Just beat the game at monarch difficulty for the first time...wonder vic'try (korea)

[ariano_paluda]

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[ariano_paluda]

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[ariano_paluda]

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[Dis]

wonder victory? how does that work for the normal epic game?

[Dis]

Originally posted by Rommel2D

SGA works for the advisors- they tell you you're getting more beakers, but those beakers aren't counted toward the actual discovery...

it seemed to me my turns to discover something went down during sga.

[Modo44]

Originally posted by Dissident
wonder victory? how does that work for the normal epic game?

You need to get 18 of all 29 wonders. It does not seem to matter who built them.

[Rommel2D]

Originally posted by Dissident
it seemed to me my turns to discover something went down during sga.

That's what the advisor reports, but the one time I paid close attention, and what other players around here have reported, after you get to 'one more turn left', it will stay there for two or more turns until the non-SGA number of beakers are accumulated.

I haven't checked this very thoroughly, but we've discussed it in the PBEM forum a few times and no one has presented evidence to the contrary...

[ariano_paluda]

Any comments on my screenies??

AP

[Dis]

snoopy's terrain would be an improvement

[Terra Nullius]

i must, i must, i must explore

repeat three times before bed every night

it also looks like you're building settlers at pop3. the gurus ((ha! someone just called aqua a guru! that's gotta be a first)) would say that you need to let your capital grow more. ideally you want it to be oscillating between about pop4 and pop6.

generally city locations look ok - definite room for improvement, but it's no worse than i usually manage.

i'm not happy about bursa for a coupla reasons.
1) one tile further and you could have taken in the wheat bonus
2) you've got a worker busy roading hills very early on - seems less than optimal

could do with better prioritisation of tiles early on
plains beside rivers are a no brainer - it takes less time to irrigate than to mine. you seem to have a lot of easily improved riverside tiles that are waiting a long time before they get the treatment

on the upside - i'm impressed to see so much fighting going on with just archers and spears - i normally wouldn't bother 'til i had something stronger to fight with.

oh, and just to keep the aqua/trip conjoined pair happy ...
more workers .. more workers .. more workers

[ariano_paluda]

I was wondering:
is it worth going for monarchy immediately? the reason i ask this, is that the computer seems to get philosophy before me anyway??

AP

[Terra Nullius]

ok, now we're getting somewhere..

let me be blunt. there is no way in hell the ai should beat you to philosophy at monarch level when you start in a valley close to four (count them) rivers. the fact that this happened tells me straight away that you are not building a decent economy at all.

two things you need to do
1) let your capital develop better before trying to pump out the settlers. there are occasionally times when you might be desperate to claim an important piece of land. in general though, you need to get into the habit of letting your city build to pop 5 or 6, plan to have a settler built on the turn you reach pop 6.
in 2150bc, you are at pop 3 and not growing for another 5 turns, but you have a settler coming in two turns.

2) prioritise cash flow. by 1075bc, you still have a lot of riverside tiles that are not being worked. that's two gold going wasted for every tile not being worked. my priorities on this map would be
i. build granary in capital with forest chop
ii. road and irrigate all riverside plains

the big dilemma with this map is how to deal with a high proportion of riverside hills. in a perfect world, you'd have a buncha cows beside gentle rivers, hills sitting in the middle distance and lovely scenic mountains in the background.

i think you're doing the right thing by leaving the hills for later. but you really need to plan for getting cities built and tiles improved according to your economic needs.
this is one reason why it's so important to explore early. once you have a clear picture of the territory, you can sit down and count out exactly what tiles you intend to use. yes, count them, ...

[ariano_paluda]

I should've been clearer. i beat the ai wrt philosophy in this game. in fact i was the tech leader for 3/4 of the game. What i was talking about was on emperor. Everytime i've played on that level. the ai beat me wrt philosophy. blunt is okay, as long as it's not without reason..

thanx again :-)

it's nice that i can benefit from your experiences :-)

AP

[vulture]

lebensraum: getting your capital to size 6 to pump settlers is not, on its own, a virtue. As a rule, you want cities producing workers to be the smallest size they can be to work efficiently.

Firstly, you want to find the city size that gives you the best growth. Which is going to be the size at which al tiles producing more than 2 food are being worked (growing an extra size and working a new tile producing 2 food doesn't improve the rate at which you grow; working a tile with 3 food speeds up your growth).

Secondly you want a granary to speed up (usually double) the rate of growth. This can usually be done whilst growing your city to the right size anyway.

Thirdly, you need enough shields to get you to 30 shields in the time it takes to grow two sizes. This is done by growing more to take advantage of the 2 food tiles that generate shields (irrigated plains, mined grassland, some bonus tiles). Plus due to game mechanics you can take advantage of 2 shields from forests without suffering any growth slowdown from the food (if you are prepared to micromanage).
In THESE cases it is worth offsetting the loss from taking more time to build your first settler against the benefit you get churning out settlers more quickly after that.

The ideal of course is the 4 turn settler pump, if you can scrape up enough food for it.


Say for example you have a city with 2 floodplains, 1 bonus grassland and lots of normal grassland within reach (not very realistic admittedly, but it's an example). Irrigate the floodplains (3/0/2 in despotism with roads) and mine as many grasslands as needed (2/2/1 for the bonus grassland, 2/1/1 for the others). Your city center produces 2/1/2.

First rule: you want to be size 2 or more to get to both of the floodplains, giving you +4 food per turn.

Second rule: with a granary, that means growth in 3 turns (with some waste).

Third rule: you therefore need to generate 30 shields in 6 turns to have a 6 turn settler pump. If you run at size 3-4 working the bonus grassland with the third pop, and a normal grassland with the fourth, the shields per turn you generate are 3, 3, 4, 4, 4, 5, giving 23 in total. not enough. (Not the 3, 3, 3, 4, 4, 4 you might expect incidentaly). Working size 4-5 gives you 4, 4, 5, 5, 5, 6, for 29 total, which is annoyingly one short. A forest would come in handy here. So you have to work size 5-6, giving you 5, 5, 5, 6, 6, 6 (if you are limited to size 6 by the lack of aqueduct or river), for a nice 33 shields - enough to generate a settler every 6 turns. And that's what determines the size your city should be.

If, on the other hand, you have irrigated cows on plains (3/2/1) instead of floodplains you can get by with a size 2-3 city instead, since that's enough to generate all the shields you need in the time taken to grow to sizes.

[Terra Nullius]

Originally posted by ariano_paluda blunt is okay, as long as it's not without reason..

without reason? .. without reason?!!

you know who ya talkin to there buddy??!!

Just beat the game at monarch difficulty
And...i'm gonna try again

What i was talking about was on emperor.

phuhh, reason

so nyah..

(just kidding) oh, an' i promise not to kick your butt in any upcoming pbems.. .. honest!