Mystery13
Prince
The new dot map looks pretty good to me, though I would consider splitting green dot into two cities. One in the far SE and one at your proposed "whale" site. Definitely settle grey dot first.
ZF1 - Zed's Training Day Game
- Thread starter Zed-F
- Start date
After a bit of fiddling around, here's the dotmap I came up with (before I found out ChrTh had made one too.) 
Compare with ChrTh's, see which one you like better.
Some notes:
Here, grey dot is in fact on fresh water, though it doesn't look like it. There is a river that it is diagonally adjacent to that runs behind the mountain -- I confirmed this by right-click on the tile, and it has 1 gold. Whichever map we go with, Grey dot is top priority to keep the Iroquois from settling in our area.
It's too bad Mystery didn't see the posts about moving Shanghai one square SW as it turns out that would have helped quite a bit. So, I placed pink dot (ChrTh's purple, quit switching colours on me ChrTh!) on the original spot. I didn't want Shanghai to have tons of overlap since it will probably be our least corrupt city; a little is fine, but too much means the city will never really benefit from a hospital, and while I don't expect the game to last too far into the Industrial Age, I do expect Shanghai to eventually want a hospital. That goes for pink dot as well, but if we leave orange dot as a half-city (never build a hospital) it shouldn't become a problem.
I thought about trying to make 1.5 cities out of Green dot, and it could be done if you move green dot one square SW and found another city on the very far E tip of the peninsula. There would be a huge amount of overlap, however, so you'd have to be very careful about ensuring that the far E city doesn't poach too much of green dot's land -- sort of similar to what's going on with orange dot on my map. I would do that in preference to founding on the hill as there's not really enough unused coast near the hill to justify it, whereas there's lots of unused coast near the far E side of our lands.
Red dots would make good future sites, they probably have about as much priority as Blue and Yellow dots. I didn't bother placing dots for further out cities, as you can figure them out when the time comes.
Any dye city we found will probably be pretty corrupt, see the following link for details on how to calculate corruption:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showt...&threadid=19922
A quick estimate of the distance to that dye square (assuming we built a city right on it) is calculated using Pythagorean theorem: 14 squares NW and 4 squares NE = root(14*14 + 4*4) ~= 14.5. So, the distance factor from the formula in the linked-to post gives ~52% corruption, before courthouse. Actually from experience that seems low, I'd expect worse corruption than that, so I may be calculating something incorrectly.
Anyway, the point with respect to the dye city is that we don't want to tie our city placement strategy too closely to the fact that there's a dye there -- so long as we get a city somewhere in the general vicinity we should be fine, it doesn't really matter if it's perfectly placed as it will probably be too corrupt to matter much. It's more important to get good city placement for cities near the capital -- almost always the general rule is the cities closest to the capital get the best land/placement choices, and the cities further out make do with whatever land is left. On the other hand, if we decide it's suitable to build a FP up there, that may mean we want to be more careful about where cities that far N get placed.
Compare with ChrTh's, see which one you like better.
Some notes:
Here, grey dot is in fact on fresh water, though it doesn't look like it. There is a river that it is diagonally adjacent to that runs behind the mountain -- I confirmed this by right-click on the tile, and it has 1 gold. Whichever map we go with, Grey dot is top priority to keep the Iroquois from settling in our area.
It's too bad Mystery didn't see the posts about moving Shanghai one square SW as it turns out that would have helped quite a bit. So, I placed pink dot (ChrTh's purple, quit switching colours on me ChrTh!)
on the original spot. I didn't want Shanghai to have tons of overlap since it will probably be our least corrupt city; a little is fine, but too much means the city will never really benefit from a hospital, and while I don't expect the game to last too far into the Industrial Age, I do expect Shanghai to eventually want a hospital. That goes for pink dot as well, but if we leave orange dot as a half-city (never build a hospital) it shouldn't become a problem.I thought about trying to make 1.5 cities out of Green dot, and it could be done if you move green dot one square SW and found another city on the very far E tip of the peninsula. There would be a huge amount of overlap, however, so you'd have to be very careful about ensuring that the far E city doesn't poach too much of green dot's land -- sort of similar to what's going on with orange dot on my map. I would do that in preference to founding on the hill as there's not really enough unused coast near the hill to justify it, whereas there's lots of unused coast near the far E side of our lands.
