Alone on small Continent, what to do?

[Blake]

The HRule question is an interesting one.

Financial tends to make it profitable.
Pacifism tends to make it unprofitable.

What you probably want to do is raise the happy cap of the BEST cities, to the healthy caps. A troop costs the same g anywhere, but in your best city (with academy and stuff), the happiness is worth A LOT more.

[DirtyMartini]

Originally posted by wodan11
I think people sometimes forget the power of Fin + Colossus + Pyramids. If you can get it going, it's huge. Elizabeth is the Queen of this strat. How can you not go for it when you're Elizabeth???

Wodan

What does the Pyramids have to do with Financial and Colossus? Happy from representation? Happy from HR?

[Asmodeous]

Originally posted by DirtyMartini


What does the Pyramids have to do with Financial and Colossus? Happy from representation? Happy from HR?

Happy from Representation + extra beakers.

HUGE bonus if you're a small civ.

Me.

[DirtyMartini]

Originally posted by Asmodeous


Happy from Representation + extra beakers.

HUGE bonus if you're a small civ.

Me.

Yah, I get how good representation is for small civs running specialists, but it seems to me that running specialists and fully leveraging colossus are contradictory. Colossus means working a lot of coast tiles, which are food-poor, which means you can't assign as many specialists, which means you aren't getting as much benefit from Pyramids/representation.

I guess the idea is to run specialists in landlocked cities and work the coast via fishing villages and get the best of both worlds. So the pyramids+financial+colossus combo isn't really synergistic but actually compementary -- some cities leverage one while others leverage the other. Actually, that sounds fantastic, maybe I'll try to pull that off tonight.

[wodan11]

Yes, you've got the idea. And, keep in mind that it's not all that hard to have 2 specialists per city. All you need is 1 food resource. Usually you'll found your coast cities so that you nab those seaborne food resources anyway. So, representation lets you run 1 engineer per city plus a scientist or priest if you have the food, plus you're working a bunch of coast tiles for massive commerce. Keep doing that up until you get Emancipation, and then and only then start switching your cities to cottages (one city at a time).

Oh and one thing to keep an eye on. The "emphasize" buttons don't really do this strat efficiently even if you only click the emphasize commerce. You'll probably want to cycle through all your cities once every 10 turns or so to doublecheck that they're doing what you want.

Good luck!

Wodan

[DirtyMartini]

[SIZE=1]
Oh and one thing to keep an eye on. The "emphasize" buttons don't really do this strat efficiently even if you only click the emphasize commerce. You'll probably want to cycle through all your cities once every 10 turns or so to doublecheck that they're doing what you want.

Good luck!

Wodan

I'd have to say that's my least favorite part about using any substantial number of specialists. The governor does a decent job if the emphasize prodution + emphasize commerce +/- emphasize food buttons are on if you have no specialists. But once you force a couple of specialists, it all starts to break down. That cycling through business bugs me a bit, but I suppose that's the price of moving up in difficulty -- paying closer attention.

[joncnunn]

On the city placement, I sugest sending a scounting type unit onto the Silk and the NW tile of the land mass before founding city #3 to check for nearby fish resources which may justify moving it. I see 6 unexplored sea tiles in that area within CR of possible city sites near there.
In addition there's 4 unexplored sea tiles near enough city #4 to possibly justify shifting that site as well and city #4 placement will affect #5.

[joncnunn]

I'm seeing the PHI connection with Pyraimds, but am having a hard time seeing the FIN one. Without Pyraimds you just go Monarchy and build cheap units as policemen to grow the cities as much as you want.

[wodan11]

Fin and Colossus have synchronicity and make early coast cities amazing.

Without Fin it becomes just as good to not work the coast tiles at all and to do an early cottage economy or a SE economy.

Wodan

[batavier]

This is the current state of my island. I discovered some more fish to the east. At the moment i need more workers. One of them was killed at the end of the road towards coventry by a barbarian. I thought I had all the ground covered.

I didn't build the pyramids, I think it would have interfered with all the axemen I had to build. Barbarian activity has been high.

At the moment I'm running science specialists at my capital and at nottingham. York needs some cottages. Coventry in the northeast will have more specialists.

I think I will build another city near the pigs in the centre, then one at clams/marble in the north, and then one in the far east, just to keep out the AI. I hate it when someone settles on MY land.

[Asmodeous]

I hate it when someone settles on MY land.

And by that I assume you mean "on my planet".

Me.

[joncnunn]

Looking at the map, you appear to be leting your cities grow way too much, I'm counting 2 of them with angry citizens. York in particular is building the worker at a slower rate because of it. It looks like the happy and health limit at York is 7, so it's wasting 3 food to be converted into hammers at the moment. When it was at 7 and close to full basket at least one more citizen should have been turned into a specalist if you weren't ready to slave.

I would go for Blake's red dots for 2 center locations; one takes in the silk and horse and the other the pig.

On the north I'd go with the forest just west of the Marble, it's another of Blake's dots.

I'd go with Blake's red dot in the far east as well.

On realtive order, I'd go with that north one taking in Marble first since it has the unique resource.

Then the Pig-center one for the higher food.

Then the fast east- territory

And then 4th the Horse-Silk center one.

[batavier]

I've managed to get a spaceship victory in 2003. Thanks everyone for the tips. Caste system + representation is seriously powerful. Too bad I couldn't get the pyramids and had to switch to emancipation before I could run
very long with this combination.

What is also very nice is philosophical + pacifism + national epic in the capital. I ended up settling 2 great merchants, 3 great engineers and 9 great scientists. my capital had a great hammer output as wel.

my main production city was rebel-found ainu. This also had iron in the BFC, wich I hadn't found yet on the first map I posted.

The spoti n the far east was settled by marsa. I declared war to kick him out, wich was easy because it was redcoats vs. longbowmen. A follow up galleon was sunk. The spot was then immediately settled by saladin who was a member of the mighty hindu block that I had also joined, so I couldn't kick him out. Saladin also founded a city to the south in the ice, with NO workable tiles.

The world was divided in the hindu block, made up fo Kublai khan, me, saladin and mao, and the others:
Isabella and Mansa musa and Asok, who didn't even like each other.

Mansa would eventually manage to raze a large cottage/fishing coastal city with a surprise landing.
Isabella was friendly at first, but relations cooled because I wouldn't convert to buddism. Eventually she declared war and became a great spammer of destroyers, but she only started to hurt my fishing when it didn't matter anymore.
Asok was killed of by Kublai Khan.

In the early 1900's I was well ahead of everyone in techs and started working towards a spaceship victory. In 1980 I tought I was finished with everything. But somehow missed that I needed a docking bay and had to finish of plastics and then robotics. I had switched to universal suffrage and lowered the science slider to cash rush some buildings well before that, so I needed anoter 23 years to finish.

Because of the delay, Saladin managed to build the UN and get elected as secretary with everyone except for kublai voting for him. If he had next proposed domination victory he might have had it, because kublai and myself were just too small to block him.
He only proposed a nuke ban however, wich everyone adopted. A few turns after that I was finished with the ship.