Smith's College - General Discussions

[Arrian]

Originally posted by notyoueither
Has anyone ever Ralphed in C4?

I dunno if it is actually "Ralphing" but I have noticed that, in some of my games, my build pattern is noticeably tighter than some I've seen (in AU100, for instance)... but that is usually when playing an ORG civ.

It depends on the terrain, really. There are several reasons I can think of to utilize a relatively tight build (4-tile), such as defense, maximizing the useage of certain juicy tiles via MM, and possibly even health benefits (cities can "share" forest tiles for the health bonus, AFAIK).

Once we can see more, we can bust out the dot maps

-Arrian

[nbarclay]

The problem with a dense city build in the early part of the game is that it's harder to claim a fair share of territory without getting in a financial mess. Maintenance costs related to number of cities quickly become a limiting factor on growth, making it impractical to build additional cities to gain additional territory. A more compact empire is an advantage in the early game, since it reduces distance-related maintenance costs. But unless the early-game advantage can be leveraged into additional territory later on, the long-term impact is problematical.

On the other hand, our huge number of flood plains coupled with our Financial trait may give us some extra options we wouldn't otherwise have. Consider the possibility of using cottage spam in EotS to pay for a couple extra cities or so, which in turn would make up for the lower growth (and lower ability to use excess food to build settlers) in EotS due to building cottages instead of irrigating. That could either support a couple extra camp cities or let us expand farther out earlier than we would otherwise.

A variant strategy would be to deliberately leave some extra space to backfill with additional cities once the Storm's economy can handle it. That would hurt a bit in the early game since distance-related maintenance costs would be higher and it would be harder for cities to support each other militarily if we get in an early war. (Also, we'd have to be very, very careful that we don't box ourselves in a situation where the minimum-distance-between-cities rule keeps us from building a city we planned on.) But it could be a pretty strong strategy for maximizing the number of tiles we can work in the mid game.

All of what I'm writing here is still pretty much at the brainstorming stage. Ideally, it would be nice if someone would be inclined to take the time to experiment with different city-building strategies, but I rather doubt that I'll be in a mood to do so.

[Dominae]

A heuristic I use in my SP games could apply here:

Basically what I do is place my second city very close to my capital - 3 tiles. I might do the same with my third city if I plan on being aggressive early on. Additional cities are placed on a case-by-case basis according to a combination of "best city cite" and "AI land/resource denial" methods.

Two close-knit cities that share all the capital location's best tiles and that benefit from efficient Worker actions are enough to jump-start any strategy.

A blanket dense city build is not ideal unless there's a very high density of quality tiles available. Usually the tile distribution is such that the best city-sites are further out, so claiming territory is key (if the AI allows it).

I'm pretty sure something similar could be applied in this game. Given our capital's relatively low Health cap, I think a close sibling makes a lot of sense.

One thing to remember is that we may run into "territory negotations" with other teams sooner than we think: on average, Civ4 maps are more cramped than Civ3.

[Arrian]

Once we have the lay of the land we can do some experiments if we want. At this point, it's all very theoretical (brainstorming, as Nathan said) because we don't know what's out there.

-Arrian

[Theseus]

Originally posted by Dominae
A heuristic I use in my SP games could apply here:

Basically what I do is place my second city very close to my capital - 3 tiles. I might do the same with my third city if I plan on being aggressive early on. Additional cities are placed on a case-by-case basis according to a combination of "best city cite" and "AI land/resource denial" methods.

Two close-knit cities that share all the capital location's best tiles and that benefit from efficient Worker actions are enough to jump-start any strategy.

A blanket dense city build is not ideal unless there's a very high density of quality tiles available. Usually the tile distribution is such that the best city-sites are further out, so claiming territory is key (if the AI allows it).

I'm pretty sure something similar could be applied in this game. Given our capital's relatively low Health cap, I think a close sibling makes a lot of sense.

One thing to remember is that we may run into "territory negotations" with other teams sooner than we think: on average, Civ4 maps are more cramped than Civ3.

I do pretty much the same thing, for the same reasons.

I was originally turned on to this approach by watching Aeson in some deity games (for safety), and then saw the benefits in shared tiles... especially true as I am a heavy poprusher, and thusly *very* often share both high value tiles and (importantly) cottages, with shared forests where possible as well.

