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DeepO
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supporting Candle'Bre
Jan 2002
time: 06:21
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More importantly than the raw numbers of the cities, is the things you can build with them. And for that, I would prefer looking back at the numbers before hospitals.
One of the reasons why GS did well in producing units right before the Lego war, was that all cities were tuned each turn, so that no shields were wasted. Most of the cities were frozen at round numbers, 3 at 100 spt or as close as possible to it (one of these needed disbands each turn, as it was a 80 spt one), and most others near the 50 spt or 40 spt marks. Doing so we didn't lose shields, or the least we could. Nearing 800 spt during mob, before hospitals, we churned out 800 spt worth of units, not losing anything. In any of my normal games, I never get this ratio, you always end up with 80 spt cities, building 100 shield units. That's losing 30 spt, or an efficiency rate of 62%
This is no difference compared to all the time before, all our players have micromanaged, some to the extreme (myself probably included, but Nathan and Aeson at least as much). But of course, I'm most familiar with the numbers while I was playing...
There are a couple of reasons why we could do this, as GoW, ND, and Lego can't have been this efficient.
First of all, our city spacing, which was very tight. Most tiles could be switched between 2 or 3 cities, and well below size 12 all our land tiles were worked so it was a constant arranging of workforce each turn. A burden, but when nothing else happens (no war), it gave you something to do.
Secondly, all our cities were highly specialised. Worker pumps were used from the very beginning (did we ever build a settler without a granary present in the ancient era?), and quite quickly growth was stopped in all cities, solely relying on the pumps. So, more or less static workforce allocations were producing round numbers (10 spt is just as well as 11 spt, only it doesn't lose a shield which could have gone to another city). And because cities don't grow uncontrolled, you can stop cities at e.g. 25spt, leaving room for others to grow bigger.
Third, we always had a surplus of workers. This is needed, as every turn you've got to change tiles between mines and irrigation to get the most out of your territory. We used this from the beginning (I saw Nathan doing it many times, even in the ancient era), but especially once we had RR. Workers have allways been a large part of our unit count.
DeepO
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DeepO
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supporting Candle'Bre
Jan 2002
time: 06:21
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BTW, there were other reasons for our production.
We always have shortrushed whereever possible, apart from a period in the industrial age when we really needed all the cash we could get, to keep our research going.
We also forested all of our territory. This gave us 830 shields, all of which have speeded construction at the fullest extent (no waste!). You can only do this, when all your territory is RRed, or nearing to get RRed. Then, 12 workerturns will give you 10 shields, which becomes even more profitable when you've researched replacable parts. As we had workers with the dozens (at one time, we had over 80 workers, I believe. most of these were either working on RRs, or on foresting), this was not really a cost. Also, commerce was not such a problem because of our seas, but production was at a premium.
In order to do it, I kept a map of all the tiles which were already forested at one time or another, to avoid doing tiles twice. I believe I missed once, where I 'lost' 12 workers on a tile that I did before.
Rushing production in one way or another is always nice to get more stuff, but it's double important when rushing something gets you a production advantage sooner. Apart from the 2 warriors we rushed at the very beginning, I don't think we ever cut a forest unless we were either building a factory (or had to finish a market before a factory, in which case rushing the market is just as good), or a granary. This pays double: those 10 shields count as at least 20 shields if it means you will build a factory one turn sooner. This is, because you get one turn of extra production in a city with factory and Hoover. If you gain more turns, the gains are only higher. Foresting all our territory gave us an estimate of some 2000 shields compared to the 3 others who, I think, didn't go through this trouble.
Last important thing, was that in wonder building we tried to single out those things that meant we didn't have to construct something.
- We tried for the pyramids at first and would have gotten it too, if it wasn't for some poor timing in 2 or 3 turns (in hindsight, the Lighthouse was more useful, as it gave us Vox. The pyramids would only have hindered us by starting our GA a couple of turns sooner).
- We build Sun Tsu (20x40 shields, is 800 shields we never had to 'pay'. in 20 cities we produced veteran units at one time or another) We got this one by a GL, so it didn't cost us any shields either.
- Hoover, is another of the free building wonders, and while not so big in terms of investment versus shield profit (we simply didn't have enough cities worth it, only 10 or so would otherwise have build a coal plant), it meant that none of the others got the gain, and had to build power plants. It again gave us a couple of turns virtual profit.
- And finally we built the Internet, free research buildings everywhere. Well, we never profited from that one, as we didn't get out of mob long enough to build us some unis. But the same thought applies as with Hoover: others had to build research centers if they were to go to Alpha Centauri, we didn't.
These 4 wonders are the only ones that directly affect production, all others affect commerce. No wonder we went for them given half a chance.
I think it is one of the things we Stormians can be proud of: we had the smallest land area for most of this game (Vox and RP not counted, of course), yet in total spent most or nearly the most in shield counts. It was one of those things that kept us alive for so long. It nearly balanced out our diplomatic difficulties 
DeepO
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DeepO
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supporting Candle'Bre
Jan 2002
time: 06:21
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Oh, MZ, don't get me wrong, I don't want to imply GoW was wasting shields everywhere, that's not how I saw it. And shortrushing in itself is of course used everywhere... but the reason I mention it is that at one time, we shortrushed every building to some extent. Money always has been less of a problem to us than shields, so trying to convert gold into shields was always useful.
BTW, we never got to build stock exchanges, at the end we had 1 bank. We entered a full-stage military buildup around the time most others started on factories, and never left... markets we had everywhere, and luxury things in the cities that counted, but other than that a minimum of other buildings. We only had a couple of unis, I thought, some cities didn't even have libraries. But those cities that had, were specialised into research metropoles, with Colossus, Newton, Copernicus, and every high commerce shield in reach.
Not that we didn't wanted, but we had to sacrifice everything for military production.
and Re: the workers, we did add them to cities, of course, but there is nothing to add once you use all tiles, or are stuck at size 12. This happened before RRs came a long, at one time we had 30 workers cleaning pollution, switching improvements, and guarding our coast (against Vox, mostly, but also against a possible Lego invasion while we were at sea with most of our army)
DeepO
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07-06-2005 01:00
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