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Trip
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Hunt Valley
Apr 2002
time: 00:36
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As I look at the map I see some things that we as a team really need to be focusing on:
- Expansion
Right now we're the smallest power on the map (excluding the embattled Monkeys), yet we are the team that probably has the most land available to anyone. The key to economic strength in Civ 3 is having a lot of big cities. Right now we're pretty mediocre in that department... we have neither a lot of cities or very big ones.
This being the case, I think we need to do a balls-to-the-wall expansion phase ala Apolyton in the PTW ISDG. We have a ton of land that's not going to fill itself. Our greatest priority should be Settlers from wherever we can get them, and infrastructure when we can fit it in between the Settlers.
The most important factor in this is getting cities down so they have time to grow and build up shields and improvements of their own. As (from what I can tell) we have no reason to fear a war, we can safely REX to our hearts' desire with few repercussions. Spending shields and pop points on Settlers instead of military units will not be that much of a problem.
- Palace Jump
I first brought this up in passing about a month ago, but I really think we need to give some consideration to it now.
Sunshinia is not an optimized location for our Palace based upon what land we have available to us. Thus, we need to jump it to another location by disbanding it.
Before doing that, we need to have a FP already constructed in our old core. Based upon our current city placement, and our future expansion the best location for our FP would be Happy Hills. It is in a centralized location to our north, giving all of the area a good productive capability, especially as we chop some of that jungle.
Down south the best location for our target Palace would be 1 tile southeast of the game. These two cores would give us the maximized production potential out of our empire.
- Workers
Harry has so far done a good job as far as this is concerned.  For being so small and not having great terrain our infrastructure and number of Workers is quite impressive. This is a trend we should continue, though the first two issues I brought up should be our main concern.
One thing I DO NOT really agree with so far regarding the direction Harry has taken us recently is the focus on things like Markets and Cathedrals. I realize that we're weak economically, but the key to changing that is utilizing the vast expanse we have available to us. We will have time to build the improvements later, but the key to being stronger in the long run (which is what really matters since there's no pressing concern to be dominant right now) is having more and bigger cities.
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Trip
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Hunt Valley
Apr 2002
time: 00:36
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- Yellow indicates a city site that's already been built, and for better or worse that's what we're working with.
 I'd rather some of those jungle cities were built elsewhere, but oh well.
- Red indicates a high priority site that should be built soon, either because it's close and has food to grow or somehow otherwise helps out our empire as a whole.
- Blue are lesser priority sites that we build after the red sites.
- Pink sites are low priority and shouldn't be built until everything else is in place.
Also includes important tile improvements that we should take care of in the near future.
R stands for road, M for mine, I for irrigate and C for chop. They are laid out in a way showing which should be done first (i.e. those in back should be done first).
I realize that there has already been a plan in place, but I'm just trying to help out in any way that I can. This plan gives us tight spacing for minimization of corruption (and we have a higher OCN which helps us also) and maximization of tile sharing.
The sites marked P and FP obviously stand for the future locations of our Palace and Forbidden Palace. With this plan Happy Hills will build the Forbidden Palace using the hills nearby to boost production. We will then draw Sunshinia down to pop 2, abandon it with a Settler and then rebuild it (possibly 9 of its current location). In the process, our city down south next to the game should build up its population so that we can jump the Palace down there, giving us two productive cores.
The key point in this plan is expansion. We should build Granaries in as many cities as we can and Settlers as fast as possible afterwards. The sooner we get the cities down the sooner they'll be large and productive.
If anyone has any questions/comments/suggestions about this plan please don't hesitate to post.
Here is a RCP (Ring-City-Placement) outline of the current city placement plan in the south.
As you can see, the cities are allocated along the two red rings and the yellow ring. Disneyland is the only city in the yellow ring, but there's not much that I can do about that.
The cities in the closest red ring have a rank corruption of only 2. The yellow ring cities (Disneyland) have a rank corruption of 6. The second red ring has a rank of 7. The circle just outside of that (the blue ring) has no cities, but I showed it at rank 14 just to show you how drastic the effects on corruption that this plan will have.
