08-03-2005 20:31									#1
	Just beat the game at monarch difficulty for the first time...wonder vic'try (korea) Suffering from ads?

And...i'm gonna try again :-)

I noticed some of you guys post savegames here. And i decided to try that myself. and i plan on using the ottomans, on a large cont, 70% map, with restless barbarians, and normal aggression from the AI.

Wich "milestone" dates would you like being posted besides 4000 bc?

What i'm really curious about, is how to REX properly, and how to space cities. other than that, just fire away when i get those games posted (don't have my own IC, since it's very expensive here in denmark).

AP

	08-03-2005 20:35									#2
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Perhaps it's better, to just post a couple of screenies.

	08-03-2005 21:45									#3
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Well 4000bc and 2190BC are good break points. Congrats and good luck.

	09-03-2005 03:48									#4
	Full PM-box? Change here!

If you were playing a non-agricultural civ on that Monarch game you won, then the only tricks of the trade you might not know about are worker and settler pumps, and the varient of settler semi-pump.

(A worker pump produces workers constantly on the same turn of growth staying the same size. Usally has a Granery. 5fpt and 5spt is a two turn worker pump on a city size 6 or less, usually size 3 or 4 though.)

Settler pumps alternate between two sizes, usally 5 and 6. 5fpt throughout and an average of 7.5 spt. With a granery.

A settler semi-pump alternates between a settlers and improvements / expensive units / pairs of cheap untis. Usually has 3 fpt and a granery.

As to city placement on Monarch level, well, your plan obviously worked on the previous one. But if you wish to dominate the AI even more on this level:

Generally avoid the OCN pattern UNLESS you have camps [temp cities that build nothing but a baracks and units] between them.

Having one direction as CXXC and the other CXXXC with no camps tends to work well, but don't become married to a pattern, consider the terriagn. Partiuclarly rivers and locations of known resources.

And also be aware of corruption in city placement. Unless your agircutral that virtually all desert really close to you no where near a river doesn't make for a particarly good permenent city.

Instead it's a camp to be disbanded as soon as the adjoining cities cultural boundary expand to take it in. It's going to cost your empire more shields than it's bringing in pretty quickly.

	09-03-2005 20:20									#5
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I'm not really "at home" with some of the abbreviations used here...for instance, i don't know what OCN is...

last week i finally found out what REX actually stands for


that aside, i will what i can do about uploading screenies and saves..don't have my own IC, so i'll go bother some of my friends :-)

btw, what should the screenies be showing??? do you want screen saves from my entire realm? or just a few "key" cities?

oh, and on a sidenote, i was REALLY lucky in this game. I got a SGL upon discovering writing, and i used it to build the colossus...got another one discovering scientific method, and i used that for building hoover dam. How much is the scientific golden age worth anyway??? can you pop additional SGL's during the scientific golden age? i mean, do the game mechanics regarding SGL's change in a scientific golden age??

Thanks for the help so far :-)

AP

	09-03-2005 21:42									#6
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SGL adds 25% to research.

	09-03-2005 21:44									#7
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OCN = Optimum City Number.

CN = City (rank) Number

See the corruption thread.

Colossus was a rather poor choice for the SGL, becuase Colossus at 200 shields is one of the cheapest. I'd have picked Pryamids and discontined any granery builds on the starting landmass, and if I didn't have Masonry yet I'd have held onto the SGL until I did get Masonry.

Scientific Golden Age doesn't work at all due to a bug.

	10-03-2005 00:02									#8
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quote: Originally posted by joncnunn Scientific Golden Age doesn't work at all due to a bug.

SGA works for the advisors- they tell you you're getting more beakers, but those beakers aren't counted toward the actual discovery...

	10-03-2005 20:35									#9
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Thank you, once more :-)

Joncunn you're right about choosing the expensive ones. Gotta remember that. I chose the colossus for sentimental reasons, and i actually conquered the pyramids from the americans some 100 years later ;-)

AP

	28-03-2005 18:09									#10
	Support Apolyton or Terrorists Win

I'm having difficulties getting those screenies. I tried pushing every key on my keyboard, but nothing happened. I couldn't find a folder in the civ3 directory containing any screenies, so obviously i haven't hit the right one yet.

what happened in the game i intended to start, was that i won the spacerace, but for some reason the domination vic con wasn't checked. if it were, i would have lost, since the hittites ended up being the only civ on a continent approx 2/3 of the world.

what i learned: don't leave the super ai alone for that long...it'll backfire....


tried a couple of games on emperor. with everything random except barbarians. every time so far, the world was a pangea one. and i have lost them all. the computer keeps ganging up on me, and it's tough waging war on 4 ai's thats larger and more productive than you. one or two is manageable, but more than that, is just too much. when i find out how to make those screenies.

