Freeciv Web Game 41: The Yugoslav Micaenean reenactment

This is the final report of the Freeciv Web Game 41 that I have played during the past four months. It was one of the most fun games I have played in a long time which is surprising for several reasons: the FCW ruleset is not very well balanced and overgrown in the wrong directions, and in this particular game I probably got the worst starting position in a long-turn game ever. However, the ruleset itself is functional and if you know the basics, you can get by if you are ok if you have no ambition to be a top player.

When I joined the game and saw that I am stranded on the island of Crete with three settlers and no boats, I literallylaughed and said, ok, let's see how this ends up, not really expecting to be alive by mid-game. My third city was delayed I don't know how much, probably a week or more, until I was able to transport it to mainland and the next weeks passed eagerly awaiting for a neighbour's invasion while I'm unprepared for defence and unable to bring enough - or any - reinforcements in time.

Fortunately, my neighbours were friendly and far enough and the fun - reenactment of the Greek expansion across the eastern Mediterranean - could start.

The Last Moments of Znojmo

It all happened just after sundown. Light on the horizon disappeared, but another appeared from the north, in the pass next to the Dark Hill. It was clear right away that we have overstayed our welcome in this place. The Fellowship wants us gone. At first we couldn't see, but soon it became clear this is a large war party. Six catapults, several groups of war chariots and elephant riders. The city is well defended, we thought. We have walls, and the forest we planted has sprouted quite large already, which would slow the enemies' advance and allow us to defend harder. But it proved futile. Rocks thrown by catapults of the vile Aragonese caused the walls to slowly crumble. We've sent out our best warriors in a counter-attack and managed to destroy two of them and damage the others, alas our men were all slaughtered moments after. Such is the ferocity of the enemy. 

 

After they breached the main gates, it was clear all hope is lost. Screams echo through the night. Buildings go up in flames. Utter chaos sweeps the land. We've sent messages through The Discordeon to our leaders, but all we can hope for is prayers in our last moments. There's no help to reach here in time. The flame of life flickers and slowly fades out, blown away by the wind of the Aragonese. The lucky ones have spears driven through their hearts and die quickly. May The Light guide them. The less lucky ones are rounded up to be toyed with by the enemy. May they remember The Light, for their next moments will be the darkest. The brave ones run directly against the enemy to guarantee themselves a quick death. The Light smiles upon you. At the end of this city is a house. I've lived here my whole life, but now I shall go to The Light as well. A knife through the ribcage guarantees a swift death. May The Light guide my hand.

 (by daavko)

East Germany as a commie republic

Switching to republic took place five turns ago and while it was almost too early for that, it seems to be paying off. It's possible that doing something else first might have been a better choice but at least now it's impossible to bribe the East German workers. The key to switching to republic or democracy is having a decent economy. So, how to do that?

 

Build enough cities. If you have less space build the cities close enough to each other. Citymindist 4 means that you need to have 3 tiles between the cities. Having more is nice but overlapping is usually a good idea. If your cities have 6 tiles between them you most likely have the cities too far from each other. On this screenshot you may see some unclaimed space between the poor & old East Germany and the other nation next to us. This is because the border situation evolves and sometimes cities appear and disappear.

 

The second thing you may want to do is to improve the land. Building roads is not just for moving your units between the cities. When you build a road on a grassland, plans or desert you get trade for that tile. With republic or democracy you get an additional trade resource and that's huge. This means you get more gold and science. Don't use such tiles if there are no roads, unless you really need to. For making the land improvements you need at least one worker for each city you have. Preferably more. If you have 1.5 workers / city that's usually enough. Having too few workers is incredibly expensive since you will be using unimproved tiles. From that pic you can see how East Germany doesn't have all the tiles improved and this is bad.

Another thing is gold. It may be a good idea to have some gold for a rainy day but if you have too much like more than hundred with these stats it's usually too much. Use gold for purchasing city improvements. You get some value from city improvements and that adds to your economy. Compound interests is the effect you want to have and that you get by purchasing city improvements like markets, court houses etc.

You can get the same thing and the same economy by having less cities. Building more and smaller cities takes time and getting the city improvements is expensive. In the end it's good to have more land but for a long time it's not that hard to catch up or do better with way less cities. This means improving the land and avoiding expensive wars.

For avoiding those expensive wars you can always ally with someone and dissolve the alliance before the game is over. Agree about some kind of cancellation period like East Germany did when it recently allied with Finland. Yes, we are now allied in-game.