After playing a rise and rule OCC on emporer and finding it Viable (I had a tech lead the entire game ;) on a huge map), I have an idea for a new laid back SG.
My thoughts:
Strict OCC, we can never for one instant have more than one city. (You can still get armies from the Military academy).
Emporer Level
Standard Pangea
Random opponents except for America.
We are the Sioux.
Our economy is tourism based, and thus we can only build GW that have tourism possibilites, and SW that give tourism are preferred. (Rapid City in a nutshell) (I will not put any restrictions on industry that seem to be in effect in RC).
We are defiant to all Meso and Native American civs (excluding America).
When we get our UU or enter the middle ages, we must declare war on America and stay at war until a GL emerges to make peace.
We must build the SW that displays as Mt. Rushmore. (War Memorial?)
One screen shot of something is required per turn set.
20 turns for peacetime, 10 turns for war.
If people are interested I will generate some starts and we can go from there.
Roster:
Microbe
Blank
Romeothemonk
Blank
Bed_Head7

Here are some starts.
I am split between all of them.
Weigh in with your opinions please.
Start 1
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads9/start1.jpg

Start 2
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads9/start2.jpg

Start 3
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads9/start3.jpg

Sign me in. I played one at Monarchy too.

I like OCC. Sign me up.

Starts are posted. Please cast your vote. I moved a little on start 1 just to see if it was viable. (I was rolling a lot of marsh etc. and wanted to see if what that fruit was.)

Do we want to be coastal? If so, none of it look good enough.

If not, I'd go for No.3 and move SW.

The city should have as many as possible river tiles for commerce, and ideally, have about 8 coast tiles.

I greatly dislike having coastal cities in OCC. With the International port, in RaR they may not be so bad. In my previous OCC game, I had to wait until Electricity to talk to more than 4 of my opponenets.

I greatly dislike having coastal cities in OCC. With the International port, in RaR they may not be so bad. In my previous OCC game, I had to wait until Electricity to talk to more than 4 of my opponenets.

I don't get this.

1. Coastal city makes contacts much easier as you can build curragh and meet everyone by just sailing about the coastline without RoP issues.
2. Another benefit is better commerce (especially Seafaring). Commerce is actually more important in OCC than in normal games.
3. Also, certain wonders are only available to coastal cities.
4. The last, you do not depend on your neighbors for trade routes.

But since this is pangea, we can certainly play for a change, but being coastal is one of the most important thing in my mind for an OCC.

You have some extremely valid points Microbe.
But this is a variant OCC, just because I know that the players in the SG forums are up to the task.
We are not seafaring, we are agricultural, hence my preference towards rivers.
Ships other than the Canoe are 2 or 3 optional techs away.
Commerce is king, but production is very handy, thus my preference for a hill or 2 so we can get some 1 turn champs rolling early.
The Trade routes point is extremely valid, but with us being Mil, I see us keeping open some trade routes.
That said, I am leaning towards 2 or 3 now, with 3 executing the move you suggested.

IMHO all your starts suck for OCC.
#1 may work, but it ain't coastal.
#2 is a really bad start for RaR.
#3 would be a good start for a regular RaR game, but lacks production for OCC.

IMHO you need:
- A Hill to found opon.
- Coast
- A early food bonus; Elephants would rock.
- Several Mountains.

Fresh water is not that important; a River is great for the commerce bonus, ok, but a Lake is not that helpful.

Hmm, going with Doc's thinking here, I may need to reroll some more. In start three, that apears to be an elephants behind sticking out to the southwest.
I will put this on hold again until I can reroll some more starts then. Sorry.

Don't forget a tribe moves *2* ignoring terrain costs. Don't be afraid to wander 4 to 5 turns looking for something better.

I'd say #3 looks pretty good, especially if you move the tribe 1 S to begin with. Appears you would have river commerce, 5 Hills, 3 food bonuses and a bunch of forests. Unless you're holding out for 4 flood plain oases and 8 Mountains, that sounds pretty good. Pre-irrigation, post-mining you should be able to generate >20 spt before production multipliers.

Or is sugar not a food bonus? The sw blob appears to be Elephants.

Food isn't really the problem. Production is. Since you cannot mine Grassland, all you'll get in #3 are like 3 hills, and a few Forrest, plus the Elephants/Sugar (no spt). Make that 20spt without boosters at size 15. And, aside from the Hills, no resources with production bonus will appear.
Some Floodplains and Mountains will be far better.You can get Camels, and even without, 20spt at size 6 are doable.
Mined Hill =4spt.
Mined Mountain =6spt.

Uhhhh ... let's assume the tribe moves 1 S, and the fog-gazing is correct and we spy elephants. Pre-irrigation, grassland is neutral for growth, Elephants are +2 food, and Sugar is +1 food. The center tile for an Ag civ generates 4 fpt, so by working the 3 food boni the city is at +8 fpt (post-Despot, pre-irrigation). That amount of food allows the working of 4 (of the 5) Hills, for 18-19 spt at size 7.

At size 13, with irrigation and 2 BGs ... I see a max of 31 pre-multiplied shields assuming 2 forests are available.

But Doc's right, for an OCC it is probably wise to do a lot of forum-shopping and look for Flood Plains (w/food bonuses) + Mountains. His example is a little disengenuous, as I think to work 4 Mountains at size 6 would require 2 FP-Oases (+4 fpt each, pre-irrigation). A mixture of regular Flood Plains and Mountains would not be nearly so appealing.

Pre-irrigation, grassland is neutral for growth,
While in chiefdom grassland is NEGATIVE growth. You need 3 food per person in RaR. Grassland is 3 food, and takes a negative 1 for the chiefdom penalty down to 2 food. Grassland just plain sucks until a better government.


As for good tiles getting a camel on floodplains is extra food and growth. A couple of cereals squares and look out.

One thing I am starting to learn about RaR is that you can support mountains and hills easier then in regular C3C.

Don't forget that flood plains can be MINED if you are to heavy with flood plains.

Well ... in Despotism the center tile would still be 4 fpt, the Sugars 3 fpt, and the Elephant 4 fpt. At size 3 a city would be +5 food and could grow to size 6, still working 2 Hills and a BG in addition. Low shield/high commerce start, but one could toggle around on the various tiles as comprimises between food and shields in the early turns. (If the clan goes south, the food bonuses have to wait for the Palace-induced border expansion. Conveniently timed with growth to size 2.)

Is that a sign-up T-McC? If it is, I am really tempted to try #3. In my previous OCC game I only had 28 pre-multiplier shields. I had no problem snagging 22 GW's and ~10 SW. I like the river, sugar and elephants more and more as I think on it and people comment.
One of the goals of this game is to be a challenge. Also the river models Rapid Creek. :)
The more I hear, I think I want to try #3, as Microbe has expressed an interest in trying. If T-McC plays, I have no problems trying #3.

Alright, I'll play. An OCC can't take that much time, and I've already spent too much mental energy on this thing.

Here is the Save.
This is to be a fun and relaxed game.
Roster is as follows:
Microbe
T-McC
Romeothemonk
Bed_Head7
Lurker: (Any lurker can claim got it in 24 hrs after Bed_Head7 Posts the save.) This kind of makes it semi-open.

The start (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads9/start3.SAV)
I hope this is fun for you all, I have been thinking about a fun picture laden semi-descriptive thematic game.

OK. Appears as though Microbe is up, playing 20. I'd guess move S, to the forest across the river. If we don't see anything else interesting, might as well found. We could wander for a few turns, but I think 5 Hills + 3 Forests and Elephants is probably doable for an OCC.

Since we want to meet people, maybe start on a couple Scouts and a 2nd worker? With no military we could still potentially get good stuff from huts, and the 2nd worker lets us get roads down and be ready for Mining when we get Construction. We can always merge one of the workers back in if we run short on things to do (or we may need to build a colony on something).

I'm not entirely clear what we're trying to do here. Is this an attempt at OCC conquest? :eek: Or are we aiming for a Cultural victory? Space would appear to be impossible.

I move one tile SW and settle.

Start on Masonry in 14 turns.

3200BC: Meet America (from north) and trade Cultivation for Pottery+Scrape Mining (we are one turn into it). We have iron inside our border. :D

Start Worker Housing and Alphabet.

3050BC: See a green border.

3000BC: Meet Persia. Cultivation for Domestication+3g. Do not see horses or camel.

Note: Worker goes to road the iron.

Build order: I suggest next champion -> scout -> forge? Then we can build the Palace Garden for the tourist income.

I assume we stick to the "lux/sci/tax cannot be more than the cap" rule. In Chiefdom then we have to keep Sci+Lux at least 50.

Alphabet then Writing?

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads9/romeo3-3000BC.jpg

In Chiefdom then we have to keep Sci+Lux at least 50.
I thought it was taxes and lux to 50%, and science to 50%. Chiefdom sucks with NO flexibility.

@ LK - You're saying the same thing as microbe. Transitive rule and all that. I think.

Functionally, Science to 50% until we show 1 turn to discovery (and Lux to whatever is necessary), then if we reduce Science the combination of Sci + Lux must be 50%.

I think I'm up, so Got it.

I'm more than a little concerned about where we founded. I think we just traded 1 Hill + 2 Forests for 3 regular Grass (relative to moving S instead of SW). That's 10 spt (post-irrigation) we won't be able to recover before City Planning (when we can plant Forests on that Grass). The benefit to moving SW was to get the food bonuses into play from turn 1, but since we're OCC I doubt the slower growth for the 10 turns required for our borders to expand would have been harmful. SW was correct for a regular start, but I don't believe it to be correct here.

Oh well, play the hand we're dealt. Since we have military already: Huts=Death. I think I'll put a 2nd worker out to get roads on every tile, and then we can mine faster when we get to Construction. Worst-case, the 2nd worker is a temp and gets merged back in when he runs out of useful things to do. Might even consider a Granary. If we can get to size 7/8, we might as well do it quickly.

Winning is allowed however we can/want to. I would personally prefer not a diplo win.
I really like the iron, that helps our resources and shields out.
We might want to trim America as quickly as possible, so that latter on we don't get overwhelmed.

Romeo3 - Dances in Underpants

3000 BC (0)
Re-name Capital to Rapid City. I think that's the conceit in this game.

For shields, we have 4 Hills (1 Iron), 2 Forests, and 3 BG. Pre-rails, that means 27 spt + the city center, maximum. So maybe 29 spt. The spot I wanted would have had 5 Hills (1 Iron), 3 Forests, 3 BG, 1 Plains. Could have been 9 extra shields. But until we get out of Despotism, it's a moot point.

Squeeze an extra buck out of the MM, WH still completes next turn. We cannot yet build the Palace Gardens. Those are enabled by ... Caste System, so I guess I'll head there next. Only 100 shields, and the tech is on the way to Dynasticism. We're ahead of X-man and behind Abe in Tech. X has no money to give us for Alphabet.

