Zalson plays one turn at a time [COMPLETE]

[T-hawk]

Also attacking from the SW puts your units in better position to move towards the next cities.

[Zalson]

If you attack like this, you attack across the river.
Why not attacking from the forest SW of the city?

For some reason (and I'm not sure why, in retrospect), I thought that attacking diagonally across a river doesn't entail a -50% amphibious penalty. Now that you point it out, I will adjust my attack vector.

Wasn't able to play at all last night and provide that overview. I hope I can get in tonight.

[T-hawk]

attacking diagonally across a river doesn't entail a -50% amphibious penalty.

The -50% is for sea-to-land attacks from a boat. The penalty for across a river (including diagonally) is -25%.

It was actually true in older versions that the penalty didn't apply in your proposed configuration here (diagonally across a river mouth), but that was fixed eventually.

There are some counterintuitive cases where it looks like the -25% should apply but it doesn't. Attacking diagonally around a river bend is one (like from 1SE to 2E of Baghdad), and so is attacking diagonally past a river source (like from Mecca to 1SE of it.)

[Zalson]

t110
Ready for a tour of Zalson’s Arabia? Then here we go:



Mecca
A commercial powerhouse, regrowing on an axe after a triple whip for my horses city. It’s not even at its full potential in this screenshot.



Medina
A production powerhouse. Unfortunately, this is also likely to be a shrine city, which is a shame because this would be a perfect heroic epic.

Medina finishes an axeman, who heads up north to chase a Egyptian archer that’s been wandering around my northern border.



Damascus
Settled on the rice, Damascus is about to become a hybrid powerhouse with iron working and calendar.

Microed to finish a missionary this turn. The chop that ended up in Mecca was supposed to go here. Whoops.



Baghdad
Not the best is what I’d use to describe Baghdad. But, with that cogent description out of the way: it has produced the majority of my military.



Najran
Our eventual capitol. Will cottage all the FP, cottage the plains, and let this grow into a monster.

Whipping a granary on T111 (12/28 food), then overflowing into the library. And building that for a long time.



Kufah
A decent city founded before its time. With worker labor this will be a decent hammer producer but it’ll work 3 FP cottages for Najran, the oasis, the cow and the wheat for now — and whip off the excess.



City 6
I’ve done better but not super well. I will have one worker around to start this place with a pastured sheep, horse, and a floodplains farm. This will give me workers, settlers, and units. Perhaps a heroic epic city.



City’s Music 1 and Music 2
I’ll need to be able to build culture along side a missionary for these two gems. Sadly, and I mean this, these are high on the pirority list, but mainly for the silver.



Cities unappetizing 1 and no resources 2.
No resources city is useful for the fact that it claims a few green tiles. City Unappetizing 1 needs chain irrigation before I can think about founding it.

No resources is, therefore, my next city.



3 cities
But none that I want particularly. Will wait until music/civil service until i can found them. That way I spend the minimal amount of time, you know, not working low-yield tiles.



The Leftern frontier
The city marked calendar will be settled once I can get ... irrigation. It'll just grow too slow with only the bonus from the single farm. I'll need 4 farms over there.

The northern one also needs chain irrigation.

So my next research target is civil service.



The WarPath
10 axes and 5 catapults. We’ll move in 1T.



T111
Workers road and everything moves SW SW.

T112
Workers move SW and road. Everything moves SW.

T113
Declare War. move next to city.

T114
Kill




Not the best demographics, I know. But I am artificially constraining my crop yield and thus my GNP … for a happy cap that I am about to raise next turn. Well, next turn-ish. I can get the spices/silks in 2T — because I’m bad at worker movement.

But identifying you have a problem is the first step. Right?

[Old Harry]

Nice report. For cities where you need to pop borders are you planning to run caste system in your first golden age? How far away will that be?

For the war why not declare and move in t112?

Also - on your worker movement problem - you didn't need to move the combat workers to that tile this turn did you? It signals your intent, puts them at risk and costs 1 gold. Probably not an issue vs ai, but a human should try to snipe them.

[Zalson]

Old Harry:

I completely forgot that I can run caste system to pop borders, being spiritual and all! Thanks for reminding me.

You’re right: I am actually planning on declaring next turn. No idea why I wanted to wait an extra turn.

As for the workers: yeah, I would not be so careless in MP. That’s a good thing to keep in mind going forward, certainly. Since that is, ostensibly the point of this experiment.

t111
The big disappointment to this turn was that, naturally, I waited long enough to be able to … single pop which the granary at Najran. :sigh:

Founded Basra and started improving the sheep. Or, at least, moved over to it.



