RB2c
Ozymandous (Captain)
Ragnoff
Dwip
Talamane
DeceasedHorse
Tidus4444

Ozy, please make a game with the following parameters.
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads10/RB2a_-_Settings.jpg

We are RB2c of the Malinese Empire!
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads10/RB2a_-_Mali.jpg

Good luck RB2c!

And here we go!

If i remember correctly, there is a minimum number of chars.

Ozy, please confirm the roster when you get a chance:

Ozymandous (Captain)
Ragnoff
Dwip
Talamane
DeceasedHorse

Game started. Will post a screenie or two plus the save when I'm done. :)

....:confused:

Just spent an hour typing up the report and the $#%$#%$# page here reloaded when I tried to attach something and it was erased.... :mad:

Summary... Ghengis, Frederick found. Frederick is to the South-East. I moved the starting city site one to the East to be a 'hub' between the two rivers, probably weed but oh well. Hunting, Agriculture, Animal Husbandry discovered, Mysticism queued up. Archery was given to us from a village. :)

Buddhism and Hinduism were founded but not by either of the two we know from what I can tell.

Skirmisher built while waiting for the city to grow to size three and a worker queued up. I still haven't gotten the timing down for when to build workers and settlers but oh well. Our worker should have plenty to do except for chopping trees and jungle however.

Here's some screenies from the time of our founding to the end of my turn. Sorry this isn't more comprehensive, but not much going on now.

http://ozymandous.home.mindspring.com/Public_Stuff/Civ4/Civ4ScreenShot0002_8X6.jpg

http://ozymandous.home.mindspring.com/Public_Stuff/Civ4/Civ4ScreenShot0003_8X6.jpg

http://ozymandous.home.mindspring.com/Public_Stuff/Civ4/Civ4ScreenShot0005_8X6.jpg

http://ozymandous.home.mindspring.com/Public_Stuff/Civ4/Civ4ScreenShot0010_8X6.jpg

Oh dear! We need religion. Were Buddhism and Hinduism founded by our neighbors?

Oooh, you guys drew a Calendar start (TM) - that is, all the resources at the starting position aren't enabled until the Calendar technology. These are generally some of the toughest positions to play from, since your silks there will be basically useless until much later in the game. This will make for a very interesting comparison to the other RB2 games, seeing as how you have a tougher start (in the future, you may want to move next to the corn, not away from it... :mischief: )

Ozy, I always type my reports in either Notepad or Word and then cut and paste them here into these forums. Had WAY too many reports get eaten by the forum to do anything else. Sorry that it happened to you here. :(

I realize that this is a little late, but would you be willing to take a sixth player? Or would that be a bit much for an introductory game?

Edit: Never mind, looks like Iester (team b) found my post in the main thread first. Good luck!

Oooh, you guys drew a Calendar start (TM)

Eh? I see Ivory, Gems, and Furs in the picture. Maybe that's a Calendar Start by some accounts, but it's not a Calendar Start(TM) in my book. :lol:

Wait until they get a real Calendar Start(TM)! :eek:


- Sirian

In a MP game, if those are the only resources in your capital's 21-tile radius, 1) it's definitely a Calendar start and 2) you're in trouble if anyone tries to come after you right away.

Agree though that a REAL Calendar Start (TM) is something to see! :cool:

GOT IT!

Hmm, wondering if we should have some discussions before I get to into this. BTW, how many turns did you go, 20? Anf if so, should I do 10 or 20? (I know we got to ten each as once we get off the groung, I just do not know when we drop to 10)

Ragnoff

BTW, this will be my first Succession set of turns! woot!

OK, we are the mighty Milanese Empire, known as the Ping Teammates! The year is 2880 B.C., and the first Dynasty has ended. The Ragnoff family has come to power (the Malinese have no idea where that name came from, or why that some foreign sounding.

"The first thing that the first Ragnoff Emperor does is ask his advisers to study his people, and to return.

First of all, we discover that the Ping Teammates are spiritual people. They are also quite wise in the ways of finance, having started bartering with one another before we even had anything valuable to barter with! You would think as a spiritual people we would start on the path to wisdom and guidance, but it appears that in the beginning the People's greed was more important than their devotion and in the beginning learned to make roads to rocks that had pretty colors in them, and then to dig up the rocks (we started with The Wheel and Mining). This may be why the first emperor, Ozymandous the first, directed his wise men to ignore the realm of the spiritual and focus instead on all of the things we could do with the world around us.