Red dots would make good future sites, they probably have about as much priority as Blue and Yellow dots. I didn't bother placing dots for further out cities, as you can figure them out when the time comes.
Any dye city we found will probably be pretty corrupt, see the following link for details on how to calculate corruption:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showt...&threadid=19922
A quick estimate of the distance to that dye square (assuming we built a city right on it) is calculated using Pythagorean theorem: 14 squares NW and 4 squares NE = root(14*14 + 4*4) ~= 14.5. So, the distance factor from the formula in the linked-to post gives ~52% corruption, before courthouse. Actually from experience that seems low, I'd expect worse corruption than that, so I may be calculating something incorrectly.
Anyway, the point with respect to the dye city is that we don't want to tie our city placement strategy too closely to the fact that there's a dye there -- so long as we get a city somewhere in the general vicinity we should be fine, it doesn't really matter if it's perfectly placed as it will probably be too corrupt to matter much. It's more important to get good city placement for cities near the capital -- almost always the general rule is the cities closest to the capital get the best land/placement choices, and the cities further out make do with whatever land is left. On the other hand, if we decide it's suitable to build a FP up there, that may mean we want to be more careful about where cities that far N get placed.
One procedural comment: PLEASE use WinZip (or equivalent) on your save files before posting them to the forum. Save files are normally quite large, but zipping them up saves over 90% of that space, meaning less storage problems and faster uploads/downloads.
Making Shanghai into a troop-cranking town sounds like a good idea for the moment, since it will grow slower so probably will build fewer settlers/workers and be allowed to grow larger. We should keep Beijing and Dockonda Bay pumping out settlers and workers since they grow fastest, but they should eventually get to around size 6 anyway since they grow so fast. We don't really want to let them grow past 7 for now because it takes double the food to grow past that point.
At some point we should consider building Pyramids. That is the best ancient-era wonder if you can fit a lot of cities on your land, and that looks to be the case here. We could save a lot of shields worth of granaries, and it should not be too hard to get since we're only on Regent. (Note, this might not be something to try on Emperor/Deity where the AI gets production bonuses and can more easily win a race to build a wonder.)
The Wheel: It would be nice to know about horses, but perhaps not critical. I would not try to research it; I'd consider getting going on the path to Courthouses and Republic more important, as we will have already delayed quite a bit by the time we finish Iron Working, and Republic is a great government for earning cash or doing research, and for limited/rapid war. (We only need Monarchy govt if we are planning an extended war.) Rather, I would wait until we can trade for it or buy it at reduced-cost prices. The price will go down as we contact more civs that already have the Wheel (and not until, hence one reason why early exploring is important...)
Hopefully we can get our conscript warrior exploring our nearby lands N of Beijing a bit more. Our westernmost warrior might want to go check out the Iroquois so we can find out what their lands look like before they build temples and seal their borders. We may also need 2-3 extra warriors/spears to seal the border around grey dot city so that the Iroquois don't go through our borders to go settle in or explore our lands.
Making Shanghai into a troop-cranking town sounds like a good idea for the moment, since it will grow slower so probably will build fewer settlers/workers and be allowed to grow larger. We should keep Beijing and Dockonda Bay pumping out settlers and workers since they grow fastest, but they should eventually get to around size 6 anyway since they grow so fast. We don't really want to let them grow past 7 for now because it takes double the food to grow past that point.
At some point we should consider building Pyramids. That is the best ancient-era wonder if you can fit a lot of cities on your land, and that looks to be the case here. We could save a lot of shields worth of granaries, and it should not be too hard to get since we're only on Regent. (Note, this might not be something to try on Emperor/Deity where the AI gets production bonuses and can more easily win a race to build a wonder.)
The Wheel: It would be nice to know about horses, but perhaps not critical. I would not try to research it; I'd consider getting going on the path to Courthouses and Republic more important, as we will have already delayed quite a bit by the time we finish Iron Working, and Republic is a great government for earning cash or doing research, and for limited/rapid war. (We only need Monarchy govt if we are planning an extended war.) Rather, I would wait until we can trade for it or buy it at reduced-cost prices. The price will go down as we contact more civs that already have the Wheel (and not until, hence one reason why early exploring is important...)
