RBP7 - SPOILERS - Genghis Khan of Egypt

[sunrise089]

Ok, time for a quality update. I've definitely reached the point where my lack of micro skill + attention to (civ) detail has cost me, though I don't think things are all that bad.

Here's my empire:



I've chosen a fun Vegas naming theme. For now each city will be from a casino owned by a different corporation. I'm saving Caesar's palace for the Roman capital should I capture it

My cap Luxor is currently working a corn, gold, and cow tiles. The current plan is to finish the granary next turn, then switch to working 2x corns and the gold. Build a barracks until the city grows, then 2pop whip a settler. That plan has the settler appear in 8t, which is the exact turn the cap's borders expand I think that's clearly better than slow building the settler, even if the city winds up at size 2 (with granary food) versus size 3.

My second city Wynncore is working a copper and an unimproved floodplain. When the warrior under construction is finished next turn it will take its cows back from Luxor and start on a 6t worker.

The third city Venlazzo is really tricky. It's currently working a corn and set to grow in 2t. BUT Iron Working is due in 9t and the city only has 22h into an Obelisk. My plan:

T44 (current turn) - Food 12/22, hammers 22/30, working corn
T45 - Food 18/22, hammers 23/30, working grass forest
T46 - Food 20/22, hammers 25/30, working grass forest
T47 (pop2) - Food 0/24, hammers 27/30, working grass forest + grass hill forest
T48 - Monument complete
T53 - IW in
T58 - Borders pop

That's hardly ideal. :thumbsdow In hindsight I should have chopped a second forest for the city right away.

Speaking of hardly ideal, my tech situation is also gross. I get IW in 9t, which means fishing in 12t total. Yet I'm planting my fourth city, tentatively named Golden Nugget, in 8t. I guess it will be working gold at size 1 for a few turns...

Here's the worker plan:



Yes I should have used different color lines To translate...

*Worker 1 moves to the floodplan at Wynncore and farms it. That spot is really vulnerable to capture, so I don't have to put multiple workers there. This is 7t.

*Worker 2 cottages the tile Worker 1 is on now. Then moves to the grass hill next to my fourth city spot and roads. Then moves onto the gold tile. Road 1t and then mine. (12t total so far). Then either finish the road or move right into a forest to chop a workboat.

*Worker 3 cottages the tile he's on, then roads the grassland forest hill 1W of my cap, then moves back north and roads the gems tile. He will have one extra turn, so he'll probably put a turn of chopping into that grass forest hill he roads.

*Worker 4 will be done in 7t. He will either help mine the gold or help mine the gems.

Anyways, that's the plan. The biggest issues are 1) Golden Nugget will have to wait a bit to work the gold, then wait longer for the clams, 2) Venlazzo will have to wait several turns to work the gems (sort of a necessary evil though with jungle gems), and 3) Golden Nugget will be planted on a forest. Let me know if any of those items seem worth changing up the above for. Specifically I could not build cottages before planting Golden Nugget which would allow me to chop the forest the city will plant on, pre-road the forest to chop for the workboat, and have two workers immediately in position so the gold can be improved the turn after planting. Meanwhile the forest worker moves straight into the gems jungle and roads. Have I just talked myself into this?

Demos:



Looking pretty good. I won't pick up a whole lot more for the next half dozen turns, but that's because I'm putting myself in position to first pick up 3 great tiles in ~10t and also to have several cities with high happy caps moving onto lots of cottages right after that. One note is that one of the other top civs did some slaving. I didn't track it too closely, but food and power both went down, which suggests pop being whipped away.

I also picked up Rome's charts. GNP, production, and food aren't too interesting, but I'll put up the power:



Nothing to worry about yet. They can still choke me, but in the very short term it doesn't look like any big German-style invasions are coming. I'll have pindicator's charts in about 10t which will mean I can check power for everyone who has met me.

Finally, time for a big picture view:

So....this takes me about forever to make manually piecing together pictures in MSPaint. If there's a way to just stop the $&@! clouds from appearing when I zoom out I'd love to know it

[Ellimist]

So....this takes me about forever to make manually piecing together pictures in MSPaint. If there's a way to just stop the $&@! clouds from appearing when I zoom out I'd love to know it

http://realmsbeyond.net/forums/showthrea...ge=1&pp=10

I don't know if it works in pitboss.

[T-hawk]

I've chosen a fun Vegas naming theme.

Luxor had better build the Pyramids, then.

Don't worry about the unsynchronized tech and border situations. It happens. Having too many cities founded too soon is a good problem to have. And you did want to found them ASAP, because the settlers were whipped and you wanted to start the anger clock ASAP. But now you probably need workers #5 and #6 before any more cities.

Or why not fix things by researching Fishing before Iron Working? Golden Nugget will be happy to work the first gold as soon as it's founded as long as it's got the work boat to sink the hammers into.

BTW, don't forget to chop the banana jungle at Venlazzo. You can farm that for a 4F tile until Calendar, well worth doing.

So....this takes me about forever to make manually piecing together pictures in MSPaint. If there's a way to just stop the $&@! clouds from appearing when I zoom out I'd love to know it

I do believe the edits in the post Ellimist linked work in Pitboss as long as "Lock Modified Assets" wasn't set. You will get that "game files out of sync" message, though.

Alternatively, use flying camera. Enable it in Civilization4.ini to use Ctrl-Shift-F and you can zoom out as far as you like.

[darrelljs]

Nice update!