Ozymandous told us in addition to hiding from the animals, we could hunt them! His wise men learned that certain things, when planted in the ground, yielded good food if you bothered to stay around long enough to see it grow. After hunting the animals for awhile, we found out that if we rounded out some of the animals and stuck them inside a fence, they would always be there later we wanted to eat them. But while Ozymandous modestly claimed he only pointed his people down the first of the spiritual stones, mysticism, Ragnoff the Curious discovered that he must have, in fact, learned those secrets. Speaking of stones, we seem to have a lot of them lying around. Probably because we only really want the pretty colored ones when we dig them up, but there are a lot of ugly ones usually on top of the pretty ones. However, as Ragnoff the Curious prepares to take the reins of power into his hands, he notices that some of the people are experimenting with making piles of the ugly rocks, and suggest that if we polish the ugly rocks and then stack them on top of one another, we might be able to build a building that won't fall down next time the wind blows really hard. Ragnoff the Curious is somewhat doubtful, but allows the people to continue on this project that they call masonry. One of them even pointed out that if we could make the buildings really neat looking, it might cause us to rediscover our spiritiall side (masonry is a prerequisite for the last of the early religions with monotheism)."


I was fairly surprised to discover at first that we did not found either religion, especially since we have the spiritual trait. But I looked at our starting technologies and realized why Ozzy may have chosen to develop the worker technologies, if were going to build workers, we might as well have them be able to do a wide range of tasks. The financial tray will not do is a lot of good early, sent the tile must already produced to coins before it comes in the play. However, this makes towns and villages and even better potential build, so placing cottages should have some priority, particularly where there is already abundant food resources.

"Finally, one small village of other people we found took sticks with stones on one hand in shows us how do you could use another stick with a bit of animal gut to propel the first take a great velocity, a practice they called archery. Our people, however, been much wiser than the simple villagers, realized that while the villagers stood together in groups to practice this archery, archery also be used by people who were hiding behind trees and not standing in a big group. The villagers called their people who practiced archery archers, but we call our people who uses running around tactic skirmishers."

Our skirmishers are a great ancient unit, they have a 4 strength instead of an archers 3, can get one or two first strikes instead of an archers one, yet cost the same 25 hammers. The advantage of a great ancient unit like this means that we will probably be able to defend cities with but a unit or two from rampaging barbarians and early attacks. But in some ways the advantage is short lived, and if we don't engage in any early wars, we will probably be at long bowman before we need to use this unit.

"The next order of business for Ragnoff the Curious was to investigate our city itself into inquire about the people we have. Our capital city, Timbuktu, has grown twice since the Ping Teammates started keeping records. We discover that, for all the Ozymandous dynasty did to advance the state of knowledge about what we could do with the land, he never had people organize to go out and do those things! Instead, the people were busy looking about. One group of them, armed with very little but fast-moving, were scouting about. Two other groups, armed with big sticks, were moving at a slower pace. Finally, one group of people with big sticks, and the group of people who were practice been that skirmishing idea were stationed here at Timbuktu, which probably means that barbarians would not attack Timbuktu, and explains why the Ozymandous dynasty stayed in power for almost 1200 years! :P

However, it does seem that the Ozymandous dynasty finally decided that since we can do all these neat things with the land, we ought to organize a group of people to do that, and that is currently with the energy of Timbuktu is going: to train a group of people in all these tasks we learned! Apparently, learning the tasks isn't the hard part, it's convincing our people they want to do this! In order to trick people into doing this, we are going to give them a title, Workers, and tell them that this is a much better title than the People Carrying Clubs, or People Figuring out Cool New Things. This training is not yet complete, and Ragnoff the Curious would not dream of interrupting it. As for the city itself, it is, on forcefully, still a rather rude place. Although we have a nice palace that we inherited from the Ozymandous dynasty, the rest of the city is pretty much a collection of huts, tents, and straw buildings. This might explain the interest in piling stones on one another in an attempt to develop better buildings!

Of the lands nearby, we have found places where animals can be herded, and were numerous things can grow. Of course, none of them is actually near our main city. Unfortunately, the resource that we planted our city on and near, the great silk fields, are still something that we cannot understand how to properly harvest. Oh well, when we get these workers, they can start building a road towards the rocks, the cows, and corn and maybe we'll send some people to live there instead of bringing all the rocks back here!"

Okay, we have no buildings, three warriors, scout and a skirmisher. I will keep the scout and the two warriors out looking around. The scout I will bring back down towards Timbuktu, hoping to investigate the immediate surroundings and find locations for our next cities. I feel that, as soon as we finish the workers, we want to start settlers. An absolutely great city site would be the desert hill immediately north of the stone. The reasoning is that the city gets to food, a hammer, and according no matter where you put it. It does, however, get the defensive bonus for the Hill, and it will be able to utilize the nearby cow and corn while only overlapping the lake with Timbuktu. It finally play 10 turns, there is no way I will get the settler out, but I will start him. If I play 20, that I believe I can found the city before my turn ends. For research, I intend to finish masonry, and then start the polytheism tomatoes use them wrong. Monotheism is the only early religion left that we would have a shot at. While the people who founded the other two religions are closer to Monotheism, it is quite possible that those civilizations, already possessing religion, will currently be picking up the worker tasks we already know and may not have a great urge to get to Monotheism. Our spiritual trait becomes much more powerful if we have founded at least one religion.


