Emperor games C3C: how to improve your skills

[Jeem]

Originally posted by vmxa1


I use Irfanview. It is a free product and runs on XP and Win98SE.
Capture the screen and then resize to 800 and save as Jpeg.
If I want to crop, I use Hypersnap.

Cheers vmxa, I'll try that out.

[Jaguar]

Nice start.

[Mountain Sage]

Originally posted by Dominae
Mountain Sage, did you put Amsterdam on a Cattle tile?!

Yes, was it wrong ? I am but an egg...

[Dominae]

Originally posted by Mountain Sage
Yes, was it wrong ?

This is one of the times that I can without hesitation say: yes! Never build your capital on a bonus Food resource!

A bonus Food tile is well worth the cost of sub-optimal capital or city placement in the early-game. Like I've said somewhere else, the early-game is more or less defined by the search and exploitation of bonus Food tiles.


Dominae

[Catt]

Originally posted by Dominae


This is one of the times that I can without hesitation say: yes! Never build your capital on a bonus Food resource!

A bonus Food tile is well worth the cost of sub-optimal capital or city placement in the early-game. Like I've said somewhere else, the early-game is more or less defined by the search and exploitation of bonus Food tiles.

Dominae didn't exactly spell out why it is unquestionably a bad idea -- the city center tile of a city will always produce only 2 food (forget about Agricultural cities for a moment), whether built on a "wheated" floodplains or a barren desert. By building a city atop a food resource, instead of next to a food resource, you deprived the city of the possibility of utilizing all the "goodies" offered by the resource. That cow tile became a 2f, 1s, ?gold city center instead of a 4f, 1s, ?gold irrigated cow-grassland (5f once out of despotism).

Neither food nor shields pass through the city center, but gold does -- building on a gold hill is often attractive because the city automatically enjoys the "gold" bonus without having to delegate a city laborer to working a 1f tile (the city center gets 2f regardless). Building on a food bonus effectviely wastes the available bonus - the AI does this all too often.

Catt

[Dominae]

You can get 2spt on the city centre tile at size 1 by settling on: 1) a Furs Forest that is overlaid on a Plains, or 2) an Iron Hills, assuming you've know the secrets of Iron Working.

I've never seen the game put a Bonus Grassland under a Furs Forest, but I assume that would have the same effect as #1 above.


Dominae

[Catt]

Originally posted by Dominae
You can get 2spt on the city centre tile at size 1 by settling on: 1) a Furs Forest that is overlaid on a Plains, or 2) an Iron Hills, assuming you've know the secrets of Iron Working.

D'oh! Yes, there are examples of shields passing through the city center tile which I forgot. The more common "lose a shield" city center decision is whether to build on a bonus grassland. If you do, you'll get the same one shield in the city center tile that you'd get from a plain grasslands (although I believe DaveMcW showed that the "bonus shield" reappears when the city grows past size 6 -- i.e., a City (7+ pop) center on bonus grass gets one more shield than a City center on plain grass).

Catt

[Theseus]

Also, gold means you are building on a hill... a good thing.

[nbarclay]

Originally posted by Theseus
Also, gold means you are building on a hill... a good thing.

A good thing if you're attacked, anyhow. But in SP, are your cities (especially core cities) attacked often enough for that to be a significant consideration? (In MP, defense is of course a lot more important!)

The down side to building on hills is that once you get out of Despotism, hills are some of the best productivity tiles around. Only bonus grasslands (with one less shield but one more food) can match them without a boost from a resource. So all else being equal, I would usually rather save a hill to work later in the game than build a city on it.

But I do like building cities on gold hills in the early game so I can get the effects of the gold immediately instead of waiting for the city to grow big enough that it can afford to work tiles that hurt growth. In that case, I regard the short-term benefits of building on a gold hill as easily outweighing the slight long-term difference in productivity.

(Note that if I'm playing an agricultural civ and building on a gold hill means not building on a river, under Despotism, the city can grow just as well built on the river and working the gold hill as it can built on the gold hill, or can grow better if it's built on the river and works higher-growth tiles. Thus, agricultural civs are the only ones with which I tend to prioritize rivers over gold hills in the early game.)

Nathan

[Mountain Sage]

Nathan, Dominae and Catt: it's good to have you around. Criticism taken and well deserved. Thanks.

Dominae: a 'Fur Forest'? Gee, I knew you have lots of trees in Canada, but of this kind... So, in fall, you collect the golden and brown furs when they fall from the trees? Could you send me some seeds, please?

[Mountain Sage]

400AD: the Holy Powergraph. We are a bit behind but hope to catch up soon. Byzantium already looks strong…

[Mountain Sage]

1025AD: another few years have passed by. A short war with Rome gave us control of this little island. In fact, we went to war in expectation that a future resource would be there. The cities themeselves are so corrupt that they are worthless.
Techs: Banking in 9 turns, 2617 gold (-3/turn). The pre-build for Smith TC is on its way.
Byzantium has Astronomy but all other civs are at –1.
Army: 16 Galleys, 14 MI, 8 Knights, 10 Ancient Cav. And some other assorted units for a grand total of 106. The problem with a spread-out empire is that you need more units to cover your flanks, which sit usually doing nothing forever, until an invasion shows that there are too few on that particular spot…

[Mountain Sage]

1505AD: another day, another age. Sumeria is out (just for more useless land…).
Techs: Electricity in 5 turns. Byzance has Ironclads and Nationalism. All other civs are now hoplessly behind.We are heading for ToE with a pre-built already in place and then Hoover Dam.
Gold 7’873 (+1/turn), which is way too much. Unfortunately, there is absolutely no point in rushing buildings (except Temples) in totally corrupted cities.
Military: 17 Cavs, 17 Galleons, 16 MI, 57 Swiss Mercs, 15 Ancient Cav and some others for a total of 137 units.

[Mountain Sage]

As you can see, it’s ‘factory time’. Capital in Ur and FP in The Hague. At least I have a ‘sound’ core.

[Mountain Sage]

The Holy Powergraph: Byzance is a real KAI, but Rome looks strong but is at a steady –3 techs and 0 gold (guess why? ).