A bit of Landscape Gardening???

[Oldman]

Do you guys have any opinions on transforming the land? i'm just playing out occ13, and i need a couple of hills to mine, but each hill takes an engineer 20 turns to create, doesn't that seem like a LONG time to you?!?! i've never really questioned it before, cause i normally just go with the land i have and cite my cities accordingly!!

So how do you guys go about it? especially in occ? when do you build your engineers to transform and develope the land? do you do it early enough to manage with just a couple of engineers? or do you build 4 or 5 and rush all the gardening? thoughts anyone???

[Paul]

That's why I usually go with forests instead of hills in OCC games.

[Oldman]

ok, so how many forests do you need to get your city upto 80 shields per turn? I think on occ13 i'm going to have the 4 silks with railroads, 3 sheilds each and 3 hills (mined and railroaded) with factory, hydro and manu plant! which gives me 80+ shields!!!

And how early do you start creating your forests? do you only ever have 2 engineers? what kind of balance do you try to strike between city size and growth with food, trade and shields? cause you don't get much food and no trade(?) from hills and forests, so the more you have the slower your research rate?

[Paul]

I just deleted all my old saves so I don't know exactly how many forests I had. I prefer to build my forests as late as possible so that I can still get a decent population. In OCC13 I built 4 engineers. And you should always put your forests (and also hills) on river squares so that you keep the trade arrows.

[Oldman]

Yeah, i think i'm going to need 4 engineers but i've left things a tad too late to build hills, maybe forests is the way i'll have a look when i get home!!

nice tip about the river squares though!!!

[Makeo]

I use transforming land a LOT in multiplayer. Especially for defence. Turning a fort on plains into a fort on a hill makes a big difference.

[Scouse Gits]

Hey Oldman - I had no problems reaching the magic 32 on my relatively inferior starting position for OCC 13 (2 Silk, 1 Whale, 1 mined hill, 2 forrested river + 1 shield from each other square = 34) I've just had another look at the centre site and I make it:
4 Silk = 12, 3 grassland rivers -> forrest = 9 + 10 plain and the city (shield grass) = 32
which puts you home there are also 2 boring grassland squares which you might consider mining to forrest and then irrigating to plains which would give you a total of 34 original shields = 85 final production
Forget your hills - go for the forrests ...


------------------
____________
Scouse Git[1]

"CARTAGO DELENDA EST" - Cato the Censor

[Oldman]

Cheers Scouse, So i'm guessing 32 is the base number before the factory, hydro & manu plant kick in!!!

So where did you settle then? i got from one of the shorter posts on the occ13 thread that you didn't settle at the start position, but i've not read through the logs yet, cause i ain't finished! Don't want to spoil anything?!?!? even though it is 1754 or something?!?!?

[Scouse Gits]

I set up home at (65, 51) 7 East and 3 South of your city - its not a bad location, but there is a very much better one about the same distance East again, but I didn't find that in time. Yes 32 is the pre-factory magic number - thanks to Paul (I think) for that in another thread.
It was on one of the earlier OCC fortnights that Paul gave his key piece of advice - irrigate forrests to plains and mine rivers to forrests - that way every square can yield shields & arrows - suddenly landscape gardening becomes a piece of cake...


------------------
____________
Scouse Git[1]

"CARTAGO DELENDA EST" - Cato the Censor

[Oldman]

It looks like i've made a Faux Pas on this one, i've farmlanded all of my river squares and left the grassland for landscaping!! it'll be a little messy and i doubt i'm going to get a prize at the forthcoming Britain in Bloom competition this year, but when you're up against a deadline like this, you just have to make sacrifices!!!!

[Tom DeMille]

Oldman, a couple of tips about maxing out your city site:

My impression is that mining an irrigated (or farmland) square into forest takes longer than mining an empty grass/plain square. I'm not sure if this is true or not (maybe I'll test it sometime), but I've gottten into the habit of pillaging my irrigation when I start mining a square into forest).

I used to run into food troubles in some of my games. I would max out my population and then find I had a food deficit of say 12 after converting some grassland into forest. Presto, my engineers would be killed off half way through spaceship construction and I would have lots of pollution.
Now I plan ahead a little more. Shortly after discovering refrigeration I count up all the shields I have and then figure out how many more I'll need for the magic 32. If it's 9 more shields, I know that I will need to convert 3 unshielded grasslands to forest. I then count up all the food I will produce after forests are in place and everything else is converted to farmland. I then figure out what my final population will be (I usually allow a food deficite of 2 or 3, making sure I won't run into famine too early). For occ13, I think I converted 2 grasslands to forest, and figured a population of 25 would give me a food deficit of only 2 later in the game.

Ok, enough ramblings. The moral of the story is to do some counting of shields/food to max out your population/production.

[Oldman]

Thanks Guys!! I went with the forest ideas, built 2 more engineers and got everything up and running at 85sheilds the turn before i complete Apollo!!! then i get wiped out by the Japs and Spanish!!! but i think i've got the principles right at least?!?!!?

[Scouse Gits]

Oh and congratulations on your promotion Prince Oldman ...

------------------
____________
Scouse Git[1]

"CARTAGO DELENDA EST" - Cato the Censor