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**vondrack** · December 8, 2002, 09:04

I am happy to see someone started the discussion!

I am terribly busy today, but I will definitely elaborate on your thoughts later.

Again, thanks for bringing this to the table!

**Spiffor** · December 8, 2002, 11:51

Very good topic

I agree we may very well be in the middle of crap terrain. The Jungle and deserts are often pretty wide, and I assume we are in the savannah : a small band of fertile grassland much like the one between the Sahara and the African Jungle (there is such a thing in Civ).
However, if my theory is verified, it means we have some good land to settle upon early on, East and West of us. I agree with you, we should discover these good lands as soon as possible.

I don't think we should build one or two workers now : building workers means losing one pop. point : everytime we build a worker in Legopolis, we lose 7 turns in the settler race

(7 turns is the time the city needs to grow). Our growth is our best, and maybe only, asset in our starting location, and making Legopolis a settler farm is the way to go : we produce settlers 6 turns faster than the others

However, when we'll want to settle in the Jungle, we'll have to build workers along with our settlers. Jungle can become a great terrain once cleared : it's grassland which can hold many luxuries and coal

If we work jungle tiles early enough during the Jungle Colonization, our cities there will be as productive as our cities on the Savannah.

Since Jungles can be changed into great territory, unlike deserts, I suggest we only build one city in the desert during early game, only to avoid Legopolis being at the border.

**delmar** · December 8, 2002, 14:53

Re: long term strategy

First of all let me second the motion and thank you for the excellent idea of starting this thread.

Comments inline.

Originally posted by redstar1
I've basically played until i've made contact with the other civs and exchanged maps.

We shouldn't give our maps to anyone and we shouldn't expect anyone to give his map to us. See the Foreign Affairs Strategy thread for more details.

Where we are compared with other generated maps does not bode well for us. This band of jungle/desert is normally fairly wide and doesn't contain much good land. This is why I think once we have built 2 warriors we should try and churn out a worker or 2. As soon as we get started clearing that jungle the better off we will be.

I respectfully disagree. It is very unlikely that we don't have enough good land for at least one more city (see the bonus grassland outside of our capital's reach?) and most early cities don't grow too big anyway. In worst case we can even share one or two of the tiles that are within our capital's reach. Clearing the jungle this early would be a waste of effort.

Another thing I noticed from the games I played is that 6 out of 7 times, Carthage was on a continent/island by itself. Either a smallish island or a big continent. The only time I was close to a civ was Spain, on the other side of a huge continent. Whether or not this means anything in out current game remains to be seen but its food for thought.

In my opinion it would be extremly dangerous to build on such a shaky ground. I at least find it highly unlikely that the qualities of the starting position is tribe-specific.

As a result of all this research I can see 3 possible scenarios.

1. We are in the middle of a ton of crap terrain which is going to take time to clear/expand beyond.

2. We share a continent with one or more civs, probably to the north or south and therefore on good land.

3. We are on our own.

I believe there are two scenarios:

1.) We are alone.

2.) We are not alone.

If we are alone, then my goal would be to get everything necessary to get off of our island: most notably Map Making, coastal cities, harbors, galleys and the Great Lighthouse.

If we are not alone, we should expand like hell (with reasonable defense for new cities, of course), then build up our defense, then build up our culture.

What we need to do with the terrain is another question. We should clean up only as much terrain as we are going to use. Specifically the "good" tiles around the capitol seem to be more than enough. As I mentioned above, a good site for 1 more city (e.g. producing workers) is extremly likely. And note that you can clean up area that belongs to you any time but you can't occupy more land after other tribes expanded up to our doorstep, even if you cleaned up your area perfectly in the meantime.

Sorry for the length of this

Hehe, you should see my posts in the Master Builder Poll thread.

**delmar** · December 8, 2002, 15:13

I agree with almost everything Spiffor said and would like to expand a bit only on the following:

Originally posted by Spiffor
However, when we'll want to settle in the Jungle, we'll have to build workers along with our settlers.

This seems to imply that we will send along a worker with every settler we produce. I assume you didn't mean this literally, and I would like to explain why you shouldn't.

One worker against a jungle tile is not much. It takes 12 turns to clean it up, 2 more to build road and another 2 or 3 to irrigate or mine it. 16-17 turns seems like eternity. I would send at least 3 workers against every jungle tile for cleaning in 4 turns, roading and mining in another 2. Then the "work group" can move on to the next jungle tile, possibly belonging to another city.

