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**Hermann the Lombard** · October 8, 2002, 13:37

Your idea of the roving settler team makes me feel a bit like an idiot. It seems so obvious now that you point it out, but I've never seen anyone use the trick (such as in Succession Game V, where we took about a millenium (and two fortresses) to get a road to our choke-point city.

I've never gotten anything remotely like the haul of PW that you got, so fortresses have been prohibitively expensive and very very selectively built.

I agree that it is absolutely essential to pick a fight early in Cradle, but for cities, not for PW. It is so very much quicker and easier to take an AI city than to build the nomad, walk to a site, found the city, and slowly grow it to the size the AIs routinely reach in the early game. Without the science from former AI cities, I find I end up about 20 techs behind the AI (in games where I started alone on a landmass).

Agreed about the barbs, and about the time that the barb threat dies down the 12-stacks of AI units start showing up. It is good to carry a Big Stick.

**Velociryx** · October 8, 2002, 13:55

Yeah, I try to mix and match when it comes to growing the empire. I will gleefully gut a neighboring civ for their cities, but I find that invariably they're not where I want them, and will often disband the smaller ones (or selectively starve a few) to relocate, and build a couple of settlers for "filler" cities to firm up the borders. I also don't mind running slightly over the city limits for gov sizes, but generally shy from going more than 2-3 beyond limit unless there's just something that's too good to pass on (city containing a juicy wonder or two that's right on my border).

Forts are hatefully expensive, that's true, but they pay for themselves sooooo quickly in terms of speed and efficiency in combat.

The roving settler team!

Not really sure what made me think about that....I was getting frustrated and grumbling about the time it was taking me to get from point A to point B, happened to have a settler in the neighborhood, and...poof! I built the city, in two turns, had my roads, then unbuilt it and he continued on his way....desperation was the mother of invention in that case?

I'm really enjoying trying different approaches in-game so far....that, coupled with the sense of discovery is really making for some dynamic games! I might, by mid-game, get buried by more technologically advanced rivals in this month's tourney game, but it's been a tremendously entertaining experiment so far!

-=Vel=-
PS: Glad you liked that settler thing....I'll see what other bizzare notions I can come up with....

**Ogie Oglethorpe** · October 8, 2002, 14:17

If I didn't know any better, I'ld say you were pulling some pages out of CIV3 putting down a settler simply to gain an area of influence in order to build rails and move your troops.

By the by, I've fired up CTP2 now and have to say I like what I see, but is it my imagination or is the game predicated upon war early and often.

Og

**Velociryx** · October 8, 2002, 15:44

Hey bud!

You caught me dead to rights there....I admit, I was so dead set on drawing first (significant) blood vs. the Eutruscians that I pulled out every stop I could think of to speed that up some!

Early war....hmmm....yes and no. No moreso than Civ3, I don't think, but definately more than SMAC, where you could go at least half the game before having anything other than a series of sharp skirmishes.

I have found that it IS possible to keep the peace, but only if you're willing to constantly badger the AI about border violations, and live with Piracy to your trade routes.

But....you're digging it so far? That's GREAT!!!

-=Vel=-

**centrifuge** · October 8, 2002, 16:00

Originally posted by Ogie Oglethorpe
By the by, I've fired up CTP2 now and have to say I like what I see, but is it my imagination or is the game predicated upon war early and often.

Og

I don't agree that war is necessary early and often espescially in Vanilla and SAP... Cradle and WAW

, now those are different stories...

In my experience, the scoring system of Civ3 requires early expansion and wars. CTP2's scoring is mainly concerned with the way that your civ turns out in the end, Whereas Civ3's is based on the path used to get you there.

**mnbryan37** · October 8, 2002, 22:28

I agree with Herman. In the 4 Cradle games I have played, only once did I receive a huge (7 or 8 thousand) amount of PW points. More typically its just a few hundred. I usually end up with a lot of extra nomads as I dispand small cities that I take over. Besides using them to extend roads, I also use them, as well as any obsolete troops I might have, as scouts. Before attacking a city, I send in a suicide scout so I can determine the amount and strength of the defensive forces. I've saved many a 12 stack by not attacking a heavily defended city.

