The "Size-5" strategy

[Xin Yu]

Some notes:

Just as 5 scientists can give you 16 science bulbs, 5 taxmen can give you 16 golds. The effect increases when you build city improvements. This is very useful when you are rushing for a wonder. You can have some cities build caravans, and others hire taxmen (stop scientific research for a while), and use tax money to rush buy caravans.

One food caravan can supply a city enough food for 5 turns. Using this, in later stage of the game, you can push the above strategy to its limit -- in a big city hire 16 scientists or taxmen (with corresponding city improvements), and use food caravans to keep them work there forever. Suppose you have a size 20 city and build marketplace, bank, and stock exchange. Hire 16 taxmen will give you 120 gold per turn (suppose the other 4 citizens can provide enough gold for the maintainance). Spend 125 gold every 5 turns for buying a food caravan, you net 95 gold per turn, enough to buy 30+ shield of production, only without any happiness and pollution problem.

The ultimate parctice is to use food caravans to increase SSC's population to 36, and hire 16 scientists, then use food caravans to support the food consumption.

[SilverDragon]

I have been making some 'science' cities and some 'gold' cities. I make a whole bunch of gold cities, because my size 5 cities don't have good production, because they aren't producing jack diddly squat every other turn. So, I rushbuy. The gold cities have tax improvements and not science ones, and the science ones get science improvements and not tax ones. I've started an Emperor game to try it out and I'm looking at a chance to land before 1500. But then again, arii landed in 1075 on diety, so I guess I have a long way to go.
*goes off and starts cussing out the mongols and persians under his breath*

[Xin Yu]

SilverDragon: maybe if you build more caravans and trade a lot, you can get to AC faster . Size-5 city is a starting strategy. They should grow to size 20 eventually.

[SilverDragon]

They do. I use them for a while, and then they "graduate" to being a normal city, around 18-20 population. After i get 8 normal cities, I stop size fiving.

[Smash]

This "hire specialist" scheme does have a place in any game.You don't have to do this all the time.You may want to do this during certain parts of a game.And maybe not every city.
It works really well in scenarios.You can get techs way before you were supposed to.Its fairly easy to generate 5000 beakers in the first 2 turns of Red Front for example.

A good tactic for fast science but eventually you need some sheilds.I find myself hiring scientists and taxmen at certain times.

[cavebear]

I'm trying it in a current game against a player who is really better than I am. It's working well, though it feels odd. Doubtless, I do not have the system working well yet.

Still, I am holding my ground on development (actually ahead on the better techs, and got to Monarchy faster). In fact, I will have Philosophy in just a few turns. I have fewer cities, to be sure, but they are 5-5-5-4-3-1, and about to build another.

IN SPITE OF this world being mostly plain and swamp (which seems hard on the "size 5" strategy), it is working well enough. On a more grass and forest setting (we are in 2x1x), I would have a killer lead!

I got my first 2 cities built on corn, close together, and that certainly helped, but it is very very difficult to build up the needed food surplus with plains. This idea needs grass/forest around the specials.

Errors I made: Forgot how to add a settler to the main city and disbanded it there instead of using "b". That set me back. Built barracks because I couldn't decide between more settlers or warriors (and my opponent is a fierce attacker). But I also got pikemen and monarchy fast, so maybe I've come out ahead (vet pikes early, cool). Best tech rate I can maintain is 4, but had 3 once.

Have had difficulty keeping the scientists fed with the plains terrain, but even then, I had 6 turns of 5 scientists before having food problems in the main city the first time.

With some practice, this could really work well.


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[cavebear]

Hmmm, in reviewing Arii's post, I see he went for Writing and Currency, while I did go for Writing, but later, and went for Feudalism for defense.

Perhaps I can get the Currency with Philosophy, but I think I would rather have Chivalry or Monotheism, given the aggressive nature of my opponent. I have to give some thought to Map-Making, too.

I think that if I had played this strategy more accurately at the start, I would have each of those by now and could well have Vet Crusaders and Trade while my opponent was looking for Elephants.

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[arii]

I like this stuff. Tried it in my current tourney game and it allowed me to beat the other players to key wonders. You pay a price with a slower expanssion since you are sacrifying 2 cities for 1 size 5 city very early in the game. The game being exponential that's a big loss. On the other hand you can get to key techs a lot faster and hire taxmen to rush build wonders a lot faster.
Things I'm thinking of doing to maximize this strategy:
rushbuild city improvements library/market place to improve scientist/taxmen return
once you have 3-4 other city at size 3 go to republic for a few turn an WLTPD them to size 5-6 and go back to monarchy. You loose 6 turns of science but am sure you can make up quickly with 3-4 new scientist cities.
I like that you can be in monarchy (happyness+unit support) and get a good science rate.

