W(h)ither our mighty metropoli?

[Six Thousand Year Old Man]

He's baaaaaaack...


What's our overall City strategy - more cities, grow existing cities to size 5, or grow size 5's to size 8?

We have University - there's nothing to prevent us from adding Settlers to existing Xin cities to grow them to size 8. A size 5 city produces 24 beakers w/ Library. A size 8 city would produce 39 beakers, and 58 (I think) with a University. We currently are producing 67 beakers/turn and science is at 19 turns, to provide a point of reference (naturally, not all cities are Xinning at once). Problem is, we have no way of growing cities beyond size 8, really - celebrations will be nearly impossible in Demo/Republic, and we can't build food Caravans to grow the cities above size 8 by that means. And our terrain is generally ill suited to largescale irrigation. City growth past size 8 will be tough.

Our illustrious Deputy City-Planner had polled the masses and suggested Fundy. Fundy is hard times for Science Xinning, since, IIRC, the science rate is halved for specialists as well as conventional science.

On top of all that, we have imposed a 'soft' rule on ourselves not to ICS (I say 'soft' because it hasn't stopped us so far).

So here's the poll - do we try to grow our existing 'core' cities and improve them, or do we found some new cities and get them, and some other existing cities, to size 5 for science Xin purposes?

[Six Thousand Year Old Man]

n.b. The advantage of growing cities to size 8 and beyond is that we can make the Universities/Libraries (and/or Markets and Banks) more cost effective, since we can hire more specialists or work more tiles.

The advantage of getting more cities to size 5 is that we need less infrastructure to keep them out of disorder.

The advantage of building more cities is the ICS advantage, of course - lots more tiles worked in less time, fewer improvements required, more units cranked out (But then, we said we wouldn't ICS )

[Sparrowhawk]

My understanding of ICS'ing is building as many cities as possible (2 squares apart, overlapping), and no improvements. We clearly are not doing that, and I think our best choice is to build more cities, filling in the spaces between our spread out empire. These cities will start out in disorder, so we need defensive units build to travel with the settlers to establish martial law immediately however.

/me throws in his 2 cents worth (which in Canada is about 1/2 a cent American...after taxes )

[Ben Kenobi]

Glad to see the sheriff in charge.

Welcome back!

/me needs to replace broken Civ2 cd since brother stepped on old one.

What's our overall City strategy - more cities, grow existing cities to size 5, or grow size 5's to size 8?

No more cities due to unrest.

I like a threshold, grow core cities to size five, so that we can xin them by disbanding settlers to feed population growth.

As for growing after size 5, we need to improve our terrain so that we generate some decent growth rates. Then, we can drop the xin to focus on city growth.

These are my suggestions, let the sheriff do what he may.

[Hydey]

Originally posted by obiwan18



* obiwan18 needs to replace broken Civ2 cd since brother stepped on old one.

I hope you gave him a nice burial

[-Jrabbit]

Our illustrious Deputy City-Planner had polled the masses and suggested Fundy. Fundy is hard times for Science Xinning, since, IIRC, the science rate is halved for specialists as well as conventional science.

STYOM -- Not sure about the halving of Ein contributions; never heard of that. But it will be hundred of years (explosives, RR, gunpowder, democracy, etc) before we can reach Fundy anyway...

[MrWhereItsAt]

I request, as FAM, that the city to the far north change the tiles worked from one of the river squares to a forest. We lose one food but gain 2 shields, speeding the completion of the Diplomat there significantly.

Cheers

[Ben Kenobi]

I hope you gave him a nice burial

He inadvertently stepped on the cd, so now he just has to get me a new one. Everybody wins.

[Hydey]

Need more voters to help break the 3 way deadlock in the poll

[Yurt]

Grow the big ones and improve the terrain around them.

[Six Thousand Year Old Man]

If the poll ends in a tie, then I will cast the deciding vote

I had actually hoped for a more decisive result so that I could form a strategy on how to implement the plan (e.g. where will the martial law units come from to garrison new cities? OR do we slow science Xinning down in favour of cash Xinning, so we'll have the money for the needed improvements in bigger cities?)

Getting more cities to size 5 and Xinning them is the easiest option. All we need to do really is add Settlers to existing cities (faster method) and/or irrigate the surrounding terrain (slower method). Most of our cities have temples: temple + 3 units + 1 specialist (any type) = content, at size 5.

Building new cities would get us major unhappiness problems in the near term. Not a disaster - after all, the main city tile is automatically worked, even if the first citizen is an elvis - but it would lessen the advantages of the added cities. If we do choose this approach and build new cities, we ought to be building them on specials.

Growing our cities would also result in unhappiness in those cities - which would require us to build colosseums or cathedrals OR raise the luxury rate. Both of these processes would be expensive. In the long run, it could be worth it if the larger cities can produce more goods/taxes/science. In the short run, these cities wouldn't be able to produce units very fast, or Xin (Xinning would slow the build rate to a crawl).

[cavebear]

That's exactly why I support growing more cities to size 5 and Xinning them. Martial law can prevent most of the unhappiness in a 5 city. When they get larger, we have to spend a lot of shields building happiness infrastructures.

And incidentally, that's why I tend to try and move NONE units to cities for defense and martial law. The shield support is zero for them, and the losses in the field come from shield-supported units.

