's city placement looks good to me although I think there is one problem though. We will not be able to utilize the third cow until one our borders expand. It takes 80 turns before Carthage expand.

Are talking about that cow 2 to the North of Carthage. We can use that cow right away if the city is built anywhere near that lake. We don't have to wait for a border expansion. If we own two opposite side of a square we will also own that square as well, except if it is ocean or an enemy square.

 

[trikos]

Dohh... I didn't know that. I guess that's why I entered a training game

@dl123654:Thanks for pointing out my mistake

 

[Jurimax]

And here is my version of the dotmap .
Please feel free to make remarks.

Greetz Jurimax

[edit] Sorry for not cropping my image

 

[Bede]

Request to the trainee's on trading
If you are going to make a trade; save the game and then trade. In your turn-report write down very detailed what was traded, how and most importantly why you made that trade. I'd also appreciate it if you send me a PM that there is a save for me to judge.

To keep the pressure off off the CFC-FTP server you can email me the trade-saves as well.

I could as well judge the trainer's trade ...

@Rik, that is a most generous offer and I am looloing forward to your critiques of my trades....

Before this starts to happen, if you or anyone else has some rules about trade value it would help or just point at an article. I've looked through the editor to see that CB, and Pottery are 2's and other's are 3's and 4's and so on all the way. But what does that really mean in terms of how much gold should be paid for each and how much doesn't the number of people who already know the tech effect the cost/value depening on how you look at it?

@o-p, ainwood's Civassist has a tech cost calculator built in which takes all those factors into account and gives a base cost for a tech in beakers (1 beaker=1 gold piece).

There is one other factor not included which is the AI/AI Trade Rate factor. The Trade Rate Factor is applied as a discount on AI to AI trades. Somewhere there is also an AI/Human trade rate factor which is applied as a mark-up to the base cost on AI to Human trades and a discount on Human to AI trades.

At any rate the human will pay more and get less than in a comparable AI to AI trade. You can figure that mark-up/discount on a case by basis by comparing the base cost from the calculator to the actual bid/offer in the trade screen.

(@Rik, am I right here, or is the mechanism different? I haven't studied the editor or the game mechanics or done any formal analysis, so my evidence for all this is purely anecdotal)

As I understand it, our objectives for the cities are:
- 12 workable tiles for each city (preferably land for production)
- Emphasize commerce. We are going to need it badly.

Working water with harbor might not be so bad from a commerce perspective (but in general?). We can also hope for republic, which means we will need cities with 6+ pop, so we don't have to pay for our units.

@trikos,
on the objectives statement.

I love coastal towns....even though they are shield poor, so let's build lots of them. They are commercial machines.....It was the legendary player, Sirian, who refined the "fishing village" to a high art in Civ3 1.29 which did not have nations with the seafaring trait. Anyway, the fishing village is a pop6 town close to the capitol (reduced corruption) with maximum water access, a harbor, maybe a courthouse, maybe a temple or library for border expansion and all the commercial improvements (marketplaces/banks/stock exchanges) and that was it. Get enough of those little villes and a commercial/seafaring nation can spin gold. If there is a fish bonus or a single landbased food bonus even the harbor is unnecessary in the early going and those coastal towns generate 2gpt with no worker turns under any government. Add the commercial and seafaring city center gold boni....I think you see what I mean.

And we have some really choice spots for fishing villages to the SE of Carthage.

And if you think this post is long wait until we encounter a major speed bump....

 

[Rik Meleet]

(@Rik, am I right here, or is the mechanism different? I haven't studied the editor or the game mechanics or done any formal analysis, so my evidence for all this is purely anecdotal)

I don't know exactly; I trade on my feeling. But I think this is the case.
Rules of thumb;
* Buying a tech which is only known to 1 civ ("monopoly tech") is more expensive than researching it.
* Selling a tech to a civ which doesn't know any other civ which holds that tech gains more than what the civ would have spend if it researched it itself.
Using those 2 rules correctly is the art.

