Building Armys

[vmxa1]

Next I guess I will have to look at posting some logs to point out my actions and any reasons for them. I think the key things are 1) city placement
2) I am guessing here, but lots of lost worker turns

You now have a good number of workers, but they will be hard pressed to get the job done with the locations of your cities.
Too much distance and too many dead tiles.

You could be getting structures finished sooner with some workers chopping wood. Take a good look at my placement. It is loose, but this is a wide open map at Monarch, so we can get away with it.

Getting a granary in those first two or three cities slowed me down, but let me race ahead later. I knew I could afford it as there was more land than I wanted to try to control before the industrial age.

I founded a city by the cow near the volcano to use as worker pump, but once I seen how easy it was going to be to get wonders, I use it for that instead.

The first 40 or 80 turns will make the game for you. Now some things you will not be aware of as you need to have lots of experience to know what to expect from the AI under nearly all conditions. This is what allows you to alter you game plan and maybe get away with fewer troops at some points or no temples in other situations.

[vmxa1]

Ah I forgot to menton the resources. It can be a good idea in some games to rush to get a resource, but this game is not one of them or at least not the ancient ones.

I did not rush to hook up horses. I waited until I could comfortably found a city next to them.

I expect to get to Iron around turn 140. I just don't need it and I do not want to wreak my empire to get it. I will and have made a a slight altering by sending a settler(s) in that direction a bit sooner.

I am not fond of swords in a game like this anyway. Horses will be better as they are faster and can retreat. Not to mention they can upgrade to Knights and Calvs.

Since I have SoZ, I will have AC to punish barbs and civs with. I will eventually upgrade my warriors. The only impact was I made more archers than I would normally, but it is not a problem.

[Creator]

So in other words u are saying when u start a new game always always aim for the great libary as a priorty dont bother learning iron working and horseman etc because like u said the great libary will get them free of charge or aquire them from other nations.

In a way then u are never going to have a powerful+uptodate military until the great libary is made I understand now and the way u say placing your citys the best option would I think and maybe u mean the same in a spiral pattern as then easy access to add roads and not far for workers to go.

U been a great help.

Thank you

[vmxa1]

Not exactly. I am saying that in this game I could see that it was a huge map and only 7 players on a large land mass or a pangea.

This let me know I could get away with no military to speak of for a long time. I did not know the barbs setting for a long time, but I knew I only had to worry about uprisings and they would be after I got all ancient techs.

I knew no one was close to me from my scouts and so even if they declared war it would not be a problem. They did and it took many turns before a few warriors came a calling. Archers could handle them.

Yes it was possible that something could go wrong, but not likely.

If this was a game at a higher level or I had closer neighbors, I would have done things differently.

The only games I always aim for the GL is at Deity or Sid. I need it at those levels. At monarch it is just a denial thing as I would normally do all my own research.

As to military, again it was the map. With a huge map and only 6 rivials, I do not expect much conflict for a long time. There is lots of land to keep the AI busy. It may and did try to extort me a bit, but it will not send serious forces that early. Archers and spears can handle them. Remember I have a strong empire and can crank out vets fast if need be and since I have roads and the cities are near to each other, I can get help quickly.

If I was a bit worried I would have made cats, but I was sure that was not needed. Plus I had the tech very soon and could hook up horses in a pinch and make them.

In the next 40 turns or so I started making more troops in prep for barbs and riviasl. I have gotten all the ancient wonders except two. Oracle and Pyramids. I never build the oracle and seldom get the pyramids. I just don't see any value to the oracle at lower levels and at high ones, I can't get it. The pyramids, is a bit more useful, but I just won't commit to it.

I only care about growth in the first 5 or 6 cities, after that it is not an issue.

[vmxa1]

Creator I think I have given you some insights into one way to approach this type of a map, but I am not sure it is of much help to you. I mean it may be interesting, but I do not see any intergration of any of the ideas and no details have been posted.

IOW, if you think the idea of having all the ancient wonders, but two and being in a position to roll over the AI is useful, them I would suggest you start the 4000bc and see see what you may do to duplicate it. You could use the 2190 instead.

What I am saying is I do not know if you have a plan to do it better than before or not. Do you see what was done? The GL is not the be all, it was the way the empire was handled.

I could post details, but I have seen in the past that some players just would rather do what they have been and that is fair.
I just don't want to go to the work to write log that will not be of value.

[vmxa1]

Here is the 150bc or turn 120:

[vmxa1]

One more thing I should mention about the settings in this game.
If this was not a huge map, pangea and had the standard number of civs you would not have so many huts popped.

This would mean your tech would be much farther behind and even though you may have a few more contacts, the trades would be less likely. This is because the AI would have swapped the starting techs before you met them and you would have little to offer.

