31-08-2004 02:01									#31
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quote: Originally posted by Trip Well, don't look at me, I'm not the one to convince. The one in power here is E_T. Ironic that he's not even active or on the team any more... Nobody else seems to know what's going on.

Perhaps some public opnion is needed? A poll or something democratic

How long untill ET is back anyway? It's feels so dirty and underhand doing any kind of MoI stuff without the man around.

	31-08-2004 02:13									#32
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quote: Originally posted by OPD Both these cities already have granaries, but they are quite important/core cities so I don't think it would really be that feesable to have them building workers in the long term although maybe for about 20 - 30 turn could be worthwhile, the fact that they already have markets means they can then be jumped up to size 12 (prob 11 w/o temples) straight away.

If these cities are so important, it may be better to look elsewhere. But in that case, the granary has to go, and all irrigation as well. Those cities could be up to size 11/12 right now, producing twice as much shields. We need more specialisation: if these are labeled core cities, make them core cities instead of wasting valuable time. Focus!

In general, that's the idea: jump every city the moment they can to perfect size. If it's building an aqua: size 6 (or 5 if it wouldn't make a difference in spt) If it's building a market: size 8. The turn it gets a market: size 11. If you have the workers, this is possible, and way more efficient than what's happening now.

quote: These 2 cities are wierd they have alot of irrigation and a granary, if at size 6 they had built workers for 10 turns then added them all they could be at size 12 already rather than have them grow to size 12 slowly.

Not only that, but the shields for the 6 workers would be recuperated in less then 10 turns as well. It's not too late, though, the cities could still gain from doing this now.

quote: The "A" city would be cool, espectially as it already has a harbor, Antlegrad too, however these 2 cities would also have to grow to full size in the mid - long term as there are alot of tiles which only these cities have access to.

I'm not sure, but at size 10 or so, with RR present, it might be possible to also have 2-turn worker pumps going. In many cities this can be done, it just rarely happen because if you know this in advance, you plan the neighbouring cities closer before they're built

quote: I don't know if anyone else would like the idea but Lux Invictia could work quite well, it would take at least 6 good tiles from the very heart of the empire which would suck quite badly. Although I don't think this would prevent any core cities reaching 12 and then, before hospitals, RR would mean it would only need 4 tiles (including city square).

If it isn't suited right, it could also make a 3-turn worker pump, even if that's a mess to micromanage. 2-turn pumps are a lot easier...

DeepO

	31-08-2004 02:41									#33
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The idea was to disband lux now that we have larger cities in the area. We're already fairly cramped as it is up north.

	31-08-2004 03:09									#34
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quote: Originally posted by DeepO If these cities are so important, it may be better to look elsewhere. But in that case, the granary has to go, and all irrigation as well. Those cities could be up to size 11/12 right now, producing twice as much shields. We need more specialisation: if these are labeled core cities, make them core cities instead of wasting valuable time. Focus!

I think it would be more effective to have them grow themselves, they are growing quite fast and this way will be big cities a while before any kind of pop adding can take place. Even if that is rather in-efficient I think it's more effective. Therefore the granary cost pays for itself from the extra trade due to quicker growth and the irrigation is not that big an issue as the cities can be set to work more hills/mountains to balance things out.

quote: In general, that's the idea: jump every city the moment they can to perfect size. If it's building an aqua: size 6 (or 5 if it wouldn't make a difference in spt) If it's building a market: size 8. The turn it gets a market: size 11. If you have the workers, this is possible, and way more efficient than what's happening now.

You don't to sell me on this, I've seen it enough in ptwdg1
Specialization is the best way to go but you'd need to have that planned out in advance, things are set up to work differently, however cities are planned perfectly to never need any luxuries or entertainers just without the worker adds.
I think it's often better to work with the current set up to a certain extent rather than making serious changes, especially as it is quite far into the game. It's not just the time/resources in game that it would require but also the effort planning that would be needed.

In the current situation, 0% lux, the max pop is 9 with market and 10 with temple. Then when Bachs is built it'll be 12. Pumping cities up to 12 can't really be done independantly, Dominus and Chiquita would be great at size 12 but you'd need to get a dozen or so other cities up to that size (on the same turn) to justify the rise in lux rate. I think that should be the way to go though, it would be good to do on the first turn of the GA but I think that may be too long to wait.

quote: If it isn't suited right, it could also make a 3-turn worker pump, even if that's a mess to micromanage. 2-turn pumps are a lot easier...

