Unfinished business - SG for improving at Civ 4 (sic)

[RefSteel]

couple of comments: whip the forges before anything else. That way, we get a 25% bonus on the hammers we whip out. The forges also give us +2 happy so we can afford to double up whip anger.

...unless there's a more urgent need. (For example, Granaries are ~always a more urgent need in new cities, especially at half the cost, and e.g. the Library may be more urgent in Flying Dutchman just to speed the "conquest" of Cuman.)

Make sure you can overflow the library at Flying Dutchman into a ... obelisk? That's an additional +2 culture (5*.25)

Stele! In fact it's an additional 2.25 culture once the library is in place; unlike hammers, the game does keep track of fractional cultural production. (Of course it's worth only 1.75 pre-library.) Thinking about the way culture works, the Stele might indeed shave a significant number of turns off the flip date, since in spite of producing no culture ever, Cuman will (I think) have some native culture on its own tile that you have to overcome.

[haphazard1]

I think barb cities do have some effective culture in the city tile itself, as RefSteel said. But if you can get some culture on that tile, you should be able to flip it fairly quickly. I had forgotten about the stele, but it is actually useful in this case. For once. The anti-synergy of a monument UB for a creative leader....

GG for a medic chariot, excellent. I love chariots for my GGs, they get the extra movement and usually will not be the top defender in most stacks (and die fighting when you really don't want them to). And you can sometimes sneak them a bit of extra XP at very good odds against axes if you are close to getting them one more level.

Looking pretty good overall. A future oromo/cannon conquest spree is a good possibility, or you could look at something earlier (knights/trebs?) if your economy gets you ahead in tech sooner.

Do you have any plans for wonders in the near or medium term? There are some potentially attractive ones within the next couple tiers of techs.

[shallow_thought]

Huh. Never thought of throwing in a stele. Nice catch, will add it to the list in FD after the lib.

And yes, while WB will probably be first build in new city, no point in chopping to completion until 4t after founding. Will chop with one worker only, while others get on with furs (new resource, needed for happiness in FD), then silver.

It's certainly more efficient to build and whip the forges first, but it may be faster to slide a worker whip followed by chops in there. I'll take it on a case-by-case basis - it may just take too long to build forges in some places without chops or 3-pop whips I'd rather avoid.

[Zalson]

We probably want the wonder of like 3 settlers and 3 workers

Oh, and MoM.

[Zalson]

Huh. Never thought of throwing in a stele. Nice catch, will add it to the list in FD after the lib.

And yes, while WB will probably be first build in new city, no point in chopping to completion until 4t after founding. Will chop with one worker only, while others get on with furs (new resource, needed for happiness in FD), then silver.

It's certainly more efficient to build and whip the forges first, but it may be faster to slide a worker whip followed by chops in there. I'll take it on a case-by-case basis - it may just take too long to build forges in some places without chops or 3-pop whips I'd rather avoid.

The reason I suggested mining the silver first is that it gives a better yield (0/2/5 vs 1/0/4). We're going to have 5 unhappy with your whips (if we get a full 1-pop overflow on the library, we'll get the stele in one turn). We won't have an issue with happy, is what I'm saying. If we get all 4 workers to mine and then camp, we can probably so it in 3 total turns -- then 3 can move to chop. Or something like that?

As for forges: all our cities grow pretty quick (with the exception of Christmas Present) and have good hammer output. We should be able to 3 pop whip the forges (102 total hammers output), Do we need to have 30 in the box or 18 in the box to 3 pop whip? I'd say we 3 pop whip and build axes with the overflow, then 2x whip the workers once we regrow. That'll give us forges, 5 axes, and 5 workers or something like that?

EDIT: wish that I had thought to post a city round up at the end of my session. That'd be useful right about now.

[shallow_thought]

We probably want the wonder of like 3 settlers and 3 workers

Oh, and MoM.

Proper report will hopefully follow (my wife is back early from a company jolly, so maybe not...), but the good stuff:
- Have started to prepare chops around YM for MoM (would love to have it - and we have loads of forests, can always save them for Taj instead)
- We have Sailing, Mysticism and Masonry, working on Calendar*
- Library and Stele are putting pressure on Cuman
- One worker whipped, one barb worker running from the ruins of Khazak** stolen
- Many forges (quite a bit of chopping helped here) and one market whipped***
- Lots of lovely riverside cottages at Brocken
- New city has fish, silver, furs

Notes:
*I got 1t masonry in case we want walls - key cities are at 40% defense, but we might want 50%... also, no turns in Cal yet, next player could consider Construction instead.
** Boudicca grabbed Khazak - we now know why we've not seen an incoming stack before
*** Whipped for overflow into military - Boudicca has finally got marginally serious

Bad news - Boudicca is back with a small but highly promoted stack; real problem is she has manoeuvred it sensibly! She's been moving over hills and threatening to fork XP and BaS; because of the rivers everywhere I can't get troops into good positions (observe the out of position axeman). Bah. We have enough troops to defend (and those in XP are fortified) but I'm having to basically double up at XP and BaS. If we'd had construction for bridges I'd have hit her on the flat; get through the one axeman and the rest should be gravy (all those city raider promotions that would be worthless...). On hills, archers and GWs could be costly to shift.



