City planning( the not messed up poll)

[shade]

We have some serious problems on the Happiness front which cripple all our other planning. But there is good news, we are only 2 techs away before beeing a fundamentalistic Govt.

In the mean while we can only build temples(and hire elvises) to stop this(those will give us a lot of thits(sp?) when we convert to fundi wich also is a good thing.)

But there are some things I would like to poll about.

First: we have currently 8 Xin-cities (and only 140G)
Should we only Xin for research or only for cash or should our president get the freedom to Xin for what he deems necessary.
Knowing we will need quite some cash in the future(to rush temples in some cities(eg Gehinnom), or to make true citadels of some cities so they can withstand every attack(eg New Apocalyps,Sheol,Styx,...)) and ofcourse some troops for our Noble SMC.
(Hereby I also transfer all orders for Buffalo,Styx and Sheol to the SMC, since they will be important in our war-efforts against the North Americans.)

Second: Dominion is ready to be used as Size 5 Xin-city.
But I would suggest we wait with this untill it reaches Size 6.
Dominion is a city wich is constantly under attack by the Greek, therefor it has no infrastructure usefull for Xinning. This would take 28 turns, which is the exact time needed to finish it's Walls, build barracks(for faster recovery of our troops, upgrade from a chariot to a Knight/Crusader/Dragoon and then finish a marketplace or a library (of wich a marketplace might be our best first choice since the mined ivory can give us a lot of trade in between the Xin-turns.)
So the choice you have to make is between long term or immediate effect. Personnaly I favor the Long term view.

Shade
(you have 3 days)

[shade]

and our situation in Dominion

[Ben Kenobi]

Yes, much more useful to put a library in a city before we Xin.

I suggest that we push for fundamentalism, and then make all our cash back from tithes.

[cavebear]

I think that, at this point, our prime goal should be Fundamentalism. I don't like that form of government, but we really have to do something to solve our unhappiness problems.

And about Dominion, why not move the Worker from the unimproved grass to the mine. It gets the city to good trade that way (I realize the growth stops). It could Xin with the best of them and changing to a Marketplace or Library might improve that greatly. The city has defenses against Greek units even without walls.

[MrWhereItsAt]

We should Xin for Fundy, but since we will need to rush things here and there it would still be best to have some money ready for upgrades/rushes. Thus it is Presidential discretion, but with a strong bias to science in the times we don't need the cash.

cavebear's change sounds good for the time being, and a city at size 5 can Xin pretty well... I am a little puzzled about your second poll though shade - long term plan vs short term you say. But what EXACTLY are these plans? I must just have a problem with thinking today, as I am sure you have listed them, but in a way that is not as blatantly obvious as this here idiot needs.

[atawa]

I support a fast drive for Fundi, compared to our current Mon our resourceproduction will rise considderably

Can't we get the knight that is currently stationed at Enron as 4'th unit to Domion? We dont need it in Enron and with a second attacker present we can change production from city walls to either a market or library.

[shade]

Originally posted by MrWhereItsAt
We should Xin for Fundy, but since we will need to rush things here and there it would still be best to have some money ready for upgrades/rushes. Thus it is Presidential discretion, but with a strong bias to science in the times we don't need the cash.

cavebear's change sounds good for the time being, and a city at size 5 can Xin pretty well... I am a little puzzled about your second poll though shade - long term plan vs short term you say. But what EXACTLY are these plans? I must just have a problem with thinking today, as I am sure you have listed them, but in a way that is not as blatantly obvious as this here idiot needs.

long term: Dominion grows to size6 while building walls,barracks,knight/cruc/whatever available with m=2 and attack and then a market/library, then starts Xinning

short term: Dominion starts Xinning now, while having to wait some 30 turns before a Market/library is present.

Can't we get the knight that is currently stationed at Enron as 4'th unit to Domion? We dont need it in Enron and with a second attacker present we can change production from city walls to either a market or library.

we could(without happines problems) but I think that sould be a decision for our SMC.*silently pushes the topic away toward Cavebear*

Shade

[atawa]

You are right, I only mentioned this as I dont want to waste 80 shields on city walls if its not needed.