We may want to eliminate one of the sites in the far south to eliminate some scrunching, but we don't have to worry about that immediately.
Last edited by Trip on 19-05-2004 at 12:41
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Trip
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Hunt Valley
Apr 2002
time: 00:36
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In order to do the things I've listed above, there are some things I've seen from the save that I feel need to be changed or addressed...
- Forbidden Palace
Obviously, Happy Hills needs to be switched to building our Forbidden Palace.  At its current pace (5 SPT) it will complete in 40 turns, which is obviously too long. But that can be easily changed. There are 4 hills within its radius, which can be mined in not too much time. Goodwrench should start mining this next turn, Paul Bunyan should mine his tile while the 2 Workers up north mining near Peace Pipes should come down and help also. Getting the FP done as fast as possible should be a priority. As soon as we get it done and are able to conduct a Palace jump the sooner our economy will increase.
Other improvements to work on for Happy Hills would be to chop and irrigate that forest tile to the southwest. Additionally, we should irrigate the shielded grass directly south of HH. Working those 2 irrigated tiles and 4 hills at size 6 and 0 growth will give us 14 SPT (15 if the chopped forest is a shielded grass), with probably 2 wasted. Based on our current production and growth pattern, 12 SPT should get the FP done in about 20 turns. We should also look into adding a Worker to the city once most of the improvements are done, to cut down on the time needed to grow and get to the optimum size and laborer allocation.
We should look into increasing the sizes of our cities and turning up the luxury slider while we hook up (and trade for) more luxuries. This will help Happy Hills (along with other cities) get larger so it they can generate more shields.
- Granaries and Settler Production
Suntanland and Sunshinia currently have Granaries, and should focus on Settler production as much as possible. Sunshinia should start on one right away, and Suntanland should as soon as it's done with its Market.
Funky Town is 4 turns from its Market, and after that can probably do a Granary, or go straight into Settler production with it's 4 FPT.
Paradise and Friendship City are currently on Granary builds that will complete in the next 5-8 turns. These are good, should start on Settlers as soon as the Granaries are done. We can possibly rush the Granaries in both cities to help speed things up.
Disneyland is doing a Barracks and Las Vegas is doing a Temple. I feel that both of these should be changed to Granaries as well. While this will limit our max pop (in Las Vegas) and our military (in Disneyland), I'm not too concerned about either of these. MAST is the only team which poses any threat to us militarily, and they're weak to us (and dependent on us for resources). Like with Paradise and FP we can (and probably should, especially in Disneyland's case) rush the Granaries to help speed things up. Nothing like finding a good use for our gold. 
- Workers
We currently have a plethora of Workers down near Funky Town and Disneyland. After these guys finish their current tasks they can be sent south to help prepare things for the new coastal Horse city and for the target Palace jump city. One of the most important things to keep in mind is the fact that we need to get that city's size up quite a bit, so getting it prepared for strong food production ASAP is important.
As I said above, we have a few Workers in the vacinity of Happy Hills which should get started on mining tiles for a shield boost to do the FP.
Worker production should be squeezed in between our need for new Settlers. While it's true that having new cities with no improved tiles to work isn't all that great, the fact is that most of our new cities will be pretty corrupt or have other already improved tiles to work, meaning our need for Workers in the near future isn't all that great. The important part is simply getting the cities up and growing so that later when we do have more improvements to work the cities will be large and productive.
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Trip
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Hunt Valley
Apr 2002
time: 00:36
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quote:
Originally posted by Togas
Overall, a very well conceived plan. I'm not at all fond of the red desert city site, but I'm VERY pro-expansion into our bountiful south-west and west. |
This would be a temporary city, designed mainly to pump out Workers and generate more commerce. It would have rather low corruption which would pay off for quite some time before we disband it and use its Settler elsewhere.
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However, we must not shirk our Hoplite production, nor should we assume that we are safe from war. Cities that cannot contribute meaningfully to the expansion should continue with defense production. |
We have a few Barracks already constructed (Sunshinia and Las Vegas, IIRC - Happy Hills will be otherwise occupied  ), which can pump out vet Hoplites in between Settlers without hurting us.
