Vel's Strategy Thread, Volume II

[El Conquistador]

Originally posted by Firecrak
I must say I am right there with you on the whole "I love to build, hate to fight". I often find I've missed my window during the ancient period to wound my neighbours, only to realise by the middle ages that they have spread like locusts and outgrown/outproduced me into a stalemate, where if I declare war, they will just rip up my precious cottages and other resources, yet take no cities because I have sufficient guards for a medium scale war. It ****s me to tears most times.

Story of my life

[fed1943]

I only have some experience with Cyrus and Kublai.
I like Cyrus:a good peaceful builder with a fair army.
Kublai is chancy to play,not due to his own location,but his neighbors´:if they are not close (or if their expansion is runing away)Kublai wins the war,but gets broke.
BTW,very good post,as usual.
Best regards,

[El Conquistador]

Originally posted by Velociryx
Total agreement 'bout the situational nature of any build. Just too many variables involved to say "always x, and then always y." That kind of reasoning is great for generating rules of thumb, but few, if any such statements will wind up being true absolutely all the time.



-=Vel=-

How do you solve the problem of having to choose your leader before seeing the landscape ? Are leaders of such little influence that it's still possible to win given the wrong leader/landscape combination, even on higher difficulty levels?

[Velociryx]

In general, I don't think it will make or break you. Granted, some civs will find their "style" cramped by not being blessed with a start that they can optimize (any civ that starts with Fishing, and does not land on the coast, or Rome with no iron anywhere to be found are but two examples), but the good thing about the civs is that since they start with five traits each, if you can't play to one, you can invariably play to several of the others. This might not be your "favored" method of playing a given civ, but is definitely doable.

-=Vel=-

[El Conquistador]

Somewhere around post 225 of this thread there was some brief discussion of where to place the most productive cities; on the inside or on the outside of your empire. I'd say production to the outside, money to the insde.

[Velociryx]

I would say "wherever the land dictates." I don't really ever try to MAKE a city into what I want it. I make it into whatever the land indicates that it ought to be. Wherever it happens to be...on the border, in the interior, it is what it is...

-=Vel=-

[El Conquistador]

I haven't heard much on changing around the science % during a game. Anybody got some particular ideas on that, maybe tied to a specific kind of agressiveness?

[Tony]

Nice analysis Vel.

I'm leaving off the half priced buildings that each trait comes with, because exploiting THAT advantage is entirely self-evident, and needs no discussion.

I disagree. I don't think you can weigh the value of a trait or its uses without including the half price buildings. Half price mid/late game buildings like a bank are less useful than early era buildings like a granary or forge (because of turn advantage). Half price temples or harbours can actually effect your overall strategy (eg for half price temples, the utility of multiple religions increases and keeping people happy via multiple temples is a better option)

Tony

[Cort Haus]

Originally posted by Tony
Half price mid/late game buildings like a bank are less useful than early era buildings like a granary or forge (because of turn advantage).

It can also be said that half price Nat. Wonder buildings (CH, Bank, Uni) are additionally-useful because they effectively reduce the shield cost of Nat Wonders substantially. So for ORG (standard map, normal speed) 8 Courthouses cost 480 hammers rather than 960, which makes the Forbidden Palace 480 hammers cheaper. The same applies for Oxford & Wall St.

[Forrester]

Starting placement

I've probably missed it but I haven't seen anything mentioned about where you decide to start -- specifically, the size of the advantage to starting on an all-hammer (I think maybe it has to be 2+ hammers) hill so that your city starts with two hammers and two food instead of just one hammer and two food.

This often means double production speed for non-workers, non-settlers your first 8 turns, and double or +50% production speed for the next few afterwards. Even for workers and settlers, we're talking about +33% speed if your city is only size 1.

I used to only be willing to sacrifice one turn to get myself to a hill, then two . . . now, I'm thinking that it might be worth three or even four moves to get that advantage. (Okay, four is probably stretching it.)

What do y'all think?

EDIT: I'll keep the question in here because this is where all the Civ geniuses hang out , but probably best to post it to a new thread . . .

[Cort Haus]

Re: Starting placement

Originally posted by Forrester

I used to only be willing to sacrifice one turn to get myself to a hill, then two . . . now, I'm thinking that it might be worth three or even four moves to get that advantage. (Okay, four is probably stretching it.)

Hmmm. The thing about the capital is that the map generator usually places the start loc with some good resources, even if they're not visible yet. Moving away any significant distance weakens the capital.

Sure, plains hills are nice, but I'd rather have a couple of specials. I'm not sure I'd even start on a plains hill if it mean't moving away from a river or coast, because of the health penalty for not founding by water.

Yes it's good to be fast out of the gate, but not at the expense of nerfing the later game. Three or moves to get to a plains hill doesn't sound attractive to me.

[InThane]

Criteria I'd use for moving away from starting location:

1. Am I planning on spending much time as size 1 city? (I.E. immediate settler/worker builds)
2. Does my fresh water access increase/stay the same?
3. Does my ocean access increase/stay the same?
4. Do I gain any juicy specials by moving there?
5. Lumber access for choprushing/health.

I'd say if three of those five criteria are met, I'd do it if it meant losing one or two turns. If all five were met, I'd be willing to give up 3 or 4 turns.

We keep thinking of our capital cities as being of utmost importance, but since we no longer have production/trade being lost to corruption with distance like we did with prior civ games, making a powerful capital is actually secondary, and we can use other cities to grab the "home location" specials.

[Forrester]

Re: Re: Starting placement

Originally posted by Cort Haus


Hmmm. The thing about the capital is that the map generator usually places the start loc with some good resources, even if they're not visible yet. Moving away any significant distance weakens the capital.

Sure, plains hills are nice, but I'd rather have a couple of specials. I'm not sure I'd even start on a plains hill if it mean't moving away from a river or coast, because of the health penalty for not founding by water.

Yes it's good to be fast out of the gate, but not at the expense of nerfing the later game. Three or moves to get to a plains hill doesn't sound attractive to me.

I agree that it would be dumb to sacrifice specials or fresh water for a hill start, but there will arise situations in which you can see a hill on the river that you're starting at, and don't have any obvious specials around you (or you see that said hill probably has as many specials as you have).

I agree that they usually start you off in a nice place, but it's also true that the suggested city placements (blue circles) after you create settlers are sometimes kinda dumb.

Just surprised I haven't seen this subject come up before, because it really is a monster advantage early on to have double production.

[Forrester]

Originally posted by InThane
Criteria I'd use for moving away from starting location:

1. Am I planning on spending much time as size 1 city? (I.E. immediate settler/worker builds)
2. Does my fresh water access increase/stay the same?
3. Does my ocean access increase/stay the same?
4. Do I gain any juicy specials by moving there?
5. Lumber access for choprushing/health.

I'd say if three of those five criteria are met, I'd do it if it meant losing one or two turns. If all five were met, I'd be willing to give up 3 or 4 turns.

Assuming that your fresh water access stays the same, juicy special access seems to stay the same, ditto lumber/ocean . . . how many turns would you sac to move from your starting point to a hill where you'd get an extra hammer? One? Two? Three? Four?

[InThane]

Originally posted by Forrester


Assuming that your fresh water access stays the same, juicy special access seems to stay the same, ditto lumber/ocean . . . how many turns would you sac to move from your starting point to a hill where you'd get an extra hammer? One? Two? Three? Four?

Probably not more than two turns, unless I plan to spend a LOT of time @ size 1. That extra hammer can add up over the long run.