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LTT Game Manual
(the page title is called a manual, but the google doc and content below is really more about a strategy guide)
As part of working on https://github.com/longturn/freeciv21/issues/487, I combined insight from a few games and created this google doc: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1nFgztVP7d1sYXYLJ343wcOcOYMI0CvNY9pBkgSmBqJQ
With LT78, panch93 has started a tips and tricks sub-channel and started posting content. Capturing here to see how it can be incorporated into the google doc and eventually to RTD
It is always good to move your explorers first (from mountain to mountain to explore as much as possible) and plan the first 10-15 cities at once!
The way you do city building and place the cities depends on the overall strategy of the empire. There are two ways (and as always a lot of intermediate ways which is a mix of the two) people usually go about this.
Those are:
- Capital being a powerhouse and you build and grow some powerhouse cities
- Individual cities aren't important and you keep them smallish but you keep expanding aggressively without spending time growing cities.
Many people follow the path of 1 since it's easier to do. I haven't seen a lot of people implement 2 successfully.
Anyways, keeping 1 as the strategy for now since most of us are comfortable with it. Here are a few ways to think about city placement. I'll elaborate each point further down below.
- Overlap significantly and don't waste any tiles. It is not smallpoxing just because you keep cities together.
- Plan ahead and plan atleast 10-15 cities at once.
- Growth is paramount, and think about what happens to a city after you would have modified the terrain around it.
- Mentally assign roles to your cities.
It is a common misconception that keeping the cities close together means smallpoxing and people conclude whether smallpoxing is for them or not. But smallpoxing also refers to the fact that your individual cities are small and you keep growing your empire larger and larger without growing your cities. Even when you want to largepox. It is always a good idea to have significant overlap in your city plan. This is mainly because of the efficiency and flexibility of your empire.
A city in total uses 45 tiles. To fully use the 45 tiles, the city atleast needs to be of size 44. Even in a food heavy city where you hit +20 food as soon as you touch size 16. and +10 food as soon as you touch size 8. By the time you touch size 36, you will already be in turn 70-80.
This means, there will be a lot of unused tiles in the early game. It gets worse, if your empire is food scarce (which is the case now). Also, a important fact is that any food after granary size is wasted. Overlapping cities gives you the option to provide the tile to the city which needs the food in that particular turn. On average from experience, each tile being shared by 2 cities seems ok for me. But that need not fully be the case. But do try to keep the city distance as mindist+1 so that there is enough overlap that you dont waste any food. Your speed of growth is significantly better with overlap and sacrificing speed of early growth for better overall growth is not worth it as you will not be left alone to farm in most cases, and even if left alone, the opportunity cost of early speed is massive. It also provides flexibility of making some cities build units for defense and you grow the rest.
So, how does one largepox with such a significant overlap? The answer will be significantly elaborated in the assign roles to cities section too, but a quick version is you dont grow all your cities. After you actually run out of tiles, you shrink/stop growing some and grow the test, that way you transition from the initial "smallpox" to largepox. You retain the speed and flexibility of early game and also get the better overall ceiling of largepox.
If you overlap like said above (which I hope you guys do) you should easily be able to fit in 10-15 cities in the land you see in the first turn. How you plan 10-15 cities at once will become clear as you think about the other points, but planning 10-15 cities at once, will make what your empire is working towards much clearer. As much as you cant guess the flow of the game, thinking about what you want your empire to look like in the midgame and late game really helps position your cities correctly. Think about growth, ways your opponent can attack you and as well as how you can stop it later. (edited)
Population is a very important resource. The faster and bigger you grow, the more your capacity for anything in this game is. More will be elaborated on the roles section, but think of how much your city will grow in a particular location later in the game. I mentally divide cities with respect to late game growth rates when planning cities. +20 cities grow every turn, +10 cities grow every alternate turn. +7 cities grow every 3 turns, +5 every 4 turns and so on. Other intermediate numbers cause food waste. So, when you look at a city location. Think about how easily the terrain can be made into grasslands which easily lead to +20/+10 cities. You also need to look into how much a city can grow. A tile with 2 food offers no surplus since each citizen takes 2 food. So, thinking of such surpluses and deficits helps you think about the roles of cities. One reason coastal cities are great is, with harbor ocean tiles give 2 food. So, no deficit. If the other land tiles addup to +10 or +20, those cities can grow indefinitely. So, it is almost always a bad idea to build a city off coast with ocean tiles since harbor comes early but transform comes very late into the game, and you are losing a lot of food and growth in the process.
