Turn 100, 570BC

[nbarclay]

On closer examination, it looks like our best option for this turn is the same whether our ultimate goal is a settler or a WC, so I can go ahead and finish the turn. But we do need to be thinking about the issue for next turn.

[asleepathewheel]

They don't need the iron in the capital. They can have the iron connnected to D;ville and stream in the warriors that way for the upgrade.

[Randolph]

I agree that to stop rushing units before Vox is "broken" would be to unnecessarily extend this war, and ultimately use more resources.

[nbarclay]

Originally posted by Randolph
I agree that to stop rushing units before Vox is "broken" would be to unnecessarily extend this war, and ultimately use more resources.

As long as the main determining factor in how long it takes us to win the war is number of units, rushing units probably makes sense. Once things shift over to where distance is the main determining factor, adding a handful of additional units won't make much difference, and we need to switch a good chunk of our focus back to building our economy. In my view, the transition point comes when we either take Dissidentville or control a road all the way to it and have no combat-effective Voxian forces in our territory in the western theater. (In the east, I don't really care whether Vox's forces are dead or just pinned down to where they are rendered irrelevant.) Once we reach that point, and assuming we don't suffer massive losses along the way, rushing a few extra troops will have little impact on exactly when we win.

[Randolph]

Agreed, That's what I meant by "broken", the point where the equilibrium breaks and one side one side is essentially ensured victory.

[asleepathewheel]

Originally posted by nbarclay
But I'm starting to get sick of spending gold on units and getting almost no investment out of our golden age,

Well, thats the problem with rexing the first 75 turns of the game. Had we built up some military, any military, then we could have used the GA more effectively. Its a trade off, a dangerous one. In more capable hands we might have been finished. No one is happy about wasting the GA on units, but that is the price we are paying for being lax in our unit building. And until Vox is taken up to the isthmus, I don't think it would be a huge mistake to stop building units. After all, we don't know if we have enough to finish vox as it is, and war on Bob in looming and we will need expeditionary fighters.

[Shiber]

Think of it this way: the more units we build now, the earlier we'll be able to conquer Madrid.

[DeepO]

We're not sure yet on Vox: sure, their initial stack seems to have stopped being dangerous, but we haven't accounted for all their units yet. Don't get too optimistical, their current silence on the public board could also come because they're planning something. If played right, they could still have over 20 immortals we haven't seen yet, it wouldn't surprise me if 15 of those will be pressing on Monsoon next turn (or whenever the road finishes)

But, Cyclone's best use is food production, and it doesn't seem like we are needing all the unit production we can use. Don't forget many of our cities are not growing anymore (due to size-limits), we are going to need to compensate this if we want to stay on top. It doesn't look like we're going to find a lot of population in Vox's cities, so we need to build workers and settlers as fast as we can miss the cats. 3-turn settlers will be nice, 1-turn workers even nicer. We need both, our current worker force is laughable... if we want to go offensive, we need to be able to spare at least 5 workers, preferably 10 on jungle roading, or we'll lose momentum fast.

DeepO

[DeepO]

Oh, and regarding the Build-to exploit: strangely enough, I have been using it forever (since the day I found out there was a road-to command, which was likely the same day I bought Civ3). I never noticed it was different from doing it the roading yourself, although I did notice the workers ending in the middle of the turn, though. But are you sure it only works with road-to? I thought all automated workers did it like this.

I can't say for sure, but I have waited on my workers many times to see them finish a road in the middle of a turn, I thought that was supposed to be happening either way. Why else would workers carry out their orders in the middle of a turn (when they first get active)... they also do it with mines, irrigation (same trick can work there too) and other stuff, but you will never deliberately wait on moving units to see a mine completed first.

BTW, it doesn't always happen, it depends on which worker you use for it. The last (few?) workers never get active before the end of the turn, they stay last no matter what you do. I thought that was needed to give the player the chance to wake automated workers for rush jobs, for which I used that property a lot. I never considered it an exploit that all the other automated workers did their job before they were supposed to do, but cursed when the 'wrong' workers finished their job late.

Strange that you guys only notice this now, I guess I'm one of the few people here who will automate 80-95% of my workers from the ancient age onwards. It's ironic that by playing less efficient, you gain efficiency

So, do I consider it an exploit? No way! It's clever use for automation, that's right, and this is the first time where I see anyone actually planning on doing it deliberately (against the AI, one turn delay isn't that bad). But I can't see us prohibiting the use of automated workers in MP, and automated workers have the same advantage as the road-to workers we are discussing here. The problem lays not in the automated workers, it lays in that hand-workers are, for some strange, buggy reason disadvantaged.

DeepO

[nbarclay]

I'm certainly not suggesting that we stop building units. But we have an enormous production rate in our core, and once the balance in the war is clearly tipped, I don't think we can afford not to shift some of our focus away from units. Our culture is a joke, and we have two cities that would have access to whales if they had temples. Tempest's production could be double what it is now with an aqueduct. Some of our outlying cities are suffering outrageous losses of gold and shields due to not having courthouses. If we win the war with Vox but leave Glory of War and Neu Demogyptica in a position to use their golden ages to outstrip us economically, will that win the game for us?

[DeepO]

Oh, these were all comments on ending a road early, not that workers get extra movement points in case of a road-to command. That would of course be an exploit, as it is a bug... and a new bug at that, it didn't happen in vanilla Civ3.

DeepO

[DeepO]

Nathan, that's my idea for sure, however it's a bit too early to start on culture or courthouses. In 5 turns, everythign will have most likely changed... but until we are within sight of D-ville, we shouldn't stop building units in all our cities.

What we need to do is find ourselves a way of not using cash for units, as this is too costly in the long run. We have spend what, 1000 gold on units so far? Very expensive... even if it gave us 250 neccessary shields.
I agree on one point: I think we're safe enough that we can stop using Cyclone for unit production, and start using it again where the city is most good at: building food.

DeepO

[nbarclay]

I'm not saying we're at the point where we can shift our construction projects away from military matters yet. Even our next couple settlers have military purposes. But I'm expecting the balance to shift decisively in our favor sometime in the next one to five turns, depending on how Vox plays, and I want us to be ready to shift a little bit away from a 100% short-term military focus when that happens.

[Randolph]

I think this is an important topic. Does anyone have (civ) MP experience in finishing off a moderately sized opponent (I don't, so maybe this is more understood to others then to me)? We (or should I say all of you ) went from almost no military to fighting off a decent force in only a few turns. Vox certainly doesn't have our economy, but if they play their cards right they could make our final victory much more costly then the AI can come close to.
We (obviously) want to destroy Vox in the most efficient way possible, so what does this entail? Some ideas:
1) complete elimination, as many have said to not remove Vox from our island/continent would waste potential economic assents, and leave open the possibility of future annoyances.
2) Sufficient economic force, 90%+ "full economy" (tax, production, etc) as long as necessary, and 90%+ production ALAN.
3) Properly conservative/ambitious attack strategy.

What else (I'd like to think more on this but I have to go)

[DeepO]

Randolph, I'm pretty sure we're doing ok what efficient Vox-removal is concerned, but as said in other places, fun has to be part of it too. We need some kind of tactic to make it count, so far this war has been quite boring.

Come to think of it, I'm going to start a new thread on this, it's important enough to not let it clutter in our turn threads

DeepO