I thought I was lucky; now I'm not sure

[SilverDragon]

quote: Originally posted by DaveV on 05-15-2001 01:27 PMThat's an awful lot of off-path techs to spend for the privilege of vaporizing eight caravans and building a wonder that does the same thing as two martial law units under Communism.

Do the math. By the time you're in Communism, you are probably using muskets or riflemen. Let's say muskets. You normally defend with one defender. The extra ML musket costs an extra 30 sheilds, and if you have 50 cities, for example, you will be saved 1500 sheilds for a 600 sheild wonder. It also gives you money under fundy, unlike the units.

OMG I just contradicted DaveV!

[East Street Trader]

I had a go recently at exploiting oedo's discovery so as to fluctuate between Monarchy (for settler/caravan building) and then brief bursts of representational government(for WLT*Ds and delivery of the caravans).

This turns out to make micromanagement challenging and after three or four games I had still not got the method to the point where I could demonstrate a clear benefit. I suspect the period in Monarchy (Communism later) should be longer than I tried and the periods in representational gov.t shorter.

One problem is that you get high population very early which makes the A1 very unfriendly almost from day one.

I'll come back to it though. I got far enough with it to satisfy myself that the losses during the occasional years in anarchy don't, by themselves, make the method unworkable.

Two other comments. After the first ten or a dozen cities are down it is perfectly possible to allow some of the heartland cities to begin to grow and to exploit their productivity with improvements. And there is no harm in some land development. But, while there is still land to expand into, I agree the balance needs to continue to favour getting the cities down. If a turn goes by without one or two new cities being established treat that as a warning that your settlers are spending too much time being distracted by land development.

Secondly, I find myself thinking more and more that Wonders are also a distraction. The games which go well seem to be the ones where I use caravans to establish routes; the times when I find myself thinking that my civ may be stagnating are the ones where I seem forever to be just storing up caravans towards yet another Wonder. So I am trying to cut down the ones I go for.

Oh, and as far as Mike's and Bach's go, it is worth remembering that they give precisely no happy citizens. So if you are thinking in terms of some WLT*Ds spurts of growth, or the benefits of Republican arrows in shield rich Monarchy/Communism, you are better of with routes and roads supported by Marketplaces and Banks and a 20% luxury setting.

[Mixam]

Rufus I found myself in a similar situation a couple times. It was just after I came here and heard expand, expand, expand Anyways I don't really like the idea of ICS so I expanded like mad but with room for the cities to grow. It got to the point where I had so many cities I was getting black hats all over b4 AD (I was still in monarchy). I had never had turns so long in the BC's b4. And my research seemed to be taking so long. I wasn't thinking straigh and I decided to go to republic for WLT*D and big surprise without all the martial law all my cities went into disorder with the exception of the SSC which had Shakespeares I think. After clicking zoom to city and switching to temples and marketplaces in about 50 cities,which wasn't even half of them, I gave up and started a new game. Sufice it to say I won't expand so fast ever again uless i have a good government

[Jarouik]

I, too, played a similar game not long ago; I know I was incredibly lucky to begin with, finding lots of advanced tribes early on, but being on a huge continent led me to outgrow the other civilizations in every respect. In this game, as usually, having built Hanging Gardens, Michelangelo's Chapel and J.S. Bach's Cathedral as early as possible led me to be able to expand and keep my citizens relatively content in Monarchy even when I was having on the order of 50-100 cities. In addition, I was lucky enough to get Pyramids, which ensured swift population growth while still in Monarchy; I know some people do not recommend Pyramids on Deity due to the unhappiness of even the smallest cities, but building the happiness wonders meant my cities could be content and reasonably sized to build settlers and, after that, Temples and Marketplaces, very fast due to the ease of unit support in Monarchy. Once I had covered most of the continent and built J.S. Bach's, already having Marketplaces in all the larger cities, converting to Democracy meant that my population soared immediately - it is true that the happiness wonders do not create happy citizens, but they turn the unhappy population to content, making up for the lack of martial law, and 40% luxury rating on Democracy does the rest, causing nationwide We love the President days. This was the phase that made me truly invincible, since in a few hundred years I got dozens and dozens of cities with population 8 or more, buying Aqueducts and Sewer Systems as quickly as I could afford.

It is notable that if you are trying to populate a huge continent, sticking to Monarchy quite long pays off, I think. Although the horrible corruption means your science is quite slow, and you have to have the happiness wonders to be able to expand at all, it is the fastest way to build settlers to fill the continent. Only after I have founded most of my cities, perhaps built Settlers there to start improving the land and, most importantly, built the happiness wonders to make up for losing martial law effects, do I switch to Democracy - from then on it is only a matter of building Marketplaces to get your cities to celebrate and Aqueducts and Sewer Systems to keep them growing.