Vel's Strategy Thread - Part Three

[gnomos]

Originally posted by Velociryx
Profoundly important bit from Jeff Morris - Firaxis

If you capture a city that has not generated any culture, you will Raze that city, regardless of its size....

Wow....and something that certainly needs more discussion here on the boards!


-=Vel=-

Actually, this doesn't seem to be correct. A size 1 city with no culture will get razed. larger cities have their population reduced by 1, at least, that has been my experience.

[gnomos]

Optimal Pop Rushing

To maximize pop rushing, you need a size 2 city with 2 wheats. By irrigating the wheats you produce 4 food each, plus 2 for the city square. This produces 6 food a turn in the food box. With a granary you can gain a pop point every other turn. This is ideal for pop rushing, give the unit one shield the first turn, pop it out the second. Put a marketplace, granary, and barracks in the city to produce veteran units while keeping the people happy. War or trade for luxuries, the 7th and 8th luxuries produce MAD happy faces, these little soldier factories will never give you any trouble. If you can find sites for 3-4 factories you can produce 2 new units every turn, leaving your other cities free to produce nothing but improvements or settlers. Produce swordsman, spearmen or pikemen, and horsies. If you tech whore a lot and save cash, you can then upgrade lots of units as you gain techs.

[gnomos]

Re: Quirks/problems w/ gameplay

Originally posted by DFHNY

Along these same lines, you have made the AI able to cheat at production. Let's say he lands a bunch of units right next to my city. My turn comes and I change production from
whatever I was building into a military unit, say a spearman. And the changeover is complete, meaning I'd already produced way more shields than necessary for a spearman so it will come right away. I still have to wait until the next turn for it to appear - at the end of my turn he attacks me, wins the city, and my spearman never materializes. HOWEVER, if the reverse
happens, I land near him, and during his turn he changes production, the SPEARMAN APPEARS right then and there! And he was not able to draft or any of that, I thought of that. Why does the AI have the power to insta-build like that, during the turn itself, without having to wait until the next turn for the unit to actually appear there.

Actually, I think there is a way you can do this also. When your turn begins, enter the very first city that completes a build. From there you can use the arrows on the top bar to cycle through your cities. I think you will be able to change builds in cities that haven't been processed yet, and then cycle back to the city you first entered (I'm not sure about this, I haven't actually tried it, but I suspect it will work).

[gnomos]

Originally posted by Velociryx
One possible alternate use of mobilization:

Peace-time infrastructure for Democracies in corruption ridden cities.

Crank out scads of expensive units, disband them in far-flung cities (easy after you have airports) and mix with ample supplies of cash. Your core cities bounce back from the loss quickly, unhappiness is easily dealt with on account of all the happiness builds, and you mix raw shields with dough to make your dough go that much further.

-=Vel=-
(late nite two cents....)

Heehee, draft infantry and disband them for shields.

[gnomos]

Originally posted by Velociryx
This, more than anything else, will be one of the best reasons to have "barbarian" units available to all. Keep a few on the prowl at the periphery of your borders, and you can play "Whack-a-settler" all day long when they violate your borders....no war, no fuss, no muss....

-=Vel=-

Privateers do have their uses!

[gnomos]

Originally posted by Velociryx

PS: Hmmm....I dunno what Jags upgrade to, if anything....I've never tried it....then again, IMO, the Jag is the best unit in the game....I'd prolly not be as happy with whatever unit it upgraded to anyway....

-=Vel=-

Jags upgrade to swordsmen.

[gnomos]

Re: Workers

Originally posted by Arrian
Though I don't think my micromananging reaches the levels David Weldon desribed, I am one who simply CANNOT trust the computer to do something on its own, like control my workers. No way, no how. The patchwork design of irrigation/mines I see in AI empires has convinced me of this. Why? I rarely irrigate. Sure, enough to get a city growing, but it's still mostly mines. I don't want my cities to grow beyond size 20, since specialists are useless, and larger cities start to get cranky. Pre-hospitals, they can only get to 12, so I tend to mine everything and set up the citizens such that there is no food surplus. I also delay hospitals until I have mass transit because I HATE pollution, and large cities pollute a ton.

