INC's Game Log - Please Advise

[Theseus]

INC, ask and ye shall receive!!

Welcome aboard, and may your strategies ever advance.

[vmxa1]

Originally posted by I'mNowCivilized
Ok, that looks a little big. How do I reduce it?

It is 800x600 so if it was resized to 1024 it would be smaller. You have to check the size in bytes of the new file to be sure it is within the limits allowed.

Otherwise you will have to crop it. I would not worry about it. Post the starting save from 4000bc.

[vmxa1]

The first hurdle is you have to get water to the cow and wheat. This means irrigation of a tile that you would rather not irrigate.

To me that means using the grassland next to the wheat. I do not want to irrigate to bonus grass tiles and the cow is too far too get to right away. Later you can chop the forrest and get water to the cow that way.

[Krill]

vmxa1, while the worker is on the BG it can road. It saves worker turns. That BG can be used to gain commerce instead of shields for the first 10 turns, while the extra food is out of reach...

[vmxa1]

Yes, but you will need to irrigate the BG and then soon need to mine it. That is a lot of lost turns or the loss of the extra shield.

I have not calculated it out, but my instincts suggest to road and irrigate the grass and then the wheat. Now I do not have to do anything to the grass for a long time as it will wait until I have mined those BG tiles. By then I can afford to mine the original grass with the workers I will be adding into the city anyway.

What I would have to do is to count out the workers turns and compare that to the timing of the culture border expanding to make sure the wheat is in my border by the time I irrigate it.

If I had the save I check to make sure that is the most efficient method, now I am just guessing.

[Krill]

vmxa1, to be completely efficient, the irrigated grassland would need to be mined anyway. Both a bonus grassland and a normal grassland are needed to maximise the amount of commerce generated. That is the only BG on the river.

[Solomwi]

BAH! Move 6 and nail down that tobacco! I'd agree with UnO on moving 4, but mainly because I despise those 1f coastal tiles. Of course, tight enough city spacing will allow at least one to be worked by a coastal city.

My worker choice would be to move 7, mine the tile, then road it, giving Paris one fully developed tile to work after seven turns (1 to move, 2 to road, 4 to mine), then move 9 to irrigate the grassland. Roading isn't important on the grassland, since you should get your second citizen down to the cow (growth and culture expansion will be simultaneous and that will be a 2f2s tile before improvement, giving you a 2 turn worker, and can be moved to the wheat in the second turn for food, since the 2 shields will be excess), and already have a road leading to the wheat on the BG. Irrigation takes 3 (somebody correct me if this is wrong) turns for France, so your second worker will already be south to mine a BG when you're done. Move worker 1 to the wheat, irrigate and road, then move him down for a forest chop (2,2) to help your granary and allow water to the cow.

Crap, the 2 turn worker bit relies on the second warrior taking five turns, which it won't once the mine is up in turn 5. I'd insert another warrior into the queue before the worker, but I'm not a dirty stinking builderer . I'm at a bit of a loss what to do with those two turns otherwise. The borders still won't have expanded, so working the wheat for food is out of the question. You could always move off the BG, but that's counterproductive, as it costs you the road commerce. As distasteful as it is, two turns of wealth would be a small help, and keep that thrid warrior from costing you unit support until you found your second city.

[Cort Haus]

Originally posted by UnOrthOdOx
Personally would have probably moved 4 first just to be on the coast, but a great site as it is.

The advantage of building on the coast, INC, is that you can get 2fpt (food per turn) from the coast/sea with a harbor. Building one step in from the coast means you get some wet tiles that can only yield 1fpt. Hence better to be coastal, or two tiles away, rather than one tile away. Of course, other considerations should be weighed in, but in the above case I would do the same as UnO.

[vmxa1]

Originally posted by Krill
vmxa1, to be completely efficient, the irrigated grassland would need to be mined anyway. Both a bonus grassland and a normal grassland are needed to maximise the amount of commerce generated. That is the only BG on the river.

It will be quite a while before you have enough citizens to work all the good tiles you have, so the grass can wait to be mined.

I put commerce below food and shields anyway. One more gold coin is not very valuable to me at this point. I have wheat, cow and three BG tiles and forrest, so again the grass can wait.

[Dominae]

Originally posted by vmxa1
I have not calculated it out, but my instincts suggest to road and irrigate the grass and then the wheat. Now I do not have to do anything to the grass for a long time as it will wait until I have mined those BG tiles. By then I can afford to mine the original grass with the workers I will be adding into the city anyway.

