12-04-2001 09:19									#1
	Hot hut tipping tip. Support Apolyton, pre-order Civilization IV

I have been refining my hut tipping techniques.

After the very early phase is completed I now leave untipped all huts which are not in danger of being tipped by the A1.

Then, after Monarchy is achieved, I give Writing, Pottery, Mapmaking and Seafaring a high priority and build a diplo, a trireme and an explorer.

Those three units are dispatched, first to the locality of any huts already exposed and, later, to the four corners of the earth.

The routine works like this. You first roll back the fog of war, exposing the huts. Once you start tipping, if the hut is adjacent to the coast you just tip it in the normal way from the trireme, ready to get back aboard if barbs emerge. But if the hut is one square inland you station the dip between the hut and the coast, the explorer next to the hut and the trireme within reach. On the next move your explorer tips the hut but stands ready to retreat back to the coastal square occupied by the dip and thence to the safety of the trireme. Then the dip gets back aboard as well and all is snug.

As you can see that prevents hut barbs surrounding the explorer and subsequently dispatching him.

When the hut is further inland you use a similar approach but must also take advantage of terrain features. You station the diplo next to the hut
on a two or three movement square. The intrepid explorer tips as before and again can retreat through the square occupied by the dip. He can then make his third move and is now safely behind the two movement square. The dip, when he in turn retreats can go further still. Depending upon exactly how the land lies that will often be sufficient for both to escape without risk of molestation. Even if the retreat backs your lads into a corner, the navy is on hand to pick them up before the barbs get through the blocking terrain.

On the occasions when the terrain does not allow this manoevre, you stand ready to use the dip to bribe one or more of the emerging barbs and that may either open up a safe avenue for everyone to retreat or else you use the bribed barb unit/s to attack the remaining barbs. You station the dip where there is at least one single movement square next to both him and the hut. The point of that is to ensure that you have the option to bribe two of the emerging barb units at need. You attempt to effect the bribes and attacks so as to shield the expensive and valuable explorer and the diplo. The bribed units are likely to be more expendible although, in practice, I find that it is rare to lose even those.

With these methods I do not think I have lost an exploring unit to hut barbs for quite a while.

I suppose that, as far as the first two of the manoevres above are concerned, any four footed unit could substitute for the dip. But a very useful feature of the technique is that the happy triumvirate of hut tippers will often leave a trail of highly useful NONE units in their wake. These units may have uses in situ but, even if not, can eventually be picked up and brought home where they are a great boon to representative gov.ts. The trireme can sometimes take them back while the explorer and the dip are rolling back the fog of war from the next landmass.

So effective has this proved in large map games that I have actually started trying to squeeze out the resources to get two such expeditionary forces into the field early. I managed that in one game recently and had a storming game as a result.

Try it. I predict you'll like it.





[This message has been edited by East Street Trader (edited April 11, 2001).]

	12-04-2001 09:59									#2
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I like your thinking on this. I have been frustrated by tipping huts and getting hordes of barbs. I have stopped tipping huts after founding the first city. I think if you are doing well, you get more than your share of barbs. For huts nearby, I found a city, then tip the hut; the result can never be barbs. If I think about it, I send an explorer along the arctic. Three movement is nice, and if you get barbs, they disappear in the arctic.
A single barb is not a problem, but a horde is. A dip can only bribe two, and there is likely to be more than two left in the horde. How do you deal with them? Perhaps a team of two dips and an explorer on a caravel might be optimum?

	11-04-2001 22:05									#3
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As usual, am as gobsmacked as ever at the depth of thinking that goes on here, and the paucity of my own. No wonder I find it so hard to win.

I never ever thought about building explorers before - it is so long since I considered it, that I had fortgotten they have 3 movement points (if I understand correctly from above.

Nice work, and thanks. I certainly agree that getting a boat and a diplo out to sea as soon as possible pays off hugely.

	11-04-2001 22:18									#4
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Unfortunately I always play multiplayer games and leaving a bunch of huts is really not an option....if you see one, unless you want someone else to snag it, you tip it......

I don't think I would be patient enough to use your method in SP anyway EST, but it does sound like a very solid plan.

	12-04-2001 01:37									#5
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Great idea, EST! Thanks for sharing it with us. I've never built explorers but after reading your post I surely will. I think I'll also adopt the idea of not tipping huts before I have discovered Monarchy (except those pre-first-city huts). The risk of getting non-Monarchy tech is just too high.

	12-04-2001 04:56									#6
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I find save and reload works the best

	12-04-2001 10:34									#8
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EST, this is a really interesting idea, but I have a question. I like to build a SSC, and at deity I find that I really have to rush to build Copernicus' (it seems to be the only wonder that's true of, and I like to build at least a dozen of them). Prioritizing Mapmaking and Seafaring would, I fear, fatally slow down my progress toward Astronomy. Have you found this to be a problem? Or is the hut-tipping and contact with other civs adequate compensation?

