Playing at Emperor on a Huge archipelago

[FrustratedPoet]

Originally posted by Arrian
Of course, you could play nice too

Who are you, and what have you done with Arrian?!?!?!

[Theseus]

[minke19104]

Maybe he has learned the futility of war, repented his sins, and switched over from the dark side...

[Arrian]

Now THAT's funny, minke.

I continue to move further toward "center of a black hole" side, as Theseus puts it. Hell, look at how I played AU206... I had 4 wars before I even busted out my Gallic Swordsmen!

-Arrian

[Mountain Sage]

FrustratedPoet, Arrian & Co.,

Here I am,

First of all, I managed to understand a bit better how my computer works (well, sort of...), meaning:

The Bright Side: I managed to load a screenshot in Photoshop,

The Dark Side: but I get only a partial image (one corner). How do I get the whole picture?

As for the a save game, here you are:
BC 3'950 and BC 950
Please go ahead and make all your comments: I need to know all my errors, otherwise I'll never learn (said without irony this time).

Emperor, Huge map, French, sedentary barbarians (taken care of, even me ), 16 Civ. Diplomatic, cultural and space race OFF.

Comments 3'950 BC: Capitol should be 1 tile W. I went for GL and GL asap. Military, what for? 1 warrior=1 happy citzen.

Comments 950 BC: got the G Library, missed the GL.

Now you can choose:

A. PP (Perfect Peacenik): Arrian , me and a few others (no XP, though).

B: C&C (Control & Conquest): all the others.

Stupid as I am, I started with A. My next save shows you how far I am gone, without ever being to war ! (Arrian, learn from me!!!)

FrustratedPoet: who I am?: I AM ARRIAN'S GIMINI CRICKET (in bad English, or American)

[minke19104]

Are you posting any saves?

[Mountain Sage]

My saves:

[Mountain Sage]

minke 19104,

wait a minute, I'm learning...

[Mountain Sage]

My PP play (I'll stop after the UN):

[Mountain Sage]

New try PP game:

[Mountain Sage]

Ah, at last all my saves are posted (so I hope).

Happy civving and 'see' you tomorrow.

[Theseus]

MS, some highlights looking at the first 950BC save:

* Run, don't walk, RUN to CFC (www.civfanatics.com) and study cracker's treatise on early-game tile use. You are irrigating way too much, you are mining mountains , you are roading before chopping... in general, you are not maximizing the use and benefit of your best tiles.

* Your city placement is interesting... I like that it's 3-tile, but a) you could actually pack more towns onto the island by virtue of having more coastal sites, and b) you aren't accessing all of the whales that you could.

* Your people are somewhat unhappy... either build more Workers, or garrison (I'd prefer the former).

* No reason to have any towns set to wealth.

* Play with research slider.

* Trade, trade, trade. You should be maximizing trade at every opportunity. For instance, you are researching Polythesim... well, two problems there: a) the Germans already know it, so you get no profit opportunity, and b) the other civs that Germany knows probably know it too (again, no profit opportunity), and thus having contact with those civs would drive down the research cost considerably.

Waaait a minute...

I just did max trading... this is heavily modded, yes?

Well then, apart from general tips, it's hard to give meaningful advice.

I will say that whatever the mod is, it gave AI Egypt the ability to do incredibly well from a crap start... anybody involved in the AU Mod, you gotta check this out.

[Mountain Sage]

Theseus,

Tiles: I have to agree with you, but the main culprits are my workers (1 per city, first unit usually): they are so fast that I manage to improve 4 tiles+roads around each city in 24-26 turns. Then I just keep them occupied (even mining mountains!). I irrigate a lot because I bring irrigation along with the roads to my cities where there is no river. 1 tile irrigated + roaded = 4 turns, so I bring my water to the cattle... is that wise? For the rest, I will run to cracker's post asap.

City placement: I tried to space my cities 3 tiles apart c-t-t-c, so I missed some whales. Island: you are right.

Happiness: I should have put a second Warrior in each town. How can you improve happiness with more Workers? I don't need more of them, they're outpacing the cities' growth anyway. In 370AD they finished improving every single tile.

My Capitol is on 'wealth' because it run out of useful improvements to build. I did not build any Granaries since I REXxed out quickly and my cities are (quite) tightly packed toger. Is this strategy correct?

Trade and Techs: since I got the GL, a put science at 10% in order to save money for later. Not very clever, I agree, including researching Polytheism.

Modded? I didn't touch anything (don't shoot the messsenger boy!), except that the Civ specificities are ON. Could you direct me to some threads to learn more?

Oh, Egypt has no Horses... I feel so sorry for them...

Thanks a lot for your comments, this is exactly what I need.

P.S. Check my 370 AD save if you have time, and specially count my military units. Arrian will probably get a heart attack

[bongo]

Why do you build so many workers? Remember that your workers are twice as fast as 'normal' so you only need to build half the number that you normally would.

I haven't looked at your saves but I advice you to make plans for taking out germany. You don't want a strong germany as your neighbour when panzers become available. When I play for conquest(always ) I always adjust my plans to when my neighbours get their UU

[FrustratedPoet]

Originally posted by bongo
Why do you build so many workers? Remember that your workers are twice as fast as 'normal' so you only need to build half the number that you normally would.

1 per city is about right for an Industrious Civ, I think - but a lot of it comes down to personal preference. I usually find that any more than 1 per city in these situations is overkill (unless you have lots of jungle you need to chop - I haven't looked at the save files yet so don't know if this is the case for Mountain Sage).