Krugi
At heart
- Joined
- Apr 24, 2010
- Messages
- 132
I haven't had time to play any more turns yet, unfortunately -- university is starting again.
@BornInCantaloup:

You're right, of course. The road to Munich, for example, has proven unnecessary because a domestic water route connects it to Berlin. The tangle of roads in the Hamburg/Frankfurt area also seems over-elaborate, although it originated in my attempts to save worker turns by 1t-roading, which produced it on the fly-by, so to speak. I will defend the road at Essen's gold mine, though, if that was under scrutiny: that's so I can trade the extra gold once Sailing comes online.
The other workers don't have such a good reason to be slacking off in the woods.
Fact- Anderssen sacrificed both rooks, then the queen, still defeated chess champion Steineritzky - knew that "better a suffering city, than a razed city"
Fact- Essen - means food in German - use this as codeword - confusing double-agents, spies gone rogue
Fact- prophylactic play - pure strategy - remains outside the scope of the cottage builders

(No, I have no idea how I managed to miss that.)
surplus that the city harvests per turn, in addition to it being added to the food box (therefore, they yield double food), up to a maximum of 50% of the current size of the food box (i.e. (20 + 2*pop) / 2). All food in the granary is released into the food box once the city grows.
I'll have to look into the strategy articles again to optimize my play here, though.
@BornInCantaloup:
Spoiler :
Well, I'm not immune to jealousy at large, but I don't get jealous over Civ yet! I think I've underestimated the impact of (Financial) cottage growth here. From a few multiplayer games that I've silently observed, I've often seen the players whose style seemed to favor horizontal expansion (Krill, for example) maneuver into stronger positions than the initial front-runners in tech by the mid-game -- although there have certainly been exceptions. Of course, Single Player is a different beast altogether, not least because of the drastic increases in tech and maintenance costs.Those are dynamics at work.
It's rare that there's a single best line of play. However, there are means to optimize a line of play.
So, to finish with this point,
I took your save and quick played to Currency. I reached it 2 turns later than with my save. But I was then doing about 30/turn more with your save. Not even considering my extra maintenance.
With proper management, you might be able to reach Civil Service before I could.
So don't be jealous and assess the strong points of your game: the superior workforce to develop the land.
I used to be too negligent with roads, and now I overbuild them. Score another one for Aristotle, I guess.First, I'd like to draw your attention (again) to the number of roads you've built.
Some of those roads are useful, some others aren't very much.
I count 18 roaded tiles, which equals to 36 worker turns.
36 worker turns can be converted into any combination of 9 chopped forests and grassland cottages.
If you look at your map and add, say, 5 cottages and remove 4 forests for chops, maybe you can get an idea of the cost of roading so much.

You're right, of course. The road to Munich, for example, has proven unnecessary because a domestic water route connects it to Berlin. The tangle of roads in the Hamburg/Frankfurt area also seems over-elaborate, although it originated in my attempts to save worker turns by 1t-roading, which produced it on the fly-by, so to speak. I will defend the road at Essen's gold mine, though, if that was under scrutiny: that's so I can trade the extra gold once Sailing comes online.
This is another example of my inexperience with such trade-offs. Five turns of delay on a Great Scientist doesn't seem worth forgoing 17 turns of working strong tiles improved by ~15 turns of worker labor; this seems really obvious when I type it, and I did feel uneasy leaving those tiles unworked, but I had assigned too much of a priority to the planned Maths bulb, thinking that the earlier Great Scientist was always better. Too dogmatic.You've been stagnating Hamburg at size 3, working corn and hiring 2 scientists.
I can understand how appealing the faster Academy (or bulb) can be, but I think this is a case of mismanagement.
Hamburg has a Granary, a happy cap at 6 and many unworked food positive tiles (!).
Say we assign Hamburg corn, farmed floodplains, cottaged floodplains.
The city can then grow 3 sizes, up to size 6, in a mere 5 turns (!).
As it happens, you also have a considerable workforce in position to cottage the land.
So, at size 6, Hamburg could work Corn, cottaged floodplains, cottaged grassland x2 and 2x scientists (freeing up the farmed floodplains for Frankfurt).
Going such a route seems much stronger to me.
Indeed, your hunch about my slight disorientation is mostly true here. Now, Essen was founded so recently that I couldn't road to it in time (and, well, I'm building too many roads already), so the workers assigned to the gold mine were fresh out of luck because the city itself is out of position. They can crawl back to Cologne just in time to start improving the gems after Alphabet (IW trade), or mine a hill as a contingency plan if IW won't make the rounds for some reason.So, for the following turns of your game,
I think you should focus on your workforce (it seems to me it's a bit out of position, as if you got disconcerted by how many workers you had).
The other workers don't have such a good reason to be slacking off in the woods.

The plan was to chop five forests post-Maths with Stone connected for the Hanging Gardens, but that's not quite due yet. More proof of inexperience, that is, overeagerness to plan ahead when there's a need to achieve something right now.It's important to improve tiles you can work in the short term. And when you do, it's important to focus on growth.
Re: chops: there's no need to pre-chop if you're not going to need the hammers sometime soon. Are you chopping something in Hamburg?
I had initially wanted a farm there, but seeing as double gems/farm/cottage was still food-neutral, I had thought that the city would manage just fine; but I'd rather grow onto the gems faster than slowly push the cottage to maturation. I'll consider this.Cologne has very little food surplus, maybe that riverside grassland is better off farmed. It seems to me that having the pop to work the gems is more important than the extra cottage.
Fact- fully dependent on fish for growth - invites raids from Sea PeoplesYou killed a fish tile when you settled Essen.
Fact- Anderssen sacrificed both rooks, then the queen, still defeated chess champion Steineritzky - knew that "better a suffering city, than a razed city"
Fact- Essen - means food in German - use this as codeword - confusing double-agents, spies gone rogue
Fact- prophylactic play - pure strategy - remains outside the scope of the cottage builders

(No, I have no idea how I managed to miss that.)
Duly noted. I think I know the basics of how granaries work -- they store theIf you want to do it perfect, however, you should aim for a food bin of 11/22 after the whip. (more or less, slight difference, no need to forego working strong tiles to get exactly there.)
So, maybe you should have started working the copper a turn earlier.
Whipping with 5-8 food in the bin and doing +5F for the turn would be very good.

I'll have to look into the strategy articles again to optimize my play here, though.