Ozymandous, I didn't mean to rewrite your turns (he's released a history of them) but I wanted to do something related to our succession game and I thought perhaps I should get some feedback from folks before I went ahead with these plans. I will probably have a chance to play my turns after the kids get done trick-or-treating, so look for a post late tomorrow night.

No problem in 'rewriting' them. I had a nice story written up as well, but after it was eaten (for once I didn't copy it before I tinkered with the page), I went to the summary.

Yes, our chief herder figured out how to selectively breed the animals near by, on a smaller scale since we had to way to keep large herds of them (no pastures) resulting in much improved steaks for the ruler, and the plan was to gather larger herds so the populace could eat better as well. :D

A rather smart general had figured out how to throw sticks more accurately than the initial barbarians in the village, and hence our Skirmisher's were born.

I'm still trying to figure out when a good time to build the initial worker/settler so sorry for the potential :smoke: there. :)

Oh, and yah, since we didn't start with Mysticism, and Buddhism and Hinduism were founded fairly early on I didn't make it a priority. Hopefully when that worker does pop out we can improve our lands better. And yah, Sulla I thought for a few minutes on where I wanted to found the initial city, and probably still choose wrong. :P

I believe the second person receives 20 turns, and after that 10 but I'm ot sure. :)

I don't think there is necessarily a "best time" to build a worker/settler. Unlike civilization three, I feel that expertise is demonstrated in civilization four by skillfully developing the hand you're dealt and altering strategies to fit changing circumstances, rather than skillfully implementing a more formulaic ideal strategy.

In our case, I think I would have gone for workers earlier primarily because the research paths focused on worker capabilities. Additionally, while our starting city location has the potential to be developed into a quite effective city, particularly in regards to commerce, is not particularly powerful in its natural state. I do not believe any starting tiles have more than a combined three hammers/food. The only tile that we can get a total of five or more combined food/hammer/coins is the small lake to the West, which we cannot use right now because we do not have fishing.

As we are all new to the game, I do not offer this in an attempt to criticize, rather to analyze. I do not think the research choices made were inappropriate, nor do I think it is inherently wrong to delay a bit before producing settlers and workers, especially when one sees the need to explore to find a second city site, however I do not think that those two choices, combined with our starting city location, was optimal.

However, I also do not think we are necessarily in a bad position, as the city on the silk and the two additional silk resources, combined with the trade implications by having the city connected to both rivers, suggest that the city will be a commercial powerhouse when develops later in the game. We also have several units so we will be able to quickly exploreand access to a skirmisher, a powerful defensive unit for the early game. The only thing I think this means is that we have to carefully consider where to place the next city, so that we can have a city that is strong and production/food.

Unlike civilization three, I feel that expertise is demonstrated in civilization four by skillfully developing the hand you're dealt and altering strategies to fit changing circumstances, rather than skillfully implementing a more formulaic ideal strategy.


I have to agree hear. If you have nearby fish then fishing is critical. Why learn about pastures if no cows. The list goes on and on.
Even what to build can be influenced by resources as some buildings speed up with things such as stone and marble.

"Oh no," I say. "I'm up in RB2, and my copy of Civ isn't here ye..." *UPS truck pulls up and hands it to me*

Some days my timing works out.

Got it, with some delay while I figure out how to run things.

Dwip, I am hoping to have enough time to complete my turns and post tonight, but there is a chance it will not be posted until tomorrow afternoon.

(Boy, Civfanatics is being REALLY slow today)

Er, yeah. Ok. Ignore me. Apparently along with relearning the interface for Civ 4, I need to relearn not to post when I haven't had my caffiene yet, too... :crazyeye:

(Next stop, I relearn to read! See Dwip. See Dwip read. Read Dwip, read!)

On the plus side, I seem to be one of about two people with ATI cards the game just gets up and works for, so.

Just for grins (and i need the practice).

The infamous calendar(~tm) start. Holy hannah! I rolled a start with the same settings. Super lucky. Founded two religions (Hinduism, Judaism), closed off my AI neighbor from expansion with borders crossing a small continent i share with him (China), crushing one of his cities with culture, about to pop a great prophet. Built Stonehenge and Oracle. Presently building skirms, since i see him getting desperate. Two cites, about to found third. Date is 925 BC.

And all because of wet corn and wet rice.

OK, I am playing turns now, in trying to learn how to post images! I should this up tonight...