I think the Clams city should have come before the Gems city. Other than that things look pretty good for someone who didn't sandbox for 20 turns, then stopped after just one turn .

Darrell

[sunrise089]

Nice update!

I think the Clams city should have come before the Gems city. Other than that things look pretty good for someone who didn't sandbox for 20 turns, then stopped after just one turn .

Darrell

This certainly could be right. Or, maybe I just should have built more workers before the 3rd city settler. Remember though I actually will be able to sync clams city really well with the culture. Planting earlier would have meant like a 2/0/1 cottage as the best tile. I can say for certain if I had horses I'd have cranked out a few WCs as scouts/defenders, but as I don't it seemed best to keep expanding.

One thing to keep in mind is that I lust after the gems city. As silly as it may be, I was at least a tiny bit worried of the city either being taken from me or units wandering down that way and stopping me from settling.

[darrelljs]

Leveraging Palace culture is a fine reason to delay the Clams spot.

Darrell

[sunrise089]

So I'm actually a bit proud of this. It isn't perfect micro by any means, but it's a lot better than what I normally manage.

Here's a sketch of how my land and workers sat 2t ago (this is the same turn as the above worker plan picture).



Here's what I wanted to accomplish:

1) Not make VenLazzo wait for its cottage.
2) Not waste the forest on Golden Nugget's city tile.
3) Not make Golden Nugget wait for tile improvements.
4) Not delay the founding of Golden Nugget.
5) Not burn a bunch of worker turns.

The cottage is what kept tripping me up. I wanted to finish it, then move that worker south. But because of the row of hills and forests that either meant wasting a worker turn or putting a few turns into chopping/mining the grassland forest 1E of Luxor, and that meant a 1-2t delay for Golden Nugget. On the other hand not finishing the cottage within 4t would mean it wouldn't be available for VenLazzo to work.

Here's what I came up with:



I didn't draw the exact routes, but the workers just moved along the roads. With them on those tiles they can road for 2t, then move back up to the cottage and improve it the same turn, then move back down and get into 2move terrain.

Anyways, that gets me to T47 and here:



Here's the unit and build micro going forward:

T48 - Workers finish cottage, capital now at size 4 swaps to settler.
T49 - Workers move into Golden Nugget forest and GN gold hill, capital works settler.
T50 - GN workers chop+road, capital whips.
T51 - GN workers chop+road (road complete), settler moves to city tile. New (4th) worker produced, puts turn into cottage 2E of Luxor.
T52 - Cultural borders pop. 1 worker chops, settler plants, other worker starts mine. New worker in transit.
T53 - Both GN workers mine. New worker arrives on the jungle gems tile.
T54 - GN mine complete, 1 worker has movement so moves into forest 1N of city. New worker finishes road. New worker roads jungle gems.
T55 - Chop GN forest. Other worker moves towards gems. New worker finishes roading jungle gems.
T56 - Iron Working tech in. Chop GN forest. Other worker moves into gems jungle (only burned worker turn). New worker chops.
T57 - Chop GN forest, chop complete. 2x workers now at VenLazzo chop, jungle chop complete.
T58 - Workboat complete (3 hammer overflow). VenLazzo workers mine. VenLazzo borders pop.
T59 - VenLazzo workers mine, gems mine complete.
... - At this point I have 3 workers up here and another gems mine plus a farmed banana to work on.

And yes, there is a fourth worker during all of this, the one currently farming at WynnCore. Once his farm ends he'll be kept busy building cottages, nothing too fancy.

There's very little interesting city tile micro during this time period, basically the best tiles are being worked. The one exception is that the cap needs to steal the cow for exactly 2t from WynnCore to get 40h into the settler and allow a 2pop whip, yet also allow WynnCore to complete its worker without delay.

[T-hawk]

I like it. Do remember that chop comes out pretty weak. Fourth-ring outside your borders without Mathematics will yield something like 9 hammers, if that's really worth the worker turns.

[regoarrarr]

I like it. Do remember that chop comes out pretty weak. Fourth-ring outside your borders without Mathematics will yield something like 9 hammers, if that's really worth the worker turns.

Yeah. I always want to save those forests just because it feels good, but I agree with T-hawk that it's probably not worth the worker turns (assuming they have better things to do)

[sunrise089]

Not the most exciting update, but since at least something happened...

First, planted this a turn early.



I honestly can't figure out why I was able to 2pop whip my settler at 20 hammers invested. Aren't Normal speed whips 20 hammers per? With IMP that seems like I would need 40 in the box...



Here's my empire. Note the next two turns will see borders expand in my cap and then WynnCore, which will be nice. My plan is to let my cities grow for a bit, swapping WynnCore to a worker at size 3 and Golden Nugget to a worker at size 2. Workers will have the gold at GN in 3t and then start on those delicious gems tiles.

I completed a (half price) barracks this turn as I want to build a pair of axes and then a warrior in my capital. I'm surprised my power rank only improved, IIRC, one spot, from ninth to eighth. It's only one building of course, but we're all really compacted, with only a 10k spread between me and top power.

Speaking on Demos, as you can see in the rare uncropped image above Mali is coming on strong, while Rome isn't. Rome's players know what they're doing, but their demos are pretty poor, so I assume just unlucky dice rolls with land. The only other thing I could see happen is a crazy warrior->Praet upgrate to surprise people, but with the distances I think that would be tough to pull off.

Lastly, I responded favorably to Mali's settling agreement proposal in the public thread. They've not responded yet, so hopefully that just means they're as slow as I am to update. Either way, my next settler will probably be produced in about 10t.