Get another buck by turning down science to an allowed 40%. (Lux is 10%).

IT - Alphabet comes in, and apparently we need Ritualism first. Due in 5.

2950 BC (1)
WH completes, lux to 0%. Start a 2nd Scout.

X-man somehow came up with Pottery and Boat Building on the same turn. :confused: He knows someone to his south. (And they do not know Alphabet.) Scout heads that way.

2850 BC (3)
American Warrior wanders by. Don't think much of it, but start a 2nd Champion anyway. Pop hut is deep south, get maps and see Mauve borders. Let's be cute and try to get growth and Champion production both in 2.

2800 BC (4)
American Warrior moves away, build switched to Worker.

Hey, we have Bison to our NE. Not in our boundaries, but seems appropriate nonetheless.

Bump lux to 10%, even though we cannot reduce Science.

2750 BC (5)
Ritualism --> Caste System. Abe does not have Caste System, X-man is backwards.

We have Incense on the tile I originally wanted to found upon. That is a strategic resource (and very nice for a high culture game). We grow to size 5, but the unit does not complete. Set to complete Worker in 1.

Western Scout finds Barbs, runs into a hut and pops a Tribe. Guess our pop goes up by 2 (3?) soon. If it can make it back.

(Whoops 2 moves, ATAR) [dance]

The Mauve people are proving elusive.

2710 BC (6)
Worker --> Tribal Guard. I'd like a defense 2 unit in our Capital.

The Mauve party people are Siam: We get their 44 gold and Boat Building for Pottery. Sounds like they are isolated down here.

I have no idea who X is trading with. We were up 2 techs last turn, and we're level now.

2670 BC (7)
Siam yells at us for cutting across their territory. I slip him 25 gold on our way out.

Hopefully the Western Barbs will chase the Scout instead of heading for our city.

2550 BC (8)
Now we've got Barbs in the south as well. Run, Forrest, Run!

2590 BC (9)
Clan joins Rapid City. We are at our limit of growth at size 6.

It appears we will have a rather annoying 7 spt un-modified. I cannot see how to feed the people to generate the 8th shield. Pick up a couple of extra food. We can run +2 fpt and generate 4 base shields, then cycle onto -1 fpt with 8 base shields. This will have to be watched rather closely.

2550 BC (10)
TG completes. Decisions ... decisions ... Forge or not? No, we'll pre-build for the Palace Gardens. (Using Stonehenge).

Catch myself before completing a road on the Iron. We probably don't want to hook that up before we can use it. I'm not sure whether Incense can deplete, but a road now wouldn't do us any good.

Find the Ottomans in the SW. They are fairly broke and behind us in technology.

Gift Siam 25 gold, then get it all back (+ their original 29) for Alphabet. :) Rinse and repeat with Osman since they'll meet Siam in the next couple of turns. No one yet has Caste System.

Then change my mind and go for the Forge 1st. Forge + Palace Gardens in about 15 turns. Just don't get attacked before then.

2510 BC (11)
Meet the French, about 2 turns too early. We could have snagged a couple of slaves. They have cash, Mysticism, and slaves, but no Caste System.

IT (12) - Caste System in, let the trading begin! Also see some Red Guys. They be the Spanish. Get Myst + Ferm + 54 gold from X-man. Sailing + 60 gold from Abe for Ferm + Caste. Naval Warfare from Spanish for Ferm + Caste + 25 gold. 176 gold from Joan for Caste + Sailing. Gift Sailing to Siam and Persia, to get them away from annoyed. So ... 4 techs and 260 gold. Then give Abe 25 gold to keep it fair.

2430 BC (13)
Set a course for Dynasticism, third in the queue. After that, maybe we head for Construction so we can mine.

I think I found the 8th guy. Another purple.

2390 BC (14)
Forge complete, Palace Gardens in 9. The food will have to be watched, the city has 8 remaining. I'll try not to leave this for the next guy.

Never mind, the purple folks are Franks.

Bump up science to cut 2 turns off of urbanization.

2350 BC (15)
Note to self: Adjust tiles in city next turn.

2310 BC (16)
Persia and France are fighting. I just saw a Persian slave get whacked.

2230 BC (18)
Persia has settled a city towards us.

2190 BC (19)
Another Tech Twister (TM): Buy Urbanization from Joan for 10 gold. Urbanization + Naval Warfare to Osman for Slavery + Wheel + 35 gold. The Wheel + Slavery to Izzy for 275 gold. Give X-man 35 gold, then take it back (+ his original 20) for Naval Warfare.

Spread a little more money around to keep us held in high regard.

2150 BC (20)
I think we'll meet someone new on the next turn. The Western scout is next to a brown border, and I don't think that's anybody we already know.

Final Notes:
Rapid City is configured to build the Palace Gardens in 3 turns. Next player must adjust the food on the last turn or the city will starve. You can pick from -3 fpt and 15 spt, -1 fpt and 12 spt, and +2 fpt and 6 spt.

One of the paradoxes of RaR is at work here. Until we get out of Chiefdom, we make more spt at size 6 than at size 7. Next player also gets to see us form a new government, so after that we can grow peaceably.

The Spanish and Americans likely do not know the Ottomans and French. Exploit this ruthlessly. I would also suggest that we build another scout (or maybe even 2) and send it (them) nosing around the eastern half of the pangaea. We're not likely to find anyone new, but it can't hurt to pay unit support to "buy" map information.

The Palace Gardens will be producing 8 gpt tourist income before 1 AD. :)

I figure Construction after Dynasticism, but we should probably start targetting a Wonder. The MoM (available with Dynasticism) cannot become a tourist attraction, so I think that one is out. A-ha ... how about the Hanging Gardens? That's pretty useful for an OCC and we can already build it. The Oracle would also be a nice target, we'd require a Shrine first.

Pictures and the Save:

Unfortunately, unless those brown borders come through we won't have any Native or Mesoamerican civs in the game. Maybe we can just be pissy towards the Spanish? :lol:

Looks good T_McC. Good thinking and great play. I would concur with the HG.
Got it.
Luck of the draw just made this game easier then.

I'm more than a little concerned about where we founded.

Sorry, I missed your initial comment about moving it S. I am still not used to the RaR city placement.

Space race is actually very doable, if we can build all those sci wonders. But in my attempt I always had sci leader enabled. Is it enabled in this game?

I am still not used to the RaR city placement.

Yeah, by now the math in C3C comes fairly naturally, but in RaR I'm usually guessing. It just seems wrong to say "grassland is lousy".

We can still do an early military rush on the Americans (if/when we find them). Even in Chiefdom we can do 5 Champs/6 turns and come out even in food. A military rush really only means a 10-12 turn diversion from Wonder building. It would be nice to get some slaves so we can merge our workers back in to save unit support.

SGL's are enabled. I always use them.

Space Race...have a look at the shield costs of the SS parts. One is at 4750sp. And, you won't be able to build the Crystal Palace, the best production booster.
I'd head for the Oracle instead of the HGs. 2 free Techs, 2 more chances for a SGL, and the Oracle is pretty cheap, plus the AI rarel can cascade to it because of the prerequisite.

IHT: Just as T_mcC said.
Turn 1: Although Lee would be greatly annoyed I am going to road up the iron. Since this is my game, I can do that. :)
Turn 2: Ottos pop weaving.
Turn 3: Palace gardens come in. Start a shrine.
Turn 4: Keep the shrine going. Iron is roaded, started roading the incencse.
Turn 5: writing in, starting Dynasticism. Build some embassies. Joan is fighting X-man and Osman. Lincoln is fighting Isabella. We get mythology from Isabella for writing and 50 gold. Osman gives us weaving and 94 gold for Mythology.
Turn 6: Shrine in, gonna build 4-5 champs and trim X-man a bit. Sell Isabella weaving for 55 gold.
Turn 7: Ottos pop Math. Pop hut by Rapid, get maps.
Turn 8: We got barbs everywhere.
Turn 9: Positioning.
Turn 10: Moving around some more.
Turn 11: Naval warfare gets 55 gold from Joan.
Turn 12: Start the HG. Can be swapped to oracle at no cost. MM for growth.
Turn 13: Lose a champ to a barb, but we are still strong to Persia, Champ promotes on barb. Retreat and heal now.
Turn 14: Moving and healing
Turn 15:
Turn 16: Spain gets dynasticism. she wants 70 gold when we will get it next turn.
Turn 17: Get Dyna, start the revolution. Get Math and 4 got for Dyna from Ottos. 5 Freaking turns of Anarchy. Declare on Persia.
Turn 18: Elite champ dies to reg TG. Vet Champ kills TG, enslaves, promotes, and razes parsagarde, killing a clan. (2 slaves total.) Find persias army with western scout, he will die, as he moved next to an archer and a champ.
Turn 19: Scout dies as predicted. Healing and roading towards the front.
Turn 20: I must have played 21 instead. Sorry. Persia is a monarchy, we are in anarchy, and we still are strong compared to them. We can assualt persepolis.
Next better player (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads9/Romeo3-1475.SAV)
Some embassies.
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads9/Bangkok.jpg

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads9/washington.jpg
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads9/Persia.jpg
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads9/Paris.jpg
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads9/Madrid.jpg
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads9/Istanbul.jpg

Hmm I must have saved over the top of Istanbul. Sorry.

I think Siam might have the worst start I've ever seen. :lol:

I had shadowed along for a few more turns after my set. Nice to see Abe still has his capital in your timeline. :eek: (Yup, built an Embassy in Boston.)

What are we after in the Persian war? Yeah, I know we're militaristic so we should smack someone around a bit, but does X-man have another city besides his capital? Or are we trying to kill him off.

Since there are other wars going on, the next player should keep an eye out for workers to buy. No reason we should be paying for our own workers. Picture showed two huddling in the Siamese capital, but that was a while ago.

Next player should also look to upgrade the Persian slave, he'll work faster.

Will do, T_McC.

The war with Persia was to trim the nearest neighbor and to get some slaves. I would keep the pressure up to see if we can exterminate the X-man. If we can knock him off, it makes us that much stronger.

lurker's comment:

I'm not one to lightly contradict the illustrious T_McC, but the MoM does indeed produce tourism. Quite nicely, for it's price, I might add:

MoMtourism.jpg

The happiness boost wouldn't hurt in OCC either.

:lol:

Well, since I trusted the Civilopedia, we are building the wrong wonder. Hopefully bed_head will catch this post before we finish the Hanging Gardens. For an OCC, the MoM is better as it still gives 3 content faces and doesn't expire. It may also be cheaper.

It is cheaper. There are some discrepencies in the civilopedia, we just need trusted lurkers or game designers to bail us out.

The Palace Gardens will be producing 8 gpt tourist income before 1 AD.
Is there a post that explains hour the tourist income works? I don't understand how you know it will be 8 gpt.