AP

	29-03-2005 02:08									#11
	Support Apolyton, buy Galactic Civilizations: Deluxe Edition

Once you press the PrintScreen key to copy the screen onto the clipboard, open MSPaint and 'paste' onto a new bitmap. Then you can edit it and probably compress the file (not sure what you'd want to use for this) before posting.

	02-04-2005 17:35									#12
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4000 bc

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	02-04-2005 17:36									#13
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2150 bc

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	02-04-2005 17:38									#14
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1075 bc

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	02-04-2005 17:39									#15
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270 bc

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	02-04-2005 17:39									#16
	Lose 30 kilos (of popups)

190 ad

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	02-04-2005 17:40									#17
	Support Apolyton, buy Civilization: The Boardgame

1130 ad

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	02-04-2005 17:41									#18
	Suffering from ads?

1515 ad

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	03-04-2005 00:50									#19
	Support Apolyton, buy GURPS/ Alpha Centauri

wonder victory? how does that work for the normal epic game?

	03-04-2005 00:51									#20
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quote: Originally posted by Rommel2D SGA works for the advisors- they tell you you're getting more beakers, but those beakers aren't counted toward the actual discovery...

it seemed to me my turns to discover something went down during sga.

	03-04-2005 00:59									#21
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quote: Originally posted by Dissident wonder victory? how does that work for the normal epic game?

You need to get 18 of all 29 wonders. It does not seem to matter who built them.

	03-04-2005 03:25									#22
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quote: Originally posted by Dissident it seemed to me my turns to discover something went down during sga.

That's what the advisor reports, but the one time I paid close attention, and what other players around here have reported, after you get to 'one more turn left', it will stay there for two or more turns until the non-SGA number of beakers are accumulated.

I haven't checked this very thoroughly, but we've discussed it in the PBEM forum a few times and no one has presented evidence to the contrary...

	07-04-2005 10:22									#23
	Inflate your Upload Space

Any comments on my screenies??

AP

	07-04-2005 11:20									#24
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snoopy's terrain would be an improvement

	07-04-2005 13:11									#25
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i must, i must, i must explore

repeat three times before bed every night

it also looks like you're building settlers at pop3. the gurus ((ha! someone just called aqua a guru! that's gotta be a first)) would say that you need to let your capital grow more. ideally you want it to be oscillating between about pop4 and pop6.

generally city locations look ok - definite room for improvement, but it's no worse than i usually manage.

i'm not happy about bursa for a coupla reasons.
1) one tile further and you could have taken in the wheat bonus
2) you've got a worker busy roading hills very early on - seems less than optimal

could do with better prioritisation of tiles early on
plains beside rivers are a no brainer - it takes less time to irrigate than to mine. you seem to have a lot of easily improved riverside tiles that are waiting a long time before they get the treatment

on the upside - i'm impressed to see so much fighting going on with just archers and spears - i normally wouldn't bother 'til i had something stronger to fight with.

oh, and just to keep the aqua/trip conjoined pair happy ...
more workers .. more workers .. more workers

	11-04-2005 10:26									#26
	Avatar Enlargement: We've got the solution

I was wondering:
is it worth going for monarchy immediately? the reason i ask this, is that the computer seems to get philosophy before me anyway??

AP

	13-04-2005 16:36									#27
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ok, now we're getting somewhere..

let me be blunt. there is no way in hell the ai should beat you to philosophy at monarch level when you start in a valley close to four (count them) rivers. the fact that this happened tells me straight away that you are not building a decent economy at all.

two things you need to do
1) let your capital develop better before trying to pump out the settlers. there are occasionally times when you might be desperate to claim an important piece of land. in general though, you need to get into the habit of letting your city build to pop 5 or 6, plan to have a settler built on the turn you reach pop 6.
in 2150bc, you are at pop 3 and not growing for another 5 turns, but you have a settler coming in two turns.

