King of Kish
Chieftain
- Joined
- Oct 31, 2003
- Messages
- 4
Hello there,
I'm brand new to Civfanatics and GOTM, so please excuse me if my analysis is flawed, or has already been discussed. Please be kind - this is my first post!
I think the ideas are new, though, and should be of special interest to all the QSC players.
To get a feel for GOTM, I've been playing some recent games, looking at some incredible QSC timelines with awe, that kind of thing. In particular, I've looked at GOTM 20 - Spain, and I've done something I haven't seen discussed elsewhere.
Essentially, I've managed to build an uber-settler factory in GOTM 20 - Spain, and by "uber" I mean significantly better than a 4-turn settler factory. (It's only recently that I even discovered the existence of 4-turn settler factories, and what follows is inspired by Bamspeedy's excellent article on them.)
Here's a map of the start position:
As you can see, most players settled on the hill. So did I.
Looking at thw QSC timelines, lots of players, and lots of the really good players, then built a 4-turn setter factory at Madrid. I'll be honest - so did I at first. But then I noticed that Madrid was producing many more shields than were required, and I started to wonder ... can we do something even better?
Yes we can.
We can build the following:
A warrior and a worker every two turns!
A settler and a warrior every four turns!
Three setters every ten turns!
Here's how:
Madrid has access to the following tiles, once they've been developed a bit:
Home - Home (2F,1S)
Plains Cattle Irrigated - PCat (3F,2S)
Grassland Cattle Irrigated - GCat (4F,1S)
Bonus Grassland Mined - BGra (2F,2S)
Floodplain Wheat Irrigated - FPWh (5F )
Vanilla Grasslands Mined - Gras (2F,1S)
Forests - Fore (1F,2S)
Floodplains Irrigated - Floo (3F )
I'm going to assume that we started the game by building a few warriors and sending them out to explore. Then we built a granary, and all the while our worker irrigated and mined like his life depended on it.
We're now at the traditional position for a 4-turn settler factory to begin a production run - our city is size 5, and has a granary which is half full of wheat. Here's what we can do instead:
Factory of the People - A warrior and a worker every two turns!
Turn 1: Start building a warrior.
Work the tiles Home , PCat , GCat , BGra , Fore , Fore producing 13F and 10S.
Turn 2: Warrior! Start building a worker.
Work the tiles Home , PCat , GCat , BGra , Fore , FPwh producing 17F and 8S + 2S.
Next turn the city will grow, and the extra citizen will work a forest tile to produce the extra shields needed to complete the Worker!
In two turns we've produced a warrior and a worker, and returned our city to the condition in which we found it. Repeat ad nauseam.
Armed Setter Factory - A setter and a warrior every four turns!
Turn 1: Start building a setter.
Work the tiles Home , PCat , GCat , BGra , Fore , Fore producing 13F and 10S.
Turn 2: Work the tiles Home , PCat , GCat , BGra , Fore , FPwh producing 17F and 8S + 2S.
Next turn the city will grow, and the extra citizen will work a forest tile to produce the extra shields.
Turn 3: Work the tiles Home , PCat , GCat , BGra , Fore , Fore , FPwh producing 18F and 10S.
Turn 4: Settler! City shrinks to size 4, but with 16F in the grain store.
Start building a warrior.
Work the tiles Home , PCat , GCat , BGra , Fore producing 12F and 8S + 2S.
Next turn the city will grow, and the extra citizen will work a forest tile to produce the extra shields needed to complete the Warrior!
In four turns we've produced a settler and a warrior, and returned our city to the condition in which we found it. Repeat ad nauseam.
The Ultimate Settler Factory - Three settlers every ten turns!
Turn 1: Start building a setter.
Work the tiles Home , PCat , GCat , BGra , Fore , Fore producing 13F and 10S.
Turn 2: Work the tiles Home , PCat , GCat , BGra , Fore , FPwh producing 17F and 8S + 2S.
Next turn the city will grow, and the extra citizen will work a forest tile to produce the extra shields.
Turn 3: Work the tiles Home , PCat , GCat , BGra , Fore , Fore , FPwh producing 18F and 10S.
Turn 4: Settler! City shrinks to size 4, but with 16F in the grain store.
Start building another settler.