Is there a post that explains hour the tourist income works? I don't understand how you know it will be 8 gpt.

It's in the Civilopedia. Any Wonder that can become a tourist attraction should link to the page. There's a table that gives tourist income for a given age range. I believe the relevant entry for this case was 8 gpt for a building being 1875-2000 years old. Since I think our actual finish date was 2070 BC, it should produce 10 gpt by 1 AD. :D

Building things early really pays off. The Palace Gardens costs 2 gpt maintenance, but there will only be about 30-35 turns between when we finished it and when tourism kicks in (1000 yrs old). Once the tourist income kicks in, it covers at least the maintenance costs.

One other small Wonder we'll want to build: The Holy City. Requires Incense in the city radius. The other Small Wonders that can become tourist attractions should come too late to be useful (at least for tourist income),

After we complete the MoM, we have a decision to make. We may not want the Hanging Gardens anymore, or at least not while we have other choices, like the Oracle.

Worry not. I went to work tonight, so I haven't played yet, and now know to build MoM.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads9/romeo3_925BC.SAV

IT - Enter Monarchy.

1450 BC (1) - Switch to MoM, reassign tiles. Give Spain Mathematics for their Barbarian worker and 23g.

1400 BC (3) - France and Siam show workers available, but I can't get them. Join a native worker.

1350 BC (5) - Osman demanded some gold. I demanded some respect. He declared war.

1300 BC (7) - Win with one vet, lose the other vet and elite champ. Looks like eliminating Persia is out of the question. Buy Spanish worker for 117g, join our other worker.

1250 BC (9) - Lost our last champ against Persia.

1225 BC (10) - Play around, and get MoM one turn faster.

IT - Learn Philo, use big picture and trade it to Spain for Bronze Working and 108g. Then take Construction as free tech.

1200 BC (11) - After this, I have no idea where to go, so I start Iron Working. MoM also finishes, but I lost the screen shot. Luxury to 0%. Start on an Amerindian Spearman to get some defense and also allow food box to fill some.

1150 BC (13) - Finish Spearman, start Oracle, due in 10 with heavy starvation, but that will change once iron mine finishes.

1100 BC (15) - Mine completes, now only minor starvation to get Oracle. France has Polytheism, so I send Math, Writing, and 137g their way to get it. Polytheism gets Poetry and 55g from Spain. Dynasticism to France for 295g and 2gpt. Take America's 104g for Polytheism. Give Osman Philo and Polytheism for 172g and 2gpt as part of peace.

1025 BC (18) - Put Rapid City on massive starvation again to drop it one more turn. It would starve the turn before finishing, which screws it all up, but I think with the mine finishing it should work out perfectly. Hopefully, I did not screw anything up.

1000 BC (19) - I hope no one minds, but I am going to play past a bit too. I want to see my plan through. Iron Working learned.

950 BC (21) - It wasn't as close as I thought with the mining. I am not sure what I did wrong, but we were able to retain 3 extra food, meaning it wasn't even close. Oracle next turn.

IT - Get Oracle, take Monotheism and Monasticism for the tourism producing incense based wonder Shangri La and the small wonder Holy City.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads9/romeo3_oracle.jpg

925 BC (22) - Give Ottomans Iron Working for Civil Engineering and 41g. Spain gives us 242g for Iron Working.

We have 0 beakers invested in Riding, so feel free to change it. The current plan build wise is Temple-Holy City-Shangri La, with a unit or two in the middle if necessary. Or Shangri La first if we actually have competition, but that won't actually happen. This could also be changed, but Rapid City is now MMed for temple. Also worth noting is that the Palace Gardens is now paying for itself. Again, sorry for going over, but I didn't think it would matter much with this game. Going based on builds/techs makes sense to me as long as it is in the 20 turn range.

Well done, Bed-Head_San!

:goodjob:

This seemed like a fun idea, so I tried it and ended up timing an Oracle build to get Dyna (which was very expensive to research) and then Philo (first, though I had been lagging in tech). Unfortunately, this still left me one short of Demo (and I didn't want two anarchies). So 40 turn research ensued. I think there is some potential there, even if I didn't maximize it.

BTW, agree on everything in your plan except one thing. There's this really great library I've heard about that you might want to build first.

:mischief:

A lurker can now grab this, or Microbe can claim got it by the end of the Super Bowl Tonight.
I didn't see if we made peace with Persia in there. Did we?
A horse colony may be useful so we can build our UU.

Well Done!

Couple of things: Might be a good idea to build a 4-turn Water Mill in Rapid City before anything else. It would be worth 4-5 spt and so is better than cost-neutral for any Wonders, although it would delay the Temple by 4 turns.

The Holy City is a small Wonder, so we will definitely build that. Let's see Holy City: 320 shields, 4 cpt, 2 content faces. Shangri-La: 400 shields, 3 cpt, 3 content faces. (Obsolete at Flight). Hanging Gardens is 280 shields for 3 cpt and 3 content faces, but obsoletes earlier. No one besides us is building any Wonders, so I say we build the Hanging Gardens before Shangri-La.

So maybe a build order of Water Mill - Temple - HG - Holy City? (Temple + HG = 350 shields, 4 content faces, 4 cpt > Holy City). With a food deficit, the Temple could be done in 2 after the Water Mill and the HG would take 7-8 turns.

Now just to pull the builds in a different direction: We have Elephants, so 3-4 of those to go Barb-farming with would be nice. We may not need Barbarian slaves for labor, but we may be able to merge them to Rapid City. (Or are they always complaining about us fighting "The Mother Horde"? :lol: ) I can honestly say I've never tried to merge a Barbarian worker to a city, so I don't know what would happen. Elephants are also great for building a road network to the front and any colonies we may form (another use for Barb slaves). Our UU is way off, we need about 6 techs for it.

Actually, we're still at war with Xerxes. Sounds like neither of us are trying, so if the next player wanted to make Peace it should be alright. X-man will never have anything to give us, so a little cash to call off the now-phony war while we Wonder build should be fine. I think the Americans are settling our way and might need to be smacked, when we get tired of Wonders.

We're perfectly fine for Happiness. Even size 15 would require no more than 20% lux.

Just checked. A Barbarian citizen does complain about war vs. the "Mother Country". :lol: :lol: So Barbarian slaves are only good for labor and colonies.

A Barbarian citizen does complain about war vs. the "Mother Country". :crazyeye: :crazyeye:

A totally whacked out fact I never knew.

Or are they always complaining about us fighting "The Mother Horde"?
Exactly that will happen. DO NOT USE THAT. It's the reason why you cannot join Slaves, so at least the AI (who rarely upgrades them) won't suffer from it.

I had considered Water Mill earlier on before we got Civil Engineering (right tech?) but forgot about it in the last turn, as I selected temple in the IT when Oracle finished, before we had it. So I agree completely there.

Exactly that will happen. DO NOT USE THAT. It's the reason why you cannot join Slaves, so at least the AI (who rarely upgrades them) won't suffer from it.

Alright, now I'm confused. If we spend the 27/87 gold to upgrade them to workers/peasants, they won't complain when they are merged? Or does this comment mean that the unit type "slave" does not have the "join" flag enabled.

It was kind of funny to see them complaining. If the entirety of the land gets settled, so there are no more Barbs, would they stop?

Maybe a good reason to kill off X-man, then we can add his citizens once we start to put together a stack of other "involuntaries".

No, we cannot prevent Workers of Barbarian nationality being joined to cities unless we disable that for all workers. So, all we could do about that was to not allow to join Slaves (since especially the AI will get several Slaves from Barb-hunting early).
You are in something like a 'Locked War' with the Barbarians, no way to ever end it.
The same applies to the Mayan JT Slaves in unmodded, tw.

Good research guys. I have to agree that a mill is our next build.
A lucky lurker can have until 8:00 PM to grab this tonight, otherwise it is over to Microbe.
On a side note, I think peace with X-man now, and build some elephants at some time, and go and visit him again in 25-30 turns would be a great idea.

got it. Hopefully can get report done before SB.

Pre-flight: It can be sold if you really want to – but I always build a Slave Market. I can't imagine having happiness issues in RandR OCC with all the happiness wonders - it's not like we need to love the king here!

:rolleyes:

At our current 16 base spt, that’s an extra 4 spt. Once we grow, it will be five. Perhaps later we can turn it off, but to max tourism by the magic date of 500BC, we need shields right now badly.

Peace (he gives us all his gold 14 and RoP) with X-man.

Switch research to Classical Ed in 10 (it is required, on path to Great Library -> AI tech will hit warp speed at end of AA, beginning of MA, GL always pays on RandR, especially OCC, AI will research Riding, so we can trade for it.)

BTW, Democracy allows cash-rushing (to short-rush improvements) and also gives commerce bonus. Hopefully we can trade for CoL and then get to Demo. War-weariness has not been a huge issue for me on RandR, this decision will be after my turns, so y’all can make it then.

900BC Slave Market-> Water Mill in 3 (with one turn of starvation coming)

IBT: Spain demands mono – we have monopoly and it’s the only tech we’re up on her, she is far away, so I refuse. Perhaps a mistake, but there are several barbs between us. Maybe she can help us clear them out.

:)

875BC: Trade Philosophy to Abe for 80 and 1 gpt, ROP to get him to gracious just in case he wants to pile. Alliances don’t come until MA, so Isabella can’t buy anyone else in. War happiness = ) Barb approaches – move out spear to cover worker.

850BC: MM for Water Mill in 1 – more Barbs from north. Other Barb retreats, spear back on MP duty, lux to 0. Start mining incense forest.

IBT: America researches trade – will need it eventually, wait for now.

825BC: Water Mill->Sword in one. Consider joining Persian worker (will after Temple is built)

800BC: Sword->Sword (five barbs milling about)

IBT: Siam demands Math, cave.

775BC: Sword->Spear (then back to construction)

750BC: hmmm, with Incense mined, we’re making 40spt with no starvation. Great Wall in 6, why not? Next player can switch if they want, but easy tourism there. I like to build GW before SW, can always get the SW later. Temple+ Holy City would be ten turns. Can get HG in 7 – might be a better choice. Sword beats barb, we get a slave. Join Persian worker, still ok with 0 lux. Upgrade champ to sword.

730BC: MM HG in 5, starving two, should come in just on time. 48spt. Not bad. If we can get HG + Great Wall, it would trigger our golden age, and this would actually be a great time for it to push for wonders in time for tourism.

710BC: zzz

690BC: I’ll stop here, Classical comes in, I’d continue Drama in 10 on way to Lit. I’ve never seen the AI suck so bad on tech in this period. Spain will talk peace, if we can get it, may be a good time to go barb hunting. Good luck.

