Spaceship comparison game

[Swiss Pauli]

Well I played a pretty poor game and although my beaker count is a bit low at the cut-off point because of some heavy pop-rushing, I'm way behind solo and MDbill's efforts.

Had a short war with GW after he put a city near the wheat/fish/copper site on west edge of our island.

[DrSpike]

I finished my current game this weekend. I'm quite busy this week though so it looks like I'll get to the comparison game next weekend.

[Swiss Pauli]

Had a look at the two saves posted so far and decided that my approach might be of interest for mulligans: I settled beyond the mountains.

http://apolyton.net/upload/view.php?file=76188_Swiss_Alex_AD-0001.Civ4SavedGame

[mdbill]

I just wrapped up 1000 AD (or do we stop at 1500?)

I like how it's progressing. I put a city next to the mountain range and then grabbed Music. I was planning a culture bomb, but then decided to go with Artist Super-specialist. That way I got the extra gold and beakers and the city still stole the gold/hill resources and eventually flipped the city.

I got all my universities built and a military with a few gunpowder units/cats.

Within 10 turns.... I will start war and take cities on the west side of the continent. I will finish up the Oxford. I'll get Democracy and have the Statue of Liberty completed (I have 2 engineers sitting around).

[rjmatsleepers]

England have completed their first phase and we're down to 2 TV slots per day, so I managed to find some time to play.

I was a bit slow getting a settler past the mountains which means I have company. Also I used my 2nd great scientists to grap philosophy since Taoism was still available, I'm not sure whether this was a good idea or not.

I'll ty to have a look at the other AD 1 saves later today.

RJM

[Swiss Pauli]

Originally posted by mdbill
I just wrapped up 1000 AD (or do we stop at 1500?)

Within 10 turns.... I will start war and take cities on the west side of the continent. I will finish up the Oxford. I'll get Democracy and have the Statue of Liberty completed (I have 2 engineers sitting around).

Could you pause there and post a save? Sounds like you've reached a key decision point (war or not) and it'd be interesting to compare results at 1500. What do you think?

[mdbill]

Originally posted by Swiss Pauli


Could you pause there and post a save? Sounds like you've reached a key decision point (war or not) and it'd be interesting to compare results at 1500. What do you think?

Yea, It might be interesting to see who can most efficicently capture the west side. People can still play their own starts, but also try this quick one from 1000 - 1500 AD.

[rjmatsleepers]

Pop rushing

I replayed through to AD 1 a few times (sometimes with better results, sometimes with worse). I tried going for early Slavery to use pop rushing. (I don't usually do this). My results were not good, but that may be because I wasn't using it effectively. One of the problems was the beakers spent learning Bronze Working. This is usually available by trade from the AI fairly easily. Even if I got a benefit from the pop-rush (and I'm not sure about this), it didn't make up for the "lost" beakers spent on BW. Of course, my approach means I can't chop rush early either which can be a disadvantage.

What do other people feel about pop rushing?

RJM

[Swiss Pauli]

Re: Pop rushing

Originally posted by rjmatsleepers
One of the problems was the beakers spent learning Bronze Working. This is usually available by trade from the AI fairly easily. Even if I got a benefit from the pop-rush (and I'm not sure about this), it didn't make up for the "lost" beakers spent on BW. Of course, my approach means I can't chop rush early either which can be a disadvantage.

What do other people feel about pop rushing?

RJM

For me, BW is a keystone tech (Slavery, Chop, Copper) that I want ASAP, so I'll always research it early. Ideally, my second (or third) city will be founded on, or near, Copper.

Vel and Blake are big fans of whipping, so that prompted me to use it more, but I should really use Blake's spreadsheet actively to improve my play (and make myself a little 'crib sheet' of zero-H whips and other useful stuff that I often forget).

The details are in Blake's thread, but the main thing to consider is what the would-be-whipped are giving in relation to the benefits from the earlier completion of the building/unit.

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=152415

The most relevant post to spaceship games is where Blake walks through a whipped university (and the sickly lumberjack).

And here's another thread from Blake specifically relating to an early game settler whip:

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=152123

[rjmatsleepers]

Re: Re: Pop rushing

Originally posted by Swiss Pauli



The most relevant post to spaceship games is where Blake walks through a whipped university (and the sickly lumberjack).

The sickly lumberjack is very instructive, but ...

I tend to research CoL very early and the potential benefit from unlimited scientists (from Caste System) seems more attractive than pop rushing. Blake shows that pop rushing gives a better food to shield conversion rate, but I tend to be watching beaker rate more closely.

(Having said this, I realise that in my AD1 save (above) I forgot to switch to either Slavery or Caste System. )

RJM

[Swiss Pauli]

Re: Re: Re: Pop rushing

Originally posted by rjmatsleepers
The sickly lumberjack is very instructive, but ...

I tend to research CoL very early and the potential benefit from unlimited scientists (from Caste System) seems more attractive than pop rushing. Blake shows that pop rushing gives a better food to shield conversion rate, but I tend to be watching beaker rate more closely.
RJM

Not such a fan of caste system, but if I do use it then it tends to be post biology when I can more easily support an army of specialists. However, I don't play PHI that often, nor do I tend to build the Pyramids, so it's likely that I'm not the best judge of caste system vs slavery in the early game.

[Blake]

Caste is kind of... rubbish. It's a toy for the Spiritual civs and maybe philo.
A grassland cottage is much better than any specialist.

And the Scientist is usually the best specialist and it's dead easy to get a library to run 2 of them, and often hard to get enough food to run more than 2.

so... overall... I consider Caste to be really niche. Slavery is about as far from niche as you can get. Slavery will always give very real productivity gains (ie poprushing settlers/workers, such that each food is converted to 2+ hammers instead of 1 hammer). The fact of the matter is that with Slavery, a 5 food tile is a 10 hammer tile. Caste just doesn't give awesomeness like that.

When it comes to effective poprushing the most important thing is actually not exploiting the bug(s), it is in balancing the population killed with the happiness penalty. Once you get this right you'll get massive profits from slavery.
As a rule of thumb, with a food surplus of 3-4 you want to kill 2 population at once, with a food surplus of 5-6 you want to kill 3 at once. Higher than that and you might need to actually soak up some of the excess surplus on mines or specialists, unless you can practically kill 4-5 pop at once (whipping settlers for 4 pop is good for this).

[rjmatsleepers]

I've been experimenting with the current start. I got BW by trade in 1000 BC. I think I could have traded for it earlier, but I preferred agriculture and animal husbandry.

I don't think I could get enough benefit from slavery (and chopping) to justify researching it myself, but that may be because I'm not exploiting it effectively.

RJM

[Blake]

I'm extremely partial to Alexander so I've decided to join in.

I'm using my usual strategy: Where room, put city. I'm at 6 cities. I lost 1 city to barbs, it was an early city I put on the other side of the mountain range (there were 2 cover warriors to defend it, first lost at 30% odds, second lost at 15% odds, bah). So I pretty much lost the 7th city to bad rolls. I lost a swordsman at 4% odds too (trying to kill an archer).

My tech is not impressive but that's the price of expansion...

My other usual strategy: The aggressive trait is there for a reason... Capac is going to DIE.

[rjmatsleepers]

Originally posted by Blake
I'm extremely partial to Alexander so I've decided to join in.

My other usual strategy: The aggressive trait is there for a reason... Capac is going to DIE.

Welcome aboard, Blake. I suspect your approach will be a bit different and it will be interesting to compare.

Don't forget that you have to stop just short of a domination victory and build a spaceship.

RJM