/me waiting for Cavebear's thoughts on this

[cavebear]

The Greeks have Chivalry and Mathematics, but not Monotheism or Gunpowder. So they have Knights and Catapaults, but not Crusaders or Musketeers. Dominion has a Pikemen, a vet Archer, and a vet Chariot (healing).

I think a Greek Knight or Catapault once in a while is not much of a threat to Dominion. My military opinion is that we do not need City Walls at Dominion at this time.

Whether production should be shifted to a Marketplace or Library, I leave to the City-Planner. Both would be useful.

[cavebear]

Concerning Enron: It seems very well-defended compared to some of our more exposed cities and can share some of that. I will be suggesting some unit moves in my report to the President.

[shade]

pls bare in mind to leave 3 units in those cities(or we will need 2 elvises) a 4th one can always be moved to a beter location.

[Six Thousand Year Old Man]

Cities that are 'Xin Cities' don't need any elvises (or for that matter, any martial law units).

When the city is on a Xin turn, there is no unrest because all the citizens are specialists (no black or red faces possible).

When the city is on a non Xin turn, it can go into disorder safely (cities in disorder still harvest food, so food will go back into the food box allowing more Xinning the next turn).

The downside is that the city will not generate any shields or trade while in disorder. That said... we could make up for the loss of those shields/arrows by substituting: a) the coins from the sale of a Temple in XinCities (and the extra coin we save in upkeep, by selling it), and b) 1 or 2 units per XinCity would possibly be freed up to do more useful things...

[shade]

Especially for STYOM and all who are interested I did some counting.

Selling the temples in those 9 cities would give us:
9G profit/non-xinturn
+560G(60G/temple) 1 time

and we would lose every NONE-xinturn:
26Gold, 9 sciencebeakers and 49 shields(those are the shields we use for production)(or 196G in shields).

...Is this still profitable?

Personally I don't think so.

Shade

[cavebear]

Sell the Temples?

[atawa]

Apart from the reasons our City Planner mentions they will also start making us money soon as we are not far from Fundi

[Sparrowhawk]

When we knew little of our neighbours this plan of "Xinning" (or starvation of the population as I like to call it) made sense to me, and I encouraged its use as it increased the rate at which we discovered new technology.

However, as we have come to know more about our neighbours the population has become aware that other civilizations in the land do not starve the people to discover new technologies, preferring more traditional methods. Perhaps this idea has begun to outlive it's usefulness and we need to return to more traditional methods of research?

/me Foreign Minister

[cavebear]

I think perhaps the City-Planner should give us his views on the option of xinning vs not xinning. Not in general, but as it applies to our specific situation. I readily admit that there is much of this practice that I do not understand.

From what I know of it, xinning involves temporary deficits in some aspects in exchange for temporary advantages in others. The idea itself is not foreign to me; we do it all the time when placing Workers on terrain of one type or another, or by making them specialists.

What I'm not sure of is exactly how much loss we incurr. It seems to me that the major loss is in population growth, but there may be others. Is it possible that xinning is helping us in the short-term, but damaging us in the long-term?

[atawa]

It all depends on wether we want more tech any time soon. Without Xinning we have a techrate of 58 turns if we go to 50/50.
We might change that a bit with workerplacement but not much

[atawa]

As the next turn is a Xin turn I changed all workers of 5+ city's to Scientists.
On the turn after we'll only have 3 city's Xinning so perhaps 17-18 turns for a new tech.

[shade]

personally I don't like the idea behind Xinning...but that's just my opinion(and as president that had a value of NULL and VOID )

Now I have to support it, for 2 simple reasons.
1) due to our selfinflicted rules and this nice map op atomant we really need to squeeze everything out of our game. The only way to keep our science acceptable(at this moment) is using the art of Xinning. Same goes for gold(since no caravans are allowed)

2)We also live in a situation in wich we can not let our cities grow to large(Size5 and 6 really need everything they got not to go into disorder). Xinning here is a nice way of stabelizing the size of a city.

The moment we go Fundi we will need other ways to get our science to an acceptable rate, but then again we could also let our cities grow.
The moment we go fundi we also can start a period of internal growth instead of milateristic expansion.

So at least until we reach fundi we will continue Xinning, when we switch govt. I'll poll what we should do about it.