Hehe, with RR it could do 3 turn workers at size 1, using an irrigated BGL for 2 turns then a mined GL for 1 turn then take the mountain as the growth tile

	31-08-2004 04:26									#35
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On growing cities: I certainly think all that can should grow to size 7 on their own. We simply don't have the pumpage to add workers to town-size cities. The rest of the growth, however, can and probably should be done with workers where possible. Exceptions would be short-term ones like Ming, where the food box is pretty full already and shouldn't be stopped till this growth is over. Also, some have granaries that could be put to use to grow the city as efficiently as some of the granaryless towns.

While some of the proposed pumps sound good - Arcadia really doesn't get all that much out of city size right now - we can only fit in so many. I think we're going to need a hybrid plan, growing from local food in those cities that can do so best while using the worker adds we have as best we can.

quote: Originally posted by OPD How long untill ET is back anyway? It's feels so dirty and underhand doing any kind of MoI stuff without the man around.

That reminds me... I need to get Beta to remove his access from the forum. Or if Beta can't do it, one of the admins.

E_T cannot discuss the game with us for a certain minimum period (21 days/10 turns? I can't remember exactly). And after that, I'm not sure how much time he'll have or want to spend on the game, though hopefully he'll be around for bigger-picture discussions like this.

So, we simply have to work without him for now.

	31-08-2004 22:08									#36
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Many people think that towns should grow on their own... let's just say I don't agree. It depends on specific situations, as there are exceptions, but in the long run, growing on your own is just a bad choice in Civ3 (most notable exception in the case were only grass is present, and even without irr the town would grow). You are right there aren't enough pumps right now, though... so let's focus on the cities first.

Cities with granaries: A granary is a waste in a city, if it isn't used as a worker pump. Especially in large cities with infrastructure already present (markets and temples), you should focus on production, not on growth. This is double true for all baracks cities, because when you're building units, you don't have time to build buildings, let alone spend tiles on growth. So, either those cities sell their granaries, or they are better off as a pump (maybe even temporarily). It's simply a matter of numbers, even if intuitively it doesn't feel right

Sites:
basically everyone agrees Arcadia is a good choice for a pump, with the only down side that it's in the South. So not much discussion left on this one

Antlergrad can get there without any sacrifice either, it only needs worker focus to clear the forests and irr the land (meanwhile building a granary)

the 2 market/granary/temple cities: fine, keep these as core, and take something else. There is plenty of choice left

Solace is, for me at least, a very good choice. Okay, it will lose some shields, but nothing to stop that. In return, you gain a city which can start spitting out workers in 2 turns time. That's a major advantage, a couple more workers are more than worth the loss of shields.

Other sites can do it as well, and with some shift in the empire, will mean a larger production, and faster growth. I know this is a change from what has been done before, but this is not the frist time people call for more workers, and less granaries. And no, it's absolutely not my goal to destroy the good work E_T has done, but you can have all the spreadsheets, painful attention to details, and supreme tweaking you want, but if your basic assumption is wrong you won't get the best out of the game. Part of why we need many worker pumps is because it would make us less dependent of the MM: if cities don't grow, they can be stopped at spts which are round numbers, not needing any workforce shuffles. a 20 spt barracks city produces musketmen every 2 turns, without the need to tweak it every turn.

Whatever happens, please stop building granaries in non-worker pump cities. That's 60 shields, and 1 gpt waste, which is at this stage still considerable. Once factories are up, it won't matter that much, but by that time you will have so many workers, all tiles in the empire are used.

Oh, if anyone would wonder how I became such a (noisy) supporter of the cause: Look at GS in the PTWDG. In 770 AD, it had used all its tiles for a long time, just because of our pumps. We didn't stop building workers, and basically RRed the whole empire in some 9 turns (it was a bit slower as other things were tweaked in the mean time). Once that was done, workers were added everywhere (BTW, the only reason why there was no-one even close when we builded the ToE and Hoover was because of worker boost in those cities). You could argue that the GS empire is small compared to the poly one, but that won't matter one single bit: with this kind of land, we would have had a minimum of 6 pumps, most likely more. Everyone on the team is sold on the concept, there simply is no discussion as it is so obvious that worker pumps are one of the reasons why GS still exists, and is still more or less in the game when 3 other teams have twice the land size or more.