Speaking of "Xinning", isn't it a good thing that the person who developed the idea had a nice short name that appears as a verb easily? I mean, what if I had developed it? Would anyone want to refer to "cavebearing" their cities? Or "hydeying" them? Or "Sixthousandyearoldmanning" them?

[Six Thousand Year Old Man]

Until we get to a more favourable government - and I mean Fundy or Commie, I can't see us ever getting any benefit from Demo/Republic - we should probably pay more attention to worker placement, to keep cities from growing into unhappiness problems.

For example, a size 3 city is content with a Temple and 2 units. Size 3 is a good threshhold to stick to unless we want to Xin (yup, good short name, same with oedo and solo. Maybe my name is what's preventing me from being a civ innovator ) it. At size 3, it can put a unit in the field without cutting into shield production.

A size 2 city doesn't produce many shields - so that although it can be kept happy with temple + 1 unit, or 3 units, the production makes that kind of shield investment impractical.

A size 4 city is content with a temple + 3 units. Problem is, the next unit built cuts into the shield production. So effectively, for military purposes, it produces the same number of shields as a size 3 city (if we assume the extra worker adds another shield).

Make sense? My proposal is to get a lot of cities to size 3 and crank out units. If we need more science/tax, then we add 2 Settlers right away and skip size 4 altogether

[cavebear]

Let them go to size 4 and than add a Settler to get them to size 5.

[Ben Kenobi]

That's a different idea from my threshold, to build up our core cities first, and then let the core cities grow past size five.

Since we are only a monarchy, any new Xin cities have to be located close to our capital, otherwise corruption drastically reduces their effectiveness.

Secondly, we have so many cities, that we will need to garrison them just to have them grow to size three, and then to size five. I'm not convinced that your plan adequately accounts for the discontent.

Or "hydeying" them?

Why does this make me thing of rogering?

If Xin Yu did not first come up with this technique, we would probably call it size fiving, or something along those lines. Since Xin has a short name, he gets to hog all the credit.

[Hydey]

Many people still have problems understanding how xinnnung really works , give them time and they will learn

[Six Thousand Year Old Man]

Originally posted by obiwan18

Since we are only a monarchy, any new Xin cities have to be located close to our capital, otherwise corruption drastically reduces their effectiveness.

Corruption doesn't affect specialists.

Secondly, we have so many cities, that we will need to garrison them just to have them grow to size three, and then to size five. I'm not convinced that your plan adequately accounts for the discontent.

Yes, but since we already have so many cities, we might as well make them somewhat useful. Corruption will play a role here... but, my key point is that when a city hits size 3, we should put the workers on forest and off grass, so that it won't grow to size 4 and create more happiness problems.

Granted, if we build more cities, it'll be hard to keep them happy.

[Hydey]

hard but not impossible

[Sparrowhawk]

Not impossible at all, and I think we are trying to make this hard on ourselves, too easy would be boring.

I think we need to use martial law primarily to keep happiness in the new cities, at least while they are building temples initially.

It seems we all want to stay away from increasing luxuries above zero, and normally I would agree, but as our happiness problems continue, it becomes increasingly obvious that without Wonders or Caravans, Martial Law and Improvements alone are going to have a tough time maintaining order. Though I would like to delay it as long as possible, and keep it as low as possible, it seems we will have to increase the luxury rate some time soon. (regardless of the final outcome of this poll)

Originally posted by Hydey
Many people still have problems understanding how xinnnung really works , give them time and they will learn

I think that the citizens of the Apolyton Imperium are quickly learning how this works. We are starving the population in order to increase science. If it wasn't such a noble goal ( Science ) then I would think we would be condemned and forced to answer for our actions, however, we are advancing the knowledge of our people and if some have to skip a few meals, so be it

/me Science Minister

[Ben Kenobi]

Corruption doesn't affect specialists.



News to me. If this is true, than this is a big boon for outposts that can't produce anything worthwhile without specialist.

I'd love to see a little more proof, since I have not seen this myself.

[rjmatsleepers]

Originally posted by obiwan18
Corruption doesn't affect specialists.



News to me. If this is true, than this is a big boon for outposts that can't produce anything worthwhile without specialist.

I'd love to see a little more proof, since I have not seen this myself.

I can't give you proof, but I can assure you that it's true. In one of the early landing games I lost my capital and went through many centuries with severe corruption. I had to spend a great deal of time Xining about a dozen cities. (Although now I come to think of it, I may have rebuilt my capital before I started Xining.)

RJM at Sleepers

[Hydey]

Originally posted by rjmatsleepers


I can't give you proof, but I can assure you that it's true.

we believe you

[Six Thousand Year Old Man]

Originally posted by obiwan18


I'd love to see a little more proof, since I have not seen this myself.

Load any past save (assuming you still have them) of this demogame and look at the cities which are Xinning. 5 scientists + library= 22 beakers, regardless of how far the city is from the capital.

Put the workers back on the ground, and you'll see corruption/waste in varying degrees based on distance from the capital.

[Hydey]

There you go

[Ben Kenobi]

First I need the civ cd to view the saves...

You learn something new everyday.
Thanks for the tip STYOM.

[MrWhereItsAt]

Well the whole Xinning thing is new to me, and I suspect may be something that proves so succesful we may consider banning it for the next game, much as we denied ourselves Ironclads last game. It has yet to prove itself a game-breaker however.

What would be the problem with increasing luxuries off 0% ? It would support the cities that aren't Xinning and thus mostly have large corruption anyway, whereas it wouldn't affect the cities that ARE Xinning.