Vel's Strategy Thread, Volume III

[Generaldoktor]

I don't think hardly anybody, (notice I said hardly,) can really feel good about bulldozing productive cottage/town/villages. That's gold you're plowing under and our mothers taught us not to do that!

There's a television commercial running in America right now where some ridiculous lizard, who is the trademark for the American auto insurer GEICO, says in a rather unmotivated Australian accent, (geckos, the lizard in question, are native to America, ) "Who Doesn't Like Free Pie and Chips?" (Comparing this to the savings through GEICO.)

Well, I might well ask, who doesn't like gold from cottages? Disciplined hands with vision will see some value to plowing at some point, like winning the game through production, or getting even more gold from merchant specialists or the improvements brought by Engineers. I really got some great cities out of plowing those floodplains before I discovered the true benefits of cottages; however, difficulty levels are definitely a factor here also as to how much of that to do and when.

Re: Chop; as with guilty fellows being weaned off pub brew, we all seem to agree it was appropriate to "nerf" chop. It was just too much easy fun to chop your way to domination in the early game; at whatever level. Now comes the hard work of playing over and over to develop new progressive strategies for building, tech selection and war. Then along will come "Warlords," and we can do it again. Nevertheless, the project is ongoing currently for me.

Settler First; Still Scared. I did a "modification" in my current v.161 game of "Settler Early," sliding in an extra warrior first on a city with pretty good inherent production. (I am still declining to chop, pre-Math.) I think it is still getting me behind, but I'm not going to join the critics. I believe Vel that there are some overriding circumstances where this is appropriate; just trying to develop a real world feel, after reading his descriptions as to when these might be for me.

[Verrucosus]

Oh, I do like the gold from cottages etc., but it's not free. If a city has flood plains, it tends to have lots of them and the combined food surplus could be well used for feeding lots of specialists and use the city as a GPP factory or as a highly specialised gold/science producer (irrespective of the general science rate and boosted by the proper combination of national wonders). I am certain that very often that is not worth giving up tons of base commerce from villages and towns, but there might be situations when it is. The problem I wanted to point out is that I usually don't farm flood plains because I don't need a huge food surplus in the early days and by the time "lots of specialists" become feasible I often don't even consider the option of demolishing a cottage because ... well, it just feels wrong. (I guess that means I agree with "Our mothers told us not to.")

[Arrian]

General...

Farms vs. Cottages: Okay, I think I remember now. the "cap" as an indicator. But considering all the fantastic benefits of early development of cottages, its hard to decide not to build them because you haven't hit "cap" yet. But I guess decisions like this are why we play the game.

The idea is to grow to the "cap" as fast as possible - hence farming FPs (4 food each!). Cities with that type of food surplus grow FAST. Then you can re-allocate your citizens as needed. My style, which I concede is influenced by playing down on Prince, tends to be to combine the farms with mined hills. I tend to have a massive lead on the AI in mfg, but be neck-and-neck with them in GNP.

It's definitely a style I've had for some time, and it's based on one basic truth: it's all well and good to have the tech that allows you to build fancy toys (be they improvements or units), but unless you have the production power to actually BUILD them, what good does it do you?

The above, clearly, fails to consider using Universal Suffrage to simply buy stuff. The weakness there is that you either must get the Pyramids (by no means guaranteed) or go deeep into the tech tree, and furthermore it doesn't get really efficient until you have the Kremlin.

Given that, I have stuck with my basic "production first" paradigm, and it's served me pretty well.

-Arrian

[Generaldoktor]

Yeah, thanks Arrian, will try this soon, though ironically it is a manifestation of my early-on strategy after I bought the game last fall.

Aeson told me once on a different thread to not be shy about "starving off" specialists periodically either, to get GPP from other cities who otherwise might not catch up to produce GP with the escalating scale for creation. That would work with this by allowing some of the cities to "step down" in pop and focus on cottages after awhile. Of course with Slavery, you can pop build too, but somebody told me even that is "nerfed" now in v.161.

[cynyck]

Originally posted by Velociryx
Now (and this is from memory, with no materials before me), we have Math, which has associated with it money (stepping stone to currency/calendar, as you mentioned), cats, and "regular powered" chop.
-=Vel=-

It also opens up COL if you have not done the slingshot or if you used it to grab Metalcasting, and it enables the Hanging Gardens for a nice pop boost and GE points.

