Trip
28th November 2003, 01:38
Hello everyone, in case you didn't know I'm a new guy here. :D I hail from the Apolyton team from the PTW ISDG and wanted a change of faces and scenery for this game. But that's not what this thread is about. ;)
What is about is some of the things I suggest for internal improvement. Basically, how I think city spacing and the economic buildup of our civ should take place. And I even have pretty pictures to help show you why I want what I want. ;)
Basically, there are four things I think are pivotal in the maximum economic development of a civ: Agricultural trait, early Granaries, copious amounts of Workers (early) and tight-city spacing.
Quite simply put, food is power in Civ 3, and as long as you can keep yourself alive if you have the most food then you are the most powerful. You have the greatest capability to build new cities, you have higher pops in your current cities which allow you greater production and gold. Those three things are basically what determines who is most powerful: # of cities and territory, production capability and usable GPT.
The Agricultural trait in one of the ways to help increase the amount of food. Every city built on fresh water (river or lake) permanently gets an extra food. Thus, every time a city grows it will only take 7 turns instead of 10 at the minimum. Just think... growing to size 6 you save a total of 18 turns! That's 18 turns where you'll have extra pop in your cities, 18 turns where you'll be generating more production and 18 turns where you'll be generating more commerce. And that's just one city. If you have some sort of bonus food resource in the area you can easily get to 5 food per turn. Coupled with a Granary that's TWO-turn growth. And that's for only 1 food resource. If you have more for other cities to use that's multiple cities with 2-turn growth. The ability to do that allows you to build 2-turn Workers as well. With those Workers you can either work more tiles (very important, but I'll get to that later) or you can add those cheap and quick Workers to other cities. Those cities stuck with hills around and will take forever to grow? Well in only 10 turns from one Worker pump city you can get that city from size 1 all the way to size 7 with just the production from one city. Clearly, extra food gives you an immense boost in power. Deserts also provide 2 food and 1 shield when irrigated instead of only 1/1. This allows deserts to be tracts of productive land instead of barriers and useless dirt for building cities. But I'm also getting into other things, so I'll continue onto my other subjects.
As I said in the paragraph above, Granaries are very important in growth. Growth twice as fast is an amazing tool, and coupled with a 5 food surplus you have a city that's more a weapon than a city. The earlier the Granaries are built the earlier they start paying off. Thus I suggest we build a Granary as early as we can. If we are an Agricultural civ then we get Pottery automatically, which means as soon as we get out a few Warriors we can start on a Granary and have it done before it gets to size 4 or 5. We can then produce 2 Settlers one after another and we'll already be ahead of average. The more Granaries in more cities we have and this effect is exponential. More Granaries is a lot more food in and more Granaries in more cities is a LOT more Settlers and cities in the long-run.
With that extra food and Granaries we can build lots of Workers, which is vital to having enough tiles for all cities to work. With a tight-city spacing it can sometimes be hard to keep up with improvements. However, with enough Workers you can (and should) always have enough fully improved tiles for all cities to work. Once that becomes the case you can have Workers preparing tiles for future growth and future city sites. With such fast growth a need for Workers grows, and we should make sure we always have a proper amount of Workers for our cities.
Tight city-spacing is one of the most important things to ensure maximum power and growth. Cities closer to the capital have lower corruption and are able to work previous improved tiles. Once you build your FP you have a second core from which to spiral cities outwards from. I know people here don't like ICS, but that's not what I'm suggesting (for the most part 1-tile spacing is bad). 2 or 3 tile spacing is the best way to get the most out of your land. You can later disband cities to allow them to grow well above size 12 when raw production from individual cities to build ICBMs and spaceship parts and such is more important. But in the early game a tighter city spacing is important. "Camp" cities can also be set up with the express purpose of disbanding them in the future. Thus when you run out of tiles to work in your more important cities you can disband the camps and allow the other cities to grow even more. In the meantime you gain all of the production and commerce from the camp cities while they exist. It's a win-win situation.
I have an example here in a current PBEM game of how tight city-spacing can be very important and give you a large edge over everyone else. In the following screenshots I have images of two civs in the Apolyton intra-site PTWDG.
The first team is named Legoland, and it has an entire (rather large) continent all to itself. This team chose to use wide city spacing as you can see from the screenshot. They also have their Forbidden Palace built in the city of Karina in the south. Thus, almost their ENTIRE continent is productive and not hopelessly corrupt. They also have quite a few cities with high population.
Their demographics are as follows:
POP: 4,713,000
GNP: 377
MFG: 163
Land: 39,800
Prod: 547
These are pretty good stats. However, the other team I will show you is even better. And they do it with a lot less land and no far-away FP built either. How do they do it? Tighter city spacing.
This civ is Gathering Storm, and they did everything right economically the entire game. They used a tight city-spacing, built a few early Granaries to help boost growth and used that growth to built lots of Workers. As you can see, almost their entire landmass is covered with improvements by this date (300 AD). The only thing they weren't that I pointed out in this post so far is be Agricultural (they're Egypt). Then again, this is PTW and the game started before Conquests was out. :p
Demographics for Gathering Storm:
POP: 6,167,000
GNP: 519
MFG: 174
Land: 30,900
Prod: 600
Keep in mind, all of these statistics are superior to the previous team (Legoland), despite the fact they have much less land. This is because of their city spacing and proper preparation early on in the game.
