The 'size six' strategy

[Shaka II]

population leveling

Has anyone done an analysis on what best to use the workers and settlers produced by size 6 or any fast growing incubator city?

Mainly, I was thinking in the area of population leveling, so that all cities are about the same size (e.g., size 6) to minimize corruption, maximize production, gold, etc.

Generally, I use them (as probably most players) to make all significant improvements and then add them to the smaller cities when done.

[Marquis de Sodaq]

In size 12 cities with high food production, I've altered military units or improvements with settlers in the build order. While building the other things, the city grows back to size 12. Roll out another settler, repeat the process.

The settler jogs to a town and boost the population. As long as corruption in the town isn't too high, the benefits are enormous.

[Grrr]

I kinda figured this out a couple of days ago, but thank you for pointing out the prerequisites. I can't wait until multiplayer comes out, and start playing with such strategies. Furthermore, I think that there is a way to make setler factories. Just have two workers from your strategy lying around and rebuild the city to it's old size.

BTW is their any limit to the city size which can be increased with workers/settlers, as in Civ2.

Also to all those worrying about investment: once you have one Worker factory setup, then expansion should be easy as in 9 turns (8 workers+1 settler), one can have a new factory setup, for minimal cash.
I like this strategy better than WLT_D

[Aeson]

It is possible to add up to at least 230 workers to a city. Someone did this on one of the tourney games, not sure of the exact number. I tried it on another game to see how high I could get it. I would guess that if there is a limit, it would either be at 255 (size limit for civ 2 cities, 8 bit number) or at a significantly higher 16bit (65536) or 32bit (4294967295, wouldn't that be funny?) number.

The "cost" of setting up a worker factory isn't only in how long it takes to set up though, but in how much else could be done with those turns of production. By the way, you would need to build a granery as well, so that would cost a couple extra turns for set-up. Usually it isnt worth it to set up these types of establishments until the conquest phase of the game is over. Partly because of the military units that could be produced instead, and partly because of the huge number of captured workers that are available during conquest.

[La Fayette]

glad to be back

I beg your pardon for no reply: I had no access at all to Apolyton between Christmas and yesterday night.

Xin Yu
Happy to see you back!
Thank you for kind appreciation and tips.

solo
I must check that threshold effect at size 12 once more. I did check before writing about it, but what you write seems very convincing.

Marquis de Sodaq
Yes, Marquis, my lab is open, but it is in the open field for the time being, namely playing tournament #3. 'size 6' gives very nice results (but it seems that our master at ICSing, DaveV, is also going very strong ).
I agree with the answers that Aeson gave to your questions.

shaka II
No detailed analysis yet, but it would be wiser to add your workers to the bigger cities rather than the smaller ones (since the bigger ones usually have some more improvements inside; same idea as the one behind the SSC).

Aeson
Opportunity cost, of course!
'size 6' first or early conquest first? I suppose that geography and neighbours matter.

[La Fayette]

3 pieces of information (for those interested):

1) I have derived a new use of 'size 6': see my thread 'The enlightened despot' on this forum.

2) Julius Brenzaida gives the opportunity to play a huge succession game 'Heroic Epic so that civ2 will never die': see his thread on civ2 General Forum.

3) Xin Yu is busy exploding my previous records at CiC scenarios, with plenty of new findings about how this game (yes: civ2!) works: see my thread on civ2 Strategy Forum.

[La Fayette]

it works

good news!
It seems that 'size 6' works like a charm at higher difficulty levels.
I made extensive use of 'size 6' in tournament game #3 (Monarch level) and achieved domination in 176O.
I am now using it in a game at Emperor level with poor Indians, planning to launch in the early 18 ies.

(La Fayette, winking to all happy 'size6' users)

[mengo76]

Wow.
I stay away from the forums for the holidays and look what i miss... Not that I wasn't playing civ, I ws just caught up in a huge-16civ-monarch game that took forever, especially since it hogged about 280 megs of ram and my machine froze every couple turns, i was saving the game at least 3 times per turn... but I digress :-P

NEway, love the strat, can't believe i didn't notice it, i have built workers at size 7 and grown back the next turn, but it didnt dawn on me that i could keep doing it forever!

So one strategy is to use the workers to populate other cities... But how about those of you who use them for improvements? How do you manage having so many workers? I have had nothing but bad experiences with automation, so I gave up on that. Now in this last game I had 54 workers at one point, and it just got so tedious, that once I improved all the terrain such that each city had at least 50 food, I just added them all to cities, keeping about 20 to deal with pollution. (By the way, I won by diplomacy in 1600AD).