Cityview.jpg

Did a few shadow turns - HG+GW is easily doable and triggers our GA. By 1750AD (when turns slow down) we'd have 5 sources of 12+ tourism. In addition, with GA production, we can build Sphinx in 5, Stonehenge in 6, Shangri La in 7, that leaves another 12 turns on the 30 turn GA. Great Lib (requires Lib) would take part of that. Then temple+Holy City and Rapid City would be the tourist destination of choice!

Sounds great Bezhukov.
Microbe is up.
I would continue a wonder push culminating in the Great Library, then a unit push, culminating in the garnering of some slaves.

Back from the depths of the second page. :)

What the heck is this (I'm on 1.01):

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads9/romeo3-error.jpg

Hmm. I know that Bezhukov and myself are using 1.02.
I think that maybe the culprit.
Can you switch to 1.02?

If Romeo started the game in 1.02, the rules in the biq might be incompatible with v.1.01. But this just looks like a mis-named folder, so you should be able to edit either the pediaicons.txt file or the folder name to achieve compatiblity.

That doesn't appear to be a unit that was part of the PTW/Extras folder (I've only seen references to Medieval Japan and WWII, so that shouldn't be the culprit.)

I'm on the 1.03 beta, BTW.

Hmm, o.k. then. DocT would be the guy to ask on that error Microbe. My knowledge of modding involves loading them and hitting play.

What the heck is this (I'm on 1.01):

The Amerindian Spearman animation is one of those added in 1.02, microbe. You need to install 1.02 to continue playing; but other than adding the missing animations, there's nothing you need to do.
Btw, noone should use 1.02; it is buggy. Don't think more than maybe 5% of users will ever notice the problem, but anyone here on the board will find himself in that small minority. Get 1.03 beta from the RaR thread in C&C.

I'm on 1.03.

I would suggest that the imperative war on America wait until Political Philosophy (allows alliances). We can stipulate that research must go toward PP after Crop Rotation (allows irrigation), but war with America before alliances would be folly.

The war must be started when we either build our UU, or enter the Middle ages. We might want to be ready for the war, although with a couple of swords, I think we can handle it easily. We may even want to get to elephants to do a couple of chores for us, of attacking and roading to the enemy.
I have done many wars against the AI in RaR OCC. If we keep the borders of our city free, the A.I. will sort their units for us. They usually make a nice stack of fast, low defense units that stop right next door to the capitol. Besides, if we get ~8 jumbo's togehter, we can go visit the X-man again first as practice.
That war variant rule was added by me to make sure that this was not a builder only game. Plus T-McC and Microbe are used to fighting masses of enemies, and I am getting fairly decent at it as well.
I will be upgrading to 1.03 shortly and suggest that others do as well.

A note: I will be out of town from Feb 14 to Feb 21. I have to give a presentation at TMS conference in San Fran, then go to Grand Forks for Regional College Bowl Competition. I personnally cannot think of anything better than going to Grand Forks, North Dakota In February, but what the hey.
Where is a brrr smiley when you need one?

Maybe Doc can weigh in on this one, but ...

If this game was started w/1.02, our workers may actually get slower if we upgrade them to peasants/laborers. That was the major bug in 1.02.

Where do we pick up 1.03beta?? I have looked for it but not found it at the DyP page or the RaR page.
A pointer might be useful.

Go here (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=2457066&postcount=928) for the 1.03 beta. Should be a small download.

Maybe Doc can weigh in on this one, but ...

If this game was started w/1.02, our workers may actually get slower if we upgrade them to peasants/laborers. That was the major bug in 1.02.

Not slower, but also not faster. So except for the move=2, upgrading isn't worth it :(.

preturn: we are at turn 93. Not sure why. I stop starving our capital and get HG in 4 turns instead of 3.

630BC: renew peace with Ottomans. Build HG, start Great Wall. Persia builds a town next to us. Hmm, I am surprised to find that this is just its second town. :eek:

610BC: Kill barbs. We find a Japanese town but there is no defender in it and so we cannot contact it. :sad:

I let us grow instead of being stuck on size-10. I

I really don't think we should be going for the GL. At emperor it's very possible we become tech lead all the way and SGL is good to have.

590BC: meet Japanese.

I get Aristocracy from Siam by Bronze Working+Philosophy. Sell to America for Trade+94g.

570BC: Sell Peotry to Ottomans for 156g. To France for 78g.

530BC: Ottoman demands Monasticism and I tell it to go away and we are at war.

510BC: Lit in 11 turns.

Establish embassy with Japan. It is 3spt building Sphinx in 66 turns.

America has CoL, so I buy by Monotheism+Iron Working.

IBT barb kills our scout.

470BC: Siam and Ottoman embargo us.

450BC: renew RoP with America. We build Sphinx and enter GA. This is a better wonder than the GW as denial to the AI.

430BC: I start granary. We are exactly producing 40spt.

410BC: I make peace with Spain, pay CoL+137g for a worker. Granary -> Slave Trade. This adds commerce to each tile and is a must have.

390BC: Spain has Republic and America has Democracy.

Persia and France make peace.

370BC: France and Ottoman embargo us.

Note: Do we really want to build GL and stop research? I would certainly continue to do full research (and get more SGLs). For this reason, I wouldn't build GL unless we have nothing to build.

I would also revolt into Republic. We are religious and I want the option to research faster, plus the GA is 30 turns instead of 20.

I would also build Shangri La for happiness reasons.

On the other hand, IF we build GL, I would then save sci buildings for units and try to trim America down a bit. It's too strong compared to others.

I'll play this tonight, but for now things seem a bit confused as I suspect everyone has a different idea about what we're trying to accomplish.

As the Sioux, we are Agricultural and Militaristic (we did go on a Champion rush against Persia). I'd give up the trade bonus of Democracy to gain 5 turns of GA shields (very well could be a "free" Wonder), so I won't revolt. I just finished an OCC Emperor RAR game, and even though I had only one city I drew 5-turn anarchies during both of my revolts. I'd just as soon not risk that until after the GA.

Agreed that we won't need the Great Library. One of the interesting things about RaR is that the AI doesn't seem to move in lock-step through the tech tree. The human can almost always keep up through trading, especially if other civs don't get full contacts or fight a lot.

If we aren't going to build the G. Library (it should be a potential tourist destination, and a good source of culture), it will be because we find something better to do with the shields. I'll have to look at the save to say what that is. (Different Wonder? Jumbos?) The GA is perfectly timed for culture/tourism, so I'm inclined to do that until we run out of neat stuff to build. Then we can build up our military.

Agreed Sphinx is a better "denial" Wonder than the Great Wall, although equally useless to us. May even be worth building Stonehenge (in 5?) for denial as well. At least that one saves us a gpt maintenance.

Didn't realize Slave Trade was a commerce booster. That also saves us a gpt maintenance.

I think I'll play 10 and let the next guy get some GA time too.

Three notes:

The pedia says Slave Trade is not a tourist attraction.

The barracks Sphinx gave us allows us to build Sun Tzu, which definitely helps us.

Democracy allows cash rush, Republic doesn't.

The pedia says Slave Trade is not a tourist attraction.


Nor would I expect it to be. I don't have the game in front of me, but I think Microbe was indicating that Slave Trade has the Colossus effect. I've never built it, so I'm not sure.

Stonehenge/Sphinx/Great Wall should all be tourist attractions. Sun Tzu's may be a tourist attraction as well, but I suspect we will have a better choice of wonders when the time comes. With a high production city it may be cheaper to disband-and-rebuild rather than cash upgrade (not to mention the new units one could build with the shields invested in Sun Tzu's). If our city makes 60 spt (post-irrigation, it will), that covers 180 gpt of upgrades with Sun Tzu's, and 360 gpt without (or is it 3 gold/shield without Sun Tzu's? I know it is 6 gold/shield to rush production).

I'm completely lost on where Sun Tzu's falls on the tech tree. What other wonders fall in the early medieval? I suspect we will have the choice to build Leonardo's instead of Sun Tzu's, and if I have the effects right (2 techs, +100% research) that would be a priority over 1/2 price upgrades. More useful to us, but less useful for denial. Although if we have the tech lead it isn't a real problem to keep the AI broke. ;)

I would build Stonehenge. I would not build Slave market.
I would not revolt until we get to something like Absolute Monarchy.
The Slave Trade wonder is evil!! as almost all wonders after the AA double the unhappiness of slave markets. While they are not cumulative, 8 wonders is 9 total unhappies. Plus we cannot sell the wonder and we do not know if it gives tourism.
I would get the GLib and research on our own as well. This allows us to effectively double our research rate, as we get the techs we want, and pick up the garbage techs at absolutely no cost to ourselves. That is why I like the Great Library. Plus is allows us to go straight military for our mandatory war with America.
A trimming of the X-man might not be all bad. :D
Just some more random thoughts from me. I honestly love to see diverse styles in SG's and thus do not try to dictate what to do too much, but I will say no to the Slave Trade.

I would build Stonehenge. I would not build Slave market.

I disagree.


I would not revolt until we get to something like Absolute Monarchy.

I agree. I thought we were religious.


The Slave Trade wonder is evil!! as almost all wonders after the AA double the unhappiness of slave markets. While they are not cumulative, 8 wonders is 9 total unhappies.

I am confused. They are NOT cumulative, so there is only one extra unhappy face regardless how many wonders you have. Why 9?

Plus we cannot sell the wonder and we do not know if it gives tourism.

It gives ONE EXTRA COMMERCE IN EACH TILE. It's one of the best wonders in an OCC. Too bad we coulnd't build Silk Road.

This allows us to effectively double our research rate, as we get the techs we want, and pick up the garbage techs at absolutely no cost to ourselves.

I'd trade instead of getting through GLib. That speeds up the tech pace the most. We are going for space I assume?

A trimming of the X-man might not be all bad. :D

X-man has only 2 towns. There is no much point in trimming him.

but I will say no to the Slave Trade.

Unless I missed something (in how the unhappiness is calculated), I absolutely want Slave Trade. However, I see the rule says we can only build wonders giving tourist income, so I would agree for that reason.

I am confused. They are NOT cumulative
They are adding up. Each one gives +1 Happy Face.

In this case, the game surprised us - we didn't know it was fixed when designing RaR (it did *not* work in PtW).

They are adding up. Each one gives +1 Happy Face.

In this case, the game surprised us - we didn't know it was fixed when designing RaR (it did *not* work in PtW).

So, they are not cumulative, and they are adding up? :hmm:

Am I the only one that get confused?

"Cumulative" = two wonders that each 'double unhappiness' will result in 4x original unhappiness ('oh').
"Additive" = two wonders that each 'double unhappiness' will each add one instance of original unhappiness (the oh can be set with the editor; 1 unhappy in RaR), resulting in 3x oh.

In the same way scientific/commercial improvements in Civ2 were cummulative, in Civ3 they are adding up.

(Btw, the terms are used correctly from a RPG/Customizable Card Game environment. Was an avid StarTrek CCG player for years, with a ruleset/ glossary of 100+ pages...)