Conflicts will come sooner and the AI will do much better in tech with 15 civs to increase the tempo.

So I would prefer to see players use normal settings until they are well versed in the mechanics of beating the AI at Regent or Monarch. Then they could change things for fun or to make it easier or harder as they choose.

In fact I think it is best to use std size maps with 8 civs until those levels are no contest. More land and less civs distorts things a great deal and is best used for Sid or HoF games.

I think getting off to a great start is what will propel you to play the game to a conclusion or at least till you see you cannot lose.

[Creator]

U have helped me but I think I dont proper understand the worker part many a time u have said about worker turns wasted.

What do u do to stop workers wasting turns do u like finish a square then move only 1 and start on that raod building no matter where u are heading and not send them over the map distances therefore wasting turns?

[vmxa1]

Originally posted by Creator
U have helped me but I think I dont proper understand the worker part many a time u have said about worker turns wasted.

What do u do to stop workers wasting turns do u like finish a square then move only 1 and start on that raod building no matter where u are heading and not send them over the map distances therefore wasting turns?

What I am talking about is having a worker do a task on one tile and then move to another tile, not adjacent, and do another task.

So what we want to do is to not have workers move any more than they have to over unimproved tiles. So if you want to chop a forrest, fine, then when it is done build a road before moving on to the next task.

Best is to look at your tiles and see what needs to be done and plan the path so they do not have to keep moving back and forth.

Sooner or later you will need to waste some turns as a task becomes a priority, but you strive to minimize it.

Another thing that is common is to check your research to adjust the percentage down as you are close to getting a break through.
You can do at least the easy thing, which is to check before the break through to lower it, if possible. You maybe able to add more to the effort when at 2 turns to go to get it to one turn by shuffling a worker or two.

These efforts in the first 160 turns will make an impact. Placing your cities is more important though. You need to take advantage of any locations that have bonus food. Not getting a city down by the cow on a river is going to slow you down. Instant irrigated cow is very nice. You also get the extra commerce and the city will not need an aqua.

This is why I suggested you maybe take the 2190 save and play it out for 40 turns. First do it however you think you should, without regard to what I did. Then look at it and the next one I posted to see how they compare.

If you are more less the same, you are off and running. This is how you can see if you have picked up any new tactics.

Some say this game is all about food and it is, but really it is the workers that make the food. If you have looked at many of the games posted in this forum, you will generally see the better players will have more workers early and better infrastructure than the rest of the players.

Everyone that post about struggling at Monarch or lower have in common the lack of infrastructure and workers. That IMO is the issue. Most of the rest of the game is not so important until you get in the very tough layouts or in contest or MP game.

The map was so strong that I did not employ any true pumps. I did use a few cities to more or less crank out workers and settlers, but they also build structures.

BTW I played out till I finished Sun Tsu and Kights Templar and have the Epic going as a prebuild to Sistines. I got an MGL from the long war with the Mongold. They sent about 30 horses to a frontier town in groups of 2 to 7. They did not attack the town as I had two pikes and Sun's gave me a barracks. I use AC and LB mostly to chop them up. I have upgrade to Knights, but they got peace before they faced them.

[Creator]

The frightened little AI lol.

Yes im doing exactly that even if I have to go to another city 4 squares away with out road I build the road on the way it seems to speed up the roading and irigation process not to mention the money that comes in = science.

Now its all clear to me now.

[vmxa1]

I don't know if it was mentioned along the way, but irrigation is another place to make mistakes.

Be careful not to over do it. I would prefer to only irrigate tiles that would be needed to let the city grow. Two exceptions are to get water to another town and to set up pumps.

One thing you often see in the AI land is lots of irrigated grasslands. Hope to see some reports of getting to the end.

[Creator]

Me to it going well so far I have 10 citys and 2 of them are size 9 and growing quickly the rest are slowly catching im wanting to change goverment to monarchy but need more big citys and the money is starting to flow in I have around 8 per turn and 20-28 when the research is at an end. Is this normal amout of money coming in at 40BC and should I have more citys??

[vmxa1]

Too many variables to say about how many cities one should have.

I would say that I would not switch to Monarchy in this game and hardly any game that you did not intend to fight endlessly. I love monarchy for Sid, but hate it for any normal game.

You should wait to get republic and switch to it. You do not want to switch more than once as a non-religious civ. The only exception would be later in the game. You may find a reason to go to Dem or Commie. I doubt that would make sense in this game.

I can tell you I had 11 cities at 50BC and was making 108gpt. Once size 12 and 1 size 8, if that helps any. I already had Monarchy, but was doing my own ressearch for Rep so I could switch to it.

Republic will generate more income. It will cost more for support, but that is fine. Once the GL is dead, you will need to do all your own research or conquer others.