ZF1 - Zed's Training Day Game

[Zed-F]

Hmm. We don't really need Monotheism right now; since we have 5 lux sources we should be able to grow our cities to 12 with markets and temples alone, though we might need a bit of lux tax.

If the AI civs insist on warring with each other and not researching, then yes we'll need to go ahead and research certain key techs on our own. But, keep in mind a slow advance up the tech tree is to our benefit, since it prolongs the usefulness of our UU. Before we research anything, however, we need some horses and some cash with which to upgrade them, though. My suggestion is we wait and build up cash until Monotheism gets shopped around or discovered by more than one civ, or we trade Feudalism for it if possible. Definately don't pay GPT for Monotheism. Once we feel we have a sufficient cash reserve built up and a large enough army of horses we can get Monotheism and start researching Chivalry at max rate. Once we have Chivalry, we can again turn science off and start upgrading horsies and going to war.

Make sense?

 

[Mystery13]

Yes, that makes sense. Right now Babs want our World Map, all available gold, about 50gpt AND fuedalism for monotheism. Everyone is warring with them currently so it will not be shopped anytime soon. Sun Tzu is in about 13 or so, so we should probably turn on science long enough to get chivalry starting with ChrTh's next turn...if I understand you correctly.

 

[Zed-F]

I would say we don't want to research Monotheism on our own. The other AI civs will probably be researching it on their own -- at least those that have Feudalism will be, since the AI rarely researches Engineering before Feudalism and Monotheism. When they finish Monotheism it will lower the cost for us to buy it. Moreover, it is always cheaper to buy stuff with straight up cash than it is with GPT, especially if we've ruined our reputation by making peace with the Babs without cancelling the alliance with Persia. So, we should at least build up the necessary cash to find out how much it would cost straight up for Monotheism; it won't be the 1000 gold that 50 gpt translates to. We know we need to build up cash to upgrade horses anyway.

In the meantime, if you want insurance, you could run a single scientist in one of our colonies (not a core city!) to research either Monotheism (in case we choose not to buy it by the time 40 turns are up, which is unlikely) or Engineering (for trade value). That won't cost us much, and if it pans out could save us quite a bit of cash, but the odds are slim that it will be useful; most likely the AIs will research/shop those around before we get a chance to. Remember, AI wars typically don't last forever, and once peace breaks out the trading will begin once more.

 

[Mystery13]

Yet another mysterious turn...

Looking back at the words of the great Zed-F,
I pull out the veto hammer. We want as many
horsemen as possible before Chivalry, and a
switch from the Great Library to Sun Tzu. Right
now, Persia wants everything we have for
Feudalism so I wait. Surely it will be traded to
everyone else in a few turns. Only Babylon has
another tech for sale. For the sun and the moon
we can learn the secrets of Monotheism. Nope.

To the hammer:
Beijing to horse. Tuskany to horse.
Tatung to worker. Padmativa to temple.
Diamond Delta to temple. Anyang to temple.
I switched out of barracks for now with the coming
of Sun Tzu. The temple is just a placeholder
until I find a more pressing need.
Dockanda Bay is ready to riot so I move the lux
slider to 10% to comfort the folks. MM city so that
growth and temple occur same turn.

Ok, hammer is back in the toolbox.

In between turns, Iroquois building Hanging Gardens.

70AD
Quick check of the military advisor shows four horsemen.
I'm thinking we keep up the military push until we have
15 to 20.
Upon further review, switch Padmativa and Diamond Delta
to workers. Lots of jungle to get rid of.
Lots of worker movement in every one of my turns.

In between turns, a worker is built in Tatung. I switch
to settler. We have one spot left to fill.
English building a Great Wall.
Looking more at Tatung, I think a courthouse would be
beneficial. Perhaps after the settler that's what we
should do there.

90AD
Worker movement.

In between turns, Persia and Japan sign peace treaty.
Diamond Delta builds worker, switches to temple.