"Cumulative" = two wonders that each 'double unhappiness' will result in 4x original unhappiness ('oh').
"Additive" = two wonders that each 'double unhappiness' will each add one instance of original unhappiness (the oh can be set with the editor; 1 unhappy in RaR), resulting in 3x oh.


OK, then I suggest either removing this comment in the Civilopedia (as in C3C everything is additive), or explicitly saying it's "additive not cumulative".

Given my experience with RaR, Civilopedia should be the top priority to work on instead of new animations, units, etc. I've been misled by numerous times.. :(

Due to the Rules Slave trade is out.
Plus the additive properties of slave markets are evil. However we want to win is acceptable to me. We can win conquest, Culture, Diplo or Space. For that very reason, I would conquest out the X-man, thus making it easier for us later if we do go for conquest. Plus it lowers the Tech costs a bit.

Plus it lowers the Tech costs a bit.

Last time I checked the tech cost formula, this isn't true for tech lead.

If at least one civ has learned the tech you are researching, then your statement is right.

In this game we are the tech lead, so killing civs will help other AIs, not us.

Given my experience with RaR, Civilopedia should be the top priority to work on instead of new animations, units, etc.
Seriously, I beg to differ. Top priority is game balance, and helping the AI to get on its legs. I can assure you that RaR was more intensively tested before release than C3C; and I might say, the results are pretty convincing. RaR is more than just 200+ new unit animations.
Luckily, many pedia stats are autogenerated. But an item like the unhappiness...it required about 5 reworded, more detailed posts to explain the effect to a veteran player like you. Such a mechanism cannot be explained to most players at all. I don't know how many pple play RaR, but I'd guess about 15000 d/l easily. And 14500 of those will never ever notice Slave Markets generating unhappy faces.

Well ...

I seem to remember posting a bug report from RaR 1.00 where the unhappiness effects of the Slave Market GW were geometric! (i.e., having 4 Wonders that were listed as "doubles unhappiness from Slave Markets" resulted in 16 unhappy faces.)

(Doc's wording confuses me, too. I would have said "the effects are additive not geometric", instead of "adding up not cumulative". Might just be the whole posting-in-a-foreign-language thing. :) )

As I now understand, each Wonder with the "doubles unhappiness ... " flag adds 1 unhappy face.

It's Romeo's game, so I'll switch the Slave Trade Wonder to something that can generate tourism as per the variant rules. I am not high on the Great Library, as I think we'll derive more total benefit from 1 of the +100% science wonders. I think we all know how to broker techs, so getting a few for free while we're science leaders isn't going to be a big deal.

Having the Library would allow us to cash-rush other infrastructure, but I don't think money will ever be a limiting factor in this game. In the Emperor OCC game I just finished, I won via the LoN in ~1365 AD. I ended up with ~13000 gold at the end, there was nothing to spend it on.

I'd like to see Persia dead for this reason: We can farm the barb camps for workers, and then merge Persians into our city for growth. X-man will never do anything useful for us, so he's got to go. I'm not sure how different max shields vs. max food is in our GA, but I suspect it is >10 spt after multipliers. Using the Persians for growth may allow us to pick up an extra Wonder.

I think our options for winning are Diplomatic, Culture or Conquest. I think Space is folly (4750 shields for one part! :eek: ). I'll try to get us a push towards culture, tourism income can also mean army support. If conditions are right (i.e., we can buy the tech) I'll pop out a couple of Jumbos and look for some slaves.

(Oh, if we're objecting to the effects of the Slave Market Wonder, shouldn't we also sell our Slave Market? It's not the Wonder that causes the unhappy faces. I think we shouldn't sell it until it becomes a problem.)

I agree with T's thoughts.
Actually I think that a lot of the confusion with the cumulative, additive, whatnot, is related to our inability to have a unified Math language.
It is really interesting because in my education, cumulative means additive, geometric means the doubling effect we are all concerned about.
The really odd thing is that math and formulae's normally transcend language, as long as we understand the basis.
At least we all kinda understand the same Economic principles, as we think space is ridiculusly expensive.

Please, please, please do not sell the Slave Market now. If it starts to bite on happiness, you can sell it then. I build the thing in all my games and never have any worries. Of course, I also run lux at 10% to get the benefit from Bazaars et. al., which takes care of most happiness problems.

If you'd prefer not to do this, at least keep it until the time for building tourism wonders is over. It will give us 4-8 shields per turn until then, and they add up.

As for Sun Tzu, shields are a scarce resource, but the scarcest resource is time. Each new unit takes a turn we could have been building something else. This is why it's smart to short rush improvements. Leter in the game, we'll be making more shields than can be spent on any buildable unit - these shields will be lost if we're building units.

Romeo3 - Now What?

350 BC (0) {Turn 110}
The Persian appear to be adamant about that spot. That's the second time they've built there, and I suspect the new city will meet an old fate.

Max shields is 58/turn, at +0 food. Running a 2 food deficit, we can make 68 spt. (Really annoying number. Almost made 1-turn Jumbos at break-even food.)

If we don't build the Slave Trade, our options are Heroic Epic, Stonehenge, Sun Tzu's (!), Shangri-La, and the Great Wall Sun Tzu's is not a Tourist Attraction, and the Heroic Epic can wait. Stonehenge is very good for denial, but only 2 cpt and pretty worthless to us. The Great Wall is cheaper and provides more culture. Shangri La is less of a cascade risk, due to Incense requirement. Let's see what our "friends" are up too ... I only need to see that Abe is building the Great Wall to make my decision.

Great Wall due in 2.

We're at war with the Ottomans? He needs about 100 gold to stop. We have neither Riding, nor Elephant Training, nor any of the advanced gov'ts. (I think we can support a Democracy in war-time, so long as we're able to trade for a couple lux. Being OCC means cheap lux.)

The Spanish and Americans are still fighting. If/when we get Jumbos we can take a quick bite out of Abe. :D

Think about some deals, but since we don't want to revolt I see no need to pick up Demo/Rep quickly.

330 BC (1)
MM to get a couple extra food. End up at 20% lux for a turn, since we only need 20% science to pull Lit.

310 BC (2)
Lit comes in, and I've had enough of these clowns. Research to Riding in 4.

Great Wall completes. What can I get for 60 shields? Run extreme food deficit to pull a Temple (required for Holy City) in 1.

290 BC (3)
Temple in, set for Holy City in 6. (Really 5.) Hard to say if that is what I really want, though. Change mind and swap to Stonehenge for denial. (Less culture, though.)

Upgrade Barbarian Slave to Worker. He'll work faster that way.

Might as well pull the trigger on this now: Drama to Abe for Democracy + 10 gold. Get 90 gold for Drama from Spain. Drama to Osman for Peace + 60 gold. Democracy + Drama to Joan for Barb Worker, 1 gpt, 27 gold. Republic is out there, but I don't want it.

We likely still had War Happiness from Osman, but we need him for brokering. Spain and America still haven't met him, so anything we research 1st we can trade at monopoly twice.

270 BC (4)
Here's a nice trick. 45 gold to Osman for Riding, turn around and sell it for 65 gold to Abe. Spread Drama around for about another 40 gold. Elephant Training in 5.

250 BC (5)
Lose a Swordsman to a Barb. Had to try out our 100% bonus. It kind of sucked.

230 BC (6)
The Persians now have 3 cities.

Abe is researching Classical Education, so sell at monopoly to Osman for 285 gold ... then sell at monopoly to Izzy for 290 gold. Take Abe's 17 gold for a tech he'll get next turn anyway.

210 BC (7)
We have 2580 gold.

Will squeeze out another couple of food and delay Stonehenge by a turn. Being 1 turn late on Stonehenge will let us build 3 Jumbos/3 turns. Once Elephant Training comes in.

190 BC (8)
Volcano erupted over in France. Our people are really happy for a turn, lux to 30% as we fell maybe 5 beakers short of discovering Elephant Training this turn. :rolleyes:

170 BC (9)
Elephant Training in, Stonehenge completes. This is just rude. Denying the AI all of these Wonders. :lol:

As promised, go to Elephant Rider in 1.

The cascade all went to Slave Trade.

Elephant Training + 125 gold to Osman for Barding at monopoly. Barding at monopoly to Izzy for 275 gold. Barding to Abe for Seafaring at 3rd, then Seafaring at monopoly to Osman for 185 gold. Elephant Training at monopoly to Izzy for 221 gold, and she's broke. Seafaring to Joan for 19 gold + 3 gpt. Elephant Training + 90 gold to Abe for Republic.

We now have 3106 gold. Why were we thinking about building the Great Libary again? :lol: Net: We give 1 monopoly tech, we get 3 techs + 539 gold.

Research set to Currency. I have no idea where we're going to get Horses for out UU, I guess X-man is going to have to cough them up.

150 BC (10)
Jumbo --> Jumbo. Off Barb Horse, but no slave. Then Swordsman kills Barb Warrior.

130 BC (11)
Jumbo --> Jumbo. Approach Barb camps.

110 BC (12)
Jumbo --> Jumbo.

90 BC (13)
Here is a good place to leave off. I was 1 turn late in getting to the barb camps, so we have the massive uprising. We can trade ourselves into the MA, but I think that means we have to declare war on Abe. You have 4 Jumbos to work with, but may need them for Barb defense. Full movement on everything, I just reset the city tiles to break-even food after running a deficit for the last 4 turns.

Final Notes:
We have a lot of cultural buildings we can build. We completed a Temple, Stonehenge, and Great Wall this turn. The Holy City will always be available, and it appears as though no one is building Shangri La (no shrines). This is actually a tough spot. Abe and Izzy made peace, so we'll get his full attention. He won't have many units but we must stay at war until we get an MGL (variant rules). The trades are there (Currency should only cost us a handful of gold) as we hold a monopoly on Monasticism and can likely end up with all the techs and all the money.

We can easily fight Abe, fight the Barbarians, build culture, or build Tourism. I'm not sure how we do 3 or 4 at once.

You should have 12 - 13 turns of GA left. Simplest thing to do is make the trades (if you have to pay Abe as part of this, no gpt), and then pull the Jumbos back to our city. Play defense until the Barbs sort themselves out. I don't think they will charge straight at the city. Just whack stuff within our borders. We don't need to take it to Abe (yet). I would probably start by trying to complete the wonder. We have the Heroic Epic to fall back on if we get 2-3 turns in and it looks like we need to switch off (rather than dump a whole lot of shields to build a spear). Mix in a couple of Jumbos after the 1st wonder completes, and maybe we can push at Abe's borders a bit.

We have two active sources of tourism, and the Oracle will start paying on your turns.

Here's the current situation. Had the Americans and Spain not made peace, we would have had another turn to hit those camps.

There is an appeal to building the Great Library: style points for building every tourist-attraction AA wonder for which a non-coastal OCC is eligible. If we build Shangri-La will have all of them but the Great Library.

