Zalson Plays One Turn At A Time (DEITY: Loss)

[haphazard1]

Monarchy offers the potential for multiple additional happy faces per city, although the unit maintennce costs (and hammer costs to build them) do stack up quickly. It is also a pretty decent chunk of beakers to research, and the techs along the way do not offer a lot of immediate benefit. But without other happiness options available, HR may be your best bet for growing your cities.

Writing would open your first option to get specialist slots to take advantage of your PHI trait, plus possibly OB and foreign trade routes if you have a connection to your neighbors. It is also along the way to other useful techs, so it is hard to go wrong with Writing.

To me, the choice depends on how long you think you can live with your cities at their current size caps. Maybe you will get a religion from one of your neighbors to help, but that is not a sure thing at least for a while. (Eventually they will send missionaries, but that could be quite a wait still.)

[Zalson]

Woohoo! Feedback!

Happy cap of 6 (with gold) would normally keep you going for a while, cycling through the whips, wouldn't it?

Happy cap would be 6 in the cap, 5 in the other cities with gold..

I agree that it doesn't mesh well with growing the cap to try to make use of PHI though (side note - there was some recent discussion by Mackoti and TBS about how to make best use of PHI in "Flufball's thread" under civ general discussion; might be worth looking at).

I seen that; maybe I'll read it again, this time with an application to the work that I'm doing here.

Open borders would be nice for better relations as well as the trade routes (assuming you're not planning on attacking any time soon). It's also en-route to Currency and CoL, both of which you're going to want, assuming you manage to keep expandind?As an alternative, Any chance of beelining some military tech that would let you grab that barb city? Iron working or construction?

Finding this really interesting - it's certainly a challenge, even with the additional starting units.

Glad you're enjoying it. Not planning on attacking anyone yet. I was considering Horseback Riding but it doesn't really seem worth it at this point. Phalanxes will do fine.

Next, on to Ref's comments!

[Zalson]

I think shallow_thought makes some good points. Here are some more random suggestions:

- From the screenshot, shouldn't you be claiming territory with that Settler instead of sending it to your back lines? Maintenance might be high for good forward sites, but I feel like getting boxed in by the AIs would be worse. Besides, the site toward which the Settler is moving looks to me like it shares one improved tile, zero cottages, zero resources, and one riverside tile (the same one that's already a farm) with the capital. I guess there's a seafood tile out there for it to work eventually (I can't tell with resource bubbles turned off) but I don't see it being a high priority. (When you do eventually plant it, you could have its workboat built in advance from another city anyway to get it up and running sooner after it's founded.)

I thought about that too but the issue is that there's no food accessible that leads to good spots. The spot to my west has 3 hills and a first ring accessible fish. That's the best food tile I've got.

The spots with food are: 1-off the coast with a stone and a sheep and some rivers (that actually is an good ok spot with the exception of being 1 off the coast) and a spot with a floodplain for food.

I was thinking about 2x whipping into the workboat -- the issue is I can just build the workboat faster from city 4 than it can get there from either one of the production cities, just based on current set ups.

But that spot 1-off the coast is looking temping -- it actually might save me some maintenance because it saves me from having to have a fogbuster in that region.

- I don't think Monarchy before Writing is worthwhile in this case. That's a large number of beakers spent to get +1 happy face per city, not to mention a turn of anarchy. Of course it could be more than one, but my understanding is that building units just for Hereditary Rule happiness doesn't really pay on higher difficulties. If you're planning to expand, whether through Settlers or through military, you're going to need a lot of trade route income, which means Writing for Open Borders en route to Currency. You don't want to spam libraries everywhere of course - at least not early - but I don't think you can spare the research time for Monarchy, nor to tie up any more of your military than you have to on MP duty. And if you do manage to crash your economy by expanding decently, the option to build a library while saving gold is a good one to have.

- I should add that in general, I tend to avoid the post-Mysticism ~religious techs in the early going unless I have a Spi* leader, especially with no religion and no chance of founding one en route. With AH and Pottery already in hand, Priesthood's net bonus to Writing research is pretty small, and neither it nor Poly is getting anything for you directly. Writing on the other hand gives you your first chance to leverage your Phi trait by starting on a GS early. (For which you only need a library in one city.) Obviously you'd want a specific plan though, with fall-backs if necessary. Of course setting up a library and GS might be a little premature if you're still pushing expansion - but I'm guessing not if your best available option is really a mediocre back-fill city on T43.

* - Okay, maybe if you were Ind and/or had Marble for an Oracle gambit, but that is a gambit even if you land it; I think the Oracle is still the most over-rated Wonder in the game.

This is good constructive criticism -- although I don't think I'd call the fish city site mediocre for the reasons I listed before.

Oracle's gone so that's flown. I think your point on writing is well taken. I may as well switch to it for the +4 commerce bonus -- and the diplo benefit and the Philo benefit.

