Remember the game phases... we're near the end of our expansion phase and beginning our consolidation phase. Moreover we don't have any pressing military needs at the moment. What does this mean? It means any first ring cities that are not finishing up the expansion builds (settlers) should start on infrastructure. So, Chengdu building barracks... I would rather see it get an early start on infra that will be immediately useful (we don't expect to see Chengdu building troops for a while, and we can always crash-build it later if necessary since it's cheap for us.) So, a temple, marketplace, or courthouse would be better. On the other hand, Nanking and Hangchow are second-ring cities, so should continue to look at workers, settlers, and military... so barracks at Nanking and Hangchow are possible ideas. You later change Nanking to worker which is fine as well since we're ok on military at the moment. I'd like to get one more galley out of Hangchow though so we can have one exploring in each direction. Don't neglect the value of map trades -- the more we explore on our own, the better the deals we can make.
Tientsin is hopelessly corrupt, at least until we get to Republic, and would need a courthouse to be productive anyway. So, whipping a temple there is definately a possibility -- having more than 1 pop there isn't helping us much for the moment anyway. More workers is always a good idea until after rails.
Micromanage Canton -- how? Did you give up shields for more food? If so, good -- we should still be in max food mode anyway. Or did you just give up shields? If the latter, and the city will grow at the same pace regardless of how many shields you are producing, then you might as well finish the settler early even if it drops you to 1 briefly. Why waste shields? You will still grow to the same size in the same amount of time.
Good thing you put Shanghai back on growth in 10, or else you would have got the
call. You should never limit city growth rate at this stage of the game if you can avoid it (and it's almost always a bad idea in general, unless your city is working every tile it can.) There are many ways of combatting happiness problems; we haven't even touched lux tax yet! A 10% lux tax will only touch our biggest cities, which are the ones most likely to have happiness problems to begin with. In most circumstances (i.e. not wartime with a democracy) you rarely need more than 20% lux tax, which is hardy onerous.Connecting cities with needed resources is almost always considered sufficient reason to not clear the terrain first, so no worries on that score. If you were to start working on any other tiles in the region, though, I'd say clear the jungle first.
BTW, MMOW doesn't really apply if you're only moving a few workers around (we don't really have that many yet!) Wait until you've got several stacks of multiple workers marching around, each starting and finishing improvements on the same turn... then you'll have MMOW.
Dockonda is a 1st ring city -- since it's done its settler push and we're going to consolidation mode, I'd rather see non-military infrastructure here, probably starting with a temple to get whatever Tsingtao's temple doesn't cover in radius.
Tatung is quite corrupt but has high food due to the fish (and more when we swap to Republic) so better than a barracks might be workers. It can be a worker factory and still grow at a good pace, so I'd make Tatung the supplier of quality workers to the rest of NW China!
This will take some of the worker-production burden off our remaining second-ring cities.Settler plan sounds about right for our current batch of settlers -- Canton's settler can definately take care of green dot (from older dotmaps, the very tip of the promontory by Canton.) At that point, Beijing and our 1st ring cities should stop with the settlers and start consolidation... but that doesn't mean we should stop settling. Our 2nd and 3rd ring cities should still be pumping out settlers as time permits (i.e. when they are not building workers or military.) Any land we grab from the AI now gives us four benefits even if it's hopelessly corrupt:
- The AI doesn't have it so it weakens them.
- It's land we don't have to conquer later.
- There might be resources there we can't see yet.
- If we build an FP in the area, it might be productive land someday.
So, definately keep settling as opportunity permits -- but we're going to be out of mad land grab mode soon, so the priority on settling is starting to taper off a bit (at least as far as our 1st ring cities are concerned.)
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Looking at the map, I see a few anomalies (not just from your turn, ChrTh):
- Where's the irrigation? We're going to be in Republic soon, remember... that means irrigated grass is worth 3 food, not 2. We should irrigate some tiles around Shanghai so we can grow it faster once we hit Republic. Chengdu also has some flood plains that need irrigation so it can grow quickly -- remember flood plains are good food sources even in Despotism! We want every city to have at least 4 or 5 surplus food, especially in the first ring (other than Hangchow and green dot, which are just fishing villages -- they get harbours instead.) It doesn't pay to wait until we already have Republic since then we can't take advantage of it right away when we swap governments; rather, we need to get a jump-start on it. We have lots of rivers and lakes around for fresh water, so get cracking on that irrigation!
- By the same token, why do we have mines north and west of Xinjian? Exactly how were you planning to get the plains SE of Xinjian irrigated? You can't irrigate between the hills/mountain to get there. I suppose you could mine the plains and irrigate the grass instead to make up for it, but the point is Xinjian has got quite a bit of hills and plains around so you need to make up the food defecit somehow.
- I can't really tell from the map how many workers we have, since I don't know if any are stacked, but I do see we still have lots of tiles to improve. More workers always helps... especially if we want to clear all that jungle in NW China.
- We do want to keep a few forest around for now, especially near cities that don't have hills nearby. Some variety in terrain is good, so you can change a city from high-food to high-shields and vice-versa, just by changing which tiles are being worked -- you can't do that if all you have are mined grassland. This requires some micromanagement to take advantage of, and starts to become irrelevant once a city has hospitals, but until then it's a useful ability to have.
- Remember, we might want to build a road around our Iron and pillage our Iron hill to prevent our Iron from depleting before we're ready to start building Riders. We have horses now so we should be building horsemen (upgradable to Riders) instead of swordsmen (dead end) anyway.
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Remember the game phases again, the consolidation phase starts off with the 1st ring cities trying to grow as big as possible to become as productive as possible. Most of our 1st ring cities have rivers, which means they will be growing to 12 quickly (esp. once Pyramids comes online), plus we'll be in Republic soon so no MP, which means the lux tax will need to get boosted, probably to 20% or more until we get some marketplaces built. Don't worry if you have to bump lux tax up to keep people happy, it will pay for itself with more tiles worked, thus more base production and more base income! Xinjian, Canton, and green dot city (when it gets founded) will be limited to size 6 until they get aqueducts, though, so don't forget to skim workers off them once they hit size 6 -- remember that even though we're in consolidation phase, we still want our cities to be growing all the time so they are not wasting food, and we still need a LOT more workers for the long haul!
This means our 2nd ring cities are going to have to take up a lot of slack. Your toughest priority calls are going to be in the second ring cities, not the 1st ring cities! They need to handle military builds, workers, settlers, and the odd temple... and none of them can build anything quickly. The 1st ring cities should be easy to figure out, though -- just build whatever economic infrastructure element looks to be most needed next. (Don't neglect courthouses -- the benefits might seem small percentage-wise, but over the long haul they add up quickly!) Also, note that if the second ring cities don't look like they can hack taking care of all our military needs then you may need to pull one or more of our 1st ring cities off economic infrastructure for a bit to compensate. We want war on our terms, not on the AI's terms, so we need to maintain a strong appearance to the AI. Non-vet troops are good for that if troops are needed and no barracks is in place (they can always be used as MP/garrison later) -- even workers add to our "troop count" as far as the AI is concerned, which is another reason why more workers always helps.
