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Dominae
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Hello all,
I know I promised to post a poll concerning city placement (as well as a couple of other things...), but I figured I would lump everything into this one current thread.
Please refer to the enclosed screenshot for reference with the following issues.
City Placement
From all the comments I've heard on this topic recently, I believe the general consensus is that sites 1 and 2 on the map should be our the targets for our first two Settlers. What is still up in the air is which comes first. Both sites will have access to multiple improved Bonus Grasslands (which will be shared with Apolyton...not a problem since the capital will be producing many Settlers)) and the Game tile. Site 1 has the advantage that it gives us more of a "presence" on the continent, helping the Ministry of War in efforts of blocking northward passage. Site 2 is economically slightly better, since it is adjacent to a River, yielding an extra 1 Commerce straight up.
I'm leaning toward site 1 for our next Settler, for the reaon above, and the fact that it makes the Worker and Laborer shuffling a lot more efficient (let me know if you want me to go into this in detail).
The other sites are numbered in the approximate order that I envision them being settled. Sites 3 and 4 are not much, but are close to the capital and do have access to some Grassland tiles. Site 5 will be basically useless until we start chopping that Jungle, but it puts us next to a Dyes resource and brings us close to the Persians. Depending on where and how fast we do chop the Jungle, our seventh city could very well be placed south of site 2 instead of at site 6.
Build Queues
Here is one of the better test scenarios I've run through, which attempts to address most of our needs. These queues take us to about turn 40.
Apolyton: Granary, Warrior, Warrior, Settler, Settler, Warrior, Warrior
City1: Warrior, Warrior, Worker, Barracks
City2: Granary, Settler, Warrior, Worker/Settler
City3: Worker/Warrior
City4: Worker/Warrior
The goal here is obvious: focus on economic buildup, using numerous Warriors as a fluid defense. If we do manage to keep the Persians off our backs for a little while, the second Granary should really start paying off quite fast. It is placed at site 2, since that site is River-adjacent and is therefore the best spot for long-term growth.
Another option is to use site 2 for our Barracks city, using a couple of Forest chops to get our Barracks up faster, and a Merc. or two out the door. But since Mercs. are so darned expensive, I want to state again that this option should only be used if absolutely necessary. I would not like to build 2 Mercs. for 60 Shields (the cost of a Granary) unless we plan to use them immediately.
Jungle Chopping
Once we get up to 4 Workers, I plan to combine them all into one big stack and start chopping the Jungle south and southwest of site 2. This means some of our cities will be using unimproved tiles for a bit (until more Worker come online), but once that Jungle starts coming down this will get a lot simpler (and we'll all get more optimistic!).
Other Issues
I cannot think of anything right now. Please comment here on the above three points, or anything else that warrants being said concerning the turns after our Granary. Again, I'm sorry for not posting a poll; please rest assured that I'm reading everyone's input concerning economic matters, and I am taking it all in consideration when running tests and forming recommendations to the Consuls. If you have any comments/questions, do not hesitate to contact me.
Dominae
 Attachment: intersite city placement.jpg
This has been downloaded 106 time(s).
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Dominae
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I'll have to look at a Merc. scenario more carefully before I say anything definite. I hope it will not come to that (let's calm our diplomats down!).
Dominae
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Dominae
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I'm hoping that we'll read the signs and will be able to anticipate an Immortal offensive. It would be very difficult for them to surprise us. So I think keeping on an economic course is a good idea for now. In any case, it should not be a problem to switch our Granary build to a Barracks, which would be just about in the right time frame.
Incidentally, Barracks + Merc. = 5 Warriors. And Reg. Merc. = 3 Warriors. With those numbers, if we do sense them building up Immortals, I'm sure we could pester them significantly. And if we get Iron Working and some Iron, it should not be too hard to crank up the taxes and have a decent defense by the time their Immortals get to us. So we're not completely defenseless here.
Dominae
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We would be foolish to think that CDG won't come after us with the Immortals. They hate us already. They feel threatned by us already, and we never even threatned them! 
If GCA doesn't present them with problems, then they will come after us. It doesn't have to be a well thought out logical plan; just a plan that includes certain numbers of Immortals. We can't count on them playing 'by the book', not in the least. WE need to be very wary of them.
Enough about CDG. We don't know what the future holds. It would be nice to not have to build units until we needed them; but the lack of warning from other Civ's in the form of:
"Excuse me, we'll be sending over an invasion force in 20 turns, please be ready. Have a nice day  "
We need to be ready, at least with in reason to deal with such a happening. The other Civ's know what are strengths are, they know about our mighty Mercenary. They also know how expensive they are! If I were to go after Carthage it would be at an early point in the game when I felt that they might shy away from building Merc's, because of their expense, and try to build infrastructure instead. It's a usual gamble for someone who plays the Carthage to wait a bit before building those Merc's; in fact it's usually enough to build only one per city in the middle of 'Ancient Times' since no Civ can tell if you have only one there. The threat of there being more is usually enough.