This also doesn't need to happen after the city is built: we can do it in advance, while the settler is in production.

Finally, I definitly wouldn't clear up more than 2 tiles per city and I would seriously consider to clean only one tile for every jungle-city. That should be enough for at least bringing up the population to 2 which can then be used to pop-rush a temple or something similar.

On a related note, a very difficult decision to make here is whether we should build roads on top of jungle. It seems like a waste of effort but I think it might be necessary for rapid but safe expansion. The bad news is that the base cost of building a road on jungle is 9 turns, which means 4.5 for us, and consequently it is not easy to find a setup which doesn't waste any worker time. If I were the Master Builder, I would grant some award to someone who comes up with a useable scheme.

**Spiffor** · December 8, 2002, 15:27

I wholeheartedly agree with Delmar : if we are to clear this jungle, we need stacks of 3 workers.
I don't think we should think about roading the jungle with our little info. Do we have neighbours to the south ? Are they far or close ? Are there Barbarians ? All these infos must be weighted before deciding if we road jungle or not.
If there is no urge regarding rivals/Barbarians, roading the jungle would be a real waste of time.

**Sharpe** · December 8, 2002, 16:18

Very good idea for starting this thread!

It is possible that we are on a wet world - due to the abundance of jungle and rivers near us - however, we would need to see how deep north to south the jungle is and how big the desert is above us to see for sure.

I suspect that we may be forced to clear the jungle sooner rather than later especially as our capital will run out of good food locations rapidly.

While we should first explore eastward, our next dilemma is where to send our 2nd warrior... it is very likely that another civ is probably south of the jungle and probably another (or two) may be north of the jungle - either north of us or west or east of us.

I think our next exploration should be to the NORTH - while I am intrigued about where that western river leads - we need to grab a variety of terrains for the various strategic resources. I strongly suspect that we should have an iron near our capital - so we will need to get horses and eventually oil, which should be most abundant in those desert squares. North of the desert should be plains squares (and perhaps more grassland) too.

Another question is what are the exploration priorities, I would say:

1) good city sites
2) huts
3) our opponents units and cities
4) key defensive spots

I mentioned in another thread that we might think about using a worker to establish an outpost on the gold hill - if it was to reveal the shroud, it should uncover a huge amount of terrain in the south (at least 24 squares) - it would take 2 warriors many turns to uncover the same amount of terrain. This would be more of a feasible strategy if we had a good food city - but Legopolis isn't (at least not yet).

**redstar1** · December 8, 2002, 17:16

As for exploration priorities...

I think it definately has to be city sites. In my post i explained what my research had led me to conclude. I hope I'm wrong but never the less, from where we currently sit we can see maybe one good oppurtunity for a city site. Thats not good...

**delmar** · December 8, 2002, 18:00

Originally posted by Sharpe
I suspect that we may be forced to clear the jungle sooner rather than later especially as our capital will run out of good food locations rapidly.

I would respectfully request people who agree with the above statement to come up with some kind of model/description/strategy/analysis to support this statement. In my opinion the capitol's surroundings are just fine and the capitol alone doesn't justify the cleaning of any jungle tile in the foreseeable future. In short: how big do you want the capitol be?

I usually use the capitol to build settlers and their escort for a looong time (unless I find a better city to do it), consequently I keep its population below 6 (usually 3-4). If this is strange for many people, then I will try to write up some argument supporting this idea.

While we should first explore eastward, our next dilemma is where to send our 2nd warrior... it is very likely that another civ is probably south of the jungle and probably another (or two) may be north of the jungle - either north of us or west or east of us.

In other words: we don't have a clue. I agree that we should send the first warrior to the East to see if that bonus grassland has any relatives there. I would send the next one to the West, on top of those hills for better view, to see if there is a good site next to the river (did someone come up with good names for geographical elements yet?

). The question is: how far should these warriors go in one direction. My preference is not more than 10 tile away, after that I would turn them to the North-West/South-East so that we get a full picture of the broader surroundings of our capital.

If we will have a third warrior to explore, I would send it to the mountain with the gold in it, to the South of Legopolice. There seems to be a river starting from that mountain, might have a good or at least so-so site for a city.