Work the tiles Home , PCat , GCat , BGra , Fore producing 12F and 8S + 2S.
Next turn the city will grow, and the extra citizen will work a forest tile to produce the extra shields.
Turn 5: City grows to size 5.
Work the tiles Home , PCat , GCat , BGra , Fore , Fore producing 13F and 10S.
Turn 6: Work the tiles Home , PCat , GCat , BGra , Fore , FPwh producing 17F and 8S + 2S.
Next turn the city will grow, and the extra citizen will work a forest tile to produce the extra shields needed to complete the Settler!
Turn 7: Settler! City shrinks to size 4.
Work the tiles Home , PCat , GCat , BGra , Gras producing 13F and 7S.
Turn 8: Work the tiles Home , PCat , GCat , BGra , Gras producing 13F and 7S + 2S.
Next turn the city will grow, and the extra citizen will work a forest tile to produce the extra shields.
Turn 9: City grows to size 5.
Work the tiles Home , PCat , GCat , Floo , Floo producing 20F! and 4S + 2S.
Next turn the city will grow, and the extra citizen will work a forest tile to produce the extra shields.
Turn 10: City grows to size 6.
Work the tiles Home , PCat , GCat , Floo , Floo , BGra producing 22F! and 6S + 2S.
Next turn the city will grow, and the extra citizen will work a forest tile to produce the extra shields needed to complete the Settler!
In ten turns we've produced three setters, and returned our city to the condition in which we found it. Repeat ad nauseam.
SOME COMMENTS
Of course, this analysis cannot possibly supercede Bamspeedy's excellent study of 4-turn settler factories, as chances to build this uber-factory will be very rare indeed.
However, you've probably already missed one such opportunity.
If you ever find somewhere else to build one, then I promise you, it is a thing of beauty to behold.
Yours,
King of Kish
I'm brand new to Civfanatics and GOTM, so please excuse me if my analysis is flawed, or has already been discussed. Please be kind - this is my first post!
I think the ideas are new, though, and should be of special interest to all the QSC players.
To get a feel for GOTM, I've been playing some recent games, looking at some incredible QSC timelines with awe, that kind of thing. In particular, I've looked at GOTM 20 - Spain, and I've done something I haven't seen discussed elsewhere.
Essentially, I've managed to build an uber-settler factory in GOTM 20 - Spain, and by "uber" I mean significantly better than a 4-turn settler factory. (It's only recently that I even discovered the existence of 4-turn settler factories, and what follows is inspired by Bamspeedy's excellent article on them.)
Here's a map of the start position:
As you can see, most players settled on the hill. So did I.
Looking at thw QSC timelines, lots of players, and lots of the really good players, then built a 4-turn setter factory at Madrid. I'll be honest - so did I at first. But then I noticed that Madrid was producing many more shields than were required, and I started to wonder ... can we do something even better?
Yes we can.
We can build the following:
A warrior and a worker every two turns!
A settler and a warrior every four turns!
Three setters every ten turns!
Here's how:
Madrid has access to the following tiles, once they've been developed a bit:
Home - Home (2F,1S)
Plains Cattle Irrigated - PCat (3F,2S)
Grassland Cattle Irrigated - GCat (4F,1S)
Bonus Grassland Mined - BGra (2F,2S)
Floodplain Wheat Irrigated - FPWh (5F )
Vanilla Grasslands Mined - Gras (2F,1S)
Forests - Fore (1F,2S)
Floodplains Irrigated - Floo (3F )
I'm going to assume that we started the game by building a few warriors and sending them out to explore. Then we built a granary, and all the while our worker irrigated and mined like his life depended on it.
We're now at the traditional position for a 4-turn settler factory to begin a production run - our city is size 5, and has a granary which is half full of wheat. Here's what we can do instead:
Factory of the People - A warrior and a worker every two turns!
Turn 1: Start building a warrior.
Work the tiles Home , PCat , GCat , BGra , Fore , Fore producing 13F and 10S.
Turn 2: Warrior! Start building a worker.
Work the tiles Home , PCat , GCat , BGra , Fore , FPwh producing 17F and 8S + 2S.
Next turn the city will grow, and the extra citizen will work a forest tile to produce the extra shields needed to complete the Worker!