2) prioritise cash flow. by 1075bc, you still have a lot of riverside tiles that are not being worked. that's two gold going wasted for every tile not being worked. my priorities on this map would be
i. build granary in capital with forest chop
ii. road and irrigate all riverside plains

the big dilemma with this map is how to deal with a high proportion of riverside hills. in a perfect world, you'd have a buncha cows beside gentle rivers, hills sitting in the middle distance and lovely scenic mountains in the background.

i think you're doing the right thing by leaving the hills for later. but you really need to plan for getting cities built and tiles improved according to your economic needs.
this is one reason why it's so important to explore early. once you have a clear picture of the territory, you can sit down and count out exactly what tiles you intend to use. yes, count them, ...

	14-04-2005 10:50									#28
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I should've been clearer. i beat the ai wrt philosophy in this game. in fact i was the tech leader for 3/4 of the game. What i was talking about was on emperor. Everytime i've played on that level. the ai beat me wrt philosophy. blunt is okay, as long as it's not without reason..

thanx again :-)

it's nice that i can benefit from your experiences :-)

AP

	14-04-2005 19:36									#29
	Remove this text

lebensraum: getting your capital to size 6 to pump settlers is not, on its own, a virtue. As a rule, you want cities producing workers to be the smallest size they can be to work efficiently.

Firstly, you want to find the city size that gives you the best growth. Which is going to be the size at which al tiles producing more than 2 food are being worked (growing an extra size and working a new tile producing 2 food doesn't improve the rate at which you grow; working a tile with 3 food speeds up your growth).

Secondly you want a granary to speed up (usually double) the rate of growth. This can usually be done whilst growing your city to the right size anyway.

Thirdly, you need enough shields to get you to 30 shields in the time it takes to grow two sizes. This is done by growing more to take advantage of the 2 food tiles that generate shields (irrigated plains, mined grassland, some bonus tiles). Plus due to game mechanics you can take advantage of 2 shields from forests without suffering any growth slowdown from the food (if you are prepared to micromanage).
In THESE cases it is worth offsetting the loss from taking more time to build your first settler against the benefit you get churning out settlers more quickly after that.

The ideal of course is the 4 turn settler pump, if you can scrape up enough food for it.


Say for example you have a city with 2 floodplains, 1 bonus grassland and lots of normal grassland within reach (not very realistic admittedly, but it's an example). Irrigate the floodplains (3/0/2 in despotism with roads) and mine as many grasslands as needed (2/2/1 for the bonus grassland, 2/1/1 for the others). Your city center produces 2/1/2.

First rule: you want to be size 2 or more to get to both of the floodplains, giving you +4 food per turn.

Second rule: with a granary, that means growth in 3 turns (with some waste).

Third rule: you therefore need to generate 30 shields in 6 turns to have a 6 turn settler pump. If you run at size 3-4 working the bonus grassland with the third pop, and a normal grassland with the fourth, the shields per turn you generate are 3, 3, 4, 4, 4, 5, giving 23 in total. not enough. (Not the 3, 3, 3, 4, 4, 4 you might expect incidentaly). Working size 4-5 gives you 4, 4, 5, 5, 5, 6, for 29 total, which is annoyingly one short. A forest would come in handy here. So you have to work size 5-6, giving you 5, 5, 5, 6, 6, 6 (if you are limited to size 6 by the lack of aqueduct or river), for a nice 33 shields - enough to generate a settler every 6 turns. And that's what determines the size your city should be.

If, on the other hand, you have irrigated cows on plains (3/2/1) instead of floodplains you can get by with a size 2-3 city instead, since that's enough to generate all the shields you need in the time taken to grow to sizes.

	15-04-2005 15:54									#30
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quote: Originally posted by ariano_paluda blunt is okay, as long as it's not without reason..

without reason? .. without reason?!!

you know who ya talkin to there buddy??!!

quote: Just beat the game at monarch difficulty And...i'm gonna try again

quote: What i was talking about was on emperor.

phuhh, reason

so nyah..

(just kidding) oh, an' i promise not to kick your butt in any upcoming pbems.. .. honest!