[Ellestar]

Originally posted by Generaldoktor
I don't think hardly anybody, (notice I said hardly,) can really feel good about bulldozing productive cottage/town/villages. That's gold you're plowing under and our mothers taught us not to do that!

Actually, you can pillage your own cottages for an immediate benefit and then farm the territory if you really want.

[Blake]

Okay then, here's the deal. Always get a Granary ASAP or preferably sooner. This doubles growth and largely negates the need to have a high food income for growth.

A food surplus of...
1 is bad
2 is extremely borderline
3 is tolerable
4 is good
5 is great
6 is better than great
7 is verging on overkill
8 means some should be gifted to another city

So farms... only build as many as you HAVE to! That means give every city not less than 2 food to grow with, and preferably 3 food. In a city with 4 or more food, don't dare build farms, build cottages. I'm even inclined to say if you want specialists, it's best to find a new city with a strong food surplus from special resources! If a city doesn't have any food resources or floodplains - don't bother even founding it! Farms are weak and crappy! Farms make windmills look good!

About the only time I'll mass farm is when a city is founded to claim resources or other strategic purposes, or my city-site options REALLY suck. Otherwise decent food is a criteria for a city site.
I'm more forgiving towards coastal cities since it's lighthouse & forget. So the coastal cities don't need such a high food surplus. +2 is okay for them, no further investment is required, they'll grow eventually.

Note: Post-biology farms are really quite nice. They aren't nicer than developed cottages or watermills, but they are definitely worth building.

[Generaldoktor]

Originally posted by Ellestar

Actually, you can pillage your own cottages for an immediate benefit and then farm the territory if you really want.

Pillage my own cottages! I think I'm going to rename you Ivan the Terrible!

Of course we do have a lot here who love the pop rush, but that comes back after awhile. (I do have a question about those happiness effects, having just lost a game to "raging barbs" cuz I wouldn't pop rush enough archers in a realm with no metals. Can you really rush every turn you have pop early on without your whole empire rebelling?

Cottages take so long to grow, I just can't see "pillaging" them, aside from the moral implications. (Actions such as this should affect city morale, even if it currently doesn't.) That being said, every time I can wrest a border village/town/cottage away from a bordering competitor through culture expansion, I do send in the horse archers. But its' pure gratification (and insurance in case the border bumps back,) the game won't give you any gold for that.

Blake, thanks again. The statistical analysis is probably what I was needing (and am lousy at ). Sorry you don't like windmills though, I perceive they keep the AI governor from moving off hills when food gets tight; and are healthier anyway than mines. If I've got uranium and coal by mid-game, I find myself switching most non-resource mines to windmills, just for the extra growth.

[Blake]

Windmills reduce or eliminate the need to build farms, they are thus better than farms, and often better than mines - if you would have to build farms in order to work mines, you'd probably be better off with the windmills.
I consider farms and windmills to be evils, which you sometimes must choose between in cities with low food. Windmills are the lesser of the two evils .

Financial windmills on rivers are actually downright good!


I should mention the important core strategy of building farms and mines around your heroic epic city, since every raw hammer is doubled in that city. Each farm lets you work half a plains hill mine (4 hammers), so after doubling from the heroic epic each farm is worth 4(!) hammers. So a typical grassland tile can be viewed as 2-4-0 once farmed .

Of course the same is true around your Oxfords city, where each commerce counts twice, making cottages and windmills comparatively much more valuable. Here a standard grassland cottage is worth 2-0-10 .

[Ming]

The old thread crossed past 500 posts...
For those interested, it can be found here:

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=144755

[tommynt]

no flame - just my opinion about number a good number of cities ... kinda unlimited

as long as it s using worked squares and a decent amount of cottages a new (conquered) city ll usually help
problems may arrive if new city is more then, hm, 2´0 or 25 squares away from cap or versaile (thats the new ferbiden palace?!)
a decent city should ba able to produce about 30 bakers kinda fast - u hardly ll pay amore upkeep and cities have no negatives beside upkeep imo - they ll help a lot for production in medium run and to victory conditions in long run.

so on a hub map for example settling 2 hubs is a must imo - if u r able to do so - 3rd hub when it s close to your cap may also be good - a 4th is gonna be hard to hold and to manage aswell.

