Sid games C3C: how to improve our skills

[nbarclay]

Aeson's calculation is 24 flat plus 8 per city for 19 cities.

19 * 8 + 24 = 176.

Of course that's just the free support and doesn't get into the hundreds of additional units the civs can pay to support out of their treasuries if they're willing to waste enough gold for that purpose.

Edit: Aeson, you're doing an impressive job with your civ, as usual.

[Aeson]

Originally posted by vmxa1
AFAIK they get 24 extra free support for each city and 8 bonus support. So that would be over 600 for 19 cities. Then they would have to pay maint and they get a huge production boost and could probably pay for another large group.

It's 8 bonus per city and 24 additional free support according to the editor.

(8 * 19) + 24 = 176

Your example shows just how much over the free support cap they go. 7 cities gives them 80 free support, and they were pushing ~300 units?

[Aeson]

Nathan,

Are you sure you want to go for the easier targets first? I'm thinking Zulu (don't need Astronomy to get to them) will be my first target, then Egypt.

I guess it would be possible to leave Egypt alone and hit the domination limit, as they have ~15% of the landmass... but could be dangerous as they get further and further ahead in tech.

I think Leo's is a very good idea though! Will definitely try for it myself as Egypt is going up the top half in my game too, and no one else seems close. May even give away the Great Library after I get Theology, hit the Zulu with Knights/Swiss Mercs/Trebs, then take the GL back when a second civ looks like it's to Astronomy and research Navigation full bore.

[vmxa1]

Oh I see, that makes sense. It is not 24 per city, but 24 period. Whew, well the way they run it, it makes no difference. They will have many hundreds by the early middles ages. It seems more so if they are isolated as they have nothing else to build so often and can crank out one of those ancient units in a hurry.

So maybe they are having a cash flow problem from time to time and are not smart enough to stop over building.

For you sure it will be rough to invade a healthy AI Nathan, so if you can do anything to shake them up, it can't hurt.

[nbarclay]

I hadn't even considered trying to go after Egypt at this stage of the game on Sid level. But now that I think about it, with the way they've been fighting Japan, it's probably now or never.

With my having the Great Lighthouse, I have another option: I could bypass the Zulus and go straight after Egypt, probably signing a ROP with the Zulus so my troops can travel part of the distance to Egypt overland. If I go that route, I probably ought to send a couple Swiss Mercs to one of the more distant AIs to stage a "war" and see if I can go ahead and trigger my GA so I can build and support more troops in preparation for the war with Egypt. (Getting to the Mongols would take about thirteen turns, or longer if I'd want to target someone else, but that would still come before Leo's.)

For a stack with tebuchets, I'm inclined to think that MedInfs make better main offensive units than knights. Once you ping enemy units down to just a couple hit points, it's hard for knights' abiltiy to retreat to be worth thirty extra shields. Of course knights can play a very useful role against counterattacking enemy troops.

There is one serious complication if I go against Egypt, though: with their having the Great Wall, trebuchets attacking towns under size 7 would be subject to the Great Wall bug. So I'd probably have to skip over smaller towns until Thebes falls, and I hate to think how many times I might have to recapture Thebes before it stays in my hands. (Egypt has about seven times my culture at the moment, but I really don't like the idea of razing the Pyramids, Hanging Gardens, and Sistine Chapel.)

Thanks for the idea!

[Arrian]

Impressive, fellas. Keep at it.

Nathan: regarding the FP question, I (of course) agree with Aeson that the new empire shape is an oval as opposed to the old barbell, and speed is of the essence due to the 3/8 OCN boost the FP offers.

I need to back up a page or two to look at your empire layout so I can suggest a particular city...

-Arrian

[Arrian]

Ack, you've got your palace so centrally located it is tough to make a choice.

I'm having trouble reading the screenie, but I think "Tilburg" would be my choice.

-Arrian

[Aeson]

The reason I would mostly go for Knights is because of the huge treasury. Shields will be the limiting factor for quite a while, and a Sword is just as expensive to build as a Horse.

I don't plan on having Knights defend until I have Knight armies. First landing will be a Settler only, on a Hill. Build the city, rush the walls, move as many Swiss Mercs as I can carry (shooting for at least 20 galleys, more likely 30-40) and hope I get an MGL on defense for a Merc Army.