110AD
Feudalism and Monotheism still mega-expensive.
No one is trading and our GL is due in two. Will hold
off one more turn.
Worker movement.

In between turns, Hangchow builds horseman, switches to
courthouse. Chengdu builds granary, switches to
marketplace. Padmativa finishes the worker and switches
to temple.

130AD
MM Shanghai to delay the GL one more turn.
Worker movement.

In between turns, Dockanda Bay builds temple, switches to
Horseman.

150AD
Feudalism still 820 gold and has not been shopped to anyone!
I buy it with considerable remorse and swap Shanghai to
Sun Tzu. It is due in 27, but after growth I'll MM to make
it sooner.
I check to see if I can dial down the lux slider but if I
do, Shanghai will revolt. Not good.
Worker movement.

In between turns, Babylon wants our ship out of their waters.
We apologize and move on. England and Persia ally and
England declares war on Babylon. Beijing builds markets and
switches to Horsemen. MM Beijing for growth in 5.
We now have Pikemen. I will begin switching all spearmen.

170AD
Well, Persia now has given Feudalism to everyone except Babs.
I did not want to give it up sooner for two reasons. Less
chance of any cascade to Sun Tzu and no one else had anything
we needed. We can't even trade luxuries over land yet!
Slowing growth in Shanghai gets us Sun Tzu in 18. I believe
it is worth it for the continent that we are on. MM reduced
the time by about 6 turns.

Check domestic advisor for unhappiness but find none. It's
good to have so many luxuries online.

In between turns, Xinjian completes aqueduct, switches to
horsemen. Palace improvements. We now have steps. Yeah.

190AD
Worker movement as always.
I'm beginning to think the last civ price gambit may not
work to well here. The multiple alliances against
Babylon seems to have slowed research to a crawl. No
new tech has come online since I started.
Babylons price for Monotheism is still ridiculous. I will
not turn on research yet as this must be a group decision.

In between turns, ROP with England expires, they are Polite.
They want our World Map to continue so I agree and get
their updated territory map. They would not hear of any
gold related issues. Our ship sinks a barbarian ship.
Iroquois building the GL. Japan building Sun Tzu.

210AD
Worker movement.

In between turns, Beijing builds Horsemen, switches to
Pikemen (we still have a couple of spots in need of vet
defense).

230AD
Worker movement.
Horse movement. All 4-legged troops in Nanking.

In between turns, Iroquois and England ally against Babylon.
Dockanda Bay produces horsemen, switches to markets (they
are size 9 and will need the happiness).
Canton builds temple and switches to aqueduct.
Macao builds temple and switches to courthouse.
We're only building horsemen in cities with barracks.

250AD
Worker movement.
Sun Tzu due in 14. Keep an eye on Shanghai for increasing
the growth rate relative to Sun Tzu being built.
No danger of city revolt.
Only 4 spears left to switch to pikes.
Our mobile army consists of 9 horsies with many more on the
way.
Beijing is a good candidate to start the next wonder.

And so endith another Mysterious reign...

 

[Mystery13]

And now some pictures and a save file...

 

[Mystery13]

Hmmm, the save file doesn't appear to be cooperating.

 

[Zed-F]

One quick note about pics, it's helpful to zoom out (Z) when taking them. Makes it easier to see what's going on. Also turning on the grid lines (Ctrl-G) is nice too.

It's getting harder to give good advice on every little detail as the empire grows. At this stage of the game, though, details in individual cities start to pale in comparison to the overall plan. So, I'm going to try to scale my comments upwards a level and comment on strategy more than on specifics. Hopefully this will result in less time required to write comments up as well.