Example: Civ A has tech A*. We know also Civ B,C and D, but Civ A doesn't. Civs B,C and D all know eachother, and haven't got tech A*. The AI to AI discount factor and the AI to human benefit for the AI causes us to sell our techs as lower prices than we buy it.
If we buy tech A* from Civ A we pay Monopoly prices; but because Civs B,C and D do not know Civ A the first civ (say Civ B) we sell it to also pays monopoly prices. Civ B will still pay less than we payed for to civ A. Civ C pays less afterwards and D even less. But in total Civ B + Civ C + Civ D might well pay more for it than we did.

So it is important to spot Monopoly techs. The best situation is when 2 civs have monopoly techs. Buying 1 and then using that in trade to obtain the second tech and reselling the second tech to the civ we bought the first tech from gives us a lot. This is called a 2fer1. 2 techs for the price of 1. Actually it is far better than the price of 1, as we can get some money back for the tech we bought first.

 

[oopsy poopsy]

here's a little something that I hope we don't need to use. We can make a six turn curragh/warrior/settler pump with the capital without a granary. At size 5, with
irr wheat, one mined cow, one irr cow, one mine bg, and mine sugar= 17food(+7) and 8shields per turn. After two turns you get your curragh(loss of one shield). Turn 3 build warrior and with 2 from the growth onto forest you get your warrior in 1 turn. you loose 1 food. For turns five and six use the same tiles plus move from forest to a mine on grassland= +7food and 9shields. For the 6th turn MM from mined grass to forest for +6 food and 10shields. With the two from growth you get 30 shields for the settler.
Not bad for six turns. (what's scary is I had nothing better to do on friday night except figure that out). This way if we're having problems with tech we can still be generating units for later upgrade and creating the cities to support them.

 

[trikos]

@Jurimax: Thanks for your dotmap. It looks good to me. I tried to 'test' the number of tiles per city by 'dotting' 12 tiles pr city. The cities will get 12 tiles each My only concern with the dotmap is defense, but if we look out for opponents so we don't get bad surprises, we should be fine.

@Bede: Thanks for introducing the "Fishing Village"-concept. Obviously I had to add one to Jurimax's map

Here is the dotted dotmap:

@Rik: Thanks for the rules of thumbs on trading. That makes some situation more straight forward

@oopsy poopsy: I haven't checked your setup, but it seems pretty nice if we don't get pottery.

 

[peacemonger]

Turn Log:
T0 4000BC
Worker moves to cow, sees other cow. Wow, more cow.
Settler settles. See all sorts of goodness.
Set Tech to 0% on CB.
Begin curragh.

IBT
Nada

T1 3950BC
Worker irrigates cow.

IBT
Nada

T2 3900BC
Worker irrigates cow.

IBT
Nada

T3 3850BC
Worker irrigates cow.

IBT
Nada

T4 3800BC
Worker roads cow.

IBT
Nada

T5 3750BC
Worker roads cow.

IBT
Carthage grew, assigned new citizen to forest.

T6 3700BC
Move worker to grassland en route to ivory. Curragh is made in one turn regardless, so move that citizen off the forest to the grassland being roaded for now. Move lux up to 10%, costing us 1gpt.

IBT
Nada
T7 3650BC
Curragh &#61664; warrior. (I choose not to go curragh-curragh because I get nervous waiting for military when I know nothing about the interior of my land mass yet. If expansionist, I would have gambled scout-scout (maybe 3 scouts) if the explored territory was looking safe and lonely, with the easy option to switch to warrior if any of my scouts saw something to cause concern.)
Reassign citizen to the bonus grassland to pick up the shield without sacrificing growth. Worker roads north grassland.
Curragh hugs coast heading south, to likely round the tip of our land mass toward the other side. Next curragh can head north, warrior can check out NE.

IBT
Nada

T8 3600BC
Curragh continues its course, spots GH at the tundra tip of our landmass.
Worker roads.

IBT
Nada

T9 3550BC
Er. I was going to move toward roading to ivory then working second cow, but I see now that would mean losing a turn crossing the river on the way back to the cow, plus I expand next turn. Should have headed to cow first. Oh well, head there now.
Curragh continues around border.

IBT
Nada

T10 3500BC
Carthage expands. There’s more ivory, and a GH outside our expanded borders.
Curragh explores, worker roads. MM for growth.

IBT
We grow.