Hopefully we can get our conscript warrior exploring our nearby lands N of Beijing a bit more. Our westernmost warrior might want to go check out the Iroquois so we can find out what their lands look like before they build temples and seal their borders. We may also need 2-3 extra warriors/spears to seal the border around grey dot city so that the Iroquois don't go through our borders to go settle in or explore our lands.
Mystery13
Prince
A couple of comments. I definitely would have rather moved Shanghai but I wanted to stay with the dot map that no one disagreed with. I played my game last night before the forum went down, well before your post.
Also, I'm not sure what you see in the zip files at this point. The zipped file that ChrTh posted was 62 kb compressed from 69 kb. Zipping a file does not automatically compress 90%. The file I posted was a similar 69 kb. I will certainly zip when the game files get bigger and the zipping has an effect.
I see your point on taking settlers from Beijing. It will be faster than Shanghai. Should we go Settler/Spearman/Settler in Beijing? It seems Settler/Worker/Settler would keep the city too small.
Also, I'm not sure what you see in the zip files at this point. The zipped file that ChrTh posted was 62 kb compressed from 69 kb. Zipping a file does not automatically compress 90%. The file I posted was a similar 69 kb. I will certainly zip when the game files get bigger and the zipping has an effect.
I see your point on taking settlers from Beijing. It will be faster than Shanghai. Should we go Settler/Spearman/Settler in Beijing? It seems Settler/Worker/Settler would keep the city too small.
Well, Sirian disagreed with it; that usually counts for something. 
And, I did comment that it depended on the surrounding terrain, but that he was probably right.
In SGs, don't be afraid to change what the previous person did or do something other than the suggestions they made, if you think it would be better done differently or if conditions have changed since they made their recommendations. Dot maps are not sacred. Just explain your thinking when you do so; if you change something and it was a bad idea, you'll get feedback on why, which will hopefully improve your play. If you change it and it was a good idea, you may get kudos for it, which is always nice. If you blindly follow along, you won't learn much of anything.
So, for instance, if you plan to settle the green dot area, there are a couple suggestions that have been made; only one is shown on the dot map, but that doesn't mean it's the only viable option, or even the best one.
And, I did comment that it depended on the surrounding terrain, but that he was probably right.In SGs, don't be afraid to change what the previous person did or do something other than the suggestions they made, if you think it would be better done differently or if conditions have changed since they made their recommendations. Dot maps are not sacred.
Just explain your thinking when you do so; if you change something and it was a bad idea, you'll get feedback on why, which will hopefully improve your play. If you change it and it was a good idea, you may get kudos for it, which is always nice. If you blindly follow along, you won't learn much of anything.So, for instance, if you plan to settle the green dot area, there are a couple suggestions that have been made; only one is shown on the dot map, but that doesn't mean it's the only viable option, or even the best one.
ChrTh
Happy Yule!
On Winzip: It may not save space in the early saves, but Zipped files are less likely to get corrupt due to transferring.
On Pyramid: I'd like to get a few more cities built before starting, maybe have 6 total...but that's just an opinion.
On Wheel: The reason I think we need to find the Horses is not just for the Riders but to prevent Mounted Warriors. If there's a horse tile right around Grey Dot and we don't realize and the Iriquois grab it--Oy!
Fair enough on trying to prevent Mounted Warriors. Up to the next player whether it's worth the delay on the path to Republic.
I realized I didn't answer your question before on city founding order. It's a balancing act really, factoring in
- potential growth rate (founding fast-growing cities first is better because you can cash that in to found more cities sooner)
- distance from capital (low corruption sites can produce better)
- necessary resources
- strategic value (guarding a choke point, future FP site or near future FP site, etc.)
None of these is necessarily any more important than another, it's a judgement call in each case. I would say Green dot is more important to found than Pink dot (on my map) because Green has access to wheat, but grey is more important than either to block out the Iroquois. There may also be dots up near/past the red dots we want to settle quickly if the area is an FP candidate -- it looks both expansive and vacant right now, which is a good sign. I'm not so worried about the jungle as it can be cleared, especially since we're industrious.
