Better than a food caravan. (or how to jump start early expansion)

Flurry-of-fun · November 25, 2001, 13:59

I played several games before it really hit me, workers only cost 10 shields. So who needs WLTKDays anymore? My first or second city after my capital is built on a river with several food bonus resources or irrigated flood plains and as soon as feasible I am popping out a worker every turn or two while the city never shrinks. With a granary in the capital producing settlers, pretty soon I have cities all over and fill them up with excess workers. I also use a central core of workers to build roads to new city sites and luxury resources. Happiness still a problem? Just put in another worker and rush build that temple.

The only real problem is the stupid govenor. Every turn you have to go in and reset the workers and the build queue since the AI is so incompetent.

NotLikeTea · November 25, 2001, 16:07

This is also handy for when your cities reach size 12 and you don't yet have hospitals.

Since they cannot grow, all that food is going to waste. By producing lots of workers you can either build up your smaller cities quickly, or bank the population points, adding them back to the large cities once they have built their hospitals.

Kolyana · November 25, 2001, 16:50

Both of these ideas seem to have escaped me ... I like it.

I've just finished the most enjoyable ... and the most frustrating ... game of my entire Civ III career and I suspected that I'd need a break for a day or two, but this thread makes me want to 'go back in' and test it out

gamecommander · November 25, 2001, 18:44

This is definately a viable strategy. I wish I known about it about 2000 game years ago. I have an American Civ streching over the entire Americas, North and South. A lot of my souther cities are not expanding well in the harsh jungle, plains terrain while Wahington and New York have stuck at size 12 for a thousand years. This will help a lot.

Kolyana · November 25, 2001, 22:45

Just thought I'd say that I started a new game on Satya's world map.

I am applying some strategies that I've read about here ... including those given above. Thus far everything is going nicely

I lead the world in culture and technology. More importantly, I've been able to secure some key Great Wonders ... normally something I struggle with.

Aggressive growth, using towns to stiffle the computer nations when found, and using size 12 towns to feed others ...

Early days, but a great start thus far.

Now, if I can get a foothold in Alaska, Canada, America and South Africa, I'm set

Xard · November 25, 2001, 23:42

A good idea, but I could rapidly see this causing a problem because you fill a city with new workers/citizens, and then all of the sudden they can no longer feed themselves. Just something to watch out for before you start pumping new people into those Jungle towns...

kittenOFchaos · November 26, 2001, 04:15

I used this approach in my second game as my Roman empire was getting invaded and I couldn't hope to protect my workers...by boosting my city population I got the metropolis defence bonus for my city in the "firing line" and it helped stem the tide of German expansion.

xane · November 26, 2001, 07:01

I though of this in hindsight the other day, I was amazed at the gap between Aqueduct and Sanitation and how I had a nation of size 12 cities for so long, then I wondered why I didn't just make Workers, I sure as heck needed them - doh !

Flurry-of-fun · November 27, 2001, 12:54

I guess what I forgot to explicitly point out is that every worker you build for 10 shields in the "mother" city can be used to rush buy 30 to 40 shields in destination cities. Pretty good leverage if you can handle the 20 turns of unhappiness, which shouldn't be too difficult. Especially considering the geometric nature of growth over time within the game.

Another advantage is that you only need to build one or two granaries for the whole empire, sort of like the barracks. Division of labor among cities. One to make settlers, one for workers and one for military units.

ICMB · November 27, 2001, 19:23

Well, I'd like to see a slight modification to the game to clean up this type of micromanaging.

Basically, I'd like to be able to, after a certain point in technology, be able to ship food from one city to another. That is, if I have a city stuck at 12 with 4 extra food, I should be able to trade that 4 food to another city in my empire to help it grow. Perhaps there'd be a cost associated with it, or some loss due to spoilage on the route, but it would make it a lot easier to manage cities in inhospitable areas.

So, you could build that city in the tundra where you hope Oil may one day appear, and then have your other cities help that city with food to grow.

It does seem like there might be a potential for abuse, though. For example, if you have 15 cities, and you have each give 2 food to a specific city, that city would not have any need for any irrigation and could turn into an industrial park.

It would need testing, but I think it'd be a fun new aspect.

By the way, my method of handling this situation is that I control my city food supplies to go no higher than 25 before I have hospitals. That lets me maximize production in that city by mining the entire surrounding area. Later, when I can grow over 12, I will irrigate as needed to get my cities to a good stable size.

- ICMB