[Maud'Dib]

Xin,

Couple of problems with this strategy--or it might be just my game.

1) Having only 1 food surplus did not stave off famine. 8 deficit with five scientists in Despotism (7 if in Monarchy--assuming you are on grasslands which I was); dropped a pop.

2) Huts effect your tech research--one game because of techs coming from huts. I didn't get monarchy until 100BC.

3) Location, location, location. If area is swamped, jungled, forested, hilled or Mted. Slows you down, BIG TIME.



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[SCG]

quote: <font size=1>Originally posted by Maud'Dib on 10-05-2000 03:09 AM</font> Xin, Couple of problems with this strategy--or it might be just my game. 1) Having only 1 food surplus did not stave off famine. 8 deficit with five scientists in Despotism (7 if in Monarchy--assuming you are on grasslands which I was); dropped a pop.

what version of the game do you have? I have the PC 2.42 version, and even with a 10 food deficit, but 1 bushel in the food storage, i was able to stave off famine.

quote: 2) Huts effect your tech research--one game because of techs coming from huts. I didn't get monarchy until 100BC.

This strategy is one way to compensate for that problem in the short term. Of course the fewer non-essential techs you have, the more effective this strategy will be. As a rule of thumb, the number of beakers early on needed is 10x the number of techs you have. This is compensated upwards if you are ahead, downwards if you are behind. If you read some of the other threads in the strategy forum, you'll see that quite a few people will deliberately avoid tipping many huts until they are in monarchy for that very reason.

quote: 3) Location, location, location. If area is swamped, jungled, forested, hilled or Mted. Slows you down, BIG TIME.

That is why you use settlers from feeder cities to get you up to size 5. And an added benefit here is that you do have a chance to pick and choose where to build those feeder cities to best pump out those settlers.

Edit: clarification on point 2 - all your starting techs combined (irrigation, roads, mining, and any bonus techs) can be viewed as having 1 tech for purposes of the rule of thumb. In other words, if you get 5 bonus techs, you still only need 10 or so beakers for your first discovery.
[This message has been edited by SCG (edited October 05, 2000).]

[Andromeda]

What do the references to "2x1x" and "1x1x" mean ?

I get the impression they only apply to MP games, is that correct ?

TIA

[Ming]

That is correct. In MP games, one of the options is to change the amount of production and movement of units.

2x2x means double production (every sqaure produces twice what it normally does, and the second 2x stands for double movement. Each unit gets to move twice it's normal amount. (horses move four, explorers move six)

People can play any combination... 2x1x (double production, single movement) or 1x2x or 2x2x or 1x1x.

[DaveV]

quote: Originally posted by Ming on 10-05-2000 09:51 AM 2x2x means double production (every sqaure produces twice what it normally does

Well... yes and no. I don't have a lot of experience with 2x production, but it seems that +1 type modifications are not handled properly. Specific examples: if you build a city on a square that would normally produce no shields, it will produce 1 shield in 1x production. In 2x production, it still produces 1 shield (not 2, as you might expect). Even more egregious: building a road in grass, plains, or desert will increase trade by +1, rather than +2.

Note that if you own MGE, you can start a hotseat game with 5 AIs and 2 human players, don't restart eliminated players. Quit when you're one of the human players, and you can play a 2x production game against the computer. The AI is even more clueless than usual in 2x production, of course...

[Ming]

You are correct that it never quite works out the way it should seem to...

However...

quote: Originally posted by DaveV on 10-05-2000 10:07 AM Note that if you own MGE, you can start a hotseat game with 5 AIs and 2 human players, don't restart eliminated players. Quit when you're one of the human players, and you can play a 2x production game against the computer. The AI is even more clueless than usual in 2x production, of course...

All you have to do to play on these settings against the computer is start a mp game, and when it the screen that shows other players coming in comes up... just continue with no other players... real simple. And you don't have to be connected to the net to do this.

[DaveV]

Ming - I believe that a no-opponents internet game works for you, but it hangs up for me during one of the setup screens - I can't rememeber which. Probably due to my antique hardware that doesn't even have a modem. The hotseat method does work for me.