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We also need to hook up a second iron and horses to trade to MAST, which I believe will ensure their loyalty to us. I fear that they may rush us out of desperation at some point, or they may aquire iron elsewhere and decide to conquer us for a permanent source.
Continued peaceful diplomacy will be critical during this expansion phase. However, a massive expansion phase is just what we need right now, and investing (shortrushing) in granaries is a good option. |
But will they bite the hand that feeds them? Use the iron and horses we give them to attack us back? Underhanded, yes, but not out of the question. Just because we trade the resources to them doesn't mean we immediately earn their undying loyalty. In fact, it may pose even more of a threat to us.
They already have a two-core setup and I get the feeling they will be getting much stronger soon. But where will they divert that strength?
If they spend resources on an army in the near future then they may think it to be wiser to simply take our resources rather than be reliant on us until Muskets and Cavalry...
And if they wish to rush us in the short-term then let their Archers and Warriors promote our Hoplites... 
That having been said, I'm not saying I don't support trading with MAST. I simply feel that it's a more complicated situation than it appears (and that we should focus primarily on our own affairs... get that FP city cranking before we spend Workers building roads on mountains!).
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However, what to do with the rest of our money? |
Knights!
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Trip
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Hunt Valley
Apr 2002
time: 00:36
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quote:
Originally posted by HarryH
I agree regarding expansion. My focus on workers is an effort to help that. We need productive lands for our cities to grow and be able to produce. What do we build in between settlers? We need to build something when we have pulled all the pop out of a city and it needs time to grow again. I felt markets will provide us the most benefit. You said we need some larger cities. Those cities will need cathedrals to be productive. Any city that we let grow or that will do a lot of growing while working on a long term project will need a cathedral to continue allow growth and be productive. If we want to take a shot at Sistine's or any other wonder, we will need a larger city with a cathedral. |
Some cities need improvements to grow (like cities completely surrounded by plains or jungle or forest... which aren't common). As I said earlier in the thread, it's more important to get the cities down and growing than for them to produce anything right now. Many of them are pretty far off and will be completely corrupted until their 3rd or 4th shield or gold anyways, so there's little point in building mines and roads everywhere for them at the moment.
Now that I think more about it larger cities and wonders isn't something we need right now. We need more cities much more than we need larger ones. We need larger ones eventually but at this point in time we shouldn't trying to compete economically with powers like Tabemono and LL because if we spend resources on larger cities, then we'll be behind in land and economy. They're just too big right now, we can't compete with them. Our only chance to change that is with our expansion which will pay off in the long run. Which means our focus should be entirely on expansion. If we try to do both then we'll do neither correctly and still end up behind.
Cathedrals are 200 shields. Cathedrals are what you build when you have 20% on the lux slider, 4 luxes and a Market in your size 9 or 10 cities. With our shield production it would probably take 30+ turns to build a Cathedral in most of our cities. And rushing it would be foolhardy... 200 shields translates into 800g. For one city. I'd rather give up the chance at a wonder right now and focus more on our future economic potential. 200 shields is our Forbidden Palace!
Between Settlers I would prefer we built Hoplites. Depending on the shield production of the cities we could build more or fewer of them. I realize quite a few of them would be regulars, but at least we could use them to garrison our new cities.
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I just noticed that in my Planning a Republic thread I forgot to talk about granaries. I would like to get a few more, particularly in those cities that can grow without needing an aqueduct or are good candidiates for settler production. |
What about my suggestions regarding the changes now? Las Vegas really has no need for a Temple right now (just crank up the lux slider as ALL cities increase in size), and as we have little to fear from invasion Disneyland would be best on expansion as well. Disneyland especially is a decision that has to be made THIS turn because the Barracks will finish otherwise.
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I didn't respond to your earlier thread about a palace jump because I didn't like some of the things there but did not know what to say about it. I felt it was a bit early to discuss. We are now getting closer to a time to make a decision since we will go back to producing settlers shortly. |
Didn't like what things?
I disagree that it was too early to discuss. MAST, possibly even weaker than us has already done it. They've already built their FP somewhere and jumped their Palace, and the expansion is kicking off. Despite having no resources, no bonus food, they're already ahead of us by quite a bit. Every new city they build in the south will already be productive.