The rate caps suck. After our GA we should seriously consider revolting to Democracy, as we currently cannot spend our income on rushing or deficit science. I do agree with an earlier post, that our eventual gov't will be Absolute Monarchy. With the gov't specific SW we get the trade of Democracy, with lower unit costs and no war weariness.

Great Turns T-McC. I will get it and try and play tomorrow evening some time.

Yes, T_McC, you evidently put your overeducation to work.

Good show! :goodjob:

I, for one, vote for GL - for the culture if nothing else. If we had GL, we wouldn't need to spend turns on optional techs like riding. We can of course trade for them, but free is a very good price.

iht: Move all availible units towards America. like Shangri La.
Turn 1: Give Osman currency for 260 gold. Get Mil training and 51 gold from IZZy for Monasticism. Osman gives 220, Lincoln coughs up 116 gold for it.
Turn 2: Hit MA: Declare war. All trading was IBT. Americans start Shangris La. :) Elephant kills spear settler combo, get 2 slaves. They will start roading up our spices. Border expansion. (2-0) Rider kills archer and gets slave (3-0) Retreat swords from Barb camp to City.
Turn 3: Rider kills warrior and promotes. A ton of barbs ride out to threaten X-man and us. (4-0) America has elephants.
Turn 4: One of our swords dies to barb sword, another kills it. (4-1) Use 3 riders to kill barb ponies, raise lux to cover troop shuffle.
Turn 5: Barb pillages, not too bad. Rider kills barb, rider kills American Archer (5-1).
Turn 6: Hook up our spices, let more Americans advance.
Turn 7: Barcelona builds the slave trade. Elite Sword kills archer gets slave (6-1). Rider kills rider, gets slave (7-1).
Turn 8: Build Shangri La, Start starvation elephants for a few turns. Our rider retreated in the IBT. Rider kills warrior gets new slave. (8-1).
Turn 9: Dark ages in, Invention to milling is our projected path. More production please. I have been upgrading some of the slaves as we get them.
Turn 10: Swap Rapid to a library. That way we can get more science, and/or build TGL. Elite rider kills archer. (9-1).
As you can see from the picture I am setting up to raze an American town. We should have plenty of workers when we can irrigate.
I had 4 or 5 elite victories with no luck but it is early in the war yet.
BEd_Head gets to put the pressure on them now.
Regardless of whether we build TGL, we should build a library, academy combo and school of scribes soon. Elephants are really nice, and remember they treat forests as if they were roads! We can really use this to our advantage.
10 turns until this war issue is settled.
Our situation
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads9/Romeo3.jpg
The Save (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads9/Romeo3-90AD.SAV)

Solid turns. It doesn't sound like Abe has a lot of spare troops after his war with Izzy. Is the variant rule that war cannot stop before an MGL, or that was must stop with the appearance of an MGL? Can we smack Abe around even after we get a leader? Would be nice to cripple him a while, since either he or the Spanish would have to resettle that land (as opposed to letting someone else grow big). If the Americans have to keep putting down new towns, that should also keep their core weak.

GA ends is 2-3 turns. We can pick up a bunch of food and still finish the library in 2. I'd suggest heavy shields the first turn, then as much food as possible to get the job done the 2nd. May have to hedge a bit for the end of the GA.

Watch for trade opportunities w/Osman and Izzy. Even monopoly techs are purchasable if we can also sell them at monopoly.

Can we even build an Army? Even if we could, I don't know what we would put in it. Our UU would be OK, but Jumbos/Swords/MDI are not. Small Wonders we could use include Holy City, The Academy, and Training Camp. The Heroic Epic is too cheap to use a leader on, so I would lean to the Holy City for the tourism bonus.

How many slaves do we have? I think we're over a dozen by now with many more to come. I was unsure the Barbs would just fortify outside our boundaries, but if they insist ... we can farm them after the war with Abe is over. I can't see X-Man making a big dent in those Barb horses. Irrigation will be nice, but the next boost to our production comes with City Planning when we can plant forests.

The Military Academy (and Pentagon) will autogenerate armies every 30 turns (I tested it , and it works). This is the only way we can get them (we do not have enough cities to build/create them).

The time for tourism has passed (as if we didn't have enough already). It takes 1500 years for it to kick in. And even then, it's just 2/turn. Holy City is 4 culture and two happy, so very worth it.

Irrigation will be important, as always, but until City Planning, we won't gain much production, as we can't mine grass. When we get CP, watch out! Forests can be mined, and thus also railed (+2 shields over unmodded). This is where all our food boni pay off (you can plant forests on those tiles and retain the extra food.) Then, again, maybe you already knew all this. :)

Unfortunately, we can't build Crystal Palace. :sad:

The Variant Rule is that it cannot end before an MGL appears.
I think we have ~12 slaves with our riders averaging one every other battle. I would still like to build the Great Library, but I would rather get the other Science buildings going first, and then squeeze out a few more elephants before the next wonder. We have 2 happy faces right now, and I think we can add in a few persian workers. The Holy City would allow more merges later, as we need to get our total commerce up when the G.A. ends. I am using the slaves to road to America.
I have noticed in RaR that there is not the proclivity to include the MesoAmerican civs quite like the normal game. It seems like every normal game has the Maya, Inca and Aztecs, but not so in RaR.

The time for tourism has passed (as if we didn't have enough already). It takes 1500 years for it to kick in. And even then, it's just 2/turn. Holy City is 4 culture and two happy, so very worth it.

I believe Tourism starts at the same time as culture doubling, 1000 years. I think from 1000-1500 years it is only paying 2 gpt, but it is paying nonetheless. Easy enough to check in the civilopedia or (more correctly) the current save. The F5 screen allows you to see when we built things, so its easy to figure out when the payouts start.

One sneaky thing I've found out from my current solo game: If we can trade for Silks, we can build the Silk Road (Colossus + std. game Marketplace effect). Well worth doing if we get the chance.

I concur with T_McC. I do not know if anyone has silks though.
A bigger problem is that we do not have roads to anyone else as the barbs are pretty thick everywhere.
After the American war, we need to trim some barbs as they are everywhere, and more importantly they are between us, persia, Osman and Joan in particular.
I still am leaning towards trying to elimanate a few opponents early.

If we're going to try to eliminate people early, we have to be committed to being constantly at war. Since we'll only ever have 1 city, we can't afford to let another civ grow very large. If everyone else stays about the same size, we can trade and broker for techs and not have to worry about anyone jumping out to a big tech lead and outgunning us (or threatening to launch or build the UN). I think 7 Medium opponents is much easier than 4 Large opponents.

We could pursue a strategy of continuously trimming the larger AI civs, hoping to balance the world. Like right now, attacking Persia or Siam would only let Osman or Joan grow. We could let the weaker AIs alone, and just harass the big guys. If/when we can sign military alliances this strategy becomes much more viable. Oscillating dogpiles on our side of the continent and never allowing Abe to expand N and W in peace should keep the balance nicely.

Politcal Philosphy is the tech that allows alliances, and it is along the tree that gets us to
Shakes. With all our excess food, I'd like to head that way in the MA, but it's a long way from here.

I also vote for trimming the big guys over eliminating the small. One objective after clearing barbs would be a horse colony on the horses about 10 tiles SSW of our city. Even if we only hold it 10-20 turns, it would allow some production of our 3 move, enslaving UU. Pikes (4 defense) will help immensely against the (2 attack) barbs.

After razing the American city, how about forming a blockade at the choke to prevent contact between the two halves of the world?

sounds good to me. Bez, would you like me to slot you in the current lurker slot permenantly? You have invested quite an effort in this game already.
It appears as if the largest civs are
America 12 cities (culture 250)
Ottos 9 cities
Japan 8 cities
Siam 7 cities
Spain 6 cities
Joan and X-man 3 cities
Us 1 city
We have more than double anyone elses culture.
Mapstat says that we need a garrison of 1 in Rapid to prevent it from flipping to the X-man. :lol: :lol: or :eek:

I like keeping it open for newbies like me to take a spin. I enjoy the conversation as much as the playing. If no one else grabs it, I'll take it.

:)

Thanks for the invite, though. The last time I delurked to take the helm, my contributions were not so welcome. (See the mystery civ thread) :lol:

"Mapstat says that we need a garrison of 1 in Rapid to prevent it from flipping to the X-man."

Yes, I think a zero-city challenge might overtax the talents of even the illustrious T_McC ;)

Lots to read over and think about. But I do have the save.

zero-city challenge...

hmm, anyone ever try to win the game from a settler on a boat?

:mischief:

90 AD (0) - Emphasize growth and commerce, as library only needs 80s and we are currently getting 58spt.

IT - Umm, did we know they have elephant riders? Lose the elite out in the open. Japan makes a demand, and then backs down!

110 AD (1) - Kill two of their riders and two archers, though one of ours is open to attack. I realize I didn't do exactly as T_McC suggested. Or did I? Anyway, we will get the library with 8s wasted next turn. I couldn't do any better without wasting commerce. And we have at least one more turn of GA.

IT - Barb enters our territory! Ottomans make a demand, I test my luck, but they declare.

130 AD (2) - Kill the offending barbarian, but there are plenty down there, and we might lose the sword and the spear sent to guard. Raze San Francisco. Library finished, and decide to get one more one turn elephant in our GA.

150 AD (3) - Golden Age over, though with the stupid bug it won't calculate shields correctly and I don't know the improvements well enough to try. Eh. Start the Great Library.

170 AD (4) - We get a leader. Won't immediately make peace though, as we can trim the Americans back a little more. Switch to another elephant, and emphasize food so as not to waste too many shields (still waste 8s, though). Will rush something with leader.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads9/romeo3_sittingbull.jpg

190 AD (5) - We didn't really come to a consensus on what to do with the leader, so I'll stop now. Still active units, as I wanted to use elites again once the leader was used.

I would vote to use the leader for the Holy City, it will be an additional source of tourism and I don't particularly like the units the Training Camp auto-generates. The Holy City is also more expensive than the Academy, IIRC.

Can we complete something this production round? (Bazaar, maybe?) We don't want to waste shields, even if it means waiting another turn to use the leader.

What did Osman demand? This is the 3rd phony war we are in with him. I tried to emphasize this in my turnlog, but we really don't have anything to gain from this besides war happiness. We'll have to pay him for peace anyway to regain our brokering partner. Being defiant is fun, but it can be counterproductive. It seems a knee-jerk reaction to refuse a demand for a monopoly tech, but this isn't C3C. There are probably 4X as many techs, and even a monopoly tech is only worth a couple of hundred gold. Besides, unless he's met the Americans and Spanish, he can't sell the tech to anyone. We could still sell whatever tech he demanded to Spain, at monopoly. We've got a unique advantage here because the two sides of the pangaea haven't met each other. We can't use that advantage if we're at war with Osman.