If it looks like I can get by with only 3 units in an Army, I will for the most part. Then Galleons can carry them. Will probably need at least a few 4 unit Armies though.

[nbarclay]

Looking some more at the southern part of my empire, I think I squeezed in one more city than I should have when I built Leerdam. Only one of the tiles it's currently working, including the city tile itself, could not either be used by a coastal city or free a tile elsewhere for use by a coastal city, and my southeastern coastal cities are really starving for production. My current thought is that I could build my FP there to get the OCN boost sooner and then start building down the city with an eye toward abandoning it when Tilburg gets a palace prebuild up to enough shields to switch to the FP. I can't use a palace prebuild for Tilburg until Rotterdam switches from its palace prebuild to Leo's, but I can finish Tilburg's colosseum and have a marketplace well underway for the initial stage of my prebuild.

If I do things that way, and if I want to tackle Egypt soon, I'd have to delay my GA slightly but only slightly if I want the Leerdam FP in place when the GA starts. The GA would then help both with the tail end of building Leo's and with moving the FP to Tilburg.

[nbarclay]

In my game, at least at the moment, there are major gaps in cultural borders from the war between Egypt and Japan. It may not be necessary to land a settler under hostile conditions for me to get an initial base of operations against Egypt. Or if Egypt and Japan make peace, I could use a ROP with Japan to pre-position troops in Japanese territory and then see if I can arrange an alliance with Japan to suck Egypt's offensive forces into Japanese territory where they'd be slowed down.

Regarding the size of your treasury, keep in mind the possibility of pillaging your iron (if you do that sort of thing on Sid) and building warriors to upgrade to MedInfs. With that strategy, the limiting factor would very quickly shift from shields to gold. Then, depending on cities' production, they could build warriors for upgrade to MedInfs, horsemen for upgrade to knights, or spearmen for upgrade to Swiss Mercs (fitting cats or trebuchets, depending on technology available at the time, in there somewhere). My current thinking is that if I go after Egypt, I'll follow a strategy along those lines, building units normally first and then switching to an upgrade-based approach as the invasion gets closer (so unit upkeep isn't quite as big a deal as it would be if I built a lot of cheap units early).

[Arrian]

Nathan: so you want to build the FP twice, in cities pretty close to one another?

EDIT: looking at a coastal city west of Tilburg that starts with an L but then I saw the city you're talking about.

But still, I don't get why you would want to build the FP there, and then build it again in Tilburg, two tiles away, instead of just building it in Tilburg.

-Arrian

[nbarclay]

If I hadn't poisoned Tilberg from switching to a FP by disbanding a couple regular warriors to bring down my unit support costs, switching Tilberg to a FP now would clearly be the right move. As it is, Leerdam has better production (eleven shields net per turn versus seven or maybe eventually eight) and, by the time I'd spend one turn getting gold together to rush Tilberg's colosseum and anther turn doing the rush, about a 70-shield head start. That makes for at least about a 14-turn difference in when a FP can be completed in the two places at current production rates - at a time when I'll be in a Golden Age, assuming I trigger one to set up an attack on Egypt. The Golden Age would reduce the time needed to complete a FP in Tilberg if I'd start that now, but would also make the cost of the delay greater per turn while it lasts.

Purely in terms of shields, I seriously doubt that building the FP twice could pay for itself. But assuming I get Leo's, each extra gold I would get from having my FP sooner would be worth two thirds of a shield in upgrades, and a civ in Republic generates gold faster than it generates shields. So my guess is that building the FP twice instead of once would pay for itself, but with no more experience than I have with FP effects in C3C, it's only a guess.

Nathan

[Arrian]

Hmm. I see the problem.

Of course, a FP in the west or even north could be a possibility too...

edit: looked at the map, and I think Tilburg really is the best spot. Doh.

-Arrian

[nbarclay]

Japan disappeared from the face of the planet in 300 AD, with no one but the Dutch having ever known of their existence. They will be avenged if I have anything to say about it (which, on Sid level, I might or might not).

[nbarclay]

Aeson, please let me know when Leo's is built in your game. I've played up to that point, but I'd rather not say anything until you've reached at least roughly the same point.