YouTuber Martin Fencka finds the correct sequencing of attacks to get the best value. His ranged naval forces of frigates and sole melee land unit in the area (his tercio) are attacking a Spanish city garrisoned by a ship and tercio. This game, Martin has the Honor policy tree, which among other bonuses grants his units +15 hit points when they kill an enemy unit with a melee attack. When a melee unit attacks, it both deals and receives damage, which can be dangerous. By first attacking the city with his ranged ships, he damaged the garrisoning enemy tercio without quite destroying it. This created a window to melee city with his own tercio, causing some damage to the city itself and successfully destroying the enemy unit. Martin’s tercio healed 15 hp by getting the kill, refunding most of the damage it sustained during the attack.
Tag: Civilization V
[Civ] Super micro management saves Baba a critical turn
Civ V NQMod streamer BabaYetu_ saves a turn on the construction of the hotly-contested Hanging Gardens wonder with a beautiful display of expertise. Baba’s micro speaks to intertwined cross-game ideas: pursuing marginal value to pass a threshold of effect and win a contested gamestate. Let’s check out the clip:
It is imperative that Baba push to finish the Hanging Gardens wonder in as few turns as possible. Multiple players are likely to be going for it, but only the first player to complete it will win the race. The others will end up paying the opportunity cost of spending time on the wonder without even earning the reward of completing it in their empires, meaning they will have painfully wasted their city production time for naught.
Accruing little advantages to production can be important, but only helps if it passes the threshold of effect. In this case, that means actually moving up the construction schedule by a full turn. At the start of this clip, Baba realizes that he is tantalizingly close to finishing the wonder in two turns. At that point with his starting trajectory he would have 163.65 of the required 167 production required. Painfully close! Baba strains to find ways to generate the necessary 3.35 prod over the next two turns.
Baba notes at the start “we have two food stored.” One can also see that at the start, the city is growing at a rate of +1.1 food/turn after consumption. Each citizen consumes 1 food/turn to avoid dying to starvation. The city’s stockpiled food allows baba to transfer a citizen from the +2 food +1 hammer buffalo tile the +0 food +2 hammer hill. With these temporary assignments, the city will go to -1 food/turn, which it can sustain for two turns before exhausting the 2 food stockpile.
Baba has cultural policies from the Tradition tree, one of which gives his empire a bonus +15% production to world wonders. This bonus ends up being very important. Moving a citizen from buffalo to hill netted him +1.15 hammers/turn for two turns, a total +2.30. Without the policy, it would only have been an even +2. But he still needs a little more, 3.35-2.30=1.05. Where will it come from? On the second of these two turns, Baba finishes improving a pasture on horses, which gives the tile +1 production, or +1.15 towards wonders. 2.30+1.15=3.45, which is greater than the missing 3.35 by just 0.1 production. There it is! With only one tenth of a production to spare, Baba makes the wonder in the space of two turns instead of three.
[Civ V] Pop micro on growth turns for extra hammers
Civilization V NQMod streamer Yoruus explains how he manages to squeeze an extra 2 production hammers out of his city on a population growth turn. In Civ V, city yields are processed in an order that starts with food, which means a new citizen can be born and start working a non-food tile to contribute to income on the same turn it is created. Further, with the NQ mod unassigned citizens (“laborers”) provide two hammers of production rather than the unmodded game’s one. By setting his city to “focus production” and leaving an unoccupied hill (which can be worked for 2 hammers), Yoruus ensures that the new citizen will go to the hill and provide an additional 2 hammers this turn towards the production of the Temple of Artemis wonder he is racing to build before any other player completes it.
Contested gamestates are won at the margins, a theme that crops up just about everywhere. Eeking out a mere 2 extra hammers may look like nothing, but it can push one over a threshold of effect by changing a 3 turn build to 2 turns. And even more subtly, it can alter the threshold of effect down the line, as the carryover of production overflow will influence the timings of later builds. Such tiny advantages accrue and over the course of a long game can actually move up a city’s entire production schedule by several turns, bit by bit.
[Civ V] Luck favors the prepared
Civilization V streamer BabaYetu uses a time-honored technique to try and milk the most out of an ancient ruin that his warrior (his southeastern unit) finds. Each ancient ruin contains a one time random bonus, which can be an instant extra citizen in the nearest city. Mechanically, this bonus gives the city exactly as much food as it needs to grow to the next size. Thus the free pop is less valuable if your city has stored food for growing the next pop, and more valuable if you’ve just grown and are at 0% towards yet another pop.
On turn 5 at the start of the clip Amsterdam is only one turn away from growing naturally, so getting a pop ruin would not save very much food. By waiting one turn for the city to reach size 2 on its own, Baba gives himself chances for a pop ruin to boost him all the way from from 2 to 3, saving 8 turns.
In this case, the ruin contained “evidence of recent barbarian activity” (the worst of the possible bonuses). Still, Baba played accurately by setting himself to get the most value in case it were a pop ruin. The idea behind the play is related to the concept of “playing to your outs” used in Magic: The Gathering strategy. Luck favors the prepared.