Similarly if you want a powerhouse capital, you want a city which can grow fast. Many wonders give benefits based on size, so having a capital which can grow at +20 after midgame is very useful. This is something to think about, the path from forest to grasslands is forest > swamp > grassland. So, swampy regions can actually lend themselves to big trade cities after midgame. But foresty regions take longer. Such thought regarding growth can easily help you think about what roles you can assign to particular cities. With trade bonuses at size 8, 16 and the lot. It helps think which cities you will stop growing at what size. That leads itself into the most important point of all, assigning roles to cities.
As much as your strategy for a game is highly dependent on how the game evolves, there are a few archetypes you can assign your cities which can help think about your city development which become the basis for your overarching strategy. The fundamental idea behind the archetypes is the idea that, 1 prod heavy city and 1 trade heavy city is better than 2 cities which are partially prod and trade heavy. This helps you save resources on improvements since you dont have to grow every city the same way. You can skip the science, gold improvements on the prod city and workshop on the trade city etc. A few of the archetypes we already discussed before. +20, +10, +7, +5, +4 food and so on.. On top of these we have things like prod heavy cities ( which will be smallish with a lot of prod) trade heavy cities (bigger ones), settler factories (these keep producing settlers for expansion), migrant factories (to help the better positioned smaller cities grow faster), trade heavy harbor cities, prod heavy harbor cities for the navy (think about whether this ocean isnt isolated. You wont be making navy in a ocean which is internal to us), wonder helpers (these are prod heavy cities around the cap for caravans). Ofc, a city doesnt have a single role and will be a mix of many of these. But it is good to think of the roles of the cities in advance. These are also non-economic roles you need to consider like strategic defence positions, a city which helps connecting oceans/rivers. It helps think of your empire at once together with these roles to have a better idea of the capabilities of your empire.
Your capital will be your powerhouse so think a lot before placing your first city. The typical roles for a capital are, potential +20 in the future. Big trade city. On a river so that you don't have to wait for construction (in general more the early cities on rivers, the better cuz you don't have to wait for construction) and most importantly, defence. Don't place your capital on exposed coasts or something, since they can super easily taken during marines. (edited)
The main first level strats in an LTT game currently are,
- Monarchy Rush
- Tribal + Pyramids
- Despo + Pyramids
- Horse Rush
- Settler rush
Which leads to the second level strats of,
- Republic after Monarchy
- Monarchy (either directly or after tribal) all the way till demo
- Despo all the way till demo.
First we talk about settler rush and Pyramids first strategy. Both of these can be done in Tribal or Despotism. Tribal is more aggressive and provides a lot of prod to expand fast , and despo provides better science and gold. It purely depends on your starting condition which is better. If you want the extra prod and expansion speed of tribal go into anarchy at T0. It isnt worth it otherwise. Tribal also hinges on the fact that many people will go all the nice techs first and you get it cheaper, so you kinda take a risk to get more land than them and catch up and beat them later. Despo is more flexible and lets to do, settler rush, pyramids or monarchy, republic as the game goes along. But a crucial aspect in all govs, is to not max sci and let others make the techs cheaper, while you use the gold for development of your nation.
