[SPOILERS] Land of Chaos - HitAnyKey

[HitAnyKey]

At the micro level, you need to improve your land better and work your food. Food let's you grow population onto new tiles. New population can be turned directly into production (via the whip) or commerce (via specialists). Always work your best food tiles whenever possible. I've always found it good to plan out my first 50 or so turns, as those are the most critical ones. Of course, if an emergency comes up (aka some jerk turns up with a stack of axes or something), you'll need to be flexible and adapt around it.

Really, what micro entails is having enough workers to improve your land, growing quickly onto improved tiles, and making sure your best tiles remain worked. A good way to do this is to have tile yields (CTRL-Y) on, this shows how many bread slices and hammers and coins are being extracted from each tile, and if a tile is being worked, those icons are blown up in size.

At the macro level, I would have never built the Great Wall if I were in your position, and definitely not this early. What is it for? +100% GG points? Useless unless someone attacks you, and from what I've seen of free-for-all games, people who are the most military-conservative and economically-aggressive do the best. Barbarian defence? You're at the end of a peninsula! It is dirt easy to fogbust that land! I'd rather have put those 75 hammers into a granary first, instead of a granary now.

It also doesn't help that I totally mis-read/forgot the details about the GW. For some reason, I had it in my mind that it would also get me additional espionage points per turn (instead of the starting 4). So that benefit I was expecting isn't happening.

I am having to try to crank out a couple more workers, since I have/will have tiles that need improving. Plus, once I get IW in ~13 turns I'll have lots of Jungles that need to be improved (Gems, Rice, Bananas) and simply chopped in general.

I also need to get a city settled out by those mountains ASAP. And with enough military to support it. I don't know when plako might think of expanding towards that, but those resources there must be a draw to him as well. My aim is to try to settle the spot directly north of the Jungle Gems (ie. one tile west of the valley). Thor (the axe) is headed over that way to keep an eye on it and kill any of plako's units he might see, such as if his Archer goes that direction at all. I'm hoping they run into each other, so I can eliminate it.
I'll have the Spear in Hard Knocks in 2 turns for defending that city, but need to decide how to manage that city next. It has no improved food, so after this Spear I'm thinking of just continuing to work the Copper mine to either get out a Monument (so borders can go get that Banana) or a Worker. Any thoughts on what to do about that city? I know food is big, but the city just doesn't have any yet. And my workers are needed more around the other two cities at the moment.

I tend to get sucked in by Wonders. It's one of my flaws, obviously. Like, I want the Pyramids. But I think it's probably more important to have my capital crank out a Granary, then probably an Axe, and then a Settler. (I think)

[kjn]

Second Krill's comment on Sullla/Speaker in PB2. Another great thread is the just finished PBEM 23, Novice/Sevenspirits. And feel free to ask about advice here - as long as it doesn't concern relations with other players (eg "should I build a spear or an axe to defend against Plako?) most people are quite helpful. Generally, it's easier to get good advice on questions that concern how rather than what.

Anyway, Sullla quipped in PB2 that they were building the wonders known as Settlers and Workers, and won using them. There is a lot of truth in that. Land is power, and improved land is improved power.

[timski]

More general advice: Consider creating a little sim' of your lands (re-create what you see in the world builder) and experiment with different sequences of builds and improvements. It may seem excessive to test the same few turns several times. And it would be in any game that played faster than a turn per day. But each time one experiments, one discovers something new: At first it will be simple things, like knowing to prioritise wet Corn or early Granaries. Later you'll start to see how carefully managing food overflows can shave turns off a more casual approach. This may work better for you if you prefer "doing" to reading; prefer playing more on gut feeling than spreadsheets.

[HitAnyKey]

More general advice: Consider creating a little sim' of your lands (re-create what you see in the world builder) and experiment with different sequences of builds and improvements. It may seem excessive to test the same few turns several times. And it would be in any game that played faster than a turn per day. But each time one experiments, one discovers something new: At first it will be simple things, like knowing to prioritise wet Corn or early Granaries. Later you'll start to see how carefully managing food overflows can shave turns off a more casual approach. This may work better for you if you prefer "doing" to reading; prefer playing more on gut feeling than spreadsheets.