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In your map above you are assuming that we have all that land. That is not true. Many of your pink cities in the jungle to the NW violate our border treaty with Tab. I don't think we will get that forest land south of the mountains. MAST has filled up their land between the jungle and the mountains. I expect them to start sending settlers to the forest south of the mountains soon. I don't think we will get either of the pink cities down there. We need to settle next to that spice soon or we may not get it. Without the cities in the NW and the south you should rethink the locations for the P and FP. |
So we cut them out. The city sites are just showing where we could potentially fit cities. Most of those northern jungle cities won't have ANY tiles to work anyways. If MAST gets a couple sites in the south, so be it.
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That blue city between HoS and FC needs to be moved to the hill to the SE. It is a better defensive location and we need the plains to provide food. |
If you move that city it will increase the corruption from about 33% to 65% (after the Palace jump). Basically meaning the city won't produce much of anything.
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As for no fear of war, don't bet on it. MAST was put into an uncomfortable position of having to agree to an NAP with LL to keep LL from rushing them early. Tab has also given us indications that they fear LL will attack them. I think war will happen. If we are not the target there is a reasonable chance we will get drawn into it. |
What I do know is that we will not be a target, which is the important factor. We can focus on Settlers and the odd military unit, which will be enough since we won't be fighting any wars on our soil. If anything happens, my guess is that it would be between Tabemono and LL.
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I agree with most of your worker actions. I prefer to road first, and irrigate or mine, unless a city will use the irrigation or mine right away. We need to irrigate some of the grassland around HH for it to support the population to use those mined hills. |
I agree.
We only need 2 tiles irrigated for HH under this scheme. I'd like those to be the one directly south of the city (a shielded grass which will always produce 1 shield, in case we get our GA or something) and the tile under the forest (which may have a shield and isn't already improved, so we won't be wasting any Worker turns).
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HarryH
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Olympia, WA
Sep 2002
time: 21:36
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quote:
Originally posted by Trip
We need larger ones eventually but at this point in time we shouldn't trying to compete economically with powers like Tabemono and LL because if we spend resources on larger cities, then we'll be behind in land and economy. They're just too big right now, we can't compete with them.
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I don't want to compete directly with them. I do want to stay a valued trading partner. That benefits us as well. If we get too far behind we won't be valued much as a trading partner and our value as a target will increase.
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Cathedrals are 200 shields. Cathedrals are what you build when you have 20% on the lux slider, 4 luxes and a Market in your size 9 or 10 cities.
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I disagree. I know the cost to use some lux to prevent disorder when we had a few cities at size 5 was two to three times what it would cost in maintenance for a couple of temples. As our empire gets bigger, as our cities vary more in size, and as the difference in amount of commerce generated in each city increases the more inefficient the lux slider will be for generating happiness. If we have no plans to let any of our cities grow for a while then we don't need cathedrals, and if do not want to take a shot at getting Sistine's then maybe a few coloseums will be better than a few cathedrals.
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What about my suggestions regarding the changes now? Las Vegas really has no need for a Temple right now (just crank up the lux slider as ALL cities increase in size), and as we have little to fear from invasion Disneyland would be best on expansion as well. Disneyland especially is a decision that has to be made THIS turn because the Barracks will finish otherwise.
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I don't have a problem with switching some production to produce granaries first. I still want to consider temples but I will need to do some experiments this weekend to do some cost comparisions with the lux slider. If we switch off the barracks, you will need to get Togas to agree to not ask for more barracks and military units for a while.
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Didn't like what things?
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You posted about putting the FP in HH or LV and then jumping the P south of HoS. I feel that LV is a terrible place for the FP and the FP and P placement would leave all that nice grassland in the west far from either one.
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I disagree that it was too early to discuss. MAST, possibly even weaker than us has already done it. They've already built their FP somewhere and jumped their Palace, and the expansion is kicking off. Despite having no resources, no bonus food, they're already ahead of us by quite a bit. Every new city they build in the south will already be productive.