"Ragnoff the Curious waited for a dissenting voice, but none was heard. Therefore, Ragnoff the Curious set out the following goals for his dynasty:

First, trick enough people into becoming workers and we can begin to grow more food!
Second, establish a second city, probably WSW of Timbuktu, perhaps on the desert hill. Third, attempt to establish monotheism in an attempt to it sounds the religion of Judaism. Fourth, continue scouting both rivers, as the rivers provide immediate trade access to all cities on their banks. Locate sites along these to propose to the following dynasty for the further establishment of our cities. If the third city can be founded, so much the better.

Ragnoff the Suddenly Less Curious tells his advisers to shut their miles, for all the chatter is given him a headache. After 1200 years, the Ragnoff dynasty finally had the chance, and by goodness it's time to do something impressive!"

2880 (preturn): there is nothing to set and everything looks ready, masonry is in progress as is the worker in Timbuktu.


2840 B.C. (turn 1): the scout in warrior to the north continued north, confirming that they've reached the line of tundra, and the scout crosses the river. Fir, from beavers, is found up here. The warrior to the south almost invades German territory! Last night, when looking at this screen, I was thinking what a great location for a city this was, but I did not notice the very faint white line (below) that represented the cultural border of Germany. Okay, we do want to get a city to the south here before Frederick expands too far, but for now there are more important concerns.

http://img23.imageshack.us/img23/8687/ragnoff013sy.jpg

2800 B.C. (turn 2): Bears and bears and bears, oh my! The scout moves to a hill in the north, only to find bears on the other side. The warrior to the south, by Frederick, moved southwest, and the newly revealed squares to the Northwest and Southeast to him both contain bears!!!!

http://img23.imageshack.us/img23/7603/ragnoff027qw.jpg

http://img23.imageshack.us/img23/8061/ragnoff038if.jpg

Now this warrior has the woodsman special ability, and is in the jungle, I'm almost afraid to push the end turn button, because the Bears might reduce our military forces by 40%!

Interturn: (Q: is this what we call the time between the end of one turn in the beginning of the next?) While the bare to the north decided he wasn't hungry for Scout, the first of the two bear from the self completely wiped out our experienced warriors in the jungle. (Animal psychics were able to determine that the bearers sent “thank you’s.” See what happens when you let your people learn mysticism). Apparently the following maxim does not hold true:

(Civ4's motto): Sometimes it's better to be neither lucky nor good. J at Sullla and Sirian

2760 B.C. (turn 3): I believe Frederick the Great paid off those bears! He no longer wanted our one warrior in that area to menace him! Deciding that ‘do not feed the bears’ might be good advice, the scout hurries south. The other northern warrior also turned south and east. A German scout has passed between Timbuktu the coast to the east, and our warrior wants to quickly determine if there are any city sites along the coast we should aggressively consider. Masonry is due next turn.

2720 B.C. (turn 4): Ragnoff the Not Quite As Curious is somewhat surprised, the ideas of tiling the not quite as pretty rocks on top of one another to form solid buildings proves to be sound, and masonry is discovered!

http://img23.imageshack.us/img23/82/ragnoff049xn.jpg

Following the plan of the dynasty founder, Ragnoff the curious, this Ragnoff immediately orders a wise men to pursue knowledge of fishing (due in three turns) in order to hurry or acquisition of monotheism. “Wait,” you cry, “fishing is not a prerequisite for monotheism.” The thought process here is that the inland lake will and can read Gould to a research effort per turn. As Polytheism, at the current research rates, will take 8 turns and monotheism 10, I believe shifting to fishing and making use of that lake will speed, or at least not delay, our understanding of Monotheism. The worker is due in four more turns.

2680 B.C. (turn 5): these fellows appear off the northern border of Timbuktu, and Julius Caesar says hi!

http://img23.imageshack.us/img23/5705/ragnoff058tb.jpg

I tell him there will be peace in our time, because there is no way my dynasty will be prepared to fight a war! It is yet to be seen whether Rome will acknowledge the greatness of the Milanese Empire of the Ping Teammates.

The Warriors scouting to the northeast finds the coastline, pretty much confirming that there is no empire to our Norse (although both the Romans and the Germans are scouting that way). I see this as a good thing! We should start our empire along the northern and southern rivers, but the northern area should be ours for the taking as long as we do not drag our feet about it.

2640 B.C. (turn 6): nothing much happens, the northern warrior is one or two moves away from confirming the cotton and to the north the stars, and the scout is moving south along the western edge of the revealed territory. Fishing next turn, the worker the following turn.

2600 B.C. (turn 7): Fishing is discovered, and we begin research on Polytheism. I discover by checking Timbuktu that while switching a worker to the inland lake this turn does indeed reduce the time into polytheism is discovered to seven turns, it also delays are worker by one turn! So I will finish the worker next turn and then switch. I see another Roman scout to the west, and a German scout as well. However, I do not know if the German scout is the same one we viewed originally passing to art used, the Roman scout is certainly a new scout.