I picked off a roaming chariot earlier, but then lost one myself through carelessness; Granny got revenge for 2-1 to the good guys this set.

I'm attaching the save to give maximum time for people to look around, but there's no rush to play. As said, I may not be able to report properly until tomorrow.

[haphazard1]

Ah, Boudica is back, is she? The AI does get points for persistence. Not always for intelligence but they are persistent. And when they do actually do something smart, it can be trouble. Like Gallics on hills.

Not going for wonders is a perfectly valid strategy, especially when you have more pressing things to worry about. Wars, grabbing more land, etc. Just thought I would bring it up, since there are some possibly useful ones in this portion of the tech tree and you do have marble to make some of them more attractive than usual.

Another topic for thought: great people plans? You have (or could have) some libraries for scientists, and are heading towards having some forges (engineers), courthouses (spies), and markets (merchants). Can't recall if you have grabbed Priesthood for temples (priests) yet, but you have options if you want them.

[shallow_thought]

Huh. Never thought of throwing in a stele. Nice catch, will add it to the list in FD after the lib.

And yes, while WB will probably be first build in new city, no point in chopping to completion until 4t after founding. Will chop with one worker only, while others get on with furs (new resource, needed for happiness in FD), then silver.

It's certainly more efficient to build and whip the forges first, but it may be faster to slide a worker whip followed by chops in there. I'll take it on a case-by-case basis - it may just take too long to build forges in some places without chops or 3-pop whips I'd rather avoid.

The reason I suggested mining the silver first is that it gives a better yield (0/2/5 vs 1/0/4). We're going to have 5 unhappy with your whips (if we get a full 1-pop overflow on the library, we'll get the stele in one turn). We won't have an issue with happy, is what I'm saying. If we get all 4 workers to mine and then camp, we can probably so it in 3 total turns -- then 3 can move to chop. Or something like that?

As for forges: all our cities grow pretty quick (with the exception of Christmas Present) and have good hammer output. We should be able to 3 pop whip the forges (102 total hammers output), Do we need to have 30 in the box or 18 in the box to 3 pop whip? I'd say we 3 pop whip and build axes with the overflow, then 2x whip the workers once we regrow. That'll give us forges, 5 axes, and 5 workers or something like that?

EDIT: wish that I had thought to post a city round up at the end of my session. That'd be useful right about now.

Sorry, I didn't see this before playing. I don't think it mattered too much; the camp is not much worse than mined silver anyway (1f = 2h = 2.5c, according to Blake). I only moved one worker to chop, which delayed fish by 1t (bloody tundra); others camped furs in place, then moved and mined. Fur happy was actually key in one city - saved an awkward whip / stagnation (probably XP - memory not clear). Forges were less of a problem than I'd feared because I chopped to help them along at CP and Brocken. That allowed me to go 2-pop whip to finish them - yes, into  pile of axes (and one spear) that Brian will hopefully find useful...

I'd have to re-check the game, but I didn't quite get to your production figures. I think it was 5 forges, 1 market (finished off), 1 worker, 1 axe - four forests chopped (this ignores FD and new city). No 3-pop whips though, nothing (other than FD) overwhipped, and a couple more units coming up next turn from overflow. Doesn't seem too far off? I very rarely overwhip cities, although that seems to be a standard play sometimes in MP, and furs + forges + (soon) calendar might be a good time, so I may have missed something. Most cities were in whip unhappiness already for a good part of the turnset...

 I wasted worker turns like water for 2-4 workers out near XP / BaS trying and failing to military engineer my way to Boudicca's units in the last half of the turnset though .

@haphazard1 - I'd be very happy to target MoM if the rest of the team is onboard; ideally we'd get it for our first golden age and do a big civics swap then (GLib is a decent fallback). We have marble, and forests. As for GPP, problem is lack of food / pressure for military.
- FD has food, but needs to target Moai (I think)
- Brocken has food, could start to run scientists but we need to build a library first!
- YM is a little short, as we want to keep working the gold.

[RefSteel]

shallow_thought, did you say you just put one turn into masonry? Because until that's teched and the marble quarried (which is costly in worker turns) or forted (even more costly in worker turns, but can be started in advance) it doesn't help to have marble in borders....

[haphazard1]

Always so many competing priorities. It's what makes Civ Civ. Moslty I was just asking about wonders and GPP to see what you were thinking -- there are possibilities with both, but you do have lots of other things you need right now.

MoM is always nice to have, both short term and long term; extended late game golden ages can be hugely productive in a large, developed empire. And the Great Library is often a nice way to get some GPP going when you don't have an obvious GP farm city site -- it is a hammers-to-GPP play, like the whip is a food-to-hammers play or the Oracle is a hammers-to-research play. Really, a sizable portion of Civ IV seems to be about finding the best ways to convert one thing into another thing.

Re Masonry, I read that as you already have the tech (researched in one turn) rather than putting one turn into it. Is that correct? I agree with RefSteel about getting the marble quarried -- I sometimes find myself making lots of grand plans for wonders and then realizing I never actually got around to researching the tech and improving the tile.