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Maybe I just wasn't ready because there were too many variables. We had not settled the cities in the east yet so I didn't know if we were going to get that territory. If we didn't get those locations than an FP in HH or LV would be a very poor choice. At that time we had not completed our anarchy and it will still be a few turns before we can get some settlers out. It's a bit early to tell how our borders will end up. As for MAST not having any bonus food, I will have to strongly disagree with that. We started wtih 2 floodplains within the 21 tile radius of our capital, I think MAST has 9 plus a wheat. In the rest of our empire we add a cow, in the rest of MAST's empire they add 7 more floodplains, another wheat, and a cow. MAST also got a settler from a hut early in the game. I am surprised we have been able to keep up in growth with them.
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If you move that city it will increase the corruption from about 33% to 65% (after the Palace jump). Basically meaning the city won't produce much of anything.
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I would be surprised if that one tile will make that big of a difference. I guess I will need to try to find time to run a test to prove whether it does or not.
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Trip
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Hunt Valley
Apr 2002
time: 00:36
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quote:
Originally posted by HarryH
I don't want to compete directly with them. I do want to stay a valued trading partner. That benefits us as well. If we get too far behind we won't be valued much as a trading partner and our value as a target will increase. |
Well, we're doing 40-turn research on Theology, and we're pretty far ahead in the tech race and have some deals worked out for future techs. With a war on the other continent and one possibly on this one then I don' tthink our position as a trading partner will be threatened for some time.
If we don't undergo a plan to increase our economy soon, our short-term advantages will disappear and we'll be weaker than everyone else. We'll have a few larger cities and a lot of empty space and our relative weakness will continue to grow simply because we don't have enough cities.
Right now we have a tech and gold advantage that we won't have in the future. We need to use this opportunity to make ourselves a bit weaker now in exchange for much greater strength in the future.
quote:
I disagree. I know the cost to use some lux to prevent disorder when we had a few cities at size 5 was two to three times what it would cost in maintenance for a couple of temples. As our empire gets bigger, as our cities vary more in size, and as the difference in amount of commerce generated in each city increases the more inefficient the lux slider will be for generating happiness. If we have no plans to let any of our cities grow for a while then we don't need cathedrals, and if do not want to take a shot at getting Sistine's then maybe a few coloseums will be better than a few cathedrals. |
The key to using the lux slider is having enough cities grow to an appropriate size at the same time. If we only have 1 or 2 cities grow where they need it, then no, it's not a good investment. But that's a reason why we wouldn't want to build up a few large cities while the rest are producing Settlers.
The cost of not using the lux slider is as much saving us the shields as anything else. Right now we have a lot more gold to work with than we have shields to work with. Temples are 60 shields and Cathedrals are a whopping 200. That's 260 shields of production, in addition to 3 gold per turn for maintainance to pay for 4 happy faces. That is opposed to using 4 gold on the luxury slider to keep 4 people happy for the cost of 4 GPT. Is that one extra GPT worth 260 shields per city to you?
Colosseums are 120 shields for 2 happy faces and 2 maintainance per turn. Is that 0 extra GPT worth 120 shields?
Well-timed use of the luxury slider will pay off. But we can't be growing some cities and building Settlers from others haphazardly. We're in a position similar to Apolyton in the PTW ISDG not too long ago. We went balls-to-the-wall in Settler production. With our Palace jump we're now in 2nd place in economy and growing rapidly and will catch GWT before too long. But we dedicated everything to Settler for a while, which is what allowed that jump.
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I don't have a problem with switching some production to produce granaries first. I still want to consider temples but I will need to do some experiments this weekend to do some cost comparisions with the lux slider. If we switch off the barracks, you will need to get Togas to agree to not ask for more barracks and military units for a while. |
I think Togas is pretty content with the current plan. I think we're a go on switching those two cities over.
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You posted about putting the FP in HH or LV and then jumping the P south of HoS. I feel that LV is a terrible place for the FP and the FP and P placement would leave all that nice grassland in the west far from either one.
Maybe I just wasn't ready because there were too many variables. We had not settled the cities in the east yet so I didn't know if we were going to get that territory. If we didn't get those locations than an FP in HH or LV would be a very poor choice. At that time we had not completed our anarchy and it will still be a few turns before we can get some settlers out. It's a bit early to tell how our borders will end up. |
At that point in time it was just a rough plan, and yes, Las Vegas would be a bad place for a core. However, HH is a much better location especially now that things are more set up. But there's not much we can do about the past now, all we can do is set things up for the future.