In two turns we've produced a warrior and a worker, and returned our city to the condition in which we found it. Repeat ad nauseam.
Armed Setter Factory - A setter and a warrior every four turns!
Turn 1: Start building a setter.
Work the tiles Home , PCat , GCat , BGra , Fore , Fore producing 13F and 10S.
Turn 2: Work the tiles Home , PCat , GCat , BGra , Fore , FPwh producing 17F and 8S + 2S.
Next turn the city will grow, and the extra citizen will work a forest tile to produce the extra shields.
Turn 3: Work the tiles Home , PCat , GCat , BGra , Fore , Fore , FPwh producing 18F and 10S.
Turn 4: Settler! City shrinks to size 4, but with 16F in the grain store.
Start building a warrior.
Work the tiles Home , PCat , GCat , BGra , Fore producing 12F and 8S + 2S.
Next turn the city will grow, and the extra citizen will work a forest tile to produce the extra shields needed to complete the Warrior!
In four turns we've produced a settler and a warrior, and returned our city to the condition in which we found it. Repeat ad nauseam.
The Ultimate Settler Factory - Three settlers every ten turns!
Turn 1: Start building a setter.
Work the tiles Home , PCat , GCat , BGra , Fore , Fore producing 13F and 10S.
Turn 2: Work the tiles Home , PCat , GCat , BGra , Fore , FPwh producing 17F and 8S + 2S.
Next turn the city will grow, and the extra citizen will work a forest tile to produce the extra shields.
Turn 3: Work the tiles Home , PCat , GCat , BGra , Fore , Fore , FPwh producing 18F and 10S.
Turn 4: Settler! City shrinks to size 4, but with 16F in the grain store.
Start building another settler.
Work the tiles Home , PCat , GCat , BGra , Fore producing 12F and 8S + 2S.
Next turn the city will grow, and the extra citizen will work a forest tile to produce the extra shields.
Turn 5: City grows to size 5.
Work the tiles Home , PCat , GCat , BGra , Fore , Fore producing 13F and 10S.
Turn 6: Work the tiles Home , PCat , GCat , BGra , Fore , FPwh producing 17F and 8S + 2S.
Next turn the city will grow, and the extra citizen will work a forest tile to produce the extra shields needed to complete the Settler!
Turn 7: Settler! City shrinks to size 4.
Work the tiles Home , PCat , GCat , BGra , Gras producing 13F and 7S.
Turn 8: Work the tiles Home , PCat , GCat , BGra , Gras producing 13F and 7S + 2S.
Next turn the city will grow, and the extra citizen will work a forest tile to produce the extra shields.
Turn 9: City grows to size 5.
Work the tiles Home , PCat , GCat , Floo , Floo producing 20F! and 4S + 2S.
Next turn the city will grow, and the extra citizen will work a forest tile to produce the extra shields.
Turn 10: City grows to size 6.
Work the tiles Home , PCat , GCat , Floo , Floo , BGra producing 22F! and 6S + 2S.
Next turn the city will grow, and the extra citizen will work a forest tile to produce the extra shields needed to complete the Settler!
In ten turns we've produced three setters, and returned our city to the condition in which we found it. Repeat ad nauseam.
SOME COMMENTS
- These factories "tessalate", in that as soon as you've finished one cycle, you can switch to another. In the 28 turns it taks a 4-turn SF to build 7 settlers, this multitasking city can build 7 settlers, 5 warriors and 4 workers! And it produces all the settlers earlier, too.
- There is a slight trade-off. Working your citizens this hard harms their immune systems, and doubles their susceptability to disease. (The uber-factory cycles work the floodplains 50% of the time, unlike 25% for the 4-turn SF.) In my evil capitalist way, I think the vastly increased productivity more than compensates for the health risks.
- It will take a single worker a long time to upgrade all the terrain for the ultimate settler factory. However, the first two factories don't need nearly so many upgraded tiles, and can be run in the meantime, providing extra workers to speed things up if need be.
Of course, this analysis cannot possibly supercede Bamspeedy's excellent study of 4-turn settler factories, as chances to build this uber-factory will be very rare indeed.
However, you've probably already missed one such opportunity.
If you ever find somewhere else to build one, then I promise you, it is a thing of beauty to behold.
Yours,
King of Kish