I think our next exploration should be to the NORTH - while I am intrigued about where that western river leads - we need to grab a variety of terrains for the various strategic resources.

This is an interesting alternative and should be certainly considered. My take on this is that the desert itself won't be settled for a long time by anyone, and supporting a city accross the desert will be a pain in the ass. Of course I am assuming here that the desert is relatively wide, 3-4 tiles. For all we know it might be just 2 tiles, with Paradise on the other side. Maybe a good compromise would be to send the first warrior into the desert immediately after it finds a good city site in the East (and I guess now I am assuming that there is a good site -- I certainly hope so).

exploration priorities, I would say:

1) good city sites
2) huts
3) our opponents units and cities
4) key defensive spots

#1 for sure and it should go hand-in-hand with #4. I am not so sure about huts though. I haven't played any non-expansionist civ recently, but I seem to remember that goody huts are not such a huge blessing for non-expansionist civs. I would be even inclined not to pop them, unless we have a good defense (which covers our workers as well), since we might unleash a bunch of angry warriors. Does anyone have relevant experience (non-expansionist civs on Regent level with regard goody huts)?

I mentioned in another thread that we might think about using a worker to establish an outpost on the gold hill - if it was to reveal the shroud, it should uncover a huge amount of terrain in the south (at least 24 squares) - it would take 2 warriors many turns to uncover the same amount of terrain. This would be more of a feasible strategy if we had a good food city - but Legopolis isn't (at least not yet).

Another interesting idea, although I have to strongly disagree with it. Establishing an outpost consums the (industrious!) worker, and by the way it's is not instantenious - someone should double check this, but I think on a mountain (I assume you meant gold mountain) it might take 3 turns. After you built it, you still have to defend it with at least a warrior (or you think you don't have to?). That warrior might very well keep exploring and is much cheaper than a worker (think food).

Lastly, I have to mention that I have some doubts whether these outposts work at all. In another game, I tried them out after I captured some enemy workers, and I wasn't impressed at all. It was in a different situation, so I guess all I am saying is: I want to see some serious proof (perhaps a model in the form of a scenario) that shows that our life will be a lot better with that outpost, as opposed to, say, keeping a warrior on top of that ~~hill~~ ahh, I mean: mountain!

**delmar** · December 8, 2002, 18:12

Originally posted by Spiffor
If there is no urge regarding rivals/Barbarians, roading the jungle would be a real waste of time.

This might be a good strategy: start building roads on jungle as soon as we meet rivals, till then try to clear them (with establishing good connections between cities in mind).

**delmar** · December 8, 2002, 19:19

Outposts

Edit: precision improved
I tried out this outpost issue. For a normal worker it takes 2 turns to make an outpost on a mountain. For us, being industrious, it takes only 1.

The Civilopedia, however, is either buggy or at least misleading: the outpost provides 2 tile "vision" from a hill and 3 tile vision from a mountain, not counting the tile under the outpost. This is one less than what the Civilopedia says (or they count the tile which is under the outpost). I wonder if someone came across such a bug report before.

Note that any unit standing on a hill or mountain has a vision of 2 (not counting the tile the unit stands on). The only real advantage I could find with the outpost that its vision is apparently not hindered by obstacles like hills or mountains.

**Sharpe** · December 8, 2002, 19:22

Establishing an outpost consums the (industrious!) worker, and by the way it's is not instantenious - someone should double check this, but I think on a mountain (I assume you meant gold mountain) it might take 3 turns. After you built it, you still have to defend it with at least a warrior (or you think you don't have to?). That warrior might very well keep exploring and is much cheaper than a worker (think food).

Oh I agree, the outpost idea is probably not feasible unless we build a good food city.

Just in case though, I just ran a new game in PTW and tested out the outpost premise.

The results were that while it did uncover a lot of the shroud (an area nearly the same size as we have uncovered so far), however, 6 squares would be uncovered anyway when the border expands, and another 4 to 5 squares were uncovered when the worker moved on top of the mountain - resulting in only a net gain of about 12 more squares uncovered.

This removal of the shroud was in the same turn as the outpost was created - and the outpost was created in 1 turn.

Yes, Delmar, I noticed that it only went out 3 squares out on the mountain too - that is disappointing as the manual does seem to be erroneous.