On other hand I recognised that teching in occ is rapide - in 100 turns oxford and then go on with a tech every 2 truns or so - thats really fine and fun to play for me

i was never a windmill fan and dont think i ll ever be one

i have hardly even seen lands where u dont have enough grass to irigate- sure if u really have only hills - windmill might be only way - but if i have a spot with loads of hill i usually just make a "production" city there and dont care too much about gold stuff.
windmills and watermills are imo only for really strange lands

[tommynt]

and gerneraldirector before monarchy u cantslave every tunr a archer without unhappynessproblems

- u can slave only every 2nd turn anyway
and this only for a bout 3 or 4 timea after another (at size of 3) - then u gotta stop for some time (like 4 or 5 turns)

[Addled Platypus]

wow


as of
5-05 190 downloads
5-27 399 downloads
6-20 699 downloads
7-3 829 downloads
7-30 1017 downloads
12-5 2144 dl's WOW

2/23/07 2589
9/12/07 3740


it just keeps on giving

all hail Velociryx

[couerdelion]

I’ve had a chance to read through this a couple of times now and I hope you’ll excuse the comments I have here. Specifically, I’ve commented here on the areas that I either disagree with or, quite possibly, do not understand. I strongly agree with a lot of the comments made in the guide so I trust you don’t mind that I fail to mention all of them.

But some parts do confuse me.

1) There are references made on tile selection which place values on food, hammers, gold etc. Unfortunately there is no obvious section on the subject of tile selection and the relative values of city workers in producing food, hammers, commerce, beakers, gold, culture and GPP. This is a shame because the subject is fundamental in managing city growth and development. Suddenly there appears a statement like 1 food = 3 gold which seems to have no basis.

2) You’ve argued for an early work boat from a coastal start and the logic here seems to be scouting. Specifically, you are looking for information and placing some value on this but I would argue that the information gleaned from a scouting work boat will be of limited use. A work boat can only scout in water and cannot pop huts. They are also twice the cost of scouts so uncover information less efficiently than a scout build. Given the choices, it seems that the workboat’s only benefit is that it takes longer for units to emerge that will kill them so they can scout for longer. However, at this stage you are probably scouting so far from home that the margin information value is very small. Let’s just say that I am not sold on the workboat scout idea.

3) There are few points of potential inconsistency in the text. I believe, for example that putting cottages in every city or building markets in any city producing 4+ gold is contrary to the idea of specialisation. For me specialisation is everything in this game. Your production cities should be paid for by your commerce cities and never try to cover their own costs.

Sorry irs short and seems negative. If you want I will try to put together my own thoughts on things like city specialisation/tile selection. If you like them you might add them to the guide.

[N35t0r]

Note: I tend to play on Marathon, so this might not be accurate for faster game speeds.

I've found myself regularly producing commerce-heavy civilizarions. I find, for example, that the extra time it takes me to build the wonders is more than offset by the fact that I get the tech before the AI does. (On Noble, I've regularly managed to get to at least 2x the next best civ in raw commerce working with non-financial civs, financial civs make it 3x) . It also lets me grow a nice gold buffer for mass upgrades without falling behind, and interestingly keeping among the top militarily (getting utterly pwned by the AI once did that to me). Not to mention being able to abuse the culture slider which I love.

Thus most of my cities get a cottage-windmill heavy approach, with maybe my great-merchant producing city having some extra food for ~3-5 merchants and ditto for the Great Scientist one (which normally specialize in gold and beakers as well, as the wonders generally help both). Never more than one or two farms, though (food specials allow for the upper limit), as otherwise I'd rather build cottages (as in Marathon those GP's take a long while to come out)

I then have around 1/4 to 1/9 of the cities (depending on map size, my civ's size and power / size of my neigbours) of them being dedicated to hammers. (Usually building Heroic Epic and eventually Red Cross on the first and Ironworks + West Point on the best (preferably coastal)).
For these I avoid cottages completely, and oddly enough usually workshops as well, since I choose the more hilly locations, and the odd extra food they're able to get is better off spent on an engineer rather than a workshop... I think I've only built them if I go commie due to maintenance costs...

Also, I rarely improve a citie's surroundings with the definitive improvments immediately. Usually, just after founding a city I try to get it growing quickly, starting to make them work cottages only when they're size 3-5 (not even then if it's late in the game). I usually try to minimize the time my citizens work unworked tiles, so I have a good deal of workers around, and this is a good way to keep them busy...