As a former CIV2 addict, I think that except for Cradle, that CTP2 is more conducsive to peacefull solutions. In Cradle you must go to war as fast as you can muster enough troops

**Dale** · October 8, 2002, 22:37

As a former CIV2 addict, I think that except for Cradle, that CTP2 is more conducsive to peacefull solutions. In Cradle you must go to war as fast as you can muster enough troops

Like Cradle, in WAW if you haven't got a decent army when someone finds you, you quickly find out what the lose-game movie looks like.

**Pedrunn** · October 8, 2002, 23:20

All converges to the craddle backstabing strategies/goals and AI hate humans feature.

**Velociryx** · October 16, 2002, 10:51

From rag-tag city to Empire

Growing your economy to Imperial Proportions

I don’t do much terraforming in the early game. If I capture enemy cities that have a farm or two, that’s cool, but in general, I use the native land for much of the early game, and that is the perspective from which this essay is written. My plan is to focus exclusively on growth (ie – reaching the early game city caps by government type) as my overriding first priority….this is at the expense of the military, technological innovation….everything! The reason for this relentless focus is simple. If I can grow to my early game critical mass faster than my opponents, then I can easily catch and surpass them. Admittedly, this leaves a certain window of vulnerability. The only military units I keep handy are the minimum required to maintain order in my cities, and a fistful of scouts to grab goody huts and find new city sites (generally my total number of scouts does not exceed six alive at any given time, unless I get extremely lucky in getting barbarian allies).

Opening gambits
How you expand will be, in large part, determined by the proximity of your neighbors, and the character of the land you find yourself on. These two things, acting in concert, will give you a number of possibilities and combinations, but keep in mind that this essay was written with speed in mind, first and foremost.

Gambit 1: Alone on a smallish landmass
The key here is in fitting as many cities on your starting landmass as you can, even if it hampers your longer-term growth. Ten cities isn’t really all that many, and I have yet to be in a situation where I couldn’t comfortably fit ten cities on whatever landmass I started on (if you count small 1-4 tile islands surrounding them as part of “your” starting landmass anyway). The goal is to get those initial ten production centers up and running, and if you’re on a small landmass, then many of them will be coastal. Almost can’t help that, but that’s okay, because in this particular case, sea terraforming will become all the more important, and you’ll NEED to develop a strong naval presence. Having several coastal cities will help you there. Try spacing five apart in open terrain, four apart in hilly/mountainous terrain, and see what that gets you. Room permitting, bump that up to six and five.

Gambit 2: With company on a smallish landmass
Easy. Build your cities toward your rival till your borders bump up against his, and beeline for roads and combined arms (warrior/archers in SAP, warrior/slinger in Cradle). Get a sizeable (6-8 in SAP, 12+ in Cradle) force together, and go hunting for free cities. If they’re in good locations, keep them, if they suck, burn them down. Once you’re alone on the continent, you can expand at your leisure (note here that Cradle makes it easy to do this….even if the city is in a spot you detest, keep it, disband it on the following turn, and move the settler where you want it). Spacing as above, though it may be somewhat dictated by wherever your rival decides to plant HIS cities.

Gambit 3: Big landmass, mostly flat terrain, no enemies nearby
Production will be relatively low, but growth will be to die for. Space your cities out six to eight apart and let them grow like weeds!

Gambit 4: Big landmass, mixed terrain, no enemies nearby
Space your cities 6-8 apart in the open country for maximum long-term growth, and bunch them up in the forests and hills (4-5 apart). The cities in the hilly and/or mountainous country will be your natural production centers, while the wide open spaces of the plains will lead to good long term growth for massive commerce!

Gambit 5: Big landmass, open terrain, rivals near
Pick a rival and build toward him. Preferably, pick the larger of the two rivals with a plan to knock him down a peg. Space your cities as needed, but probably you will find that your spacing will be closer here than it might be if you were alone (probably in the 4-5 range). It is of VITAL importance that you do not kill off this larger rival! What you want is to prune the rival so that you choke off his growth. A small, relatively harmless rival on your border can be a useful thing! The other reason you don’t want to kill off your first military target is because while you’re fighting that first war, your other rival(s) are getting bigger and stronger. Sure, you might not knock one rival down, but by the time you do, your other(s) will be all the harder to tackle….firmly entrenched. So, in this case, you want to fight a series of pruning actions, rather than going for the jugular against any one of them. (exception): if you’re surrounded, it is ALWAYS in your best interest to totally secure at least one front or flank, and in this case, go for a quick, early, brutal kill, and then square off against your other opponents!)