We need to garrison at least one Merc in every town that will face the CDG border before they can legally come after us. I'd rather have two, but seeing how we do want to expand we need to compromise a bit. I think we need a near equal amount of expansion and defense, with a slight edge toward defense now that we know we have a neighbor with a unit with an attack strength of 4 that just happens to have an 'itchy' finger. I truly believe that CDG will go beyond 'saber rattling', and we'd better be prepaired.
We could also counter the Immortals with a cheaper unit; the archer. He's much less expensive than a Merc and matches evenly with an Immortal when the archer is attacking. Something to think about....Warrior Code wouldn't be bad choice. I know that it would set us back because we were planning on being able to trade for it; but I feel we have to give up something in our current plan (either research or shields) in order to properly prepare for CDG's eventual actions. This is just a thought, there may be other effective ways to dealing with Immortals. I just know that warriors are not going to cut it.
We have to be flexible with our decisions and provide for our defense at least at reasonable levels when considering who may be comming to visit soon. I wanted to vote for something in between option #2 and #3, I can't so I picked three only because warriors don't give us many options against Immortals. I wish we could build unfettered by other Civ's; we have 30 turns, just long enough to prepare for a possible Persian invasion.
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vondrack
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Praha, Czech Republic
Jan 2002
time: 06:26
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I have been thinking about veteran archers as well. Combined with Mercs, it would be an army that would most probably be able to break CDG's neck (either by crushing their military or draining their economy). And as someone else in another thread correctly pointed out, swarms of warriors will be useless if we get no iron in a convenient location (not at all impossible). Immortals would be cutting through our defenses like on a parade - we would not even be able to counterattack. Too much of a gamble.
So, as far as units go, I would be hoping for a Merc per city of ours plus few veteran archers. Warrior Code as our next research goal sounds reasonable to me. It is a relatively cheap tech (done fast) and guarantees us relatively cheap and relatively effective (counter)attack units. Plus, it would likely be tradable, as none of our neighbours started with it. Iron Working would be next then (I believe that trading WC+IW for Writing with GCA should be an option later on). Depending on how long it is going to take to research IW and to build our first barracks, I may prefer IW first, WC second, though (if veteran archers would not be arriving sooner with WC-IW than IW-WC). Knowing where iron deposits are would be very important strategic advance. But I would prefer having guaranteed archers sooner rather than potential swordsmen later.
As far as cities go... all I really care about ATM is the first two sites. I generally agree with the directions in which we plan to put them(1st: W, 2nd: SE), but I'd prefer waiting for as much intel as possible before making the final decision. I hope that those two warriors we are going to build after the granary shall be able to make our knowledge of the territory further to W and SE of Apolyton much more complete. There may very well be something we will consider important enough to reconsider the city placement.
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Dominae
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I know that discussions with Persia have not been going so well. But I'm a little put out at our diplomats' efforts in this regard. Reading bigfree1's post above forces me to point out the obvious:
We are not ready for war.
We can therefore do one of two things: 1) mobilizy our economy for a potential attack, at great cost to our overall power, 2) work extra hard diplomatically in assuring that that Immortal rush will not happen.
Clearly I prefer option 2, and I think the diplomats are not giving it enough merit. Tensions are high, I understand that. Yet we must forget all that and try to get them to do what we want, even if this means making concessions/apologies/etc.
This turned out to be more of a diplomatic post, so I'll copy-paste it to another thread.
Back to economic matters, we're better off upgrading our Warriors to Sworsdmen to fight off Persia. Sworsdmen are far more cost-effective, and we'll already have the units built in the form of Warriors. All we'll need is some gold, which should not be hard to come by once we hit Iron Working and lay off research for a while (what other tech would we need during wartime?). Researching Warrior Code takes gold out of our coffers and provides a sub-par unit. I say we research Iron Working first, and only if we cannot hook up an Iron source to we even consider Warrior Code.
Dominae
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Dominae
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quote:
Originally posted by Hot_Enamel
Site 5 is far in the future, so I realise its not set in stone.....but could it be moved 1 tile east ?.....Keyboard # 6 ?
I realise you miss out on the Dye, but if its first build is a temple, it will get the other one soon enough.
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The alternative you suggest is a good site for a city. However, my original thinking was that we want as many cities along the River in the Jungle as possible. Placing a city where you suggest would allow only 2 along the River, instead of 3.
Also, I absolutely hate the idea of building Temples to gain access to resources (no offense!). A 60 Shield cost is quite an investment to get something we would have access for free if we just placed our cities differently. And 60 Shields is 2 Numidian Mercs., by the way.
