Category Archives: Cities

Things you can do when under attack from the Dark One itself…

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…sorry, I mean superior double turning cheaters — sorry — I really mean just superior enemy.

  •  You can sell some buildings. Your enemy will anyway sell them, too. Good buildings to sell are Sewer Systems, Aquaducts, etc. You don’t need them if you are anyway loosing. Those buildings are only needed to grow your cities. You don’t need them to keep your cities that size.
  • Use spies to steal from conquered enemy cities. Even if you’re not going to use the techs, you can help someone else to survive by giving it to them. For return you probably get lots of gold — you are really going to need all of it, too!
  • Use some of your units to pillage roads before the enemy advances further

Please let me know if you know more things to do. :-)

(Yes, I am under an attack from KG, Terror, dt0r, maho, etc. Actually we all are in LT30 if you didn’t know it already.)

Update: To clarify the term cheating: I call it cheating to build roads under one minute before turn change and then using them right after to conquer cities. It’s abuse of the original game system. It just hasn’t been fixed in the server (yet). However it looks like this type of abuse is normal business in Longturn games. (It’s btw forbidden in our Finnish game rules as is much of the other abuses Longturn allows.)

Daily Journal – Playing LT30/T4

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It’s time for the 5th turn of LT30.

As I’ve updated yesterday’s journal later that day, I made my first contacts to neighbours. I’ve saw Aleut, Grenadian and Finland. I’m sure I’ll see many more upcoming turns. (Two of them are players I’ve played with at freeciv.fi.)

I already talked with some of them about collaborations and possible tech trading in the future. It’s good to start building trust with your co-players as soon as possible. In the end it’s all about trust in these multiuser games with human players.

I’ll soon have to start planning how to design my borders. That’s going to be harder because of the extended movement amounts in Longturn.org. I’ll have to design again how to secure my borders well enough.

It’s only one turn two turns until I’ll have Pottery and I can start building Granaries and Workers. Because I only need 8 bulbs more to get full 56 bulbs for Pottery I can reduce scientists in two or four of my cities — and still get it in 2 turns.

It’s time to check my cities again. It’s easy to forget something without regular checking.

While playing test games for LT30 I decided to build my cities as fast as I can on at least 2 food squares that give equal balance of shields and trade.

I’m not sure now if that was the best option. I had plenty of tiles I could have got 3 food out with the same amount of shields like Plains (Wheat). Those would have been much better as city centers.

Westminster

Westminster — my first city — I built on Plains/River (2-1-2) and there’s one Plains/River (Buffalo) (1-2-1) near where I am building irrigation now — when finished it’s 2-2-1.

In Despotism government I cannot get 3 food from any of these tiles here so there’s no instant need to irrigate any of those 2 food tiles. That’s why I am directing my worker’s resource to irrigate the Buffalo instead.

I’ve got 4 shields in stock out of 40 shields for Granary now. I’m getting 3 shields/turn more but once I change to Buffalo next turn, it’s 5 shields/turn with +75% bonus because it’s my capital. I’ll have Granary built on T11-T12 — in seven or eight turns — early before my city grows to 2.

It takes 10 turns to grow to size 2 and after that only about 5 turns between growing because with Granary I only need 10 food to grow from 1 to 2 again after building Settlers.

London, Birmingham and Liverpool

Rest of my cities are pretty much the same. Built near 2 food squares with some special resources and growing to size 2 some time next 10-12 turns. I’ll maybe writing detailed introductions to them sometime near future.

Research

I ended science rush this turn. I’ve got 48 bulbs of 56 required for Pottery and it’s going to take two turns to finish now. I should’ve stopped it sooner since I don’t actually need Pottery before T11-T12.

Defence Preparations

I’m building Warriors from some of my cities now because I have some borderlands I’m not satisfied yet. However don’t worry I’m really not going to be offensive — unless provoked — and I’ll be writing about that in more detail soon both here and in our private conversations.

Warriors or Workers are also useful because their vision makes citizens in cities able to use more tiles near the city borders.

I truly believe in a game style that makes co-existance possible and thrives the success for all nations — a win-win style for all the parties. I know that’s not how things have been usually at Longturn.org and it’s going to make this game really interesting. I don’t think warfare is always useless but I believe most times co-working is much more productive.

Wolfram Alpha is a really great tool for example if you need to count how much a unit costs the next turn — after you have only 5 shields left — to build Warrior of 10 shields.

You can check the formula from Freeciv Math page and use it almost as it’s there. Just write “T=5, X = ceil(2T + (T^2)/20)” in WolframAlpha — cost is about 12 gold.

However please notice that changing a building to a unit is going to reduce the shield stock by half.

The first turn – Selecting a place for your cities and research goals

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The most important thing to do in the start of the game is selecting best places for your first cities.

Also usually the best strategy in the start is to optimize to expand by building new cities.

In LT30 you have four settlers, two explorers and two workers in the beginning. Cities can use 7×7 tiles around the city center (except the corners) but only if you have vision to them. Empty cities have vision of standard 5×5 land.

First you should use your explorers to search the lands around your starting place to have better knowledge of your surroundings.

You start with a Despotism government style and because of that those tiles get -1 penalty of more or equal to 3 resources. For example you will get only 2 food from Ocean (Fish) or Plains (Wheat) instead of normal 3. However by irrigating the Wheat tile, you may get three food even in the despotism.

Each city center will get at least one more of each resource — it’s actually a bit more complicated than that. For example if you build your city to Plains, the city center will generate 2 food, 1 shield and 1 trade (instead of 1/1/0), which is the same if you build it on a Grassland tile. However a city center on mountains will get 1 food, 1 shield and 1 trade (instead of 0/1/0).

You should select a place where you get maximum food output from at least two tiles (including the city center) and use your workers to maximize it (see the blue arrow in the image). That way you get your city to grow faster and you can build new cities faster. It helps if those tiles have shield output. Good optimized compromise to get fast growing cities is two irrigated Plains and a city center on Grassland or Plains tile, because with Granary built it gives you a city that grows and builds settler every 5 turns. It’s even faster if you have irrigated Oasis or Grassland tiles that give you output of three food each turn each tile.

You need to research Pottery to build Granary. Select it from Cilization -> Research (F6). In the start the fastest way to research bulbs is to change your people in the cities as scientists by removing them from the tiles and clicking the icon for specialist (see the red arrow in the image). Another option is to use GMA and select the Max Science governor.

This should give you 3–4 bulbs in each of your city (total about 16 each turn) and you can develop Pottery in only 4–5 turns.

While waiting the Pottery you can start building Barracks in the cities and once Granary is available you can change it to Granary. Just make sure you don’t complete the Barracks before you have Granary available. Also use your workers to irrigate one or two good food tiles near your city.

Without a Granary your cities will not grow as fast. The food stock is reduced to 0 when a city changes it’s size. With a Granary it will be half of the stock which makes growing to a new size half times faster.