Another interesting piece of info from Blake

[binTravkin]

I just read this

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?postid=5036002#post5036002

and all I can say is 'what were we thinking!'

What it says is that we should go around checking what we are working and it seems that at least in some cases, namely Xian, Tassagrad and other production cities we'll have it is more useful to work a 2-0-x tile than 0-4-0 as at pop 5 it gives the same amount of hammers as the former even while whipping 1 pop for one bundle (but we know that we can easily arrange 2bundles for 1pop or 3 for 2).

We are currently having two such tiles:
Beijing 0-4-0 mine - it should from now on only be used for wonder-building as wonders have this hammer from whip vs real hammer ratio half the normal (2pop for 1bundle).
Tassagrad 0-4-0 mine - we should build the grassland cottage near river ASAP and switch to it. We should also at last have a granary in Tassagrad.

Bananapolis and Msaha should also get cottages and granaries.

Cities running 2-0-x instead of 0-4-0 will have the same production if we run a 10turn whip cycle and even more, if we use the ability to whip more bundles for less pop.
At the same time they also will have much more commerce.

We have lost quite a lot of commerce already by having Tassagrad run 0-4-0 since very early game, let us fix it and not repeat this mistake again.

[binTravkin]

The whole article is rather cool, containing good ideas and experiences.
I wonder why Kata hasn't reported it earlier?

If any of you see a discussion of cIV strategy where prominent people like Blake, Solver, snoopy369 are involved and it doesn't seem that others from team have taken notice, you should drop a link in the Great Library thread, strategic planning thread, current turn thread or skype, so that others are kept informed about finest bits of info about cIV strategy.

This is not the first time a few quotes from Blake change my cIV thinking substantially.

[Kataphraktoi]

I thought this was well known since civ4 vannila and assumed you had reasons. For a few months after civ4 came out, instead of reading forums i use search feature on notables like blake and read theirs instead...

There is a mondo size thread a while back on civfanatics going into all that with level detail.

[binTravkin]

Well, I for one don't read so much discussions, starting to feel obsolete.

Anyways next time anyone sees wrong stuff being done you should come up with explanation (or link to one) why exactly it's wrong not just assume that there must be reasons.

Could you drop a link of that thread?

[Maniac]

Re: Another interesting piece of info from Blake

Originally posted by binTravkin
Tassagrad 0-4-0 mine - we should build the grassland cottage near river ASAP and switch to it. We should also at last have a granary in Tassagrad.

Duh!

[Kataphraktoi]

We ARE in the lead here so it seems not an unreasonable assumption.

[binTravkin]

Where were you around 900BC?

[binTravkin]

Well, it has to do a lot with luck, we're also taking quite an effort, but sometimes some stuff slips past our attention, there's some info omitted in decisions, so wrong ones are taken like with this.

This especially alarming because GS is apparently not making the same kind of mistakes (they might have made/be making strategic ones), due to presence of Blake, probably the most knowledgeable person about cIV gameplay.

We must become perfect enlightened!

[Kataphraktoi]

The last time i made a public apples and oranges you got mightily pissed I dont play this type of map anyway. Only inland sea\great plains\rainforest for example. IE rigged setups

Lets not go overboard on blake. Even if he is active on GS he is not the endall of cIV.

[binTravkin]

The last time i made a public apples and oranges you got mightily pissed

Don't seem to recall.
No seriously, I was just arguing heavily and probably missing some important info..

The strategies about tile improvements and quite a bunch of others are quite independent of map types.

[Kataphraktoi]

Those maps all have huge amounts of flood plains, a much greater ammount of river basin territory and have a bigger land to sea ratio, inland sea in particular is 1 step above whatever size you pick in the setup. The extra land allows more choicier build spots so any city can have food bonuses. I just cottage everything and get plenty of hammers inspite of it

To contrast that most if not all our cities except our capitol is in what i would normally call marginal land.

But you need to be able to suffer the enemy winning those phyrric victories, which necessitates having "marginal territory" you can afford to lose - the problem with the standard sized empire, is that it relies entirely on efficiency to be competitive, sustaining losses will be a major blow to that efficiency - you can't just casually shrug off the loss of core cities.

Blakes recentmost post describes exactly my civs. But i ussualy landgrab a huge mass with settlers, not conquest. Up to emporer you can still grab a bit more space than the AI will.

[Kataphraktoi]

I hope blake is notconsidering getting rid of his BTS AI