DeepO

	31-08-2004 23:18									#37
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DeepO.

Watching him work with GS has been amazing, and for what its worth, I back him fully. Watching him at work has revolutionized my SP gameplay. The other leaders we had, Nathan, NYE, etc were very good at this stuff, but DeepO has taken it to another level. While poly isn't faced by nearly the challenges that GS has faced due to its relatively enormous size, the principles can be still be applied to cause our civ to explode.

	31-08-2004 23:34									#38
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I think the biggest problem is that everyone's still clinging to the past and to E_T and his work (no offense to all the effort he put in).

Nobody wants to change things, nobody wants to go out on a limb.

And on top of that, there's really no one who can match the dedication or time E_T spent on his work. So not only does it feel "wrong" in the gameplay sense, but also in the moral sense. There's also not many people doing the dirty work any more, which further complicates the situation.

It's more a bureaucratic issue than anything else. We have a pair of lame duck consuls whose time is waning, and I (no offense) haven't seen MWIA doing much here in the forum lately.

	01-09-2004 00:04									#39
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Deepo

Is their a consensus of opinoin in support of switching Antlegrad and Area X to worker cities with immediate effect?

Also would there be any objections to the same being done with Solace with immediate effect?

	01-09-2004 00:08									#40
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No objections on eitheraccount from me.

	01-09-2004 00:12									#41
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On a separate issue, should we start a pre-build for Bachs since we have taken the time to research it. I thought it was supposed to be built in Apolyton Prime?

AP is currently at ~22 SPT after corruption and can probably get up to 24/25 which would give 25-28 turns for a 600 sheilds wonder. Smiths may also be worth a shot instead.

Tripoli could also pull one off quite easily.

	01-09-2004 00:18									#42
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I think having a 3rd pump up north would also be ideal. After all, there is both a lot of improvements to take care of plus a lot of growth. If Antlergrad and Elucidium are pumps that really doesn't put anything up north. Yes, we can chain them as DeepO said, but it would be nice to have another.

Right now we have 4 wonder prebuilds in order. First in HoD is for Magellan's. Another in Mingapulco, a third in Bananatopia, and one more that will start in Apolyton soon. That means... Smith's, Mag's, Bach's and Copernicus.

Is there anything we're missing?

	01-09-2004 00:37									#43
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ToE and Hoover?


On the pump issue: Could Eye and Hispanica become pumps? I know Hispanica is pump capable, but it requires all three grassland tiles within reach. Eye, I don't now about, but if a mihed hill is left open, it might just make it.

	01-09-2004 00:39									#44
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ToE and Hoover are still pretty far away. Besides, we only have so many high-shield cities.

With regards to pumps, Eye may a possibility (though I don't know the WF situation off-hand). Hispanica would probably suck too much away from other nearby cities. BFC is struggling along and taking some grass from HoD would slow down Magellan's.

	01-09-2004 00:51									#45
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For what it's worth, I vote for the following cities to be turned into worker pumps:

Antlergrad
Eye
Arcadia

The main problem we face, as Trip pointed out, is the sheer amount of work needed to run our empire. DeepO's points are quite true, but in order to benifit from these worker pumps we need to have people in charge who:

a) know how to use them
b) are willing to MM (like DeepO said, the moment a city completes a building that allows it to be size "X" w/o rioting, it should immediately become size "X" with workers. All cities other than the worker pumps should be at +0 food per turn).

B, of course, is the kicker.

-Arrian

p.s. Eye may be trickey... the question is whether or not it needs the courthouse in order to operate as a 2-turn pump. If not, GREAT, it can be switched over to a granary right now. If not... ugh.

	01-09-2004 00:58									#46
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Lux Invitia should be able to do 4 turn workers w/o a granary, there's not much point getting rid of it anytime soon as there are tiles there going spare and it doesn't effect corruption rank.

As Krill says Hispanica would probably be the only other one up north that could be tweaked.