-Arrian

Actually, all that excess population is indeed worth something. It's worth POINTS on histographic score. Happy citizens score more points than content citizens, and unhappy citizens score nothing. I use excess population as entertainers to make all working population happy. This keeps all my cities in WLTKD and also scores the maximum number of points possible. I'm nearing the end of a game on monarch (huge 'pelago 80% water, 1996 now) and I'm gaining 73 points a turn now on histograph. My final score will be around 17,300 when time runs out. My next game will be huge pangea 60% water on diety, I'm hoping I can break 40,000.

BTW, future tech DOES score points. The points are averaged over the turns of the game though, so you need a lot of future tech early to have an impact.

[gnomos]

Originally posted by David Weldon
Arrian:
It's funny that some people keep foreign workers and some people get rid of them. For me it's simply a question of tedium. If my empire isn't too big or I'm not getting sick of things yet, then I definitely keep them because they're _free!

Actually, they may not all be free. I recently checked my military advisor, and found I was paying for a lot of foreign workers. So, I selected one, and joined it into a city. I went back to military advisor, and found that the number of workers I was paying for didn't decrease. I didn't pay attention to the military advisor when I first got all of them, because I just assumed they were all free because people said they were. Next game I play I'll pay more attention to what happens to all the workers I get when I raze a city.

[gnomos]

Great Leaders

When you get one of these guys, USE IT! Use it right away, because you can only have one at a time. As long as he's sitting around in a city, you can't get another one. Think of him as 500-1000 shields, sitting there unused. He's an instant wonder. If there are no wonders you can build, then make an army, and build heroic epic to get more GLs. If you get another GL right away, rush the epic. I've had 9 GLs in my current game, one built an army, one built my FP, and the rest built wonders (playing aztecs, see game described above).

In this game I stayed in despotism a long time, pop rushed infrastructure, pop rushed troops (I used base pairing to generate a huge army, and conquered the world). I switched to republic when pikemen became obsolete, because you can't pop rush a musketman with 1 pop point. Starting those troops out at veteran is a big help for creating GLs, they get to elite quicker. When I have a GL running to a city to build a wonder I attack exclusively with veterans to get them promoted to elite. When I don't have a GL I make sure that every elite unit gets a kill in combat every turn if possible to give me the max chance to get another GL.

[gnomos]

City Specialists

What's better, making scientists or making taxmen?

Answer: taxmen, for sure.

A taxman creates 1 gold. A scientist creates 1 beaker. That's a 1:1 tradeoff.

However, you can build a library, university, and research center in a city. Plus there are a number of wonders to generate more science, only one to generate more commerce. So, it's more efficient to use the slider to generate science, where each commerce point creates a higher ratio of beakers, and make up the difference with taxmen from excess population (above and beyond those needed for entertainment to make everyone happy to stay in WLTKD). Also, if you go 100% science and have Smith's trading company, the banks and marketplace don't cost you any excess cash a turn, but if you are using the slider for cash then you are paying upkeep on your libs, universities, and think tanks for nothing.

[gnomos]

Late Game Strategies

I think there has been very little discussion of late game strategy. Worker tedium is probably responsible for most of this. People tend to build the space ship as soon as possible so they can stop moving all those workers around. Also, it's a lot of work to terraform a huge map, so people tend to end the game as soon as possible, or even fail to finish it once the eventual outcome has been determined.

I myself am trying to determine ways of scoring more and more points, so issues like maximizing efficiency, and determining the best way to occupy massive amounts of territory in the face of crippling corruption and pollution is providing an ongoing challenge.