- A couple examples of ways to use an early GS if you get one:

Hide Spoiler
You could plant for the Stone, tech Masonry, save all six capital forests, and start the Pyramids, timing everything so that once a GS is born in Sparta or Corinth, if the 'mids haven't fallen, you could bulb Mathematics, complete all six chops, and finish the Wonder, all on the same turn. Meanwhlie, you'd have been saving gold for your run to Currency (already with a big head start thanks to teching Writing and bulbing Math) instead of burning it all on the push to Monarchy, and you'd have access to Rep instead of just HR when you revolted, most likely at an earlier date (if it worked...). Or just go with the old-school standard of turning off tech after Writing while you build a library in the capital, run scientists there, and turn the first GS into an Academy, then turning on research with a +75% bonus in Athens.

Now this is what I'm talking about! I will try to see if I can put together the super-chop at Athens; I've got 7 available forests; my concern is 2 fold: 1. maybe that 210 hammers might be better spent elsewhere? 2. I'm not confident in my ability to make it work -- but it might be a possibility. I'll have to noodle it.

In the case of what you're mentioning, the fall back isn't the worst thing in the world.

[Zalson]

Monarchy offers the potential for multiple additional happy faces per city, although the unit maintennce costs (and hammer costs to build them) do stack up quickly. It is also a pretty decent chunk of beakers to research, and the techs along the way do not offer a lot of immediate benefit. But without other happiness options available, HR may be your best bet for growing your cities.

Writing would open your first option to get specialist slots to take advantage of your PHI trait, plus possibly OB and foreign trade routes if you have a connection to your neighbors. It is also along the way to other useful techs, so it is hard to go wrong with Writing.

To me, the choice depends on how long you think you can live with your cities at their current size caps. Maybe you will get a religion from one of your neighbors to help, but that is not a sure thing at least for a while. (Eventually they will send missionaries, but that could be quite a wait still.)

I don't think I can live very long with my cities at these happy caps but, from the commentary from you and others, I don't think I have the 30 turns to slow-tech Monarchy at this point. 30 turns is enough to get gold and get a religion spread from Pacal. Maybe? Also, writing gets me a 16% bonus on commerce from each city.

[shallow_thought]

Woohoo! Feedback!

Happy cap would be 6 in the cap, 5 in the other cities with gold..

I don't think I can live very long with my cities at these happy caps but, from the commentary from you and others, I don't think I have the 30 turns to slow-tech Monarchy at this point. 30 turns is enough to get gold and get a religion spread from Pacal. Maybe? Also, writing gets me a 16% bonus on commerce from each city.

I've been quiet, for fear of saying something wrong - like forgetting that the capital has a higher happy cap than other cities! I'd hoped to spend more time thinking about this game, I'm behind on everything RB at the moment. I'd love to make excuses, but the reality is that I'm having fun trying out Civ VI, and am not getting anything much else done .

[Zalson]

No apology is required, shallow_thought! It was me rejoicing for feedback more than anything else :P

[haphazard1]

But that spot 1-off the coast is looking temping -- it actually might save me some maintenance because it saves me from having to have a fogbuster in that region.

You will need a unit to defend the city itself, so it may just be a break even on the unit cost. But I am not sure just how you are currently set for fog busting in that region.

Still, sheep plus stone is not a bad city, even if it ends up one off the coast. It is not a great city, but it will have some food and some hammers and potentially some commerce. And stone could be useful for any number of things.

[RefSteel]

One thing I'm not sure of is when deity AIs typically build the 'mids. Either way, for the best chance at them, it's best to plan ahead to figure out how early you can land them, and what you're willing to sacrifice to get there. For instance, planting on the stone is an option to connect it as soon as Masonry is finished (quarries take a lot of worker turns) though it puts the sheep in the second ring: It's on the coast, has a 2h plant, a first-ring floodplain, and two first-ring forests, and can eventually share 4 out of Hun's 5 fps, presumably helping to grow cottages on them. (I'm assuming here that you'll be the one to capture Hun - which is an important part of the juggling act since 'mids or no, that should obviously be a priority!)

(Another consideration: I'm only seeing 6 forests - not 7 - in the capital's BFC.)

[Fluffball]

I'm pretty skeptical the pyramids are going to give you more of a boost than just building more stuff like settlers and libraries and units, which the deity AI will do a LOT of. If the happy cap is a problem, just whip more workers or whatever.

[haphazard1]

RefSteel's suggestion of planting on the stone is interesting. You would lose the potential of working the stone quarry for some useful hammers, but would get one hammer back in the city center to partly offset. You also leave some nice river grass tiles along the coast unused unless you later place a small filler city to grab them (sharing the sheep for food, most likely).

Upside: the city would be on the coast, ,you would get the stone connected without needing the worker turns for a quarry, you can grab some of the flood plains for more food, and there would be potential to culturally pressure (or even flip) Hun. I don't know how likely barb cities are to get some culture going on deity, but if you could get your second border pop before Hun gets any culture it could take the city without having to attack it. And you will want some culture anyway to pop your border for the sheep.