Strategy Thread - for quick strategy questions and answers

[darrelljs]

When you've offended as many people as I have, the risk of doing so again ceases to be a consideration. In fact, I did sketch out a list but I've been told that to maximize offence, I have to seed it first.

Darrell

[Commodore]

When you've offended as many people as I have, the risk of doing so again ceases to be a consideration. In fact, I did sketch out a list but I've been told that to maximize offence, I have to seed it first.

Darrell

We await with bated breath.

[spacetyrantxenu]

This sounds like one of mackoti's PBEM threads where we begged him to post his top ten or something. A new duel tournament would be fun to watch if there is sufficient interest among the top players.

Perhaps we need an anonymous selection committee. Anyone who feels like it can submit their top 8 or top 16 to some neutral party who counts the ballots and produces a crowd sourced seeding. I guess the flaw there is that it values each vote the same when I'm sure there's a case to be made that the democratic process doesn't always produce the most viable outcomes.

[WilliamLP]

In terms of research, the order of usefulness is:
scientists that will produce a GP >>> mines building wealth/research > scientists > cottages > irrigations (zero research value)
...
Put simply, mines outshine non-financial cottages in the free happiness range.

I know he's talking about single player, but is this also true in multi-player games? If I'm not financial (or philosophical), and have a city that has a lot of non-river grassland, and I want to use it for research, am I really better off speccing it out for food, production, and specialists as a rule of thumb?

I've never been interested in Deity (or even Immortal) play vs the AI. It seems to be an art that is 10% solid Civ play and 90% knowing exactly how the AI works, what it will do, and how to exploit it for worker steals, tech trades, attacks, and so on. (If anyone hasn't seen Chris / Absolute Zero's videos on Youtube it really is an interesting watch to see this dark art in action, from someone who regularly beats Deity AIs like this.)

[NobleHelium]

Everything that Unconquered Sun said only applies to Deity, not even lower difficulties, never mind multiplayer. That said, people often underestimate the power of great people and by extension Pyramidless specialists. That has been proven in quite a few pbems such as 23.

[Krill]

Everything that Unconquered Sun said only applies to Deity, not even lower difficulties, never mind multiplayer. That said, people often underestimate the power of great people and by extension Pyramidless specialists. That has been proven in quite a few pbems such as 23.

In terms of research, the order of usefulness is:

scientists that will produce a GP >>> mines building wealth/research > scientists > cottages > irrigations (zero research value)

In terms of production, the order of usefulness is:

mines or irrigations (depending on city size and presence of granary) >> cottages >> scientists (zero production value).

Well, US got several things wrong there immediately. Scientists have a negative production value as they eat food. Cottages have zero production except via upgrade or rushbuy (and I don't think rushbuy matters for most of the game). The best production tiles are food resources, not mines or non-resource farms. Slavery even without a granary is just too good due to front loading the advantage of getting new cities and workers out.

On top of that, this ranking ignores the cost of each "tile improvement" (specialist slots are effectively tile improvements as they enable 1 pop points to produce an output).

• Farms require Agriculture (<100 beaker tech) and 5 worker turns
  
• Cottages require Pottery (200<X<300 beakers of tech) and 4 worker turns
  
• Scientists require Writing (X>400 beakers of tech) and 90 hammers
  
• Mines require Currency/Alphabet (X>1000 beakers of tech unless on suicidal beeline) and 5 worker turns (cos you have to move onto a hill).

Cottages require the least investment of all of the other methods of producing research, and come at a tech you want to research anyway to speed up pop growth through granaries. That doesn't make them the best tile improvement for research, but it does enable a player to grow onto a food neutral tile, and at the difficulty level that most MP games are played, offset the cost of said pop point. That pop point is actually only there to store hammers for a future slave; the commerce from the cottage is just an byproduct, and growth of the cottage an investment for the the future. The main production tile is actually always the food resources that you settle for. Really, cottages are best thought of as a method of funding expansion rather than research and they aren't mutually exclusive with scientists. It's more about figuring out where you can afford to build libraries and how many scientists you can run, and how those potential GS you produce fit into your strategy: sometimes you want a GP for a shrine, other times you need an artist for a bomb and running those scientists, whilst helping research, are counter productive from a strategic view.

[mackoti]

And about article i can say i learned alot from US or Rusten or Acyd satyr which are all great players , if they would devote some time to MP they would have been great.
And for example i dont know whom from Rb could beat JOvan kukic in a duel.

Rusten has played pitbosses and as you can easily guess he is very good also in that format:
http://www.tacticalgamer.com/civilizatio...story.html

I know he plays multi but last time i read about him was retired.I persoanly i learn most civ from him and i think if he would play at rb would be top 5 very easily .And more of that he wrotes excelent reporst too( for single games ) .

About people beating jovan I think darrel is too optimist.
Lets not underestimate how other people play becasue there are realy realy good players.
About that analises which Us was doing yeah is only for deity games were you get rifles at 700 ad and you dont need to build your own cotages but you take from nighbours.So totaly diferent game which never will work in MP as for example TmIt (dont remeber exacly the name) foun in some games he played here.

[Gavagai]

US post also assumes tech trading on and AI trading away techs mindlessly.

[darrelljs]

All right keep in mind I didn't follow every (or even most games), but this is my first cut seeding.

Scandanavian Regional
#1 - SevenSpirits
#2 - novice
#3 - Thoth
#4 - Zakalwe

European Regional
#1 - Krill
#2 - uberfish
#3 - Commodore
#4 - Cyneheard

U.S. Regional
#1 - Speaker
#2 - scooter
#3 - Sulla
#4 - pindicator

Asia Regional
#1 - mackoti
#2 - plako
#3 - Serdoa
#4 - NobleHelium

Darrell

[Krill]

Wait, why are maybe half of those names in the correct areas?