On the other hand, the site you suggest would be better in the long run. Once we figure out what lies in the darkness to the SE, a change in placement may very well be in order.
Dominae
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Dominae
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quote:
Originally posted by joncnunn
City marked #3 is so marginal that I sugest it be relocated to 8-8-8 from A.
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I was planning to put two cities in the Desert along that coast. Putting a city where you suggest would only leave room for one.
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1. Placing a city there wastes the extra commerce from that luxary.
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No, we've been through this before (I forget if you were involved in the discussion though...). We still get the extra Commerce from the Incense if we found a city directly on it.
Another reason to put the city on the Luxury is that we only need one Road tile to connect it to our trade network.
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2. It doesn't significantly expand our reach it current place.
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Expanding our reach in the northern direction is hardly a priority, since we know we have no competition in the direction.
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3. By relocating it, we significantly expand our reach.
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If by "reach" you mean borders, then might I point out that we gain absolutely nothing from having larger land area inside our borders other than greater score.
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Also, some of the other cities should be built earlier.
I sugest that the order be: 1-2-5-6-4-(New 3) |
The exact ordering is definitely not set in stone. But might I point out that site 5 will be mostly useless until we start chopping Jungle. Therefore its early use is solely for positioning purposes. I'm still not sure if that is worth the economic drawback.
Dominae
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Dominae
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Ok, I've run through some tests, prioritizing a Barracks and Mercs.
Basically the way this is done is by having city2 be the Barracks city instead of city1. It is the better site, and can benefit from some much-needed Forest chops to get the Barracks up sooner. City1 could either pop out a few quick Warriors and then start on a Granary, or just go Warrior/Worker like all the other cities (other than city2 and Apolyton). In the first case our defenses are a little thin for a while, but given that we've got a 30-turn agreement now this should not be a problem.
Some additional thoughts:
Outskirt cities will be producing Warriors/Workers exclusively, which means we're going to have a lot of Warriors running around eventually (I had like 15 or so running around at the end of my test). I think this is a good thing, assuming we find some Iron. At the same time in my testing we had ~400 Gold in the treasury, having put Science to 0% after researching Bronze Working, Writing and Iron Working (in that order).
The outskirt cities could also produce Regular Mercs. here and there, but this would force them to use bad tiles since they grow too big between Workers.
If we do prioritize the Barracks and the Mercs. we can have around 6-8 of them within 30 turns, plus as many or more Swordsmen. I think this is too much for defense. If we do find Iron and the Persians look relatively peaceful, we can get along with fewer Mercs. and just the Swordsmen.
Dominae
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Hi Dom
I forgot to mention in my previous post that I thought you city layout plan is dynamite!  You've obviously put a lot of work into the design. I wouldn't change a thing with it.
My concern was with what kind of units we'd be building, how many, and how quickly.
quote:
Originally posted by Dominae
I know that discussions with Persia have not been going so well. But I'm a little put out at our diplomats' efforts in this regard. Reading bigfree1's post above forces me to point out the obvious:
We are not ready for war.
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Yes, I feel that we are not ready either, that is the purpose of my post above. 
quote:
Originally posted by Dominae
We can therefore do one of two things: 1) mobilizy our economy for a potential attack, at great cost to our overall power, 2) work extra hard diplomatically in assuring that that Immortal rush will not happen.
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Given what we know or deduce from how CDG has reacted ever since we've met them and began negotiations; including the fact that they are clearly out to get an advantage in every situation rather than a mutually beneficial situation--we cannot count on them seeing the benefit of working together in the near future. We have a deal right now. Unless someone is willing to come up with another tech deal, a long term one , to asure their friendship, it's just not going to happen from their end no matter how hard I or anyone from the FA Department try. CDG is unreasonable and lack experience and skill in negotiations. They make up for that by being beligerent and confrontational. I don't want War either; I'm just saying there's not much available to us to stop it.
quote:
Originally posted by Dominae
Clearly I prefer option 2, and I think the diplomats are not giving it enough merit. Tensions are high, I understand that. Yet we must forget all that and try to get them to do what we want, even if this means making concessions/apologies/etc.
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I assure you, Dominae, that we are. I think that we would have to 'appease' them even further to get what you suggest. We would have to agree to a Tech deal that favored them or some other kind of deal in which they felt they won out. That is the kind of team we are dealing with. If we were dealing with a 'mirror image' of our team, we'd be peacefully cooperating neighbors by now. These guys have the marks of a rampaging warmonger. It's hardly going to work out if we sit them on the couch and try to philosophise with them. It not in their character to do so.
quote:
Originally posted by Dominae
This turned out to be more of a diplomatic post, so I'll copy-paste it to another thread.
