[Spoilers] Biggus Decius and the Sucking Vampires (Bobchillingworth / Calabim)

[Bobchillingworth]

Seriously it is asking me to liberate the city every. goddamn. turn.


Does anyone know how to make it stop?



Oh also Selrahc now has a mind mana node. I assume he chose it for the Inspiration Adepts.

[Mardoc]

I haven't tested this myself, but according to Civfanatics, if you turn off 'Advisor Popups', you stop getting the liberate city message as well. Advisor popups appear to be the ones that say 'X wants an Aqueduct', so you're probably fine without them .

I'll see when I get home if I can figure out precisely where that option is.

[T-hawk]

I'm pretty sure Mardoc is right. It's the first option checkbox in the Ctrl-O screen.

[DaveV]

So, six turns since your last screenie: do you have open borders with Iskender? How's the research and city spam going?

[Bobchillingworth]

I'll post an image once I get today's turn, after I settle the eastern copper town.


I have peace and OB with Iskender.


Research is going better than expected, but I'm having to micromanage several of the cities every turn, because the governor doesn't understand how manors work, and loves to switch to plains forests whenever construction on the next item in a queue begins.


There's more competing build priorities now than there have been or will be probably for the rest of the game. Cities need to finish off public baths, they need more workers, libraries, breeding pits, smokehouses, manors, granaries, another settler or two, markets, and a few more units to replace the couple bloodpets I've lost killing bears while escorting settlers.



I'll try to do a more in-depth overview later.

[darrelljs]

I'm having to micromanage several of the cities every turn, because the governor doesn't understand how manors work, and loves to switch to plains forests whenever construction on the next item in a queue begins.

The downside of playing the vamps . It seems like every time I turn around the tiles are totally goofed.

Darrell

[DaveV]

the governor doesn't understand how manors work, and loves to switch to plains forests whenever construction on the next item in a queue begins.

It seems like every time I turn around the tiles are totally goofed.

I find myself using the emphasize food and emphasize commerce buttons a lot. That seems to help.

I have peace and OB with Iskender.

Research is going better than expected

Peace and open borders may have something to do with that. Researching trade and getting at least +1 commerce per city won't hurt either.

There's more competing build priorities now than there have been or will be probably for the rest of the game. Cities need to finish off public baths, they need more workers, libraries, breeding pits, smokehouses, manors, granaries, another settler or two, markets, and a few more units to replace the couple bloodpets I've lost killing bears while escorting settlers.

I hate to keep harping on the same topic, but the order of priority for builds should be:

1. Workers
2. Settlers
3. Garrisons/escorts
4. Public baths (mature cities)
5. Governor's manors
6. Monuments
7. Markets
.
.
.
97. Breeding pits
98. Granaries and smokehouses
99. Libraries

Your cities will grow like weeds working 4-food 2-commerce grasslands. All of the low priority buildings in my list cost the same as a settler, or two moroi, or 1.5 workers, or 1.3 catapults, or 5 bloodpets. A new city will give a far greater yield than a library in your best current city. Once you've filled the available land, it's time to consider infrastructure (and by then, I'm hoping you'll have made it to Feudalism so I can recommend building vamps instead).

[Bobchillingworth]

Don't read too much into my build-need list. I didn't put down monuments because almost every city that needs one either already has it or is working on one. Same with public baths. I also didn't list builds in any particular order of priority.


Military isn't an issue right now. I could build a ton of new bloodpets, but I don't want to pay for them to sit around. I'm building four 1-2 turn workers right now, and more are eventually on the way.


I was planning on building libraries over (many) more settlers though because I thought that it made more economic sense. I admit to not being particularly skilled with that area of the game, but won't the 25% boost plus running a few scientists in my size 12 cities be worth more than increasingly far-flung expansion sites? Obviously I'm going to fill in all my land eventually (I still have room for at least a half-dozen decent cities, and then a couple fillers), but every new city requires escorts, at least two workers, and a lot of time to properly get established (especially since I'll have to use chain irrigation for the east). It seems much more expedient to construct 3-4 turn libraries first.


As for the food buildings, those aren't a huge priority, but I want them in place before I have vampires, so that I can begin major feeding as quickly as possible. Many vampires might not need more than Death II and a few combat promos, or all three city raider promotions, but I want a core of very elite vampires as well, who have at least all of the combat promos + shock and can reliably defend my stacks and trump as many units as possible in the field. Plus I need a vampire of level 14 ASAP, so Prespur (probably my best food city) needs to get to an enormous size before feudalism.

[Bobchillingworth]

As promised, a couple of pictures.


My latest cities:




The core:

[DaveV]

I was planning on building libraries over (many) more settlers though because I thought that it made more economic sense. I admit to not being particularly skilled with that area of the game, but won't the 25% boost plus running a few scientists in my size 12 cities be worth more than increasingly far-flung expansion sites? Obviously I'm going to fill in all my land eventually (I still have room for at least a half-dozen decent cities, and then a couple fillers), but every new city requires escorts, at least two workers, and a lot of time to properly get established (especially since I'll have to use chain irrigation for the east). It seems much more expedient to construct 3-4 turn libraries first.

The problem with cities is that they take some time to pay off. If you build them now, you nail down the territory and give the city time to grow to a point where it starts to pay off. If you have enough workers to keep it working improved tiles, that is. I think you should at least build the cities due south and due north of Acaia (for a buffer against your long-term enemies). You could wait for the other cities because no one is going to poach them from you, but the longer you wait, the longer it will take to make them pay off. At some point, it won't be worth building new cities, and you'll have to play out the game with the ones you have.

Despite increasingly steep maintenance costs, I think any size 12 city will more than pay for itself in commerce and production. The more cities you have to produce military, the stronger you'll be when it gets to that point in the game. You're right that the libraries will pay off better in the short term; it's a balancing act of keeping your research high vs. having more production/commerce centers.

As promised, a couple of pictures.

Looking good ! Another tradeoff once you grab writing is that you can set production to beakers if you're really desperate to grunt out a tech. You should also be able to get a pretty good idea of what techs the other guys have from the tech screen. If you don't have the time or inclination to sort through the techs, I'd be glad to comb through that screen if you send me the save after you discover writing. Since that will be around turn 150, I'd also be happy to post a bunch of screenies for a report on the state of the Vampire Empire.

If you can get the other players to leave you alone for 20-25 more turns, I'm feeling really good about your position in this game.

P.S. You should probably send a PM to Sullla asking to rename this thread to indicate that you're back in charge.