--------------

Military: We should be concentrating more on horsemen, less on pikemen. If we want to have horsemen to upgrade when we get to Chivalry, we need to build them now. Pikemen we can build afterwards; we won't be getting to Gunpowder anytime soon at this rate. The scenario is, as soon as we are ready to upgrade our horses, we swap military production to infantry (pikes) for garrison and defensive purposes and since we will have more than enough potential Riders for conquest purposes. We should be able to pump them out at a sufficient rate by then to keep up with our conquests. Also note that switching spearmen manually when Feudalism was discovered was not necessary -- the game would automatically do it (either the next turn or when the spear was about to complete, not sure which.)

Domestic: It looks like we're still on an infrastructure push in some places, especially second- and third-ring cities. Do we have enough 1st-ring cities that are done infrastructure for the moment and ready to build horses yet? If not, we may want to hold off on infrastructure in 2nd-ring cities for a bit longer. Our other alternative if we really want to push infrastructure now is to disconnect our Iron. We can then safely research Chivalry, build horses at our leisure to our heart's content, and reconnect our Iron when we're ready to upgrade. Slowing growth in Shanghai -- normally I wouldn't advocate slowing growth, but this is an exception. Shanghai's almost done Sun Tzu so it won't be for long, and it needs a market to counteract happiness problems; moreover it's way behind on infrastructure, so it needs to complete Sun Tzu quickly. We need to get it back to a good growth rate and catching up on infrastructure as soon as we're done Sun Tzu, though.

Diplomacy: Ok, so we had to bite the bullet on Feudalism. That's a one time thing so we could get a useful wonder out of all those shields invested at Shanghai. But, holding off on shopping it around here to try and recoup some of our costs didn't make sense. 800 gold is 10 turns worth of income, and enough cash to upgrade 10 horses! That's a serious chunk of change, and we needed to get some of it back. Cascade is a valid concern... but, considering how much of a prebuild we've got going at Shanghai, not an issue in this case. There are no wonders that cost more than Sun Tzu that someone else might finish, causing someone else to have to swap to Sun Tzu as a second prize, and Shanghai can probably beat any other city currently building a wonder in terms of production anyway. (Check the wonder screen to make sure!) So, before you decide not to swap around a wonder tech, consider whether you can be caught first -- and check the wonder screen to find out.

Research: I'll reiterate that we don't need Monotheism for anything other than it's on the path to Chivalry; the slower the tech race, the better for us. Slow tech race before Monotheism gives us a chance to get a lot of horses and gold built up, and slow tech race after Chivalry gives us a long time with our UU at the top of the pecking order as far as units go (along with Samurai.) So, we can afford to wait for Monotheism to get spread around by virtue of others discovering it before we buy in, and then rush to Chivalry (assuming we're ready to go to war) and get our armies moving.

EDIT: More comments.

 

[Mystery13]

All valid points as usual. Let's see...
I wanted two more pikemen total. I believe I'm building them both now. We have an undefended city and one with regular spearman. Other than that, I have only upgraded Pikemen. All military build so far, other than the two current Pikes, have been horses.

For the most part, all first ring cities with a barracks are working horsemen. Exceptions are marketplaces for happiness in large cities and courthouses for shields/gold in 40-60% corrupt cities.

Research, I agree, was a bummer. The civs other than Babylon and Persia didn't have 100 gold to rub together at the time we got Feudalism (and, as I said, we cannot yet trade on the ground). If you still think that would've been worth it than my bad. A side note to this is that we have some lux to sell and should connect a road to the Iroquois to get started.

Macro is better than micro at this point to be sure. I would only ask that you keep hammering us for individual city failures as they come up. It's still crucial that we keep as much weed out of the cities as possible and your insight thus far has been outstanding. I must admit this even though I've been gaming since the days of Loadrunner and Bard's Tale. There is always a perspective out there somewhere.

 

[Zed-F]

Added more comments above -- wanted to add them earlier but the forum seemed to go down for a bit.