Shade

[Sparrowhawk]

Originally posted by shade
personally I don't like the idea behind Xinning...but that's just my opinion(and as president that had a value of NULL and VOID )

Now I have to support it, for 2 simple reasons.
1) due to our selfinflicted rules and this nice map op atomant we really need to squeeze everything out of our game. The only way to keep our science acceptable(at this moment) is using the art of Xinning. Same goes for gold(since no caravans are allowed)

2)We also live in a situation in wich we can not let our cities grow to large(Size5 and 6 really need everything they got not to go into disorder). Xinning here is a nice way of stabelizing the size of a city.

The moment we go Fundi we will need other ways to get our science to an acceptable rate, but then again we could also let our cities grow.
The moment we go fundi we also can start a period of internal growth instead of milateristic expansion.

So at least until we reach fundi we will continue Xinning, when we switch govt. I'll poll what we should do about it.

Shade

I could not have said it better myself, I agree that we will need to continue to use it until Fundamentalism, and hope that it will no longer be used after that. As cavebear and shade have both alluded to the cost of Xinning is great, and while in Monarchy we cannot afford not to Xin (the population growth would compound our happiness problems), I look forward to seeing what happens when we move to a Fundamentalist government. I think that with the city growth we should be able to sustain under Fundamentalism that our science rate will actually be higher then it currently is under Monarchy (despite the reduced rate of science under fundy).

It seems ironic however that our City Planner proposes to stop warring and focus on growth when we switch to Fundamentalism, the government most favourable to war

[cavebear]

As SMC, I consider that our chances of achieving our military goals in Monarchy at this stage of the game are about as likely as drowning our enemies by p*ssing into the wind.

We must acheive a more viable form of non-representative government as quickly as is possible. I think our immediate goal should be aimed at Fundamentalism with all else being secondary. I would rather defend our cities from onsloughts of foreign devils and create lakes of blood outside (and inside) our cities than continue in this unadvancing situation for another month.

[Sparrowhawk]

Perhaps our Science Minister ( who is that again? ) will poll on this matter, as I am not sure if anyone has recently polled on the next tech goal. I think we are still aiming for Explosives next, but I am not sure if this is still an up to date poll. Have our goals changed?

[cavebear]

We are researching Conscription, a prerequisite to Fundamentalism. I dearly hope we can research that next. Perhaps the Minister of Science can advise of of the likelihood of that being a possibility for the next tech?

[atawa]

I have PM'd Obiwan, if there is no science poll up tomorrow I will ask the VP to take over his duties untill he returns.

[cavebear]

A good firm decision by our new President. There is some great promise to this administration.

[Sparrowhawk]

That is, as long as our VP is around to fill in, you know how unreliable those Canadians can be!

btw, just kidding Obiwan and STYOM :

[Six Thousand Year Old Man]

Some thoughts:

We probably should Xin for science as fast as we can. For that reason, I voted that we should start Dominion Xinning ASAP. The sooner we get to Fundy, the sooner we can get out of disorder - a lot of problems would be solved. Finish the walls, and then Xin.

Science Xinning in Fundy is generally not a good idea. The science handicap in Fundy affects specialists, too, and one of the main advantages of Xinning is the fact corruption has no effect. In Fundy, corruption is low anyways.

Also, why are we irrigating around our core cities when they will not be growing anytime soon? And are we going to mine the hidden specials there?

[shade]

Originally posted by Six Thousand Year Old Man
Also, why are we irrigating around our core cities when they will not be growing anytime soon? And are we going to mine the hidden specials there?

because unlike the AI we can't just irrigate a random square

also the amount of water is very small on this map and the amount of settler we can sustain is low.

[Six Thousand Year Old Man]

Originally posted by shade


because unlike the AI we can't just irrigate a random square

also the amount of water is very small on this map and the amount of settler we can sustain is low.

Understood... BUT...

The cities in question are already size 5 and Xinning. They're not going to have a food surplus (due to Xin-starving) until we get Fundy. In the meantime, they don't really need irrigation. Better to found small cities with the Settlers, use them to build roads, or add them to some size 4 cities to make them size 5 and Xinnable.

IMO, of course