2560 B.C. (turn 8): Our worker finally arrives! , These fools, I mean hard-working souls, are now prepared to do the right thing and try to improve the living conditions around Timbuktu. Ozymandous had a barracks in the queue after the worker, which initially I leave alone, although that changes later (see below).

Checking Timbuktu reveals that the citizen AI has moved all three citizens to the Grassland Forest tiles, which gives us a total of 8 food, 4 hammers, and 3 coins. With this scenario, polytheism is still listed as is taking eight turns to complete. This is because they work or that was previously working the forested plains on the river (generating an extra coin) is now in the grassland claims which are not adjacent rivers. If I move one of the workers to the inland lake, we generate 8 food, 3 hammers and 6 coins! Leaving the citizen AI on, but emphasizing commerce, changes the workers again so that we generate 8 food, 2 hammers, and 7 coins. Unfortunately, this does not result in a further reduction of the time to research Polytheism, so I leave the AI off and take the middle route, 8/3/6. Generally, I believe that we do not need to tightly micromanage every city, for simply emphasizing what is desired usually works, and in fact times the AI does a good job of looking at the best citizen placement. However, while we have one city and are trying to speed research without sacrificing too much production, I'm willing to micromanage a little. Note that all of the configurations have only eight food, which means will be 11 more turns before Timbuktu grows. I decide this unacceptable, and move the worker N to the grasslands to establish farms.

The warrior to the N confirms that there is nothing there but tundra, and begins the long journey back to Timbuktu. I will probably stop them somewhere along the route we wish to place the city. A far greater concern, the scout has finely drawn level with Timbuktu (along the north-south axis) and standing on the Hill sees the cultural border of the Roman Empire. It is almost directly west, and a tiny bit south, of Timbuktu. My propose city site on the desert hill lies almost exactly between the two empires!!!!! Reevaluating our production situation, I realize that the farmers that the worker can build will hurry production of a settler, and insert a settler in the queue before the barracks. It will take 20 turns to produce a settler if I utilize the lake to improve our commerce and research, or 17 turns if we emphasize production, although since both food and hammers count towards production, we can still use some tiles on a river to do this. In that case, polytheism will arrive in seven turns, which means the three-turn diversion to fishing was a complete loss!!! I originally was going to let work on the barracks proceed (assuming we can always add a subtle or to the queue after Timbuktu has grown) but now the one skirmisher we have will have to serve to protect the new city.

We cannot lose the city site, Rome is too close. If we do not get polytheism, and we missed it by three turns, later dynasties can say it is ALL MY FAULT!

2520 B.C. (turn nine): I order the scout to begin exploring the edges of the Roman Empire, hoping to get a clue as to which way Caesar might jump. Research and city production are both on long-term projects, unless the worker can hurry the summer production far more than I expect, I doubt that I will be the one who makes the final choices as to the location of new city. The next several turns will go both way to quickly in way too slowly!

2480 B.C. (turn 10): I noticed that the Roman Empire includes a river, it seems like it might be the same river that, over in the East, enters the German lands. This means that our three empires may be connected in an international trade network (using the river) allowing religion to spread more quickly. Slightly alarmed by this I look and realize that none of the three empires we have contact with are the founders of the two religions currently in existence.

2440 B.C. (turn 11): more scouting.

2400 B.C. (turn 12): the farm completes, and I excitedly check the number of turns remaining for a settler and discover it is still 13! I nearly take myself as I realize that they grasslands with a farm (three food) is just as good as they grasslands the forests (to food and hammer) for the purposes of creating a settler!!! The only reason this was not a complete waste of time is that none of the grassland forests were on the river (which confirms the touching a river upon a corner is NOT enough to do use a river bonus, as the tile being worked did have one corner touching a river). The river must actually lie along one sides of the tile, this means that Timbuktu is not actually connected to the southern river, since it only touches the origination point of that river on a corner. Trying to figure out a way to improve our production, I think to myself, "you idiot, do a forest chop.” Then I realized that we do not yet know bronze working, so none of our tools are sufficient to clear a forest! This is the price of changing direction midstream, I was setting us up for religion rush in our research, diverted for fishing, was unable to take advantage of that because of the location of the Roman Empire, and then basically wasted worker actions! Well, not a complete waste, but not the most advantageous use. In doing this close examination, I discover something I cannot explain. A plain style with a forest should generate one food and two hammers, with the addition of a coin if it is along the river. Still coming in some improve state, is also supposed to add plus 1 coin. Therefore, the tile due south of Timbuktu, been any planes for us adjacent to the river with silk, should generate one food, to hammers, and two coins (which because of our financial characteristic would become three coins). However, it's generated only one coin. Is this a bug, or did I miss something obvious?

http://img23.imageshack.us/img23/8203/ragnoff072pm.jpg

I determine that the only tile I can improve which will actually increase the speed that you can use a settler is the unforested grassland hill along the river to our east. Mining this hill will add two hammers. Several tiles could be brought from two combined food and hammers to three combined food and hammers, but we already have that. The worker did not finish the farm until this turn, so we cannot yet move him, but I will move him over to the hill next turn and then begin mining.