In my current game I chose not to build hospitals until mass transit was available. I was concerned that global warming would damage the terrain in the long run, limiting my maximum population, plus wasting the effort of workers that would be better spent elsewhere. I'm not convinced I made the right decision, my score with this game might have been much higher if I had built hospitals immediately. I beelined for industrialization to help build infrastructure, instead of sanitation to build more population.

Which map type will generate the largest score? I suspect that it's 60% water, 'pelago, huge map. In theory you get the same amount of land as with continents or pangaea, but you can utilize more water tiles as well, for a larger total territory and a bigger population, because you have more coastline. However, expansion is more difficult, slowing you down.

[Arrian]

gnomos,

Holding off on hospitals until mass transit, my way of combating pollution, definitely hurts your score. Clearly, since score is heavily population driven. I find that mildy annoying, as I do the scoring system in general, simply because it doesn't take into account some of the new game dynamics. If I own all 8 luxuries and strat. resources, I think I ought to get a scoring bonus for that. The way it stands now, owning those things will aid you in capturing more cities & land, which in turn gives you more score. It kinda forces you to conquer if you wanna boost your score (same as Civ II in that regard). *Shrug* no biggie.

There is one benifit to my hesitation to build hospitals - if you happen to be short on luxuries, it's difficult to keep large cities happy. Thus, keeping them at size 12 keeps them under control, especially if you're gonna pick a fight to do something about that luxury shortage.

More on scoring - is it adjusted to map size? It doesn't seem like it. I'm slogging through a game on Marla's map, and I'm nearing 2000pts in 970 A.D. (Turns are now taking 15-20 minutes per... but I can't stop now...must continue.... must finish game....)

-Arrian

[henry296]

Re: Great Leaders

Originally posted by gnomos
When you get one of these guys, USE IT! Use it right away, because you can only have one at a time. As long as he's sitting around in a city, you can't get another one. Think of him as 500-1000 shields, sitting there unused. He's an instant wonder. If there are no wonders you can build, then make an army, and build heroic epic to get more GLs. If you get another GL right away, rush the epic. I've had 9 GLs in my current game, one built an army, one built my FP, and the rest built wonders (playing aztecs, see game described above).

I don't believe this is true. I am pretty sure that I had 2 leaders in my game as the Japanese. It isn't likely, but I don't think you are precluded from getting a leader if you have one unused.

Todd

[Arrian]

Re: Great Leaders

Originally posted by gnomos
When you get one of these guys, USE IT! Use it right away, because you can only have one at a time. As long as he's sitting around in a city, you can't get another one. Think of him as 500-1000 shields, sitting there unused. He's an instant wonder. If there are no wonders you can build, then make an army, and build heroic epic to get more GLs. If you get another GL right away, rush the epic. I've had 9 GLs in my current game, one built an army, one built my FP, and the rest built wonders (playing aztecs, see game described above).

When I have a GL running to a city to build a wonder I attack exclusively with veterans to get them promoted to elite. When I don't have a GL I make sure that every elite unit gets a kill in combat every turn if possible to give me the max chance to get another GL.

That, aside from the poprushing, is what I try to do. I've never seen more than 1 great leader at once, and I'm convinced you can't have that. So, I use them ASAP, and use my Vet. troops while he's in transit. They almost always become wonders (1st one, obviously, becomes the Forbidden).

Do it right, and you don't need to be militaristic to get a bunch of leaders. You just gotta fight.

-Arrian

p.s. One of the reasons I'm sticking it out in my Marla Map game, despite the 15 minute turns, is that I've got nearly all the Wonders I want thus far (*&^@ of Arc beat me to Bach by 3 turns), I'm the biggest, now the strongest, and have a 2 tech lead on the AI. No leaders yet, no golden age yet. Oh my.

[pchang]

Sad but true

If you really want to maximize your score, forget about building out your civilization. Just try conquering the world as quickly as possible. On Monarchy, I scored 9283 points by conquering the world (massive mounted warrior rush as Iriquois) in 190BC. I don't think you can beat that on Monarchy by maximizing your population and infrastructure.