Okay, that's it for my strategy/rant thread. :D Please post any comments or observations or anything else you want to with regards to this subject. :)
What is about is some of the things I suggest for internal improvement. Basically, how I think city spacing and the economic buildup of our civ should take place. And I even have pretty pictures to help show you why I want what I want. ;)
Basically, there are four things I think are pivotal in the maximum economic development of a civ: Agricultural trait, early Granaries, copious amounts of Workers (early) and tight-city spacing.
Quite simply put, food is power in Civ 3, and as long as you can keep yourself alive if you have the most food then you are the most powerful. You have the greatest capability to build new cities, you have higher pops in your current cities which allow you greater production and gold. Those three things are basically what determines who is most powerful: # of cities and territory, production capability and usable GPT.
The Agricultural trait in one of the ways to help increase the amount of food. Every city built on fresh water (river or lake) permanently gets an extra food. Thus, every time a city grows it will only take 7 turns instead of 10 at the minimum. Just think... growing to size 6 you save a total of 18 turns! That's 18 turns where you'll have extra pop in your cities, 18 turns where you'll be generating more production and 18 turns where you'll be generating more commerce. And that's just one city. If you have some sort of bonus food resource in the area you can easily get to 5 food per turn. Coupled with a Granary that's TWO-turn growth. And that's for only 1 food resource. If you have more for other cities to use that's multiple cities with 2-turn growth. The ability to do that allows you to build 2-turn Workers as well. With those Workers you can either work more tiles (very important, but I'll get to that later) or you can add those cheap and quick Workers to other cities. Those cities stuck with hills around and will take forever to grow? Well in only 10 turns from one Worker pump city you can get that city from size 1 all the way to size 7 with just the production from one city. Clearly, extra food gives you an immense boost in power. Deserts also provide 2 food and 1 shield when irrigated instead of only 1/1. This allows deserts to be tracts of productive land instead of barriers and useless dirt for building cities. But I'm also getting into other things, so I'll continue onto my other subjects.
As I said in the paragraph above, Granaries are very important in growth. Growth twice as fast is an amazing tool, and coupled with a 5 food surplus you have a city that's more a weapon than a city. The earlier the Granaries are built the earlier they start paying off. Thus I suggest we build a Granary as early as we can. If we are an Agricultural civ then we get Pottery automatically, which means as soon as we get out a few Warriors we can start on a Granary and have it done before it gets to size 4 or 5. We can then produce 2 Settlers one after another and we'll already be ahead of average. The more Granaries in more cities we have and this effect is exponential. More Granaries is a lot more food in and more Granaries in more cities is a LOT more Settlers and cities in the long-run.
With that extra food and Granaries we can build lots of Workers, which is vital to having enough tiles for all cities to work. With a tight-city spacing it can sometimes be hard to keep up with improvements. However, with enough Workers you can (and should) always have enough fully improved tiles for all cities to work. Once that becomes the case you can have Workers preparing tiles for future growth and future city sites. With such fast growth a need for Workers grows, and we should make sure we always have a proper amount of Workers for our cities.
Tight city-spacing is one of the most important things to ensure maximum power and growth. Cities closer to the capital have lower corruption and are able to work previous improved tiles. Once you build your FP you have a second core from which to spiral cities outwards from. I know people here don't like ICS, but that's not what I'm suggesting (for the most part 1-tile spacing is bad). 2 or 3 tile spacing is the best way to get the most out of your land. You can later disband cities to allow them to grow well above size 12 when raw production from individual cities to build ICBMs and spaceship parts and such is more important. But in the early game a tighter city spacing is important. "Camp" cities can also be set up with the express purpose of disbanding them in the future. Thus when you run out of tiles to work in your more important cities you can disband the camps and allow the other cities to grow even more. In the meantime you gain all of the production and commerce from the camp cities while they exist. It's a win-win situation.
I have an example here in a current PBEM game of how tight city-spacing can be very important and give you a large edge over everyone else. In the following screenshots I have images of two civs in the Apolyton intra-site PTWDG.
The first team is named Legoland, and it has an entire (rather large) continent all to itself. This team chose to use wide city spacing as you can see from the screenshot. They also have their Forbidden Palace built in the city of Karina in the south. Thus, almost their ENTIRE continent is productive and not hopelessly corrupt. They also have quite a few cities with high population.
Their demographics are as follows:
POP: 4,713,000
GNP: 377
MFG: 163
Land: 39,800
Prod: 547
These are pretty good stats. However, the other team I will show you is even better. And they do it with a lot less land and no far-away FP built either. How do they do it? Tighter city spacing.
This civ is Gathering Storm, and they did everything right economically the entire game. They used a tight city-spacing, built a few early Granaries to help boost growth and used that growth to built lots of Workers. As you can see, almost their entire landmass is covered with improvements by this date (300 AD). The only thing they weren't that I pointed out in this post so far is be Agricultural (they're Egypt). Then again, this is PTW and the game started before Conquests was out. :p
Demographics for Gathering Storm:
POP: 6,167,000
GNP: 519
MFG: 174
Land: 30,900
Prod: 600
Keep in mind, all of these statistics are superior to the previous team (Legoland), despite the fact they have much less land. This is because of their city spacing and proper preparation early on in the game.
Okay, that's it for my strategy/rant thread. :D Please post any comments or observations or anything else you want to with regards to this subject. :)