Probably most players on this site will have their "default build options" as a freight or a settler. Try it and see how your game improves.

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SG(2)

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Scouse Git[1] -- git1@scousers.net

quote: Originally posted by ancient on 05-06-2001 09:43 AM ok why is it that everyone says to practically build nothing in citys? i always build only two units per city. But i build everybuilding possible. i improve every tile. Build every wonder. have citys averaging 22 size. and it seems to work great. i usually get all researches first. if i get into a war all i use is spys/diplomats. the only way i ever win is by spaceship.

I generally play this way too, though I do bear in mind what Scoue Gits said about building only when there's an adequate return on the investment. I can't say I build "every" wonder -- that would be a very diffrent challenge! -- but I do build the 12-14 I want. I also have trouble improving every tile -- settlers gobble so much food in republic/democracy that I never seem to have enough of them -- but I do what I can, starting with the larger, older cities.

quote: so im wondering why everyone say to build so little and take over the world. it works perfectly fine for me to not take over the world. wouldnt you get a higher score through peace and wonders?

I think you'll find several of us here who like building rather than conquest. As for score, I think it depend on how many wonders you can get and how big a ship you build. I generally send off only 10,000 colonists, which means my ship bonus is 100; conquering the world would give me significantly more points, both because I'd have more cities and because I'd get all the wonders. But if you really can build all the wonders -- and I'd love to hear how you beat the AI to the pyramids, hanging gardens, and colossus! -- and you can get a 40,000 colonist ship off, then you would certainly rival a world conquest score.

One other thing (he said, avoiding work on a Monday morning): Recently I've started to play world conquest, just for a different challenge, and I find I haven't varied my style all that much. I do expand a lot more in order to keep the AI small, but my first dozen cities look pretty much like they would if they were my only dozen cities in an AC game. In fact, I don't really start to build a war machine until I have factories and the Hoover Dam, and I have tactics, espionage, and steel; thus, most of my game is still spent building a civ rather than making war. I'm sure I'd get creamed in multiplayer, but this seems to work find in SP even with ToT's hyper-aggressive AI.

Military conquest is very possible, but slow, with this strategy. In the end, tho, you have a much more asthetically appealing empire. I even go so far as to pillage the AI's excess fortresses while I conquer them, so the farms look better.

I have found that world conquest can double your score, when compared to retiring the turn before conquest. Does AC double the pre-landing-turn score, as well? My guess is that conquest reaps more points - my top 5 scores were all new after five world conquests, despite some respectable AC finishes before that.

quote: Originally posted by Scouse Gits on 05-06-2001 06:53 PM Just a quick question - what difficulty level are you playing on?

One other quick question... which version do you play? If it's MGE, I find it difficult to believe that you don't get clobbered now and again and aren't forced into a 'conquest' approach.

*edit*

I lied. Two questions, the other being what setting of barbarians do you use?

quote: Originally posted by Marquis de Sodaq on 05-07-2001 09:18 AM Military conquest is very possible, but slow, with this strategy. In the end, tho, you have a much more asthetically appealing empire. I even go so far as to pillage the AI's excess fortresses while I conquer them, so the farms look better.

**ROTFL** Thank goodness I'm not the only one around who has that habit. I've been known to clear entire conquered continents of useless fortresses in order to improve the aesthetics (although I leave a few as museum pieces for the conquered serfs to look at and/or as a border with a soon-to-be-extinct rival).

So why try anything else? Well, you might want to win quicker, or you might wonder what bloodlust is like, or you might fancy the idea of MP and suspect that a slow, incremental approach will hit problems against an aggressive human opponent (lets face it defending against the A1's idea of how to conduct an assault is not the game's biggest challege).

Anyway, to find the answer to why the received wisdom is to subjugate development to making your expansion as fast as you possibly can you have to try it.

Essentially the reason is the same reason that makes ICS so powerful (infinite city strategy - you crank out settlers, caravans and units and keep cities to size 2). Once you use a settler to found a city the population point given up by the city which built the settler gets back to work but you also get the resources generated by the city square as a free bonus on top. So you've doubled your money. (And to sweeten the deal the first citizen may well be able to work a better square in the new city than he was working in the old one.)

If you assess the opportunity cost of, say, building a library (80 shields) you have, therefore, if there is still land within a reasonable distance on which cities could be founded, to reckon that the extra beakers you will get is worth at least as much as the tax, beakers and shields which two new cities (2 settlers @ 40 shields each) would generate. And you have to make allowance for the 1g per turn maintenance cost of the library once built. Plus, if the new cities will have a food surplus (as they almost always will) the two new cities give you the potential to use their shields to make yet more settlers and to found yet more cities.

Now, OK, the calculation is not completely straightforward. Building the library can lead on to building a University and then a research centre plus there are the research enhancing Wonders. And there are strategic considerations - maybe you're at a stage in the game where you judge extra beakers to be vital.

But the fact is, if you stop to ask yourself whether you are sure that a particular buiulding, or the time taken up in improving land, is worth it measured against the resources from two squares coming in every turn, well the settler turns out to win the argument time after time.

At one time I tried to avoid wars of conquest completely, but now I tend to pick off a city here or there, usually only if it's an encroachment on my territory