Having played a few of these now, the lesson I've learned is to trade to anyone who could afford to pay. Trying to hold a monopoly tech in an OCC is usually a losing proposition unless you want a war.

Oh, and sometime soon we should revolt to Democracy. The MGL allows us to "complete" a Small Wonder with the production we lose from Anarchy.

And I assume bed_head is continuing.

Also, in an OCC, you're likely to pay about 4 times as much as the demand for peace later, considering the power ratio. Not giving in is a bad idea in general, but a VERY bad idea in OCC.

I would vote for rushing the Holy City.
I Would not revolt.
So we have 1 vote for revolt
1 vote against.
I like being a bit defiant. Osman is the next guy we want to trim after Lincoln anyway.

I wouldn't worry too much about Osman anyway as at the end of my turn there was 1 full barb camp and the renmants of at least 1 more between us. Let him play whack a barb.

Why would we not revolt? Don't we have about every happy wonder we could build? We'd gain ~13 trade per turn (pre-mulitpliers) and I doubt we have a large enough military to lose that all back to unit support. We shouldn't have any native workers left to support. Certainly it can wait until after our war with Abe, but when I had the game the rate caps were a serious problem. That and we can't put our money to any good use.

How is our economy? When I left the game we had >3000 gold, and I don't expect we've been running a deficit since then.

The problem isn't that Osman is going to be able to attack us before he'll talk. The problem is that he has money he's not giving us. Selling him techs at monopoly gets us more gold than we had to expend to research the tech in the first place (especially after the science multipliers). As I said, I feel the strategy here should be not to try to hold monopoly techs to ourselves, instead to sell to Osman at full price. Even if he comes up with a tech we don't have, we have a chance to research at 2nd and sell at 1st to Spain or Abe. Once Osman is broke, then he's useless and should be defied. Until then I think we are better served to take all of his money.

It's not like we'll have a particularly easy time trimming him. Last time I saw the game it would be an awfully long walk to his nearest city.

Hm, IIRC you can have as many happiness improvements as you want, WW will still be able to throw you into Anarchy...
AbsMon can't be too far away.

The Ottoman war, while in general a bad idea, may be just the thing we need to clear the barbs. I'm also amazed at how blithely some advocate throwing away the trade bonus (and also cash-rushing) that comes with Democracy. This government is what wins my games for me. I get into it ASAP and stay in it until Social Democracy (believe me, I've tried the others - Democracy is too goo for it's era). The advantage of Demo is lessened on OCC, but not because of WW. If you're attacked, WW doesn't kick in for at least 20 turns. If we choose the time for war, we should choose it for times when we can move decisively, so not so much an issue there either.

Obviously a vote for revolt (after the GL). The tech pace coming up is usually pretty crazy, and we can get to MapMaking, Matchlock, and Crop Rotation without hitting Education.

Thinking about this, the biggest factor for WW is loss of cities. If we lose a city we are in deep doodoo anyway.
Since the team seems to think the trade bonus is worth it, we can give it a try.
REMEMBER THAT I STILL HAVE DELUSIONS OF CONQUEST. :lol:
However for the style of play I envision in the early/mid industrial, I think we will be an absolute monarchy with the estates general. Looking at the picture, absolute monarchy is 50+ turns away, so demo makes some short term sense. Build Holy City before revolting as 2 more Happy faces really helps us.

First, we are not wasting any shields. I already switched to elephant rider the turn we got it and completed it in the current turn, so the box is empty. I'll rush the Holy City and revolt once I start playing again.

As for playing defiantly, that was because I knew romeo had delusions of conquest, and I shared them to a degree. We need to send some elephants in that direction to clear out some barbs, and if I can find enough forests to move on we might be able to get down there quickly. The Otttomans seem fairly powerful, and razing a city or two seemed a solid idea. I do see what you mean about it costing us more later, though. I'll pick and choose my defiant moments from now on.

No need to revolt until after the American war is over. Once we're at peace we can afford a couple of turns delay on new troops. I do think we should knock down at least one more American city, the more the merrier.

On Osman: Sure, we'll attack him sooner rather than later. But let's start moving our troops towards him before a war breaks out. Once we're in position, we choose when the war starts, not him. That way we can fight on his soil rather than having to worry about his units and the barbs while in transit. Seeing as how we only have 1 city, we should probably restrict ourselves to 1 war at a time. :)

I don't think there is much reason to delay the revolution. What we have now is enough to take the next city. Boston, I think.

190 AD (5) - Rush Holy City.

210 AD (6) - Invention came in. Once again, I have no idea what to research. Raze Buffalo. As we have a tech to trade, it seems a good time to make peace. They are willing to give us 10g, THeology, Lateen Sail, and Horse Breeding! Just for peace! Invention and 59g gets us Fundamentalism from Spain.

Holy City finished, and start Great Library, due in 8 with a bit of starvation.

Start research on milling, at 40%.

280 AD (11) - Spain demands 100g, and I actually give in. Lots of techs coming in, but I think we can get the GL.

300 AD (13) - Disperse a barb camp. GL due next turn.

310 AD (14) - Finish GL, start Wind Mill, due in 2 turns. Decide to revolt, and draw 4 turn anarchy. Emphasize growth in the capital.

320 AD (15) - Our first techs, Vassalage and Athletics, come in through the GL.

IT - Siam demands Athletics. I intend to give in, but misclick, and they back off.

330 AD - 350 AD (15 - 17) - Barb killing turns. In the last turn, we enter a democracy. Once again, I don't know where to go with research. I'll stop here, to put us on even turns. There are a couple of workers I accidentally put in danger, but we have a lot of slaves so it isn't awful. There is a barb killing group on a mountain. A couple elephants still have moves. Once we clear this area out, we could probably colonize furs.

We could make peace with the Ottomans and get their gold, but we really have no use for it, so as long as it isn't causing unhappiness the war doesn't really affect us either way.

These elephants are great. The only one I lost was on the very first turn, when an American elephant came out of nowhere and attacked.

Lost my one and only screenshot, so we'll have to count my two posts as one and not punish me for missing a picture.

Our research goals should be crop rotation and whatever gives production bonuses, guild hall, clock tower, etc. Science bonuses are nice as well.
I think we should use our gold and rush quite a few peices of infrastructure.

We should avoid Feudalism as much as possible. As soon as we get it, sell the worker housing. It doesn't give 1 happy face anymore. Also with Feudalism we should upgrade our workers. If everyone is on version 1.03 the worker speed should increase. :D
We need 3 big techs from the early MA.
1) Crop rotation
2) Clock works
3) guilds
We should attempt to avoid for as long as possible
1) Feudalism
2) Education
We need a supply of gold ASAP, I would suggest an elephant slave convoy to find gold.
I personally would still like to eliminate the X-man, as he is such a pain normally. Plus there has to be some resource he keeps settling on. Since we are militarisitic and elephants still rule very nicely, I would love to see us oscillate wars to get leaders to build us small wonders and large improvements.
Roster:
Lurker (has until the end of the day)
Microbe:
T-McC:
Romeothemonk: (may be autoskipped until the 21st.)
Bed-Head7:

Research Clockworks in 6 turns.
Suggested builds:
1) Water mill at starvation like Bed setup.
2) Rush academy with worker. (either build one first and swap or disband a slave/sword then cash rush) max growth.
3) Ditto the philosophers school
4) Ditto the school of scribes
5) Ditto the Monastary
6) Build a town clock.
Set research to Warrior Code
7) GO WHUP SOMEBODY
8) Build more elephants, disbanding any swordsmen we still have.
9) The spare gold is in American and Japanese land. Next war has to get us gold!
Set research to Feudalism.
Guilds is not a priority research target until we get gold. :crazyeye:
Map-making would also be nice so we could see where to go.

If everyone is on version 1.03 the worker speed should increase.
This is incorrect. The person whom STARTS the variant is the only one that matters.

Re: your "More Notes: I looked at the game" post Romeo, I echo your thoughts exactly.

The alternative would be to spend every last one of those shields on Leo's instead. I like plan A.

I will take the game tonight and execute your plan if no one else takes it. Alas, the time for tourism draw to a close. Time to make that income do some work.

I was thinking head for crop rotation, but do we want to put much into research. If we are going to start cash rushing stuff, we'll again have a use for the stuff. If the AI actually researches in this direction, it might just be a waste of money.

Also, keep in mind the possibility of short rushing. If we want to rush something worth 200s, we can rush something that costs only 160s, and let our production finish it. We get it just as fast, but save 160g.

Good point JD. I forgot to write that in the little blurb about rushing. We can save some of our gold for later things. We have significant cash, that we can research and rush for a while.

Guess I'll take it. Will post tonight.

Pre-flight: Hmm, some slaves have gone to say hi to the barbs. That’s not so nice. I’d hoped for some builder turns, but it looks like we may need a few more units to avoid being barbequed. Move fortified ER to cover them – hope his one defense in forest scares them away. :lol: Fortified ER’s help finish the mountain road so they can get out of dodge soon. Upgrade sword to Longbowman – extra D and hit point + defensive bombard.

Not sure if avoiding Feudalism will be practical, it’s on the way to irrigation. We have plenty of gold, turn up research. GL is a nice bonus, but we have some things we need to know soon. Like clockworks and crop rotation. RoP with Japan (giving him Lit to help him catch up with Abe) to improve relations. RoP with Siam gifting Theology to help him get to parity). Need to have some friends in this cold, cold world.

Domestic Advisor: Build More Cities! Doh! :crazyeye:

IBT: Three barb horses move onto mountain, avoiding ER.

360AD: There is an open horsey to the south, why are we building a road out to barblands again? So they can get to us quicker? We already have spices. Move everyone out of range of barbhorses or covered by spear. We’ve got more slaves than we can cover, I’m thinking since we only have one city that it might be a good idea to keep as many people as we can in that city. Some slaves head to join. Longbow adds bombard support to spear stack. Spain sells us a worker for 120 gold. Worker joins our city and we now have one unhappy soul. Pity. We do have triple anyone else’s culture (I think the barbs are winning this game), so she should come around soon to see the glory of the Sioux.

IBT: barbhorse impales self on elite spear.

370AD: Osam will talk, but I want him to come over here and kill these barbs for me. On the other hand, I’d rather he got some techs for the library, so we talk peace. Osman has Clockworks. Sweet. We give him Horsebreeding and he gives us RoP and 150 gold. Two more Spaniards join the cause. Oops, we need 10% lux. Miscalculated. Hopefully they will be assimilated soon.

IBT: Paris gets Silk Road. Hopefully that will get Joan off her duff. She’s sucking hind teat. GL gives us Clockworks. Barbhorse attacks, Longbow does work and Spear wins flawlessly.

380AD: Pike->Clock. I disband slave to get short-rush started and get… no shields. Hmm. Will take two turns then. Move 4 workers up to blockade the choke. Upgrade several slaves to workers. Getting a gang together to go after horses. ER’s and an elite spear. Will send a pike to follow. WC cost goes way down – guess I should have let the GL do its thing.