Individual city failures, we're soon going to have too many cities for that to be practical. Really, it's more a question of mindset to apply... what should my inner core cities be doing (those with <25% corruption), what should my outer core be doing (more than 25% corruption but still useful amounts of shields) and what should my colonies be doing (1/1 money pits). That, and how much food/shields is available where, pretty much dictate the general course of your planning when deciding what to build next -- after that it's just a matter of discipline to stick to the plan, and the vision to know when to alter the plan and when to make exceptions. Specific build orders matter most in the early game when the effect is magnified over 1000s of years and amplified in its effects on the speed of your expansion, and matter less and less as time goes on. We're getting to the point where most of the basic infrastructure is already there in our cities, and we're running out of expansion room and moving into a conquering mode, so the time for a heavy focus on build ordering is passing.

 

[ChrTh]

I have a question re: disconnecting the Iron.

Why?

If the purpose is to prevent its depletion, I thought depletion was a random event? Or is it a random event for connected resources?

 

[Zed-F]

There are 2 reasons to disconnect a resource or leave a resource unconnected:

1) To prevent depletion. A resource that can be depleted will not be depleted if it is not connected. It can be depleted even if you are not using it if it is connected. Some resources cannot be depleted so you might as well road them always (horses, rubber.)

2) To allow you to build earlier-age units than you normally would be able to. If you have Chivalry and horses but no iron in your resource box, for instance, you can't build Knights. But, you can still build horsemen. So, if you want to build a bunch of Knights in a hurry, and have both iron on your lands and the cash on hand for upgrades, you can disconnect your all your iron sources temporarily, build a bunch of 30-shield horses, reconnect your iron, and upgrade them all to knights. This way you pay 30 shields and 80 gold per knight rather than 70 shields per knight. 70 shields can be a lot depending on how good your cities are -- i.e. considering how big they can get to be and the quality of the land they have available to work. The former is often more affordable, especially if you're running low/no-science, or if your empire is mainly coastal-based due to your available land being crappy/peninsular.

 

[ChrTh]

Originally posted by Zed-F
There are 2 reasons to disconnect a resource or leave a resource unconnected:

1) To prevent depletion. A resource that can be depleted will not be depleted if it is not connected. It can be depleted even if you are not using it if it is connected. Some resources cannot be depleted so you might as well road them always (horses, rubber.)

2) To allow you to build earlier-age units than you normally would be able to. If you have Chivalry and horses but no iron in your resource box, for instance, you can't build Knights. But, you can still build horsemen. So, if you want to build a bunch of Knights in a hurry, and have both iron on your lands and the cash on hand for upgrades, you can disconnect your all your iron sources temporarily, build a bunch of 30-shield horses, reconnect your iron, and upgrade them all to knights. This way you pay 30 shields and 80 gold per knight rather than 70 shields per knight. 70 shields can be a lot depending on how good your cities are -- i.e. considering how big they can get to be and the quality of the land they have available to work. The former is often more affordable, especially if you're running low/no-science, or if your empire is mainly coastal-based due to your available land being crappy/peninsular.

Ah, great! I love the Training Day games...

Nothing like a ten-turn screw-up to really up your knowledge level, huh?

 

[Padma]

I believe I am up next.

I will download tonight, but probably won't play until tomorrow night.

It's been a looooong weekend, with little time for gaming, or even logging on to the net to see what's going on.

 

[ChrTh]

Padma, your goal:

Don't screw up as bad as me....

If you want to finish tonight and post, go ahead, I'm playing 2 other games tonight, what's a 3rd?

 

[Padma]

Well, that's definitely my primary goal!

Chances are I'll be lucky to find time to download tonight, let alone play. My wife has to go out of town for a few days starting tomorrow, so I should have plenty of time the rest of the week.

 

[ChrTh]

Originally posted by Padma
Well, that's definitely my primary goal!

Chances are I'll be lucky to find time to download tonight, let alone play. My wife has to go out of town for a few days starting tomorrow, so I should have plenty of time the rest of the week.

*My* wife left town today for the rest of the week!

 

[Mystery13]

Hey Padma where are you? You're not playing too hard with the wifey gone are you?

 

[Padma]

Whoops, sorry!