I actually did make a small attempt to do that as there was one thing I wanted to check at one point, but I just don't really know WB all that well. Couldn't figure out how to make a copy of my land. I couldn't get the rivers to look like they do on my map, and when I would try to erase it the entire details of all the surrounding tiles would get erased. I got frustrated after just a few moments, and gave up. It just seems like it would take hours upon hours just to make the territory, let alone try to play out a handful of turns to see what something does.

[Brian Shanahan]

I actually did make a small attempt to do that as there was one thing I wanted to check at one point, but I just don't really know WB all that well. Couldn't figure out how to make a copy of my land. I couldn't get the rivers to look like they do on my map, and when I would try to erase it the entire details of all the surrounding tiles would get erased. I got frustrated after just a few moments, and gave up. It just seems like it would take hours upon hours just to make the territory, let alone try to play out a handful of turns to see what something does.

I managed to do it the slow way in about 2 hours in PBEM 32 (over two sessions). I noted down my land on a number of grids about 18 turns in (it was a three figure number of tiles), rolled a random map with as close as possible settings to the game, and terraformed the map tile by tile. The map has been heavily modified with lots of improvements placed and resources in strange places.

It was slow granted but taking the five minutes at the start to mark off the tiles really helped.

I wouldn't worry about things like river shape, as long as they are situated in the right places.

[HitAnyKey]

I managed to do it the slow way in about 2 hours in PBEM 32 (over two sessions). I noted down my land on a number of grids about 18 turns in (it was a three figure number of tiles), rolled a random map with as close as possible settings to the game, and terraformed the map tile by tile. The map has been heavily modified with lots of improvements placed and resources in strange places.

It was slow granted but taking the five minutes at the start to mark off the tiles really helped.

I wouldn't worry about things like river shape, as long as they are situated in the right places.

That's the thing. I couldn't get the river to be in the right place. It ended up zig-zagging all over in weird directions that I couldn't figure out why it was doing that. It's not like other things where you just "click" and the terrain feature appears in that tile. The river is between tiles, and I don't know how to get it between the tiles it needs to be at.

Also, what do you mean by "marking off the tiles"? Or do you just mean being able to see your map while working in WB? That I did by having my laptop open next to me to this thread with my screenshot visible. And the game open on my desktop. Maybe I'll try again this weekend, if I have time. But the whole river thing is what frustrated me the most. And if I clicked a button wrong, there is no "undo" that I could find. For example, one time I clicked a button that made the entire map land (eliminating all water). I couldn't undo that.

[Selrahc]

Rivers can be deleted by right clicking with the same tool that you use to place them. Don't use the erase tool! As you noted, that will just wipe out all your progress.

Rivers are tricky little things in the worldbuilder. Other than those, it's fairly easy to use.

[Brian Shanahan]

That's the thing. I couldn't get the river to be in the right place. It ended up zig-zagging all over in weird directions that I couldn't figure out why it was doing that. It's not like other things where you just "click" and the terrain feature appears in that tile. The river is between tiles, and I don't know how to get it between the tiles it needs to be at.

That is a matter of finding the right tile to click on using the place river tool. For rivers going East-West it is the tile above the river, and for North-South it is the tile to the right, IIRC.

Also, what do you mean by "marking off the tiles"? Or do you just mean being able to see your map while working in WB? That I did by having my laptop open next to me to this thread with my screenshot visible. And the game open on my desktop. Maybe I'll try again this weekend, if I have time. But the whole river thing is what frustrated me the most. And if I clicked a button wrong, there is no "undo" that I could find. For example, one time I clicked a button that made the entire map land (eliminating all water). I couldn't undo that.

As regards the "marking off" I did, what I meant there was that I took screenshots with the grid on, and then wrote down tile-by-tile onto a piece of paper in a grid format. I'd use a code for each part of the tile so for example a "grassland hill with gold and forest on a river" would become GlHFAuRiv. The direction of the river would be dictated by what other tiles around it would also have a river.

It was somewhat painstaking but not that hard and saved a lot of time going forward and back, and there is a slight problem with WorldBuilder when alt-tabbing in and out in that it won't let you choose different tile choices (eg going from grassland to mountain), well on my computer.

[regoarrarr]

Somewhere ruff_hi has a post or a link to a post detailing how to make good rivers in WB

[Krill]

Always click at the bottom and right of the tile to put the river at that edge of hte tile. Clicking at the top and left of the tile is when everything goes to hell.

EDIT: I was right, bottom and right of the tiles.