IBT: three more barbhorses show up to west.

390AD: WC comes in, only thing that makes sense to research is Feud, but will turn off research for a few turns to see what develops. Vet ER kills barbhorse, makes slave. Upgrade Spear. Shortrush TC using Academy. Sell Osman Fundamentalism for 880 gold, Lateen for 240, Athletics for 250. He’s still down Vassalage and WC. Isabella has 1600 gold, and is only down WC. She is up Mounted Archery (our UU tech). Osman should get that for us soon. I wouldn’t mind slowing down tech a little so we can build some non-wonder stuff for a while, so I hold WC. Trade Joan Horsebreeding for RoP so she’ll get closer to Mounted Archery too. Japan has free gold, so I’ll send a road crew that way to see if we can help get him hooked up (we are connected to America)

IBT: our blockade was one turn too late, American settler pair comes through. Another barbhorse impales.

400AD: Actually, Japanese gold road crew manages to hem in American settler pair. Clock->Pike (clock allows pike in one without starvation. One more Pike, then we can build. Max shields now gets 70 spt. ER kills pike, making yet another slave.

410AD: Kill barb horse – southern road crew heads out. Pike->Bazaar in 2. Might as well make some cash while not researching.

IBT: GL gives us Mounted Archery. More barbhorses show up.

420AD: two Pikes cover southern road crew.

430AD: Bazaar->Pike (need one more for western barbhunting crew.) Hmm, the gold road to Japan plan needs an RoP with Abe. We need to take care of these barbs before war looks appealing, so we sign the deal, giving WC for some change. Hope this isn’t a bad idea. I usually maintain RoP’s in my games, but noticed we didn’t have them here. If you’d rather not, they will expire soon enough. Get one with Isabella too. She won’t give anything for WC, she must be about to learn it. Kill a couple more barbhorse.

IBT: Get stirrup from GL.

440AD: Pike-> Academy in 2, +2fpt. Southern road crew clears barb camp near horse, should have colony in 4.

IBT: Persian settler pair shows up next to spices. We do not have RoP with Persia.

450AD: Academy in one. Road crew making way toward Japan. Would have liked to get some more building done, but things are much more secure now. May want to turn research back on, as we really need City Planning to get the most out of our food bonuses, and it’s a long way off.

Rapid City is just showing off for his picture, the save has him making +2 food.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads9/Romeo3-450AD.JPG

One idea - maybe if we disband workers (upgraded slaves), they will give two shields for short rushes. Would definitely be worth it.

Bez, your turnlog doesn't really look anything like what you said you liked earlier.
Since we are democratic, and waiting for the next big thing, we should be abusing the trade bonus by building mass science multipliers.
I never bother with trade based improvements, unless I build Smith's. In Trade and war I can loot enough gold from the AI to never have to build trade improvements.
We also cannot build most of the trade enhancements as we lack gold.
We can however build a ton of science buildings.
I think unless we have a war very soon, we have too many units playing whack a barb.
I really dislike adding foreign workers to my cities, especially if the civ is still alive. We have a couple of persians, that is why I would want to smash the X-man, that way we will not get surprise unhappiness later. After the civ is destroyed I fully advocate adding workers.

Microbe is Up
T_mCc is on deck
We can turn lux to 0% if we sell our slave market. I would consider this.
We still have 4 science enhancing buildings to build. Then we can pick up Angkor Wat, if we are feeling evil.

Yeah, I'm not a big fan of adding workers from other civs to cities, unless I'm planning on exterminating the other civ fairly soon. The problem I see is that we have 3 Spaniards in Rapid City now, so if/when we ever fight Spain we'll get a nice boost of unhappiness from turn 1.

Has Osman met the other half of the world yet? We must abuse this while we can. I picked up the save where Bezhukov would have started, paid Osman for Peace and then bankrupted him (+22 gpt coming our way. :) ) by selling him techs we would have bought for ~1/6th the price if/when he met Abe and Izzy. Signing ROP with everyone and their grandmother is only going to hasten this process.

Don't get too happy with disbanding slaves to short-rush buildings. It will be real nice to have 36+ free workers when Rails become possible. If an improvement would require more than 1 turn to complete (even with a short-rush), a disbanded worker is only worth 12 gold to us. It is probably only worth disbanding the worker if we'd have ridiculous shield waste by naturally completing a building in 2, and the # of shields to put in the box for completion in 1 is greater than 20. If we need 10 shields, a free worker only nets us 72 gold (10 shields = 120 gold with none in the box, 8 shields = 48 gold with 2 in the box). Buying foreign workers for 130 gold is still a steal at this point in the game, so we should be only sparingly kill the ones we've got.

Now I've looked at the save. Osman still does not know Abe or Izzy. We can take all of his cash (+ gpt) for techs the other two already have. Might as well get three people researching new techs for us.

We have 4 unhappies from the Slave Market. I wouldn't be too keen to sell it off as we need the production, and it shouldn't require us to run more than 10% lux for a while.

If we get MGL's: The Academy is useful, and The Heroic Epic is always nice, but the Training Camp is kind of useless to us. We can't build armies and the units the TC produces are not too exciting. May be worth rushing an expensive building instead of the Training Camp.

I agree wholeheartedly with building the Bazaar. It gives +50% lux as well as +50% taxes, and is a nice complement to the Slave Market. A Marketplace (requires gold) has the same effect.

We do have our UU tech, and may be within a couple of turns of a Horse colony. I would not be surprised if X-man rebuilt his, but we can always hope. Mounted Warriors are a nice complement to Elephants in a "mixed" attack stack.

It's about time for X-man to go. We have enough Elite Jumbos to probably score a leader out of this, and X shouldn't have any mobile units. After that we need to look at Siam. Our pounding of the Persians has let them grown quite large. Lots of crappy land for an AI, but still a lot of cities.

Don't forget it is possible to steal a World Map from far-away civs. :) We can learn a lot about the world that way, and Safe steal costs are very reasonable given the cash we can make from selling techs.

I think we want to ride the Great Library a little while longer, and keep the overall tech pace slow. Building up to smack somebody is a reasonable alternative to science buildings we won't really use for a while.

>Bez, your turnlog doesn't really look anything like what you said you liked earlier.

It wasn't my favorite set of turns, but some of that goes to inheriting a situation with 6 4/3/2 barbhorses in range with a total of 2 units with defense over one. 4 defense is the most we'll have until mid-IA, so might as well get those units now so we can benefit from them. ER's have 1 defense, and we can't afford the luxury of continuously replenishing our supply with only one city.

The RoP's should not have any effect on contacts as: A. we have so little territory for them to move quickly though B: we have the choke blockaded. The only way the two worlds make contact is via water. They do improve our relations, giving us better prices and making those civs easier to ally later, right?

Bazaar + 10% lux with our commerce (tourism!) means no happiness problems for the rest of the game. As the Slave Market will soon be making at least 10 spt, please do not sell it. Just need to get used to this basic difference in RandR - running 10% lux. As markets only give one happy face instead of 16, running lux is not a sign of bad happiness management in RandR, it is almost mandatory. Maybe later we can revisit this decision, but right now we need shields more than gold.

I did sell several techs to Osman - wasn't sure if this was the right approach, so left the last one to the next player. Let's get at least the cheapie sci buildings so their culture can double in time.

I added the workers because of our huge culture lead - this does cause them to assimilate faster, correct?

OK, so the plan on shortrushing buildings is to rush a worker build with an empty box, then short rush the difference in one turn's production and the building's shield requirement. Sounds like a good use for all our cash right now. Then we can crank units for a while.

>We can however build a ton of science buildings.

Building only sci buildings only makes sense if you can run 100% science. Which we can't until the MA. Another difference between unmodded and RandR. Even at 10% tax (plus spikes every four turns or so), the gold adds up.

>We can however build a ton of science buildings.

Building only sci buildings only makes sense if you can run 100% science.

Huh? I don't understand this.

I added the workers because of our huge culture lead - this does cause them to assimilate faster, correct?


I would never depend on that. Never merge foreign workers, until the mother country is gone, please.

In unmodded, it's a common strategy to build only markets, banks, etc.. if one plans to rely on buying tech, or conversely to avoid banks and SE's if one plans on supporting the economy through full research and tech sales. In Rand R, you're forced to do both by the rate cap, so it doesn't hurt to enhance both.

In unmodded, it's a common strategy to build only markets, banks, etc.. if one plans to rely on buying tech, or conversely to avoid banks and SE's if one plans on supporting the economy through full research and tech sales. In Rand R, you're forced to do both by the rate cap, so it doesn't hurt to enhance both.

Sure, but as long as sci rate is higher than tax rate (not just 100%), sci buildings should be put on higher priority.

Bez, you mentioned the barb problem you inherited. I admit, I screwed up moving the two workers into range of barbs. The last time I had checked, nothing had been there. But there wasn't really a serious problem requiring more units. As long as you take care with the ones we have, six or seven elephants do the job just fine. I never lost one during my turns, and didn't really think we needed more so I did not build any.

Yes, I was surprised that the barb horse didn't attack the ER I sent to cover those slaves. Maybe it was because it was in forest. Still, it only makes sense to combine arms a bit to cover our ER's, need to keep those 8 hp elites attacking at 4 instead of defending at one. The Pikes have an extraordinarily long lifespan of usefulness - better to have them around than to have to build them under duress.

"Sure, but as long as sci rate is higher than tax rate (not just 100%), sci buildings should be put on higher priority."

Currently, and for the last five turns I played, the opposite was the case. :)
I'm just a big fan of the flexibility Bazaar provides. Your point is well taken, however - should have built the cheap science buildings first.

preturn: so, we are doing min research? I think we've agreed not to do that. I raise sci to get Feudalism in 5 turns. We can sell it to Spain to get the money back anyway, and we want SGLs.

I wouldn't sell Slave Market yet. We have enough money and shields are more important.

IBT Acadamy -> Philosopher's School.

460AD: get another barb slave.

I am not sure what our workers are doing in America so I recall them home.

IBT we learn Naval Spirit from the GL.

470AD: I sell Naval Spirit and Warrior Code to Ottomans for 501g. I sell Warrior Code to Siam for 200g.

490AD: Feudalism -> Crop Rotation. I sell Feudalism to Spain for 479g. To Ottoman for 370g+9gpt. To America for 193g.

510AD: This is what I mean by NOT turning down research.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads9/romeo3-510AD.jpg

This is going to rush Leonard's Workshop.

I set research to get scientific method in 4 turns, just when we complete the Acadamy.

IBT America starts Colossus. Isn't this a very ancient wonder?

540AD: We actually can shorten Acadamy by one turn, so do so for Sci Meth too.

550AD: Rush Leonard's and stop research this turn.

Sell Sci Meth to Spain for 642g. To