2360 B.C. (turn 13): moving around the southern edge of the Roman Empire reveals more rivers, I must now choose to move west to scout's the edges of the Roman Empire, or to move south and probably used to see if this river system is indeed connected to our own. While considering this, I realize that we show a trade route link to Frederick, but not to anyone else. Also, both Frederick and Genghis Khan have now moved ahead of us in the score. This may simply mean that their borders expanded, or they may have placed a second settler. From this, I suspect Frederick has established a second city, and at that city is along the river. However, are you not remember looking to see if those a trade route before, so I may be wrong. Another potential explanation is that their workers have completed a road to a tile along this river, and that connected the two empires. If this latter is true, it suggests that not only can cities in the same trade network be linked by separate methods (see a along the river to city the city be along a road to city sees) but that our route and change from one type of connection (i.e. roads) to another (I use a coastline) without going through a city. I decide it may become very important to know what is to ourselves, particularly to know if we're going to get squeezed out along this river, so the scout turns south and east. On another note, the second warrior has nearly returned from the north. I had originally intended to leave him along northern river, potentially marching my suggested city site, but now I decide to bring him all the way back to Timbuktu. He can either escort the new settler or stay there for defense of Timbuktu and allow our skirmisher to escort a settler. Man do I find a lot to talk about on turns where, in reality, not much happens!

While attempting to avoid Frederick the great scout that's also sell from the Roman Empire, I ended up having to move one space to the west. This ended up being fortunate, as when I moved southwest to get around that scout (a direction I was not originally intending to go, I discovered the western coastline! It looks like the point I discovered would be a BAY, as the land and coastline moves Northwest and Southwest from my position, but it may mean room does not have much room to expand.

Additionally, because of this move I met Napoleon, the Little Corporal of France (don't tell him I referred to him in that way, he said I would kill me if I did!) More specifically, my scout met his scout south of the Roman Empire. Napoleon is not sure what he thinks about Julius Caesar, but thinks Frederick is a petty criminal masquerading as a world leader!!!!

http://img23.imageshack.us/img23/5796/ragnoff068nz.jpg

2320 B.C. (turn 14): not much, the mine is started, and I discover that the river passes through mountains south of the Roman Empire, so our scout will have to divert further west and south in an attempt to find a route back to the east.

2280 B.C. (turn 15): Polytheism is discovered! We begin Monotheism, which will unfortunately take 8 turns. My side route to Fishing and did nothing but add 3 turns to our eventual acquisition of Monotheism, as I never ended up using the light. On the plus side, the farm that we improved did seem to shave two turns off the acquisition of Monotheism (originally it would take 10 turns), so the farm was not as much of a loss as I thought.

2240 B.C. (turn 16): Scout scouts, warrior moves, worker continues to mine.

2200 B.C. (turn 17): See turn 16. The scout has made around the southern edge of the mountain chain, and is moving backup to the northeast, towards Timbuktu. It may be that if we place that second city where I won it, the combination of the city and the mountain chain will largely block off Caesar from our western and southwestern territory. This would only allow him to directly compete a few moves around the change of the North. Under the idea that, in Civ4, one should adapt to the hand we are dealt, I now believe that there is simply no other city spot as important as the one to our west. Additionally, a French warrior appears along the southern border of Timbuktu, moving from west to east. Between this and the scout siding, and led to believe the French Empire is South by Southwest from Timbuktu. Note that I have not yet confirmed this.

2160 B.C. (turn 18): the warrior that was cowed into the North finally returns to Timbuktu. Additionally, the mine completes, and moving around our citizens shaved one turn off our settler. Monotheism is due in five turns, the settler in six. I move worker to the planes just east of the city, intending to build a cottage (under the idea that the cottage can start developing, and become us very valuable commerce source later). I realize I am unable to start the cottage, as we do not yet have pottery! In another thread, someone asked if the religions were that important and said they saw very little disadvantage in chasing them (almost arguing acquisition of the religions should be a major goal as it was the most powerful thing to do in the early stages). Yet my turns have shown me the choices involved. We are spiritual civilization, so on one hand having a religion would be very useful. On the other hand, we could easily lose the race to monotheism in the next few turns. And that, coupled with the inability for a worker to perform several tasks, could put us in a seriously disadvantaged starting position. Remember, if I had not sidetracked to fishing, or fighting continued to work the lake and delayed the presumption of our settler, we would have monotheism before my turns that ends. As it is, it'll be the next dynasty that finds out if we win the race, or come in a close but agonizing second. Lacking anything else immediately productive to do, I move the worker to the west of the city, intending to start the road towards my intended 2nd city site. That will be needed. The scout, while moving around southern edge of the mountain chain, discovers there is a large desert almost due south of us. Conjure to the north, coastline to the east, desert to the cells, and a mountain chain to the west and a helpless to find clear borders to our empire. There is some possibility that Frederick to the southeast can squeeze in between the desert and the coast, and as I said room could either go around the chain to the N or Rome (or presumably France) could come through the desert from the South/Southeast. Nevertheless, the area encompassed by these natural territorial boundaries is quite large. Something to think about.

