Quick question, and this might have a very obvious answer because I haven't paid attention to micro in probably 50 turns: Why so many 3/0/1 farms? We are financial, cottage spam is the name of the game.
Merovech's Mapmaking Guidelines:
0. Player Requests: The player's requests take precedence, even if they contradict the following guidelines.
1. Balance: The map must be balanced, both in regards to land quality and availability and in regards to special civilization features. A map may be wonderfully unique and surprising, but, if it is unbalanced, the game will suffer and the player's enjoyment will not be as high as it could be.
2. Identity and Enjoyment: The map should be interesting to play at all levels, from city placement and management to the border-created interactions between civilizations, and should include varied terrain. Flavor should enhance the inherent pleasure resulting from the underlying tile arrangements. The map should not be exceedingly lush, but it is better to err on the lush side than on the poor side when placing terrain.
3. Feel (Avoiding Gimmicks): The map should not be overwhelmed or dominated by the mapmaker's flavor. Embellishment of the map through the use of special improvements, barbarian units, and abnormal terrain can enhance the identity and enjoyment of the map, but should take a backseat to the more normal aspects of the map. The game should usually not revolve around the flavor, but merely be accented by it.
4. Realism: Where possible, the terrain of the map should be realistic. Jungles on desert tiles, or even next to desert tiles, should therefore have a very specific reason for existing. Rivers should run downhill or across level ground into bodies of water. Irrigated terrain should have a higher grassland to plains ratio than dry terrain. Mountain chains should cast rain shadows. Islands, mountains, and peninsulas should follow logical plate tectonics.
Also, how are the military non-diplo preps going? When are we goign to attack and with how much?
I assume we want a quick peace after grabbing the border cities + maybe the great lighthouse city. Is this true?
Merovech's Mapmaking Guidelines:
0. Player Requests: The player's requests take precedence, even if they contradict the following guidelines.
1. Balance: The map must be balanced, both in regards to land quality and availability and in regards to special civilization features. A map may be wonderfully unique and surprising, but, if it is unbalanced, the game will suffer and the player's enjoyment will not be as high as it could be.
2. Identity and Enjoyment: The map should be interesting to play at all levels, from city placement and management to the border-created interactions between civilizations, and should include varied terrain. Flavor should enhance the inherent pleasure resulting from the underlying tile arrangements. The map should not be exceedingly lush, but it is better to err on the lush side than on the poor side when placing terrain.
3. Feel (Avoiding Gimmicks): The map should not be overwhelmed or dominated by the mapmaker's flavor. Embellishment of the map through the use of special improvements, barbarian units, and abnormal terrain can enhance the identity and enjoyment of the map, but should take a backseat to the more normal aspects of the map. The game should usually not revolve around the flavor, but merely be accented by it.
4. Realism: Where possible, the terrain of the map should be realistic. Jungles on desert tiles, or even next to desert tiles, should therefore have a very specific reason for existing. Rivers should run downhill or across level ground into bodies of water. Irrigated terrain should have a higher grassland to plains ratio than dry terrain. Mountain chains should cast rain shadows. Islands, mountains, and peninsulas should follow logical plate tectonics.
(February 12th, 2013, 02:33)Merovech Wrote: Quick question, and this might have a very obvious answer because I haven't paid attention to micro in probably 50 turns: Why so many 3/0/1 farms? We are financial, cottage spam is the name of the game.
It was for the growth curve. Gladius and Dirk have had cottages they could use over the last 20 turns or so but have been busy trying to grow or push out other stuff until now. But yeah, I should probably have built more cottages and just eaten the slower growth curve... At BOG we should probably cottage over the farms too, but it doesn't make a lot of food without them, at Smooth I think we just want to push units so cottages don't make sense there.
On the military front I don't know if attacking M3 is the winning strategy, but I think it is the fun strategy does anyone want to talk me out of it?
I hope to put together a plan for how many galleys/zerks/chariots we can have poised eot125, then that will dictate what we think we can get out of the war... They have catapults so we can't do any slow-moving attacks, just lightning raids from the sea and with 2-movers.
4 galleys/ 8 zerks should get us Orient point and a shot at the great lighthouse city, 5 or 10 chariots will let us burn pigpen (depends if they ever put a spear in it! so far it's only ever had Axes and more recently a catapult). More is always better . Then how the peace turns out dictates what we can do against Trolls.
So this shows the three staging tiles where we can lurk unseen on t125.
- A allows us to 3-move the galleys to boat Orient Point,
- B allows a scout to use the m3 road network to check for possible reinforcements at point D,
- while from C we can 2-move pigpen once our worker finishes the half-built road.
