Zalson plays one turn at a time [COMPLETE]

[Zalson]

Let’s get rid of that ridiculous 60% culture tax, shall we?

T221
I am now converting most every city that has its basic infrastructure over to building culture. That’s a placeholder for now (just rotating through every city as it completes builds). I’ll switch them all over to something else and ply the sliders to see if I should go merchants or scientists/wealth or research.

Start the forbidden palace in Beijing.



Add an academy to Najran. It’ll give me minimum 64 beakers per turn, but I do have all the science buildings in Najran. So it’s a bit better than that, even.

After a tedium of going through my cities and removing all the commerce producing specialists…



+608gpt at 0% science, with 1392 total gold and 168 research coming from UoS.


17

-682gpt at 100%, with 1525 beakers and 102 gold. So, doing some math (I await the fact check because I am sick and also doing this back of the envelope).

Commerce gives me 1357 beakers and 1290 gold. That means that if I produce wealth, it will allow me to product an extra 5% beakers. So everything should build wealth with the possible exception of Najran (academy) and Beijing (academy). However, and as mentioned, Beijing will be built a forbidden palace and then Najran will build Oxford once I complete the requisite universities.

I’ve also decided that it’s worth it to fill in several more spots. So, most of the places that were building wealth after I fiddled with the sliders will now build settlers to fill these spots.













That last one will have to wait for a bit. If I can’t reach it before Galleons then it’s not likely to happen. Unless that would mean that every city gets intercontinental trade routes? I’m not sure how that works. Can someone explain how interncontinenals are determined?

Oh, I also threw a golden age. Naturally, I did not do a before and after for the golden age but I did do some math on T222 because…

T222
Spiral Minaret comes in at Kufah. That’s worth an extra 200 gold per turn (not counting Merchants, I think). Well, that and the merchants I hired.



I’ve got 25 workers right now and might need more. This makes me think that the Hagia Sofia might be worth it. Especially since I can easily chop it out someplace like Muscat. It’s 9 turns to build currently there. there’s still plenty of time to deal with that.

One thing I am going to build the moment stone comes online is, well, Oxford (at Najran, duh) but Angkor Wat. I’m going to have a lot of priests and might as well make them better than engineers.

T223
Nationalism comes in. We’ll 1 turn constitution to get our specialists bumped up a notch — although this will mean unhappiness in the places that I whipped a little hard. (Really, elephantine is the only place that’ll really be hurt by it. And that’s what -colosseums-/synagogues are for.)

And never mind on the hagia sophia: ragnar completed it. Darn.



Obligatory golden age Moai shot. Took forever and a day to get that up before stone came online. It was only at the end that I realized 2x whipping a caravel was probably the most efficient way to build it.



Look at what a powerhouse Alexandria is right now. It’ll complete nicely on the last turn of the golden age. Then, I’ll get a great person out of Thebes for an additional 12 turns of golden age.

3 settlers complete next turn and 2 more complete the turn after that.

I did some looking around the map and figure I’ll place this city on the gold with the settler coming out of Muscat. After that, I’ll need 1 more settler for the fishing village SW of Tianjin and an extra for the iceball fish island SW of the mainland.




Not sure where those’ll come from but I know that Hangzhou is no longer needs to produce any infrastructure so it might be the provider since it is nearby.

T224
Representation comes in.

Tabuk is founded by the settler from Medina. This is quite a frustrating placement as it pushes carefully managed medina into a food deficit. Alas (forgot to screenshot). Workers are there to improve the riverside grassland to a farm for now (eventually, a state property watermill).

Kufah starts Angkor Wat, due in 6 turns.

Both Shandong and Tiajin came out of resistance this turn which required some micromanagement. Also, the impending switch OUT of Caste System means I’ll need to:

• reconfigure all my cities
  
• get temples up everywhere
  

So the build order everywhere is:

1. granary
   
2. temple
   
3. forge
   

At the end of the turn: switch to representation and slavery. Because I am bad at screenshotting, I don’t have a before/after pic. But rep does add about 300 additional beakers.



Unfortunately, it also means that Najran and Elephantine are unhappy. Elephantine, I can’t even whip off the unhappy citizens (88 turns of whip unhappiness). I’ll just have to eat it until I can get a synagogue up. Fortunately, Elephantine is producing a lot of hammers as I convert it to workshops. (It’s got spices and dyes providing commerce as well as 1 developed cottage)

Finally, dial down science to 0% at the end of the turn. Replaceable Parts due in 2 (says 5 but means 2).

T225
Sana’a founded and immediately it cripples Heliopolis. i wish there was a way you could say: Don’t do this! a rice farm is much more valuable with a size 17 city.

12


In any case, that’s a bunch of turns for today. I already voted which was my only goal for the day, so I’ll continue to convalesce.

Hopefully my health will reflect my GNP graph. I’ve already had the golden age spike (yesterday’s delirium to today’s ability to think coherently).

[T-hawk]

Commerce gives me 1357 beakers and 1290 gold. That means that if I produce wealth, it will allow me to product an extra 5% beakers. So everything should build wealth with the possible exception of Najran (academy) and Beijing (academy).

All cities should favor Wealth over Research, even those.  Reason is that Wealth/Research don't use the gold/beaker multipliers in the city, they use its hammer multipliers instead.  Both produce the same amount.  So in your case it should be Wealth, because each gold converts to 1.05 beakers via the slider.