2120 B.C. (turn 19): the worker begins the road. The scout confirms that the river by Roman river by us or separate rivers, and reveals more of the desert by moving to a hilltop. Unfortunately, this move also reveals an adjacent barbarian with two combat promotions! Ozymandous left me a military force of five units, one of which was a recon unit. It looks like I'm going to leave my successor with merely 3, all of which will be located our home city, and which does not include a recon unit. I will, however, have less my successor with many choices because Monotheism and the settler will both be completed in the early parts of your turn. With trepidation in my heart, I end the turn.

2080 B.C. (turn 20): (what an odd year for the 20th turn, I assume either Ozymandous or I must have miscounted. As expected, the barbarian warrior gained more experience at the expense of our scouts, despite the hilltop advantage! The only surprise to me was that in the animated combat, our scouts actually killed 1 of the 3 warriors that were part of the barbarian warrior unit! Do not, I repeat do not, send out that settler and escorted. The loss of the both the scout and warrior earlier proved the outside world does not like us (yeah, it can't be anything like my own incompetence).

In short, I failed at three of my four goals. Although I did produce a worker, I did not use him as well as I could. I did not produce monotheism because of my diversion to fishing, followed by my inability to use the inland lake because of the need to hurry the settler production. Speaking of the settler, I did not even produce it, much less found our second city. I completed the scouting of the Northern River but both the scout in the warrior who were killed died during their scouting of the southern River. There is an area due south of us that he still unexplored.

The Ragnoff dynasty, before being thrown out of the palace by an angry crowd, quickly it tends to destroy all records of it (mis)rule.

That you were able to read this report proves that they failed even at this! :P

http://img23.imageshack.us/img23/1830/ragnoff080mv.jpg

Here is the save:

Wow, those images are huge!!!! I did not see a wat to reduce then aside from cropping them (I am image illiterate, this si the first time I have ever used the.)

Anyone knwo fo a program that is free or included in Windows EP that will allow me to shrink them yet retain the detail?

(See it and will pick it up tomorrow when I'm not exhausted from playing my solo game AND an MP game all day)

Images... Windows XP comes with Paint, which should be good enough to do whatever you need it to do, namely shrinking screenshots. (Go to the Image menu, Stretch/Skew, and fiddle around until it looks ok)

For most of yours, it probably would've been enough to zoom out a bit, take the screenshot, and then crop it so it just the interesting bits show up. (Use the dotted square Select tool, drag over the bit you want, Copy, make a new image, Paste)

Should do what you need. I don't particularly use Paint, so.

Further comments when I wake up.

Oh yeah. How do you do that thing with the signs? I've been trying to figure it out all day.

Hi,

Anyone knwo fo a program that is free or included in Windows EP that will allow me to shrink them yet retain the detail?

A great and free program I use is Irfanview (http://www.irfanview.com/), an image viewer with some basic editing capabilities. It can crop images (just select an area, then select "crop" in the image menu), and it can save the image in jpg format with varying degrees of compression. It also can shrink pictures, either to specific sizes, or by specifying a percentage, and its shrink algorithm is quite good for preserving image quality,

-Kylearan

Anyone knwo fo a program that is free or included in Windows EP that will allow me to shrink them yet retain the detail?
I am guessing you mean windows XP.

I use paintbrush all the time to and decrease the total width.
It also has an option to increase or decrease the picture size.
The report above required me to constantly scroll left and right as the images were to large to show at my current screen resolution.

OK, I went back and edited the imagies, should be easier to read now

I won't be able to play for a while, so in the meantime, I'll throw up a tentative dotmap for discussion.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads10/rb2c_2080dotmap.jpg

In general, the blue and green dots are "We want these now rather than later" cities, the purple dots are "Get these when we can get there" cities, and the red dots are "When we get around to it" cities.

The southern green dot will be a City of Greatness with proper farming and mining. This should be either city 1 or city 2.

The southern blue dot will, likewise, be a decent city someday, and also helps block off Germany from expanding.

North green dot and north blue dot aren't fantastic, but help block off Rome and Germany (emphasis should be on north blue dot to keep Germany out of our backfield)

Purple dots will be nice to have at some point, once we deal with immediate concerns. North purple in particular has some good stuff. Yes, I left the furs out of range. Either we can put a crap city up there, or just wait on a border expansion.