You’ll note from the above examples that city spacing is mentioned repeatedly, and it is of paramount importance. While it is certainly true that packing your cities relatively closer together will stifle long term growth, you do not play the game in the long-term. You play the game in the here and now, and IN the here and now, speed is everything. One or two turns faster settlement time on your second, third…tenth city can lead to faster unit generation, more PW more quickly, more research….everything. Speed is so essential that yes, I recommend letting late game uber-productivity take a hit in preference for early game speed. It really is that important, and because speed is so hatefully important to the early game, it is in your best interest to do two things, either singly or together:

1) After you found your fourth city, and if it appears that you will have the tech for roads on or before the next round of settlers is ready, turn on your PW and start building roads! You can make up the slower build times by rush building the settlers to completion, and WHEN they’re done, they’ll get to where you need them to go faster, thanks to your road network. This trick alone will save you 2-3 turns per city!

2) Attack a nearby neighbor (Cradle….have not tested this in SAP2), and steal some of HIS PW! Free roads AND a free city, how can you beat that deal?

When you’re road building, chances are that you’re not gonna have the PW points for anything fancy, so get creative. Go *around* rough terrain, not through it. Terraform roads that lead two and from rivers so you don’t have to build roads absolutely everywhere (and let’s face it, with your embryonic economy at this point, you may not be able to….but you don’t have to! That’s not the point! The point is to do everything you possibly can to speed your settlers to where they need to be!).

At this point, with all the talk about cities, spacing, and fighting, you may be wondering what any of this has to do with getting your economy working like the demon that it can be….I’m getting there!

It’s no secret that the strength and vitality of your economy is directly related to the strength of your game overall. It is likewise, no secret that Public Works is your key to economic strength. From your PW fund, you are able to terraform and change the land to suit your purposes, and there are really only three considerations….food, production, and commerce. Food is important for two reasons, and the first is entirely self-evident. You can’t very well worry much about the economy if your people are starving. Thus, having sufficient food to maintain the population is of vital importance, and should you have one or more cities founded in marginal terrain, then every effort should be made to get what arable land there is around that city, producing food! This should be the overriding priority use for your PW fund, even taking precedence over road building and fortification (of course, better still would be to simply not build a city on a site like that until all the preliminaries had been done, but once built, that is an academic argument. Their need is immediate….more immediate even, than the need for roads and fortifications).

So….basic subsistence. That MUST BE the first priority for your PW fund. If the people are starving, then no amount of coaxing will turn your economy into the well-oiled machine that it could be, and so, this must be addressed before all else.

But once you have met the basic food requirements for your people (a thing you can generally do by intentionally NOT founding your early cities –say your first 15, for example—in lousy terrain….in general, the plains, coast, grassland and forest produces food in sufficient quantity to grow your city to size 7-9 without any strain whatsoever), the next best thing you can do for your citizenry is road-building, and the reasons for this are two-fold.

First and foremost is that the other, more advanced terraforming you will eventually do is quite expensive, and barbarians and your rival civs find a great deal of delight in ripping up your expensive terraforming efforts, so before you even BEGIN those expensive terraforming efforts (did I mention it was expensive?), start by building roads, and start simply. Road-connect each of your cities. Cities in the “center” of your empire will, no doubt, have roads appearing out of them like spokes on a wheel, connecting several cities with them, and this is fine. This is better than fine, actually, because having lots of roads leading to lots of different places gives you military flexibility, which is the second compelling reason to build roads.

Roads = Security. Roads give your well-positioned armies ways of reaching out and touching the barbarians or any of your rivals who may foolishly wander into your territory.

The needs of the military tho, are not quite so simple as connecting “Point A” with “Point B” and this will require some experimentation on your part to get all the roads put down right where you need them.

As you play, for example, you may take note of the fact that your full strength (12-unit) army, wastes time cutting around yonder city, because of the garrison forces inside the city. Fair enough….poof! Drop some coin and create a road that runs NEXT TO, rather than through, the city, and your problem is solved.