I realized I didn't answer your question before on city founding order. It's a balancing act really, factoring in
- potential growth rate (founding fast-growing cities first is better because you can cash that in to found more cities sooner)
- distance from capital (low corruption sites can produce better)
- necessary resources
- strategic value (guarding a choke point, future FP site or near future FP site, etc.)
None of these is necessarily any more important than another, it's a judgement call in each case. I would say Green dot is more important to found than Pink dot (on my map) because Green has access to wheat, but grey is more important than either to block out the Iroquois. There may also be dots up near/past the red dots we want to settle quickly if the area is an FP candidate -- it looks both expansive and vacant right now, which is a good sign. I'm not so worried about the jungle as it can be cleared, especially since we're industrious.
Mystery13
Prince
Ok, good points all around. I was just treating my first dot map as sacred text. Won't do it again but will not change just for the sake of it either.
We haven't seen a post from Padma in a little bit so I thought I'd post the turn order.
Zed-F
ChrTh
Mystery13
Padma >>> your turn
We haven't seen a post from Padma in a little bit so I thought I'd post the turn order.
Zed-F
ChrTh
Mystery13
Padma >>> your turn
Just been very busy.
Downloaded your save, Mystery13, will play sometime this weekend.
BTW, in reference to zipping the save files, Fireaxis now compresses the saves. Zipping doesn't save very much space. However, like ChrTh pointed out, zipped files seem to be less likely to become corrupted. Plus, the upload server understands them, it does NOT know what a '.sav' file is.
Downloaded your save, Mystery13, will play sometime this weekend.
BTW, in reference to zipping the save files, Fireaxis now compresses the saves. Zipping doesn't save very much space. However, like ChrTh pointed out, zipped files seem to be less likely to become corrupted. Plus, the upload server understands them, it does NOT know what a '.sav' file is.
ChrTh
Happy Yule!
On the FP question:
I think that in the end we'll find that Salamanca will be the best place for a FP...
I think to the N the land eventually turns W, so that an FP in that area would not be very centralized (it'd basically duplicate Beijing)...but I could be wrong. I wouldn't rush on the FP though.
I think that in the end we'll find that Salamanca will be the best place for a FP...
I think to the N the land eventually turns W, so that an FP in that area would not be very centralized (it'd basically duplicate Beijing)...but I could be wrong. I wouldn't rush on the FP though.
ChrTh
Happy Yule!
BTW, I'm going to shadow-play 10 turns, but I won't post my results until after Padma does
ChrTh
Happy Yule!
Ok, something I caught while shadowing...
Why is that Worker E of Shanghai irrigating? That grassland can't go above 2 wheat in Despotism anyhow...the turns would've been better spent mining the shielded grassland SE of that spot. Am I right or wrong here?
Why is that Worker E of Shanghai irrigating? That grassland can't go above 2 wheat in Despotism anyhow...the turns would've been better spent mining the shielded grassland SE of that spot. Am I right or wrong here?
![[pimp]](/images/smilies/pimp.gif "Pimp [pimp]")
ChrTh
Happy Yule!
Ok, I finished my shadow 10 turns...WOW.
I'll spill later
I'll spill later
Mystery13
Prince
I have also shadowed the next 10. I don't think I'll do it again though because I like the suspense of reading the next person's post to see what happens.
ChrTh
Happy Yule!
There's also the following issue:
Let's say during Zed-F's turn, he decides to research Alphabet instead of Iron Working...so that when it's my turn, we haven't learned Iron Working.
Now, I just shadowed the game, but I decided to research Iron Working instead of Alphabet. I get it before the end of my shadow turn--and I now know where the nearby Iron is.
I start my legit turn, and I head a settler out to the Iron, even though I haven't researched Iron Working yet, because I know it's there from my shadow turn.
See the problem?
I think I'll stop shadowing this game
Sirian
Designer, Mohawk Games
And what would doing that gain you?