T11 3450BC
Warrior&#61664;Curragh
S. Curragh explores, worker roads.
Warrior crosses river to N grassland. That really was a useless tile to road for now.
MM – lux is up to 20%. Move new citizen to the sugar rather than the ivory (I want the growth and will give up 1 shield to do it). Other two citizens on cows.

IBT
Nada

T12 3400BC
Warrior moves NE, then E.
S. Curragh explores. Our coasts hold lots of food.
Worker irrigates the 2nd cow.

IBT
Nada

T13 3350BC
Warrior moved N, Curragh explored, worker irrigated.

IBT
Nada

T14 3300BC
Warrior east. What I thought was a lake looks like the other coast of our narrow landmass.
Curragh explored, worker irrigated.

IBT
We grew.

T15 3250BC
Curragh&#61664;Settler
Warrior NW. New curragh heads for up N coast. Worker moves to the ivory for roading. Old curragh explores. The bottom of this landmass is a reverse boot or is looping up.
MM -- Lux up to 30%, citizens on cows, ivory, and sugar. 5fpt, 6spt, 11gpt (3 of which is keeping people happy).

IBT
Nada

T16 3200BC
Warrior NW to sugar. Both curraghs explore. Worker roads.

IBT
Nada

T17 3150BC
Everyone explores, warrior moving N along the east side of our landmass while the N Curragh takes the W coast. Worker roads.

IBT
Nada

T18 3100BC
More of same.

IBT
Nada

T19 3050BC
More of same.

IBT
Nada

T20 3000BC
Settler&#61664;Warrior. I think we need a land explorer to head over to the landmass around the south bend that loops back up.
Warrior N. Curraghs explore. Looks like there is a chokepoint N that we can utilize. And we seem to be on a narrowish, S-shaped landmass. Foresee possible other civs on either loop.
Settler crosses river to move N. Worker moves to the BG in the direction of the wheat.
MM – lux back down to 10%, now that we have the lux hooked up. Pop back down to 3, on the cows and the ivory. 5fpt, fspt, 10gpt (one goes to unit support, one to happiness).


Critiques welcome. I'll go back and finish reading thread to participate in the dot-map discussion. Save and map attached. (How do I pull map directly into post?)

 

[oopsy poopsy]

I think that means everyone has played the first twenty.
I think in terms of cities, the second city should be W W N of the capital. I think the third city should be N N N (these are the two cities from Juri's map). I think after all the gold that bede generated, we want to work as many river tiles as quickly as we can. After those two the builder in me wants farther spacing on the other cities, but I'm trying to break the buider habit so who cares?
After my GH problems in the first twenty, I have a question about ai emperor behaviour: How quickly will an ai trade a monopoly tech to the other ai's? For instance, if one civ gets a monopoly on a tech, will they trade it to everyone they know on the next turn? Meaning do we lose the opportunity to by it high from him and sell it to everybody else at a profit if we don't do it the first turn they acquire the new tech?

@bede: have you run the stats on the starts or should we just talk amongst ourselves about preferences?

 

[trikos]

@peacemonger: Your turns look good.

@oopsy poopsy: I agree that we should go with the W W N city first. Why? Because it is located next to a river, which means more gold, and because they will grow the fastes

I think Jurimax's dot map is fine. If nobody has more comments on city placement, I suggest we stick to Jurimax's dot map for at least the first two cities or until we explore some interesting stuff (N E is still unexplored).

 

[Jurimax]

Wow, I actually made up a good dotmap, and here I was thinking that I really wasn't good a dotmaps.

 

[Mistfit]

lurker's comment: holy food bonuses Batman! 3 cows AND 2 wheat. Whomever it was that rolled this one needs to help out the people over at the HoF thread.

@Jurimax: I don't know if your interested but I made some adjustments to your avatar. I saved it in .gif format and made it a transperancy. I added some lighting effects and a lens flare. I did however have to shrink it a bit to keep it under the size limit.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads8/Jurimax1.gif

And now back to your regularly scheduled programing.

 

[Jurimax]

Thanks a lot Mistfit, it really looks nice (even professional), I'll use it immediately

Greetz Jurimax
and again thnx a lot