Likewise, you may discover that your reinforcements are taking too long to get to the front because they’re following a winding ribbon of road half-way ‘round your empire, and that their trip would be dramatically shortened by introducing a road here, here and here….presto! That’s how your road network matures! Pay attention to the movements of your troops when on auto-pilot, and do what you can to help speed them on their way.

Roads are, in a very real sense, the lifeline and life-blood of your empire, and it is sheer folly to do much in the way of “serious” terraforming before your road network is fully laid out.

Next on the terraforming list must be providing security for the realm. There are numerous ways of handling this, but you pay for it one way or another.

You can either dip into PW and pay to build forts, watch towers, and the like, thus tidying up your borders and pushing back the fog of war where barbarians love to lurk and spawn, or you may opt to pay for it by paying the support costs for a ton of units scattered throughout your empire such that they, collectively dispel the fog of war from your kingdom. However you choose to do it, you are paying a premium for that security (either in terms of PW not used for more traditional terraforming, or in terms of steadily increasing military support costs as you blanket the kingdom). It cannot, by the way, be argued that using the military unit method to push back the fog of war is cheaper or more effective than the PW method by virtue of the fact that your military units are mobile and thus, more flexible (can be used either to push back the fog OR to defend your holdings with). This is misleading, because while it is certainly true that your troops are mobile, the fog of war is not, and if you move your troops to deal with some newly formed threat, then you open yourself up to another (potential) threat, in terms of a barbarian uprising. So, you simply trade one problem for another, without truly SOLVING either.

Whichever way you decide to go, know in advance that dispelling the fog of war from inside your borders is both quite expensive and quite necessary to ensure maximum protection for your expensive terraforming and land improving efforts.

The ultimate answer to the question of how you will handle it will probably be as simple as saying “a little of both.” There are some instances where it’s just easier to build a fort, and/or where you really need a bit of a border push. There are other areas where it’s cheaper and more cost-effective to build a couple of units with good sight-radius and let them sit around. Don’t be afraid to mix and match (and while we’re on the subject, in Cradle, you’d be hard-pressed to find a better shroud buster than Javlin Cavalry!).

One additional way you can help yourself where pushing back the fog of war is concerned would be to prompt your cities to grow rapidly to size 7 or 9 (7 using SAP, 9 using Cradle). At this point, you get your first “border bump” which means that more of the map is made visible, and this is easy enough to engineer. Simply set all your citizens to farmer specialists when the city is founded and watch it grow like gangbusters (note that there may be instances where you will not be able to do this—if you’re trying to build a wonder, or if you need military units quickly, or if you are still expanding), but whenever feasible, this should be done, in order to maximize population growth, and see those gains as early in the game as possible.

So…all of the above should be done before any “real” terraforming is even undertaken, but of course, you don’t have to do so in the whole of your empire. Rather, you can break your empire into small sections (say, the space between 2-3 cities). Work hard to grow those cities rapidly, road-connect them and place a stout garrison nearby to whack marauding barbarians, station troops/build forts in key areas to push back the fog of war from your terraforming, and have at it!

But, having done all of the above, you should now proceed with care, forethought, and caution. After all, the ultimate goal is to kick your economy into high gear so you can blow your opponents’ doors off! (and as you might expect, that takes a plan, not haphazard terraforming efforts!)

After you have seen to the basic food requirements of your people, built your roads, and secured your borders, you are at last ready to begin the “real work.” Everything that has come before was simply ground work. Work done to ensure that when you put terraforming in place, you will only have to do it once (exception: as you progress through the tech tree, better terraforming options become available, and of course, you will want to make use of them! But in those cases, you are choosing when and where to re-terraform, rather than having some pesky barbarian or rival civ come through and start wrecking your work!

You may have gotten to this point in your terraforming activities with PW set someplace between 10 and 30%, but when you’re ready to grow your economy, the way to do it is full-force. Don’t do it half-way, or it’ll take forever! When you do it, devote as many of the empire’s resources to the task as possible (this means setting your PW to levels that practically shut down your cities in terms of actually producing anything….I aim for 60-80%!)