**vondrack** · December 8, 2002, 20:23

Re: long term strategy

Originally posted by redstar1
I've been playing some games however.... in fact I've played the early stages of 7 games set up the same way as our own. I've basically played until i've made contact with the other civs and exchanged maps. Where we are compared with other generated maps does not bode well for us. This band of jungle/desert is normally fairly wide and doesn't contain much good land. This is why I think once we have built 2 warriors we should try and churn out a worker or 2. As soon as we get started clearing that jungle the better off we will be. There is no guarantee that good land will be anywhere near our palace.

As delmar correctly points out elsewhere, I think, our situation is not that bad - there should be some pretty good land to the east of Legopolis. Building workers now in order to clear the jungle would be way too early.

Originally posted by redstar1
Another thing I noticed from the games I played is that 6 out of 7 times, Carthage was on a continent/island by itself. Either a smallish island or a big continent. The only time I was close to a civ was Spain, on the other side of a huge continent. Whether or not this means anything in out current game remains to be seen but its food for thought.

Interesting, 6 out 7 sounds like there should be some sort of relation... but I am pretty sure there is not. Just a weird worldmap generator streak, I guess...

Originally posted by redstar1
As a result of all this research I can see 3 possible scenarios.

1. We are in the middle of a ton of crap terrain which is going to take time to clear/expand beyond.
2. We share a continent with one or more civs, probably to the north or south and therefore on good land.
3. We are on our own.

Before the game started I would have taken anything over 3 but if it turns out we are on our own then this is our best chance. Our early develoment may be stunted but isolation will give us time.

Considering our commerciality and the river flowing through Legopolis, we should have a good chance to get to Map Making and Great Lighthouse before anyone else. Should we be alone, that (and finding a good site for a coastal city capable of building the Lighthouse) will have to be our priority.

I guess we will know much more within a few turns.

Originally posted by delmar
We shouldn't give our maps to anyone and we shouldn't expect anyone to give his map to us.

Quite correct.

Originally posted by delmar
I respectfully disagree. It is very unlikely that we don't have enough good land for at least one more city (see the bonus grassland outside of our capital's reach?) and most early cities don't grow too big anyway. In worst case we can even share one or two of the tiles that are within our capital's reach. Clearing the jungle this early would be a waste of effort.

I respectfully agree... with delmar, that is

... there seems to be at least one more acceptable city site East of Legopolis. And yes, we should start clearing jungle only when our workers start running out of better assignments. And use worker stacks, that's correct.

Originally posted by delmar
In my opinion the capitol's surroundings are just fine and the capitol alone doesn't justify the cleaning of any jungle tile in the foreseeable future.

Agreed. The Legopolis area will need no jungle clearing for quite some time. Especially since we are likely to use it as a settler/worker farm. Four fine food tiles are just enough.

Originally posted by delmar
The question is: how far should these warriors go in one direction. My preference is not more than 10 tile away, after that I would turn them to the North-West/South-East so that we get a full picture of the broader surroundings of our capital.

Here I do not seem to share your idea. I believe that our first warrior should venture as fas as possible in a given direction, looking for other civs and goody huts (see below, why). Being able to trade techs can incredibly speed our progress. The second warrior should keep close to the capitol, exploring its vicinity, serving as a guard to Legopolis at the same time (should barbs or a rival team unit appear), until the third warrior (should there be any) is close to completion. It will only take three or four turns, but we should really not risk receiving a surprise guest... especially because the information gathered by the warriors will not be used immediately, but only after our first garrison+settler combo is produced.

Originally posted by delmar
I am not so sure about huts though. I haven't played any non-expansionist civ recently, but I seem to remember that goody huts are not such a huge blessing for non-expansionist civs. I would be even inclined not to pop them, unless we have a good defense (which covers our workers as well), since we might unleash a bunch of angry warriors. Does anyone have relevant experience (non-expansionist civs on Regent level with regard goody huts)?

I have lots of experience with non-exp civs and goody hut popping on Regent (used to play the level for many months). It's almost 100% safe (there is a huge combat bonus against barbs on Regent), the barbs are real pushovers. "Angry warriors" will only help promote your explorer. I say, pop every hut we happen to see (the only exception would be a hut very close to the capital). The chances of losing our warrior to popped barbs is very low, while chances of getting something nice are quite high.

Just very briefly: the idea of building an outpost seems to be completely wrong to me. Losing a worker that can take upon that ugly jungle would be just plain wrong.