They will probably react to our NAP delaying tactics by building spears to go in pigpen, but right now six chariots would take the city. For each spear we'll need a couple of extra chariots, hmmm, maybe this isn't such a great idea after all...
Anyway Orient Point will be easy to crack from circle A, but if we want to boat the lighthouse on our second turn we need to stage in full sight at point E:
Then to get our units in place at yellow (galleys and Zerks) and red (chariots) we need to produce them this number of turns previously. We'll know once the anarchy is over how long Machinery will take, but I think it'll be ready t124, meaning we can produce:
- one Zerk in Occam
- two in BOG
- three in Smooth
- three in Foil (the last one just walking into Orient Point to replace any lost soldiers)
while producing four galleys from Gladius, In the Stone and Dirk. Then be ready to attack t129. As a by-product the cities will have a bit of whip anger, but eggs need to be cracked and all that...
We could start producing chariots now, so I don't think that side of things is so problematic.
However, to travel back around for our t140 dinner date with Trolls we'd need the galley to set off from Orient Point at t130. So I think I'm despondantly recommending that we sign a long peace with M3 , perhaps do something sneaky like declare war on M3 to make Trolls think we're busy elsewhere then sweep in on the Troll coast t141
With M3 even offering a 50 turn plus NAP , we should definitely go ahead with the attack Trolls plan, hopefully with both TEAM and M3 backing us up--should we move onto Guilds then, or continue with the Zerks plan through Machinery? What's our next tech?
If we want guilds I think we need machinery anyway, so I think we can get it and build a lot of zerks... then construction to pack our border cities with cats and spears?
I don't really know the exact situation, but piling on the leader, especially when it appears that we can gain actually useful land, seems like a good idea.
Merovech's Mapmaking Guidelines:
0. Player Requests: The player's requests take precedence, even if they contradict the following guidelines.
1. Balance: The map must be balanced, both in regards to land quality and availability and in regards to special civilization features. A map may be wonderfully unique and surprising, but, if it is unbalanced, the game will suffer and the player's enjoyment will not be as high as it could be.
2. Identity and Enjoyment: The map should be interesting to play at all levels, from city placement and management to the border-created interactions between civilizations, and should include varied terrain. Flavor should enhance the inherent pleasure resulting from the underlying tile arrangements. The map should not be exceedingly lush, but it is better to err on the lush side than on the poor side when placing terrain.
3. Feel (Avoiding Gimmicks): The map should not be overwhelmed or dominated by the mapmaker's flavor. Embellishment of the map through the use of special improvements, barbarian units, and abnormal terrain can enhance the identity and enjoyment of the map, but should take a backseat to the more normal aspects of the map. The game should usually not revolve around the flavor, but merely be accented by it.
4. Realism: Where possible, the terrain of the map should be realistic. Jungles on desert tiles, or even next to desert tiles, should therefore have a very specific reason for existing. Rivers should run downhill or across level ground into bodies of water. Irrigated terrain should have a higher grassland to plains ratio than dry terrain. Mountain chains should cast rain shadows. Islands, mountains, and peninsulas should follow logical plate tectonics.
We switched to Bureau. So nothing to report on in the cities this turn.
And we uncovered Weissbier. I think it's got the MOM and a granary. But no defenders.
So this is how our Troll borders look
And these are the staging points that we could use (the northern one is shielded by some trees I was planning to chop, so I've wasted a worker turn there and switched to building a road. Also the tile SE of Jemmy should be ours in about 10 turns.
Any thoughts?
Power
Demos
And after the turn rolled I checked Occams research capabilities - 190 beakers at 100%, 100 at break-even (which is about 55%):
Feuda 285 0 teams
aesth 295 1 teams - we know this is Trolls
alpha 285 0 teams
calen 305 3 teams
philo 285 0 teams
paper 285 0 teams
HBR 285 0 teams
Iron 285 0 teams
Const 295 1 teams - we know this is M3
Machi 285 0 teams
We're going to be early to Machinery, so I don't think we'll face crossbows from Trolls, what other units are useful against Zerks (both from the sea and from the land?) I'd guess our overland strike force is going to be made up of spears, crossbows and Zerks - anything else we should use?
We could research Cats or ask M3 for a gift to help us cat down the defenses of Gold City or Bloody Mary...
does anyone want to talk me out of it?
. Then how the peace turns out dictates what we can do against Trolls.
, perhaps do something sneaky like declare war on M3 to make Trolls think we're busy elsewhere 
then sweep in on the Troll coast t141 