Consider how PW is calculated. PW is a percentage of the raw production of all your cities. As such, PW is impacted by the length of the work day. So…if you have a lot of PW work to be done, then right off the cuff, you know that increasing the length of your workday as much as your citizens will allow it is something you may want to consider doing. This is also illuminating in terms of the TYPE of terraforming you should turn your attention to.

Mines.

Mines give you more production. More production = More PW points, which means FASTER terraforming for the rest of it. So, if your people aren’t starving, once you’ve built your roads and pushed back the fog of war, build mines. LOTS of mines.

In an earlier essay, I mentioned that I now favor specialized cities, and this is certainly true. Nothing pleases me more than to see a wide band of hills and mountains, because I know that a city planted there can be quickly grown (by turning all citizens into farmers till the first border bump), and once the city DOES grow, it’ll be a production powerhouse for me. Two or three such cities (and these can be placed close together—3-5 tiles apart--cos in all likelihood, they’ll never see anything more than that first border bump) in an empire of 15 cities or less is all you need, and it’s a very easy thing to focus on clearing the fog of war from those regions first to secure the safety of your mines, then build like crazy.

What you’ll see is that the total productive capacity of your empire takes a startling jump….a surging LEAP as you bring those mines online, and this simply adds fuel to the fire. More mines, more total production, more PW points for MORE terraforming.

Try it out and see what I mean.

When you terraform, start with the mines, yes, and place as many mines as the terrain will allow for in the innermost ring FIRST! (ie – don’t get silly about it and mine everything, but hell yes! Mine those hills, deserts, dunes, and mountains in the inner ring!). Then, move on to your next “production city” and plant mines in ITS inner ring.

Only after you’ve got mines everywhere you can have or want them in the inner rings should you turn your attention to terraforming in the secondary or tertiary rings. Why? Mathematics. You get more bang for your buck (talking early cities here, which will probably be in the 8-14 range, size-wise) by focusing in on the inner ring first, and that’s what you’re all about! Getting the most bang for your buck.

So…mine everything mine-able, and start with that inner ring. When you’re done, mine everything mine-able in the outer ring(s).

That’ll give your PW a nice kickstart, and enable you to start planting commerce enhancers (trading posts in SAP2, Latifundias, which provide both food AND commerce, in Cradle). Doing this will see your gold supply and your science spiking upward nicely, with you dropping farms or nets in as needed to help keep the food supply adequate to your needs.

When war breaks out unexpectedly, or when a juicy wonder comes along that you just have to have, you can interrupt your growth cycle to deal with issues at hand, lowering your PW to 10-30% (or turning it off entire) until you’re finished dealing with the situation, and then ratchet it right back up till you have the biggest economy on the planet! Biggest economy = eventual win, no matter what your opponents may try!

-=Vel=-

**Velociryx** · October 16, 2002, 10:53

Technological Research and Innovation
1) First priority should be to get combined arms. This means warrior/archer in SAP2, and Spearman or Warrior/Slinger in Cradle. Get it. Use it. You’ll be glad you did.

2) Second priority is roads (The Wheel) in Cradle, and basic terraforming techs in SAP2 (slave labor, agriculture, ship building) This gives you the basics to get up and running good.

3) Third priority is to get out of Tyranny in Cradle (Dynasty), and Trade in SAP2 (roads).

4) Fourth priority is Fortification in Cradle (best, most important thing you can do for your game), and Monarchy/Republic in SAP2 (increase city count).

5) By this time, you should have SAP2 well in hand, but in Cradle, your troops will be getting a bit long in the tooth, and you should turn your attention immediately to weapons techs, getting new governments as needed to bump city count further. Oh, and grab Aqueducts! Latifundias are prolly the best terraforming option in the game!

-=Vel=-

**Ogie Oglethorpe** · October 17, 2002, 14:45

As always Vel, insightful pointers and strats to a game. I realize as I am now up and running on a Cradle game (a mere Medium dif until I get the mechanics down) some stupid things I was doing.

1) Not taking the time to spike my population especially near Mountains or Hills via 100% farmer specialization. It makes a huge difference to go whole heartedly in any aspect of the game. Be it pop growth, be it PW and production allocation, be it roading , etc. It seems to me, that if you attempt to simply grow a city(s) by natural growth and allow the city to be a generalized city, your growth, PW'ing, production and subsequent commerce seem to take forever to build to any significant degree.