------------------
Dig trenches, with our men being killed off like flies? There isn't time to dig trenches. We'll have to buy them ready made. Here, run out and get some trenches.
-- Rufus T. Firefly, the original rush-builder

	12-04-2001 17:34									#10
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Fergus

Strictly, the explorer has only one movement point but it is his special characteristic that he treats all squares (that is a sea square with a trireme on it as well as a mountain/hill/forest/swamp) as though they had roads. So he can always make three moves each turn. He also ignores ZOCs.

Rufus T

How much priority you give to this would be a matter of judgment and style. I quite like getting the team out earlier rather than later and would live with losing out on some wonder or other as a consequence. But exploration continues to be important for a long time in a large map game, or even on a medium sized one. I find the A1 quite likes sending someone off on a polar walk and also sends its boats off on long journeys into the unknown but otherwise it doesn't bother with exploration much and certainly doesn't give hut tipping the same priority that we do. That is a point which gets demonstrated when you exchange maps while employing the method I am recommending. Even when your maps show them a load of huts quite near to them, they rarely seem to send units off to tip them.

So you could perfectly well wait until you're confident that you've won the race to Cope's before devoting any efforts to improved exploration.

The real benefit of the techniques mentioned lie in the security it gives the exploring team. I used to explore with four footers working alone and just lived with it when they went under. But the thing is, by the time you have your exploring unit a long, looong way from home in the midst of virgin territory, if he goes under to barbs it will be a month of Sundays before you have another unit in that region able to get back to exploring it. Put another way, what you lose when the distant unit is killed off is not just the value of the unit in shields, but also its (high) value in terms of location.

Oh, and while I post I'll mention that I was quite attracted to Ribanah's notion that rolling back the fog of war around a hut before tipping reduces the chance of a barb outcome. But I have come to think that it makes no difference. Nor, for that matter do I agree that barbs are commoner when you are doing well. My experience continues strongly to suggest that there is an inbuilt sequence of outcomes which the programme follows. In the game where I got two teams into the field I tipped lots of huts in what were probably unbroken sequences (that is the A1 didn't get to tip a hut in between the huts I was tipping). Outcomes seem to come in pairs, one advanced tribe is followed by another, a tech is followed by a tech, gold follows gold and a unit is followed by a unit. A wandering tribe is a one off and I suspect that barbs are not part of the sequence but crop up randomly from the effect of a dice roll. (All speculation this, purely based on impiric evidence).

Anyway give the method a try some time. Adding a second diplo once you have caravels means you no longer have to use the lie of the land when tipping inland - you just station the two diplo's next to the hut and then the maximum number of barbs that can emerge is six. As long as there are two available flatland squares your two dips can bribe four of the barbs and those four will then make short work of the other two.

But, as I said above, I find you can manoevre to stay out of danger with just one dip virtualy every time anyway. You probably need to try the method to get the point about that. But it's not hard to do. You just work out where your units can get to (because of their manoeverability and the squares you've placed them on) but the barbs can't (because of mountains/hills/forests).

	13-04-2001 09:35									#11
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Brilliant idea, East Street Trader. In my exploration I rarely put two units together, thinking they'll uncover more squares by going in different directions.

As you noted, when surrounded by a barbarian horde, it's not so much the loss of the unit/shields that's a drag - it's the fact that it'll take eons to get another guy out to that forsaken wilderness. I'll have to try your tag team approach, perhaps researching writing sooner. It sounds like a winner.

DaveV recently reintroduced me to Marco Polo's Embassy (MPE) for it's single player tribute potential. Like Scouse Gits, I make Trade my next goal right after Monarchy (for wonder-building caravans) so I've got the tech for MPE already. Scouse Gits brings up another great use of MPE. In the early game there are 20 different directions you can go in research-wise. The tech tree has a very broad base. None of the early techs are hard to research but there are a lot of them. With the AI personalities' varied tech outlooks, having embassy access to all 6 civs means you can trade for just about anything you need. And at this stage in the game, the AIs are usually pretty eager to trade techs, even wonder-making ones.

Great suggestion on the "useless tech detour to be traded for next turn", Scouse Gits. This has often helped me in my race for techs. It's even worth having an extra useless tech (e.g. Warrior Code) slowing down my overall research if I can shave a bunch of turns off getting an important wonder tech (e.g. Astronomy).

p.s. I agree with East Street Trader on the AI & huts issue. I don't think the AI puts any effort into tipping them. When they do so, it's by accident.