The Wonder builds look great although AP may be better off doing a 600 sheild wonder. Looking at it now it may be able to have Smith's finished in 23/24 turns.

Regarding timing,

At a rough guess (not involving GA and going flat out on science) we could probably be in the IA in about 30 turns minimum then another 6-8/0 turns untill RR.
With MT and Economics also being researched that would probably be 40 turns till IA.
With GA that could come down slightly.

With 40 workers (+10 slaves) ATM and 2.5 workers per turn for about 40 turns that would give us about 150 workers by the time RR came around.

That might be slightly overkill, it may be better to get a good wave of worker adds in before then.

	01-09-2004 01:07									#47
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Eye could do it ok without the courthouse, using one of the mined hills and with the first turn as size 5 and the second as turn 6.

	01-09-2004 01:08									#48
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Does that cost shields in Tripoli?

I forgot that we were also planning on doing a FIFTH wonder build there...

	01-09-2004 01:13									#49
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No, at least not in the short term, it'll take tiles from big bend though, although BB will have some freshly cleared jungle next turn anyway.

	01-09-2004 01:16									#50
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Okay, sounds good then...

Eye, Antlergrad, Solace, Area X as new pumps, with Lux continuing in its role?

	01-09-2004 01:20									#51
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That sounds cool, I can get started on the planning for that tommorrow.

	01-09-2004 04:35									#52
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Great! Some action going on! Oh and thanks for the compliments guys

As to how much workers you need: 150 seems no overkill at all, but near perfect. At the height of its worker power (half way through the RRing), GS had what, 65 workers? Poly is twice the size, and most importantly is less developed in terms of growth and needs to catch up. 50 pop extra, asap, and 100 extra workers sounds about right. A little more wouldn't hurt, but GA and RRs will take care of that soon enough.

Don't forget that for the GA to have a big effect, you need big cities everywhere. Those 50 extra pop will be welcome.

Oh, is it Area X, or Arcadia, the city to the East of poly prime? If Area X, correct my post above

Arrian: the MMing involved in planning the correct sizes, get the improvements ready, and add workers on the correct times is indeed not that easy. However, it's already a vast improvement over having to switch worker force every turn.
That said, in many cases switching WF still remains needed to really squeeze the last out of the empire, but we're talking about things like 1bpt, or 1 spt empire wide. That sinks into nothing, compared to the larger benefits. In case nobody like E_T steps up, we would be helped with simplicity, and tweaking every few turns instead of every turn, meanwhile planning 20 turn in advance.

Once hospitals are here, the story changes, of course... That will take a round of massive planning to make sure all cities end at favorable, round spt. But we're not there yet, it will take many months before we'll get there.

DeepO

	01-09-2004 04:46									#53
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I should have posted on wonder plans sooner.

Heart of Darkness is doing Magellan's, to get us that movement point and start the GA. Apolyton Prime is doing a lib, then it can do Copernicus and Newton's.

This originally left 4 cities doing 600-shield wonders under E_T's plan. But there are really only two, assuming GWT grabs Sun Tzu: Bach's and Smith's.

Bananatopia has a lot of city improments already and will complete the build pretty soon, so it's an obvious choice. MZ and I figured Mingapulco would be better than the alternative, Tripoli, for the second wonder; from E_T's sheets, it looked like Tripoli had some difficulty completing sooner than Ming would. Tripoli also has fewer improvements than Ming.

quote: Originally posted by OPD Lux Invitia should be able to do 4 turn workers w/o a granary, there's not much point getting rid of it anytime soon as there are tiles there going spare and it doesn't effect corruption rank.

Sounds good. I don't think it can take the tiles needed for any fast pumping, but you're right, there are a few tiles it can be left to work.

quote: Originally posted by OPD The Wonder builds look great although AP may be better off doing a 600 sheild wonder. Looking at it now it may be able to have Smith's finished in 23/24 turns.

I think AP should be doing Copernicus, and then later Newton's, once it finishes this library.

quote: Originally posted by OPD Regarding timing, At a rough guess (not involving GA and going flat out on science) we could probably be in the IA in about 30 turns minimum then another 6-8/0 turns untill RR. With MT and Economics also being researched that would probably be 40 turns till IA. With GA that could come down slightly.