2) T-forming the inner ring. Believe it or not, it never dawned on me as my cities moved from 8 to 9 and got a second ring of squares to work that the inner circle were the ones that were worked first, and only afterwards the sqaures of the second circle worked. That being said it is imperative that the first ring be fully t-formed to the hilt prior to doing any substantial improvements on the outer ring.

This of course begs the question, of the inner (or later on the outer) ring of squares what decides which squares are actually worked? Say you got a population of 4. You have 2 t-formed squares. How do you know if those t-formed squares are actually worked. Is there a means to allocate manually workers to a given square ala CIV2/3 & SMAC? And if so color me embarassed as this is likely so fundamental a question of mechanics that I should have otherwise been able to determine by myself. ('course like any of these TBS's who actually reads the freaking manual

)

Keep the advice coming. I have already found out the hard way that exceeding city limits of a given Government type is not something you want to indulge to heavily in. OTOH, it doesn't deter to heavily from an offensive campaign if all you want is to enslave your core bases to a healthy population.

First game is heading towards 1200 BC with me now in a very comfortable lead after my latest (3 of 8 taken out) conquest. Continent is now all mine with time to take a breather and start on commerce building.

By the by Cataphracts absolutely rock.

Kinna like cavalry in CIV3 if you ask me.

**Turambar** · October 17, 2002, 15:31

Another great guide Vel! Keep them coming!

Will we be seeing a Cradle AAR soon?

**hexagonian** · October 17, 2002, 15:43

Good to hear you got it up and running Ogie...

Originally posted by Ogie Oglethorpe
This of course begs the question, of the inner (or later on the outer) ring of squares what decides which squares are actually worked? Say you got a population of 4. You have 2 t-formed squares. How do you know if those t-formed squares are actually worked. Is there a means to allocate manually workers to a given square ala CIV2/3 & SMAC? And if so color me embarassed as this is likely so fundamental a question of mechanics that I should have otherwise been able to determine by myself. ('course like any of these TBS's who actually reads the freaking manual

)

The CTP2 setup is more streamlined, but it allows for some micromanagement. I do miss the civ2/SMAC/CTP1 worker system, although you can still have a city focus on a particular aspect (either growth/production/commerce/science).

What happens is that each worker in you city (population minus specialists) actually works the entire ring. The total production/commerce/food of a ring is divided by the number or workers that your city has until each tile of the ring is worked - then the next set of workers go out to the next ring until that ring is filled. You can use the specialists to focus on growth, science, commerce, and production though. In Cradle, those specialists become available at different enable advances.

You and Vel are right though - when building tile improvements on a city, fill all the tiles in a ring around a city as quickly as possible rather than improve 1 or 2 tiles on each city. And focus on the inner ring first...

A note - once you have tile improvements around a city, it may be better to use your workers instead of specialists in that city. So a city with a lot of mines might be better off keeping all of those workers instead of using production specialists. You can check this by checking the numbers as you assign workers/specialists.

[SIZE=1]
By the by Cataphracts absolutely rock.

Make sure you don't tackle Legions with them unless you have some good infantry troops to accompany them...In a straight up battle, Legions will chew them up.

**Ogie Oglethorpe** · October 17, 2002, 16:01

Belated thanx Hex for the advice on how to get Cradle working.

On the Cat issue, your prolly right. I was fortunate to although be behind significantly in tech (averageing 8 techs behind my latest victim) to be able to field a army that was reasonably on a tech parity. Although my victim had Iron Working for a good while he did not field legions to any degree. A mixed bag (12 unit army) of composite Archers and Cats made short work of any 8-10 unit army the AI had. Losses were normally 1-2 units but could have run as high as 4-5. Likewise the cities taken had no walls. Also likely as I try harder difficulties the legions would eat me alive.

All in all, though I find cradle to be the most entertaining of the historical TBS's I've played since well... since I started CIV2. (SMAC/X of course will always hold a near and dear place in my heart but I'm excluding that one as it is SciFI not historical). But kudos cradle is definitely a winner!!

Og

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