This is probably what I would do, too. Your Food output is both higher and achieved faster this way than the Cattle route. This is worth a little lost Worker efficiency. After a Warrior, the capital would build a second Worker which would chop the Forest on the way down to the Cattle, adding the 10 Shields to a Granary.

[vmxa1]

As to moving to be coastal I bah. I do not care about the 1F tile issue, it will not come into play for soooooo long. Were I to move at all it would be up the river to get all land tiles and stay on the river.

This is warlord, so you can make many wonders in this city if it has all the tiles it needs.

[I'mNowCivilized]

Maybe I'll Start over from the 4000 BC save, because this is where I am at at 350 BC.

I also have the following resources that aren't visible because there are cities on them.

Chartes has Tobacco
Iron under Rheims and Tours
Horses under Lyon
Incense under Rouen

I didn't want to put Tours right on the horses but Arabia declared war 1 turn before I was planning on do settling it. They had 5 warriors I had 2 warriors and a spearman, plus my settler. I figured my best chance of not losing everything plus losing the horses was to go right there.

[I'mNowCivilized]

and here's the part of my civ that's off map in the first one

[Solomwi]

Six things stand out.

First, your city spacing is very loose. C-x-x-C with the occasional C-x-x-x-C is my preference, but C-x-x-x-C should be a maximum. I would have founded Marseilles 2 of where it is, both to keep tighter spacing and to take advatage of the river growth bonus. Your southern cities look good, so I can only guess this was in response to the jungle. You can put another city 8 of the wheat to good effect, and let it crank out workers to start clearing jungle. Generally, instead of tramping through the jungle, I'll tighten up my spacing to C-x-C in places to take advatage of banana tiles and work my way north. With Germany so close, the Lyons border check isn't bad, as long as you backfill.

Second, Avignon is at size 3 and building a temple, when it could kick out a settler to found next to that incense. Focus on culture in that city and take the incense from Germany. You can switch now without wasting any shields.

Third, you're overirrigated. There's no reason to irrigate that BG at Rheims-77. Under despotism, you lose the extra food anyway. Other than getting water to Orleans, which can wait until much later, there's no reason for any of those grass tiles to be irrigated. Mine them and get some shields.

Fourth, your military is a) almost all regular and b) evenly spread out. Keep a couple of swords in the south until you claim all the land, and move everything else to the German border. That's where the threat is. You may not want to fight, but just like in the real world, Germany doesn't have a history of letting France live peacefully. Marseilles and Paris are not under any threat, so keep one warrior if you need an MP in Marseilles, and get the spears north.

Fifth, you need more workers. Use Marseilles to pump them out until happiness is restored without MPs and kill two birds with one stone (don't forget to try the lux slider if you're using entertainers). Whatever you do, get the worker force up. One per city is a good rule of thumb.

Sixth, forget about the Great Library. Paris can be put to much better use building workers, settlers, improvements and units to take the inevitable fight to Germany.

[Theseus]

Some other random comments (Solomonwi's were quite good):

* Paris: Hmmm, one tile in from the coast is generally not preferred. Either move 1 to be on the coast (and go for the Colossus, which is one of the few Ancient GWs advisable for a capitol), or 9 up the river, for a somewhat more central and more productive location (i.e., Paris cannot as located build harbors, and thus two tiles are relegated to 1F1G).

* Why is Paris777 improved? Maybe a road, OK, for a future city, but the mine?

[SIDENOTE: Do you understand the navigation system we are using? It is basically the numeric keyboard... move '9' for NW [EDIT: NE, of course], for instance.]

* I look to my continental extremities in desiging my CP plan... thus, the SE point where the Barbs are would be a no-brainer for me, and thus I would have placed Rouen elsewhere, to end with at least a CxxC spacing (on the other hand, I am, errr, known for tight spacing, so given what you've done so far I would STILL consider a city where the Barbs are).

* Also about Rouen: Being NEXT to an unroaded lux is useless...

* You have THREE iron? At this size of empire? Hey, if you are that lucky, go find a Tank and attack it with a Spearman.
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That said, you just need to get a handle on a couple of the things we've mentioned, and I can tell you are inches away from a huge leap in your gameplay. Take that 10 city empire you'e built, and tweak it the way that we are advising, and you will be well on your way to mastering the early game... and that is the ticket!

/me remembers ducki... wipes a tear.

Seriously, you are on the cusp. Don;t get me wrong, there's a bunch you've gotta learn to do (WORKERS! ROADS!), but you are definitely on the right track.

For the AU crowd watching... doesn;t this seem, I dunno, deserving of a lesson? I sorta feel like cracker at CFC did the lesson before this, but then the next thing is to take that 10-city empire to the next level?