Settler Rush: All the early economic strats, except Horse Rush. Heavily benefit from the Hal wonder. So, Ceremonial Burial (CB) is a good first tech to get. Hal adds +6 lux to your capital, making it celebrate from size 3 and lose the tile penalty. If you are doing the settler rush strategy, your cap will be producing settlers too (like all your cities) and the additional food and prod helps a lot and is totally worth the 20 prod. We will talk more on how to optimally pump settlers later.
Pyramids First: Hal would also be your first tech, if you are going for pyramids too. If you are going for pyramids, Pottery is probably the next tech you should go for after CB. It leads to Granary right in time for your capital to reach size 5. You will push for mathematics after this, keeping the cap in size 6 to keep it celebrating (add a couple of warriors in cap for happiness, always plan in advance, so that the cap never stops celebrating) and accumulating shields in Mausoleum of Mausolus (MoM) or Hanging Gardens (HG) and switching to Pyramids as soon as you get Mathematics. If done right, You should get pyramids around T25-T30. (People can sometimes even push it to T20). Getting rid of the penalties is where I designate the end of the first phase of the game.
Monarchy Rush: Another way to reach the end of the first phase, is to max sci towards monarchy. Hal is useful here too, so CB might be a good wonder and pottery next. But then you push towards monarchy. (You can also play around here, to skip those and rush for monarchy faster, it purely depends on your starting location). Even after getting rid of penalties in monarchy, Pyramids is a good thing to build. So, getting math next is a good idea to build Pyramids. It really helps building all the wonders later.
Despo + Pyramids: With Pyramids in despo, and the aspect of great good boost to cap and the fact that you can use warriors for happiness for almost forever. You can skip monarchy and ride the gold boost of despo to democracy.
Despo + Pyramids can skip monarchy, but Tribal really cant. So after pyramids you go for monarchy in Tribal. The strats are almost equivalent. You do pyramids first and then go for monarchy or go monarchy and then go for tribal. In any case, Penalty needs to go away by T25-30.
As long as you aren't in the receiving edge of a horse rush, You can skip bronze for a long time and keep pushing the size and power of pyramids more and more with the extra lux.
The three basic principles of workforce management according to me are.
- Just in Time
- Just enough
- Get it done first.
Just in Time: Don't work a tile you wont be using in the near future. Think of the number of tiles a city uses, and when it will grow. Don't waste your time improving your land around cities which don't have enough food, they probably wont grow fast enough to use those land. Always work on the tile which is needed in the near future and improve it first. This is where roads are super important. The more roads you have, the more you can be just in time with your workers, as you don't have to waste time traversing land. So, road everywhere, that way workers can join and leave the job midway. (I'll explain why this is important in section 2)
Just Enough: Remember how much it costs to work a tile. (irrigation, swamp>grassland) cost 5 works. So one vv worker (5.25 works). Roads on rough terrain costs 4 works. Mining hill costs 10 works. (2 vv workers), and forest>swamp costs 15 works. Once you have roads everywhere, you can plan your work force such that you don't end up spending more than this. Eg, for 15 work job, you can have 1 vv workers the first turn and move one worker to join them the next turn. (remember though, when a worker moves away progress is lost.So you can only join in on the work not leave midway). Such calculations along with point 1. Always need to be part of your daily routine, where you think about which worker can be used where. Also think of the cost associated with working a tile with settlers and migrants. Both of them carry a lot of opportunity cost. Each settler/migrant working a tile is a city smaller in size not gathering resources. So, be sure to use them exactly as much as needed and not more.
Get it Done First: When you do worker calculations, prioritize getting something done on your tile first. 2 workers irrigating 2 tiles to finish in 2 turns can be done better, by both the workers irrigating a single tile and then moving on to the next tile. That way, you get a irrigated tile early. This goes hand in hand with sec.2 and roads really ease this. Also, think ahead to working a tile, rather than waste workforce moving from one place to another, you can almost always stop early and get a tile done. This will quickly add up as you will have more processed tiles eventually which will help when you are micromanaging for your cities.