Armchair Civ
Wednesday, October 04, 2006
City management for the young and old...
10 turns (2800 BC - 1640 BC)
So I think we're currently on the right track overall. Because we're slightly boxed in by Victoria, I agree that rapid expansion is a good idea. I did make a few changes to increase efficiency though, as at this stage of the game, speed is of the utmost importance.
This was the current state of Mecca when I received it. It looks like the worker has just recently finished the pasture on the cow resource, so we should take advantage of that square. Basically, I think it's well worth it to give up one commerce a turn for three extra production.
After the change, we've decreased settler build time by 4 turns, though we're also increased our research time by 1 turn. Again, I think this is a good deal, as we can settle the next city faster. Additionally, there is still room for growth in Mecca, and the sooner we finish that settler, the faster it can get growing again.
I also made a change in management of Medina. Here's how it came in.
The biggest reason we wanted an obelisk in that city was so we could expand it's borders. Border expansion for a city comes when it reaches 10 culture. In the picture, you'll notice that we're already at 9 culture, despite not having even finished the obelisk yet. How is this possible? It looks like Hinduism has spread to Medina by way of river, just as it had London. The religious presence here gives us a +1 per turn bonus to culture, meaning we could have skipped the obelisk altogether and still gotten our borders to expand. We probably should have started on a worker here about 9 turns ago, or at least when Medina reached population 2. Since the obelisk is about halfway finished and we will want one there eventually, I decided to just finish it. But 17 turns is an awful long time.
So now we've cut down construction time to 5 turns. Again, this cuts our commerce down, but you'll notice that this has no effect on our research time. Also important to note is the fact that Medina has already reached it's health limit (remember the 9 tiles of flood plains), so rapid growth in this city will be discouraged. We might as well get more production from this city instead of all that excess food by changing a worked tile from flood plains to the forested hill.
After changing around some of the tile management, I also switched our tech research to Bronze Working. The barbs are coming now, and if we don't upgrade our military before the barbs start using archers, we are dead. Finishing Bronze Working took nearly all of my turns. Luckily, we have a copper resource within the area of the white dot on the map plan. I started to send our newly born settler down to the white dot, along with a warrior. Getting this spot settled and expanded to include the copper resource should be priority #1 right now. Also during my turn, I had Medina pump out a couple of warriors to increase defense, and I started Mecca on The Oracle. Finishing this wonder will give us a giant leap in tech and should get us back to par for technology (we are below average due to our focus on culture and rapid expansion). I should also note that I switched our civics to Slavery and Organized Religion. Keep Slavery in mind if you ever need to make emergency units for defense. And Organized Religion for our civ might just be the best civic available to us all game. +25% to building construction everywhere as long as we keep spreading Hinduism to all our cities. That is big time.
I think the most important things to do within the next few turns involve our one worker. Again, we need to get our third city expanded out to include copper in it's borders ASAP. As soon as the third city is settled, we should be building an obelisk there and have our worker chopping a forest near there to finish that thing immediately. Then, as we are waiting for the culture to hit 10 there, we should get our worker back up to Mecca so he can build a mine on one of those hills. That will drastically decrease the build time for The Oracle. Right now, we don't really have to worry too much about getting things hooked up. The cows were the most important resource and that's already done. Roads between our cities are unnecessary right now, as the river connects them to our trade network for free.
Oh, and one last thing...I changed my mind about our city plan. Green dot would be much better served two spots northwest. It gives us access to silver and more grasslands.
Good luck.
So I think we're currently on the right track overall. Because we're slightly boxed in by Victoria, I agree that rapid expansion is a good idea. I did make a few changes to increase efficiency though, as at this stage of the game, speed is of the utmost importance.
This was the current state of Mecca when I received it. It looks like the worker has just recently finished the pasture on the cow resource, so we should take advantage of that square. Basically, I think it's well worth it to give up one commerce a turn for three extra production.
After the change, we've decreased settler build time by 4 turns, though we're also increased our research time by 1 turn. Again, I think this is a good deal, as we can settle the next city faster. Additionally, there is still room for growth in Mecca, and the sooner we finish that settler, the faster it can get growing again.
I also made a change in management of Medina. Here's how it came in.
The biggest reason we wanted an obelisk in that city was so we could expand it's borders. Border expansion for a city comes when it reaches 10 culture. In the picture, you'll notice that we're already at 9 culture, despite not having even finished the obelisk yet. How is this possible? It looks like Hinduism has spread to Medina by way of river, just as it had London. The religious presence here gives us a +1 per turn bonus to culture, meaning we could have skipped the obelisk altogether and still gotten our borders to expand. We probably should have started on a worker here about 9 turns ago, or at least when Medina reached population 2. Since the obelisk is about halfway finished and we will want one there eventually, I decided to just finish it. But 17 turns is an awful long time.
So now we've cut down construction time to 5 turns. Again, this cuts our commerce down, but you'll notice that this has no effect on our research time. Also important to note is the fact that Medina has already reached it's health limit (remember the 9 tiles of flood plains), so rapid growth in this city will be discouraged. We might as well get more production from this city instead of all that excess food by changing a worked tile from flood plains to the forested hill.
After changing around some of the tile management, I also switched our tech research to Bronze Working. The barbs are coming now, and if we don't upgrade our military before the barbs start using archers, we are dead. Finishing Bronze Working took nearly all of my turns. Luckily, we have a copper resource within the area of the white dot on the map plan. I started to send our newly born settler down to the white dot, along with a warrior. Getting this spot settled and expanded to include the copper resource should be priority #1 right now. Also during my turn, I had Medina pump out a couple of warriors to increase defense, and I started Mecca on The Oracle. Finishing this wonder will give us a giant leap in tech and should get us back to par for technology (we are below average due to our focus on culture and rapid expansion). I should also note that I switched our civics to Slavery and Organized Religion. Keep Slavery in mind if you ever need to make emergency units for defense. And Organized Religion for our civ might just be the best civic available to us all game. +25% to building construction everywhere as long as we keep spreading Hinduism to all our cities. That is big time.
I think the most important things to do within the next few turns involve our one worker. Again, we need to get our third city expanded out to include copper in it's borders ASAP. As soon as the third city is settled, we should be building an obelisk there and have our worker chopping a forest near there to finish that thing immediately. Then, as we are waiting for the culture to hit 10 there, we should get our worker back up to Mecca so he can build a mine on one of those hills. That will drastically decrease the build time for The Oracle. Right now, we don't really have to worry too much about getting things hooked up. The cows were the most important resource and that's already done. Roads between our cities are unnecessary right now, as the river connects them to our trade network for free.
Oh, and one last thing...I changed my mind about our city plan. Green dot would be much better served two spots northwest. It gives us access to silver and more grasslands.
Good luck.