My workers in the south are going to get me spices and silks before they finish going up north.

Mecca finishes its axe (which heads off to the front) and overflows into an archer. It’ll switch to a worker next turn.

Damascus finishes the missionary and switches to a worker.

Baghdad will grow next turn to double-whip another catapult.

T112
moment of truth.



Well that is underwhelming.

Heliopolis costs 226 EP to sabotage production. I don’t know what that means.

I will take Heliopolis next turn and then will push on towards Thebes. Go for the throat, and all.

[Zalson]

T113
I had a rough week. let’s take an extra turn.

Somehow, MR I have no copper has 2 axeman. :/



3 cats drop the defenses.

1 more weakens the stack and withdraws. Naturally, the next one dies with 88% odds…

In come the axemen.

1 CR Axe dies… at 87%

the other 4 axes clean up.



Heliopolis comes with a Granary. Not too shabby. Oh, and a settled great prophet

Damascus double whips another worker. Now, it will just grow grow grow.

Baghdad finishes a cat and starts another.

[T-hawk]

Najran
Our eventual capitol. Will cottage all the FP, cottage the plains, and let this grow into a monster.

Najran isn't going to do that as well as you think. Because of that health problem. Each flood plains you add also costs an extra food by way of unhealth, so they're no better than regular grasslands. I think this granary should have been double-whipped as soon as the city hit size 4, since it also gives the +2 health and gets out from under that penalty for a while. But it's still going to be hobbled until you can find more health resources.

Damascus: Why is it running one priest and one grassland cottage when it could be running two of either? What you're committing here is letting material accumulate unexploited. You could run either two priests for a while then two cottages, or the other way around, and then you have the same end total productivity except that you got either the growth or the shrine sooner along the way. IOW, either grow before running the priests or eat the food shortage to pop the great prophet sooner, don't split this difference.

No resources city is useful for the fact that it claims a few green tiles. City Unappetizing 1 needs chain irrigation before I can think about founding it.

No resources is, therefore, my next city.

One useful thing it can do is work and grow a cottage 2S 1E of it for Najran. Najran then takes that over once it has the population and multipliers to leverage it.

Nice job on Heliopolis. Note that we can work out the location of Egypt's capital from the remaining culture borders: it's 2S 3E of Helio. And it will have 60% culture defense so you're in for a stronger fight there.

[Zalson]

Najran isn't going to do that as well as you think. Because of that health problem. Each flood plains you add also costs an extra food by way of unhealth, so they're no better than regular grasslands. I think this granary should have been double-whipped as soon as the city hit size 4, since it also gives the +2 health and gets out from under that penalty for a while. But it's still going to be hobbled until you can find more health resources.

Yeah -- I think is is one of the pitfalls of single player with a normal map vs the multiplayer bonanzas that normally occur. The -9 or so health penalty isn't an issue when you have every single health resource available...

Damascus: Why is it running one priest and one grassland cottage when it could be running two of either? What you're committing here is letting material accumulate unexploited. You could run either two priests for a while then two cottages, or the other way around, and then you have the same end total productivity except that you got either the growth or the shrine sooner along the way. IOW, either grow before running the priests or eat the food shortage to pop the great prophet sooner, don't split this difference.

It took me a couple of readings to understand this, but you're basically saying: don't go in for half-measures. If I want a GP: get the GP. If I want the cottages, get the cottages. Don't try to do both? Am I reading that right?

Thanks for pointing out where Thebes is. I think that catapults should be able to make the difference there; they're getting nearly even odds to start with against archers. Although I am realizing the vast number of units that might be required; I guess I'll how much the four units + Heliopolis took from Ramesses's power and be able to extrapolate then.

Really annoyed about the existence of axes, in general, though.

[T-hawk]

It took me a couple of readings to understand this, but you're basically saying: don't go in for half-measures. If I want a GP: get the GP. If I want the cottages, get the cottages. Don't try to do both? Am I reading that right?

Yeah. Let me try again to be clearer, that wording got way overly academic. Food has no value until you actually grow. GPP has no value until you actually spawn the Prophet. By going half-measures, you leave food unused without growing or GPP unused without spawning for longer than necessary.

Let's say it takes 30 cottage-turns for growth and 30 priest-turns for the Prophet. If you do one of each at the same time, you'll get both the growth and the prophet in 30 turns. If you do two of one then two of the other, you'll get one of them in 15 turns and the other in 30.

Oh, and Ramesses bought copper from somebody else. The AIs do that readily.