If you're serious about being a student, I would expect you not to cheat on the test, so to speak. In fact, if you can't separate out knowledge of the iron locations from other factors you would put into where to send a settler, then you probably don't have any solid grasp at all on why you choose any one spot over any other.
If you can't shadow a turn because it gives you some knowledge you can't set aside and choose not to act upon, you aren't going to get much out of the PROD game, for sure. You'd have to avoid not only your own shadow turns, but those of everyone else, too, which would mean missing out on any and all posts and info in the entire shadow thread.
What's more important here? The validity of the training games, or the study of reasoning behind strategic choices?
- Sirian
ChrTh
Happy Yule!
I'm removing my post, because I'm a horrible, horrible person 
Call me Mr. Repentant
Call me Mr. Repentant
0) 2150BC: I inspected each city, and am satified with the direction things are going. The worker irrigating east of Shanghai is definitely not doing us any good. I cancel that action.
1) 2110BC: Barracks complete in Beijing. I start on a warrior to accompany our next settler. The Domestic Nag is unhappy about the state of our treasury, but we will get Iron Working in 2 turns, so she can live with it. Two warriors (1 west , 1 north) out exploring. Third warrior coming back to garrison Beijing.
2) 2070BC: Northern warrior attacked by Mongol Barb. He drops to 1 HP, but wins and is promoted to veteran. The interrupted worker starts building a road to our next city site (gray dot).
3) 2030BC: We get Iron Working. A quick survey reveals no iron in our lands. There is one deposit over near Niagra Falls. Hiawatha will probably get it before we can. It seems a bit of a stretch from our current position. I start our scientists on the Alphabet.
4) 1990BC: I drop science to 80% to keep us from running into the hole. Exploring.
5) 1950BC: Exploring.
6) 1910BC: Ditto. I found the Northern Barb Camp.
7) 1870BC: I move the northern warrior south 1 tile to rest up before attacking the barbs, and I see gems in the mountains north of Beijing, across the northern bay. More gems in the jungle to the southeast of him.
8) 1830BC: Exploring.
9) 1790BC: Settler built in Beijing, another ordered up. Settler plus warrior begin moving west.
10) 1750BC: Exploring. We see an Iroquois warrior battle in the west, probably a barb outside our vision.
Here is the save:
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads/ZF1-china-1750bc.zip
1) 2110BC: Barracks complete in Beijing. I start on a warrior to accompany our next settler. The Domestic Nag is unhappy about the state of our treasury, but we will get Iron Working in 2 turns, so she can live with it. Two warriors (1 west , 1 north) out exploring. Third warrior coming back to garrison Beijing.
2) 2070BC: Northern warrior attacked by Mongol Barb. He drops to 1 HP, but wins and is promoted to veteran. The interrupted worker starts building a road to our next city site (gray dot).
3) 2030BC: We get Iron Working. A quick survey reveals no iron in our lands. There is one deposit over near Niagra Falls. Hiawatha will probably get it before we can. It seems a bit of a stretch from our current position. I start our scientists on the Alphabet.
4) 1990BC: I drop science to 80% to keep us from running into the hole. Exploring.
5) 1950BC: Exploring.
6) 1910BC: Ditto. I found the Northern Barb Camp.
7) 1870BC: I move the northern warrior south 1 tile to rest up before attacking the barbs, and I see gems in the mountains north of Beijing, across the northern bay. More gems in the jungle to the southeast of him.
8) 1830BC: Exploring.
9) 1790BC: Settler built in Beijing, another ordered up. Settler plus warrior begin moving west.
10) 1750BC: Exploring. We see an Iroquois warrior battle in the west, probably a barb outside our vision.
Here is the save:
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads/ZF1-china-1750bc.zip
I didn't post a dot-map because at this stage Zed-F's is quite satisfactory. The settler Ibuilt is supposed to take the grey dot on his map, securing for us the ivory, and providing a forward position against the Iroquois. The next settler I would send to the blue dot south of that, to further blockade our western territory.
The northern warrior needs to take out the barb camp. We may yet find something of interest up there. I see gems, and with the mountains and hills, there may be iron too.
The northern warrior needs to take out the barb camp. We may yet find something of interest up there. I see gems, and with the mountains and hills, there may be iron too.