MT we definitely want. Economics we'll want before the second wonder build completes (I assume we're going for Bach's with the first build to complete since GWT might have a chance at it), which I think will be before we can get out of the MA. So I guess assume 40.

quote: Originally posted by OPD With 40 workers (+10 slaves) ATM and 2.5 workers per turn for about 40 turns that would give us about 150 workers by the time RR came around. That might be slightly overkill, it may be better to get a good wave of worker adds in before then.

Wouldn't sound all that overkill to me if it weren't for the maintenance.

quote: Originally posted by Trip Okay, sounds good then... Eye, Antlergrad, Solace, Area X as new pumps, with Lux continuing in its role?

All of those sound good, though I'm reluctant to toss out those shields in Solace. It would take a while to build the granary after the aqua, but... perhaps we should do that?

And don't forget Arcadia, of course.

	01-09-2004 04:57									#54
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wonders:
If not building a lib gets you Copernicus faster, you should. Whether a lib is present or not has zero effect on Copernicus, and you don't want to risk losing that one.

Oh, ToE can be planned first with a palace prebuild, but it pays in many cases to keep a palace prebuild for Hoover, and build a factory first for ToE. But it depends on tech advantage, and if you can risk going for indust first.

Solace and aqua: An aqua would only cost 1 gpt, for as long as it's a worker pump. If it becomes a pump, there is no way you need it, you'd better switch it to a market in case you don't want to waste shields. But in that case, you'll need 12 more turns on the granary. That's 6 workers, or 6 pop in another city. 6 pop gets you ~8 spt on average before RR... the rest of the game. It's worth the waste of 40 shields.

DeepO

	01-09-2004 05:01									#55
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BTW, 150 gpt in upkeep is not bad either. If 50 of those get added before GA, the extras only cost 50 gpt or so, and those 50 pop make >225 gpt in GA with markets present everywhere. (>150 gpt not in GA). Again in the advantage of many pumps

DeepO

	01-09-2004 05:06									#56
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How many shields is Copernicus?

GWT does likely have other wonder prebuilds aside from Sun Tzu. This is likely the reason they are now showing ST... so they could use the Palace for something else.

It's very doubtful that GWT is doing 40 turn research now, and it's also fairly likely they're doing Education (do we know if they have it yet or not?). Which means Astronomy is under 8 turns away for them, meaning Copernicus MAY be in danger... perhaps we should save the Library for later and instead focus on Cope's.

	01-09-2004 21:52									#57
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Cops is 400 shields.

It's really not that great of a wonder, IMO. Nice to have, but there are other, better choices. Would Apolyton Prime be better used to build one of the 600-shielders (Bach, Smith)?

-Arrian

	01-09-2004 21:59									#58
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I think the reason we are going fro Copes is two fold:

1) Denial to GWT (we don't want them catching up now, do we? I understand that that one GW alone won't do much for a shrt amount of time, but what if they build it in PARTH? That is the one reason why I think we should attempt to build it. Minus 400 shields from us, minus about 10000 beakers from GWT)

The other reason, 2) is that we need all the beakers we can get, since neither CFC or CGN are going to be helping us (for a while at least), whereas GCA, while not great players, have some ****ing amazing land (Someone once said that land was "Paradise. Paradise lost"), and are going to be able to rebuild pretty quickly, and still have a GA to blow (IIRC, that is).

	01-09-2004 23:14									#59
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quote: Originally posted by Kloreep All of those sound good, though I'm reluctant to toss out those shields in Solace. It would take a while to build the granary after the aqua, but... perhaps we should do that? And don't forget Arcadia, of course.

Arcadia could be better than Solace as it already has a granary and unlike Solace it could immediately switch from being a worker pump to a large city due to it's free aqua and harbor already built.
Either way a decision sooner rather than later would be cool.

Also a decision on whether AP should finish the Library first or switch to wonder. Which specific wonder can always be decided at a later date.

	01-09-2004 23:54									#60
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That is a good point OPD... Arcadia may actually be a better candidate than Solace. It has a relatively low shield count because it doesn't have that many land tiles. Solace has more promise. We could let Solace grow and let Arcadia be the pump instead.