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As for MAST not having any bonus food, I will have to strongly disagree with that. We started wtih 2 floodplains within the 21 tile radius of our capital, I think MAST has 9 plus a wheat. In the rest of our empire we add a cow, in the rest of MAST's empire they add 7 more floodplains, another wheat, and a cow. MAST also got a settler from a hut early in the game. I am surprised we have been able to keep up in growth with them. |
Well, I was discounting flood plains as bonus food, but I guess I'm wrong about them having no bonus food. The fact that they got a free Settler means they suck even more than they should.
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I would be surprised if that one tile will make that big of a difference. I guess I will need to try to find time to run a test to prove whether it does or not. |
Ring-city placement... it's the difference between a city with rank 7 and a city with rank 14. The difference will be around that large, I assure you.
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Trip
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Hunt Valley
Apr 2002
time: 00:36
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quote:
Originally posted by HarryH
It has been my experience that things just don't work out that neatly. Cities grow and produce at different rates. In our case we need one lux in Sunshinia. Moving the slider to 10% will divert 2 gold to entertainment in that city. Right there you are paying more than what you need. You can not fine tune the slider to provide exactly what is needed. That 10% will cost us 10 gpt and provides happiness in cities that do not need it. Even if I consider all the size 4 cities that will soon need happiness when they reach size 5 we will still be paying about 2 gpt for each needed happy face. |
10% luxes only costs you 2 GPT if a city is already generating at least 17 GPT without a Market. Without even going into a detailed analysis, I think it's safe to assume that most of our cities will not be doing at least 17 GPT. Even at size 5.
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That place you have marked for the palace has very few grasslands to provide food for the amount of hills and mountains in the area. Those cities are tight and not all will be able to grow (which is contrary to the lux talk above about growing all cities the same). There is a lot of good land to the west of there. Have you considered putting the palace in the hills to the west? Have you considered Suntanland as a place for the FP? |
Actually, the location I picked probabaly has the most food of any site in the south. It has game, it has some shielded grass and it has forests to chop for extra shields. Yes, it will take some Worker turns to get it ready, but that goes for any site in the south. And once completed, the location I've chosen is better in the long run. A location further west has TOO MANY hills. The only place that has a decent amount of flat land is far to the SW right next to the tundra, which is obviously an inferior location for the Palace.
Plus in order to the Palace jump properly the size of the target city must be much larger than the rest of the cities in the empire, else we risk it going awry and our Palace jumps 1 city over. This means we need to have the city along fresh water so that we don't have to drop every other city in our empire down to size 3 (with the target city at size 6) to be able to jump it. We need fresh water to do this.
As for tight spacing, of course it is. I've written many essays on the utility of tight spacing. And it helps work with the RCP scheme. My plan should get each city up to size 10-12 at full growth. Considering the effects of having more cities producing up until Hospitals, I don't think that's much of a problem.
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I understand the concepts of RCP but have not experimented with it enough to know calculate the exact corruption. It still seems to be a big jump for that one tile. I will take your word on it for now until I can do some testing. |
The main factor in corruption is really rank more than anything else. You can have a loose spacing and cities quite far away still be relatively uncorrupted - simply because they're a lower rank. The reason a more dense spacing has more corruption in closer cities is because of the detrimental effects on rank. The difference between rank 7 and rank 14 will be a large number.
quote:
BTW Trip, your PM box was full. I could not reply to the PM you sent. As far as chat goes, I can not do it when I am at work as I can not install the software on my work PC and the Java chat does not work from there. Today is a different story. I am telecommuting from home and have access to my own PC. I just installed mIRC on it just in case. I need to drag out my laptop so I can get the settings I used the last time I ran mIRC. |
Doh, sorry about that. 
I didn't think I'd gotten that many PMs lately...
Let me know when you get mIRC up and running.
Last edited by Trip on 22-05-2004 at 01:36
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19-05-2004 08:27
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