I don;t think of it as Ralphing per se... different underlying reasoning, resulting in not so much a "ring" approach as a "tile benefit" approach, thinking in city pairs. A series of Metro+Suburb pairs?

Other considerations apply, obviously... river/coast access, military, etc.

[Theseus]

Originally posted by notyoueither
We can have the religion, agri, animalH, archery, and bronzeworking by the time we shoot out a settler.

What we are arguing is what order to do them in.

I'm doing some more runs with the Sim... assuming Warrior-Scout-Scout-Worker, I agree with nye that we have tiem for all the initial techs he listed, plus pottery, in ample time before the first Worker, with bronze working in time for rushing the first Settler (if so decided).

So, the question is what order.

I would otherwise prolly be lobbying for foregoing any efforts towards an early religion, btw.

[Theseus]

Originally posted by dejon
Any reason we can't balance these, at least early on? Mine the hills and split the floodplains 50/50 with cottages/farms.

That gives us growth, gold and hammers, which will all help us get to the point where we can churn out some skirmishers if we need to.

I realize early tactics are often about putting more of your eggs in one basket over another, but with this start, I'm wondering if a balanced approach might be more appropriate.

I am admittedly not proficient at GP specialization... so I tend toward a pretty balanced approach, especially for my capitol.

I look at our starting position, and I see:
6 cott FPs
2 irr FPs
1 cott grass
1 irr grass
1 cott plains
1 irr plains
1 sheep hill/plains
2 mined hill/plains
1 mined hill/desert
1 forest/hill/grass
1 forest/grass

... leaving the non-river plains and hill/desert to the north for whatever down the road.

[Arrian]

When you say bronze for "rushing our first settler" T... consider that chopping what little forest we have here will have ugly ramifications for our health, and also that the patch nerfed early chopping (pre-math).

As for the ratio of farms to cottages... we'll see. We've got some time to plan. We will have to decide which we want more: base commerce (cottages) or specialists (farms). We will certainly have some of each, but the exact balance will depend on various factors (such as other nearby health resources - the higher our pop cap, the more attractive farms are).

-Arrian

[Theseus]

Sorry, Arrian, I didn't specify... POPrushing.

/me cracks the whip... er, banana

[notyoueither]

We need someone to head this College to guide discussion and distill the wisdom for the turn player.

Our divisions can be a weakness if they run forever with no conclusion.

I am very uncomfortable having to play T2 this evening.

[Blake]

Okay given that we are going for a post-religion hunting, I think that once we do complete hunting, we should switch from the current build (probably a Worker), and MAX out hammers, working the 2 Forest Hills and the Sheep Hill. This will complete the scout in 2 turns, at the expense of some of the stored food. I don't think there's a downside to turning stored food into scout - well sure, we grow a little slower. But we get both the scout and the worker out much, much faster.
Another option would be to finish the worker then switch to the scout, with or without starving.

I think though getting the scout out ASAP is a good thing, I always feel uncomfortable not knowing what thinking-opponents might be up to. And if nothing else, the scout is an interesting unit to move around.

[nbarclay]

Our initial production is a warrior, which probably makes sense given the need to appear at least halfway defended to anyone who drops by for a visit. Dominae's plan had us waiting until the warrior is finished to build a worker (by which time we'll be size 3, assuming we work flood pains for growth). The down side to that plan is that it has us completing our scouts really late.

The problem is that anything we do to get scouts out earlier ends up sacrificing growth. Which, in turn, raises the question of how much growth (and, over time, production) it's worth sacrificing for how much earlier scouting.

[notyoueither]

I think Blake is saying grow to 3 and the warrior asap, then work hammers to get the scout out a couple turns later. Then do worker.

The 3f from an fp can be turned into 3h for a scout easily, and it doesn't set our exploration back as much as waiting ~30 for a scout.

[nbarclay]

Assuming I recall correctly from what I looked at earlier today, if we beeline to Meditation, we'd be about halfway through building our worker when we discover Hunting. (Polytheism would take a little longer.) That would give us a choice of either interrupting our work on the worker to build scouts or waiting until the worker is finished to build them.

[Theseus]

Where's MZ? So, you wanted to see GS in action... how about analyzing the first two turns to death?

Good job everyone. Thankfully we'll have more info to work with going forward!!