Well now my head is spinning and I can't wait to get home to play some more... And can't wait for my new athlon 1700 and gig of memory :-P

PS: what's OCC mean exactly?

[Hurry]

OCC=One City Challenge

Beat the game with only one city.

[La Fayette]

OCC
3 years ago, no one thought it was possible (that was civ2 of course). Then Paul managed it and wrote a recipe that many people consider the best ever written about civ2 (that you can find in the GL, first thread on top of civ2 strategy forum).
Then the so-called 'early landers' started competing and got amazing results (up to winning the game with one city size 1!).
I shall name samson, solo and Ribannah (princess of the elves).

solo is now hard at work winning civ3 OCC at deity level, but another player, named toe truck IIRC, has already managed it last week.

I haven't seen any post sent by Paul, samson or Ribannah yet, but mind you, the day they start posting you probably open your eyes and glare.


(La Fayette, sending a friendly sign to toe truck ... and solo of course)

[Arrian]

Wow, somehow I totally missed this thread until now (I've been over in Vel's strat. threads). Very interesting stuff, and it helps explain things I've noticed, but never paid any attention to, in my games.

I always try to set up a "worker farm" early in the game, usually a city with floodplains but low production, but I've never realized what can be done with a 10-shield, size 6 w/granary & aqueduct/freshwater city. I must say, though, that a size 6 city early on in the game is usually a core city, which is almost always tasked to building something I consider really important - more so than workers (usually either wonders or key improvements such libraries, marketplaces, cathedrals, etc.). This phenomenon occurs later in the game, too, when my cities are building universities, banks and then factories - and at some point, some semblance of an army Only post-industrialization do I normally hit a point a which I say "I don't really have anything to build here" - and usually build wealth, because I have tons of captured workers handling improvements/pollution control. The one use I would have for this strategy late in the game is to pump cities up from size 12 to 20ish. That could indeed be powerful, but I have a self-imposed rule not to cross size 12 until I have mass transit. Sounds nuts, right? Well, I'm probably screwing myself out of a better score, but I am drastically reducing pollution problems (which I HATE - more than you can imagine) in my empire.

Sorry for the length of the post. I think it was Mark Twain who said something like "this letter would have been shorter, if I'd only had the time."

-Arrian

edit: I can spell, really.

[DrSpike]

I also worried about the appropriate window for this idea (especially on emperor/deity) many moons ago when la Fayette originated the thread. As always it depends on your playstyle, but after a few games my initial hunch that earlyish AD is most appropriate for me (post initial conquering hopefully, foreigh worker supply dried up) proved to be pretty good. I agree entirely about Arrian's points regarding core cities, which is why I often use gaps in my empire early on to build entirely self-sufficient (albeit slow) worker factories (which can also be used to rush units) as described earlier in the thread. An alternative I've tried with reasonable success is to break your back (need two MP, temple, 2 lux with no rushing in memory) to get a BC size six and use the pop created elsewhere to rush unit after unit in the throwaway cities (no problems later with spoilsport citizens ). The irony here is that in this case the window for the strat is larger on higher levels where you may be forced to be more militaristic, a different relationship between the window and difficulty level than I had envisaged.

[La Fayette]

Arrian and Dr Spike
We all are rookies (and I am much more a rookie than you are, since civ3 has not come to France yet and I got the game from solo 40 days after you ).
Therefore I think we need to climb several steps up along the learning curve before being able to judge which method is strongest (and civ2 has taught us that it wasn't easy to judge at all: I go on playing games against OCCers and ICSers and no one would bet in advance who is going to win).
Please go on playing as you feel. As long as we share information, I think all of us will learn faster by trying different ways rather than all playing along with the same pattern

[DrSpike]

La Fayette

That was kinda frosty I think both mine and Arrian's post were praising the ideas you originated, and adding some points for discussion. Surely this is good?

[La Fayette]

Dr Spike
I didn't intend my reply to be frosty at all (sorry english isn't my mother language). I am convinced that Arrian and you are among those who try to use their brains instead of complaining about the AI not being fair to them.
The point is that I am unable to discuss what you have tried, because I haven't tried it yet (and I really think it is wise to try many ways before deciding that this one or that one is best).