So, most of the places that were building wealth after I fiddled with the sliders will now build settlers to fill these spots.

Are you playing for a conquest victory?  None of these will matter for that, they're never going to put out military units.

That last one will have to wait for a bit. If I can’t reach it before Galleons then it’s not likely to happen. Unless that would mean that every city gets intercontinental trade routes? I’m not sure how that works. Can someone explain how interncontinenals are determined?

Man, it's been a while and I don't remember for sure, but yes I seem to remember that one city on an island gives all of your cities one trade route with the intercontinental multiplier.

Sana’a founded and immediately it cripples Heliopolis. i wish there was a way you could say: Don’t do this! a rice farm is much more valuable with a size 17 city.

You know you can just enter Heliopolis and click the tile back to its control, right?

[Zalson]

So, most of the places that were building wealth after I fiddled with the sliders will now build settlers to fill these spots.

Are you playing for a conquest victory?  None of these will matter for that, they're never going to put out military units.

Yeah, I figure as much. However, part of this game is also to improve my play overall, so founding these cities more rapidly after the end of the war is something I wanted to work on. Also, I can't really build useful conquering units at this point (macemen/trebuchets aren't going to help and camel archers are already queued up). That said, I've reprioritized rifling.

That last one will have to wait for a bit. If I can’t reach it before Galleons then it’s not likely to happen. Unless that would mean that every city gets intercontinental trade routes? I’m not sure how that works. Can someone explain how interncontinenals are determined?

Man, it's been a while and I don't remember for sure, but yes I seem to remember that one city on an island gives all of your cities one trade route with the intercontinental multiplier.

Oh, okay. So another intercontinental city would give 2 intercontinental trade routes to every city. And that's where the intercontinental value is.

Sana’a founded and immediately it cripples Heliopolis. i wish there was a way you could say: Don’t do this! a rice farm is much more valuable with a size 17 city.

You know you can just enter Heliopolis and click the tile back to its control, right?

oh I was more annoyed than anything else. I was able to fix up Heliopolis fine; the real issue was that if I wasn't paying attention, I'd get some sweet spy specialists.

[T-hawk]

Don’t do this! a rice farm is much more valuable with a size 17 city.

Oh, and also, this isn't true.

A rice farm yielding 5 food to a size 1 city provides 3/22 of a population growth every turn. The same farm yielding the same food to a size 17 city provides 3/54 of a growth every turn.

A larger city may have bigger economic multipliers, but notice that the full +100% isn't even enough to make it more valuable. 3/22 of a citizen with +0% multipliers is still more than 3/54 +100%.

[Zalson]

Yeah, i was thinking about that. Perhaps it is more valuable to let the city slowly starve to a smaller size while getting the other one up to snuff.

[Zalson]

Check that, it's significantly more valuable. I can also whip those cities to provide some value while losing those citizens if I need to (additionally, I can run specialists).

[T-hawk]

No, don't let the size 17 city starve or whip. The farm does have more value supporting an existing citizen than it would in growing a new one.

(Take this idea to the extreme: two size-1 cities sharing one farm, would it be right to starve each time either got to size 2?)

[Zalson]

No, don't let the size 17 city starve or whip.  The farm does have more value supporting an existing citizen than it would in growing a new one.

(Take this idea to the extreme: two size-1 cities sharing one farm, would it be right to starve each time either got to size 2?)

[insert ridiculous and witty response]

On a more serious note/non sequitur: I think I do need to take a look at converting some mines to windmills. I might not end up doing it in a lot of places but surely there are some places where the extra food makes more sense than the extra mine.

This weekend I'll try to overview all my cities. DAMN THE PEANUT GALLERY DULL SPEED AHEAD. T-Hawk's patient constructive criticism will be heeded, of course. I have not built any more lighthouses since he mentioned it being a bad choice in Damascus over 200 turns ago. 

[Zalson]

Before rep parts:



T226
After:



A … very small increase. Not pictured: me forgetting to check every city and whip what it needed on T225. D’oh! However, after the turn rolls, I see the advantage.

Camel Archers begin everywhere — and now I realize why T-Hawk was recommending against setting up those extra cities. Each one is at least one cavalry. Each missionary is at least one 1/2 a cavalry.

However, I am going to move ahead with this plan. I’ve double whipped most of the cities in the north into galleys (who’ll finish into galleons in a few turns). Then it is time to get directTV (and upgrade ya) — all my nice camel archers will become cavalry. All the CR3 maces become rifles.

Looking around the map, the northern continent will go first. Shaka and Ragnar are backwards and I’d like to have a showdown with Victoria.

Also, I’ve realized that I forgot about Military Tradition. Oops. So all those camel archers become musketmen.

Anything anyone wants to see? I’ll show the cities and I’ll also show the other continents on the weekend.

[Mardoc]

This weekend I'll try to overview all my cities. DAMN THE PEANUT GALLERY DULL SPEED AHEAD. T-Hawk's patient constructive criticism will be heeded, of course. I have not built any more lighthouses since he mentioned it being a bad choice in Damascus over 200 turns ago. 

That's probably going a bit far.  The very most consistent rule of thumb in Civ4 is "It Depends".

I suspect you now have some cities which do want to work coast tiles, enough tiles per city for lighthouses to be valuable.  On top, I suspect your alternative options for hammers are generally lower quality: you spent the last 200 turns building the best things, after all!