Back to economic matters, we're better off upgrading our Warriors to Sworsdmen to fight off Persia. Sworsdmen are far more cost-effective, and we'll already have the units built in the form of Warriors. All we'll need is some gold, which should not be hard to come by once we hit Iron Working and lay off research for a while (what other tech would we need during wartime?). Researching Warrior Code takes gold out of our coffers and provides a sub-par unit. I say we research Iron Working first, and only if we cannot hook up an Iron source to we even consider Warrior Code.
Dominae |
This would be great, IMO, if we had more time and could gurantee that we'd have iron in reasonable reach. we don't have that much time and there's no knowing where, if any, Iron may be in reach for us. The archer is a 'sure' thing. The swordsmen is a gamble.
Why do you call the archer a 'sub-par unit'? It matches exactly in it's attack strength to the defense of an Immortal. In fact it has a better chance at defeating an Immortal, by attacking it, than a Merc would have defending against it. If we had 'Walls' then it would be different.
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Dominae
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Trip, I think this is the point when we're going to start seriously disagreeing.
But for the moment, I want to know why you think Iron would come to us too late. Iron Working is clearly a priority for us right now, there's no doubt about that. We're going to get in about the same time as CDG. So we should have plenty of time to get our Warriors upgraded to deal with the Immortals when (if) they come.
I believe I mentioned a long time ago that Settler/Merc. pairs out of Apolyton are not really feasible. We want to keep Apolyton's pop between 2 and 4, which will be difficult to do if we're producing Mercs. between Settlers. The Mercs. have to come from city sites 1 and 2.
And let's remember why we're arguing here (maybe we'll see we're not arguing at all). I propose to build a Granary city site 2, which would help us get many Workers to chop the Jungle. If you do not think this is important, might I point out that, no matter how much we prioritize Mercs. right now, we will lose a war of attrition against CDG, simply because our lands are so poor (I'm assuming theirs are slightly better than ours). If they're intent on pushing and pushing with their Immortals, they'll win the war no matter what we do. But the city at site 2 will be going military 100% if you want it. It can steal good tiles from Apolyton and get some good Merc. production going. So I'm not saying we produce nothing but Warriors and Workers forever.
Are they good enough players to know to upgrade their Warriors to Immortals? If so, we'll be able to read the signs way before the attack comes (drop in research, less scouting, etc.). If not, we've got nothing to fear for a while yet since it will take them forever to hard-build a sizeable Immortal force.
Dominae
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Dominae
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bigfree1 is apparently in my Ignore List (not sure how that happened), and I cannot remove him in my Control Panel (his name does not appear). Anyone know what's going on?
Dominae
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Dominae
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About the Archer versus Swordsmen issue:
Point 1:
Archer:
2 Attack + 1 Defense = 3 "points"
20 Shields / 3 points = 6.67 Shields per point
Swordsmen:
3 Attack + 2 Defense = 5 points
30 Shields / 5 points = 6 Shields per point
So Swordsmen are more cost-effective, which makes sense since they require Iron.
Point 2:
Also, on pure defense, 2 fortified Swordsmen will always do better than 3 fortified Archers. So Swordsmen "double" as defense, while Archers do not (not really).
Point 3:
Upgrading Warriors will get us a good defense up much quicker than building Archers from scratch. Gold is much easier to come by than Shields. 2 Warriors = 1 Archer production-wise, but the former can be upgrade to 2 Swordsmen. That makes them a better deal if we can spare the Gold, which we can if we think we're going to be under siege (no point in researching Map Making then).
Point 4:
The only problem, of course, is Iron. This is why I think we should go for Iron Working next. We lose nothing in the meantime, since we would be building Warriors anyway on the way to Warrior Code, and the number of Archers we would build from Iron Working to Warrior Code in case there is no Iron is small.
I also think there is a very very good chance we get Iron in the bumpy terrain to the North, which we can hook up quite fast with a couple of Industrious Workers. Remember that we can produce our "Swordsmen" far before we ever connect Iron, since Warriors do not require any resource. All we need to do is get some Iron ready a few turns before an attack.
Dominae
Last edited by Dominae on 21-03-2003 at 03:42
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Dominae
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Trip, as I'm sure you know, units are often called to do "double-duty" during war-time. It would be nice to have a constant supply of Mercs. to do all our defending, but we might want to rely on the Swordsmen from time to time (more flexibility). And I think you'll agree that Swordsmen/Merc. combos are much more fun to play with than Archer/Merc. ones. Really, the only factor is the presence of Iron. We need Iron Working fast.
Kon, we get the Commerce bonus from the Incense if we found a city right on top of it. I think site 3 is a good choice, it only makes things tight for the moment.
Dominae
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20-03-2003 09:15
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