I had to work late yesterday, and then had a meeting to attend last night. By the time I got home I was tired, hot (we're having a mini heat wave), and hungry, and I didn't even think about Civ.

I will play and post tonight, I promise!

 

[ChrTh]

No rush...I won't be able to play until tomorrow night anyhow...so just be done by tomorrow night

 

[Padma]

Preturn: Changed a citizen in Shanghai from working an irrigated plains to a forest tile. Speeds up completion of Sun Tzu's to 13 turns, with zero growth. (It wasn't growing for 36 turns, anyway.) Make a note to watch Nanking - scheduled to build Granary right AFTER pop increase. WIll MM so granary comes first.

1) 260 AD: Tuscany Bay completes its Pikeman, start Horse. Tsingtao completes Aquaduct, starts Horse. Oooh, the nice people of China add another story to our palace. I collect two more horsies in Nanking. That should be our total mounted roops there, now.

2) 270 AD: Beijing completes Marketplace, I start Horse. Tatung completes Settler. After much internal debate, I choose to build a Courthouse. I moved a couple of workers to mine hills NW of Nanking, preparatory to disconnecting the iron.

3) 280 AD: Xinjian completes Pikeman. It's a first-ring city, so I head for Marketplace to try to finish infrastructure. Hmmm, a Japanese Archer has wandered into our territory between Padmativa and Tatung. We DO have a RoP, so I can't kick him out.

4) 290 AD: Babylon completes the Hanging Gardens! (S'okay, we weren't building it anyway! ) Next they want to build SunTzu's. English switch to the Great Wall. And SunTzu's. Iroquois start the Great Library. Japanese switch to Great Wall. I notice the Babs are still cautious with us, and we know nothing about their military. On a hunch, I check - nope, we don't have an embassy with them. I establish one for 100 gold (we are currently earning 98 per turn). (Man, they're running 4 entertainers out of 8 citizens in Babylon!) Japanese archer wanders back to Japan.

5) 300 AD: England and Babylon sign a peace treaty. Hmm, Hammurabi wants to trade TMs, straight up. He might be wanting to pick a fight, but he does have 3 turns left on a peace treaty with us. I decide to say yes. Beijing completes Horse, starts another. Same with Tuskany Bay. And Tsingtao. Switch citizen in Nanking to get zero growth, Granary due in two.

6) 310 AD: Japan and Iroquis sign an alliance against Babylon. (So of course, Japan declares war on Babs.) Shantung founded on our last blue dot (NE corner of "our" territory). I start a temple. (It already has a vet warrior I sent with it.)

7) 320 AD: Our galley exploring the far western reaches of the continent is attacked by a barb galley. it is reduced to 1 HP, but it prevails in the end! Beijing completes Horse, starts another. Nanking completes granary. We restart growth, and begin a courthouse. Babs are building SunTzu's (again). (Finally remembered I was going to pillage the Iron - so I did.) Hammurabi has Monotheism, but is apparantly the only civ with it yet. He wants all or gold (831) + 5gpt plus WM for it. I decide to wait.

8) 330 AD: Tientsin completes a worker. I decide to create another. It looks hopelessly corrupt at this point. Chengdu completes a marketplace, starts a courthouse. Anyang completes a Temple, we start a granary. The English start the Colossus.

9) 340 AD: Hiawatha wants to renegotiate our peace treaty without giving us any gpt. I checked his bank account, and he has zero to spare. If we try to insist on gpt, he will have to declare war. I decide to accept the treaty. Beijing completes and starts another Horse. Same for Tuskany Bay and Tsingtao.

10) 350 AD: Hangchow completes Courthouse and starts a Horse.

We are just 3 turns away from Sun Tzu's. I am sure nobody can touch us on that one. We need to push infrastructure in Shanghai after it is done.

We have a stack of 17 Horsemen in Nanking. 4 cities are currently building them. Other first- and second-ring cities are building infrastructure.