The eastern red dots are kind of funny, and I really kind of want them where the arrows point, so as to hit the crab, but I chose not to do it that way. We'll see when we get there. I'm not too worried about them right now.

We have a settler due in 4. I'll be sending him to south blue dot unless somebody gives me a good reason not to.

well, my choice for a first city would not be any of the places you placed dots. In civ 4, I just do not see the point in slavishly attempting perfect city spacing.my choice for first city would be one that can be immediately productive with minimal worker effort, as our capital city is not.if you placed your first city basically where you have the line between the two green cities, specifically on that desert hill space, it woulf do a few things. First,it begins to block off the gap in the two mountain ranges, making it highly unlikely Rome wants to come in this direction. With a little bit of growth, it will block those off, and we have a shot at getting a religion to spur that growth. second, it transforms a fairly useless tile into a very useful one.left alone, the desert hill was barely worth mining, as there are more productive hills around it. With the city on it, it will produce 2/1/1 and get the defensive benefitsof a hill for the unit stationed there. Finally, you'll have access to both the cow pasture and the corn. Working those two titles (as the animal husbandry should be our next tech to pursue)will make that a strong early grower, and working the marble to the south will both give us access to marble for quicker wonder production but will also be a nice tile in its own right.

I could see a strong argument for making the two blue dot cities 2 & 3 as you are right, that will block off Frederick. But as both of those city sites require significant work or action, in clearing jungles and they like, to become really productive, I do not think they should be our second city.

I'm not going to even discuss the northern sight at this point, as I think we all agree those can wait until the southern three cities are settled. Rome's actions and other choices may alter what we do up in that direction. Although I would say, my initial suggestion would be getting the clam is more important in preventing overlap on the northern red cities. Clams will add one health to every city we have.

Counterargument thusly:

1. I'm not going for perfect city placement (though what I came up with does fit together remarkably well), as I am trying to make each city Be All It Can Be, catch all the resources I can, and then fill some space.

2. Which is where my green dot cities come in. I put them where I did because A) once South Green Dot comes online, and there's a lot less jungle clearing there than you think there is, with all those hills and farm/watermill space, it has the potential to be a monster of a city - maybe our highest producer. Also we get that ivory; B) North Green Dot isn't so hot, but it's ok, and blocks that mountain range ok.

3. As for the blue dot cities, I put them second (I'd probably go for south green dot first to make sure we get it) because if we're going to block off Fred that close to his capitol, we need to do that RIGHT NOW, and not later, or there won't be a later. Concerns such as "Will this be an awesome city" are secondary to that concern in this case.

4. With a further nod towards improvement time in the jungle, if we go straight for iron working (which we'll want in any case), it's something like 18 turns of research, plus tile clearing time. In the meantime, South Green Dot has plenty of grassland and hill open to do whatever with, so it's not exactly crippled. South Blue Dot IS, but that's really too bad, as I've explained.

It's Stone there, btw, for whatever that's worth, which considering how much I love Stonehenge, is probably a lot.

I see where you're coming from with your city placement, but I think putting South Green Dot where it is will make an even better city, what with all the hills, and the grasslands, and the river to work with. Its northern neighbor, well, not so good, but it could be worse.

5. I'm not particularly satisfied with those northern red dots myself. I'm not entirely sure what to do about it, either. One thought may be to move Northeast Red Dot to 1s of where my arrow is pointing, move both purple dot cities 1e of where they are now, and leave Northwest Red Dot where it is, and then stick in another city somewhere up north. Will look at it. If that other city could somehow catch the furs, that would be fantastic, even if it otherwise sucks.

I wish you could dotmap directly in the game. That would've been just about the best feature ever. Alas.

Hmmm, I had not considered eventually watermilling the tiles allong the river, ad I have not gotten much beyong the classical age, but i see your point.

Ok, I am convonvinced about south green dot, but I would still do that before the blue dots. although I definately thin s blue dot should be the 3rd city if we are going to do it.

I agree with Ragnoff. We need to get that wet corn up and running fast if we are to have any chance of settling our lands in a reasonable amount of time. Rome may grab the rice to the west, but it's dry.

We should try to build our settlers and workers from this city, because the corn farm will produce one loaf. Once the cows are online, it's going to be a very good factory.

The good news is that neither of our neighbors founded the first two religions. If we can get Judaism, we have a shot of converting them, since Christianity is a ways down the tech tree. We should try to get that also, if only for denial purposes. We can then pit Rome against Germany or vice versa, by playing the religion card. For example, with Rome Jewish, and Germany Christian, we could have them fighting. Our "trading with our enemy" minus would be offset by our "brothers and sisters of the faith" plus in diplomacy. Or we could have peace while we boom to the north (and as much to the south as possible) by converting them to the same religion. If all three of us are different religions, diplomacy will be problematic, at best, and the pointy stick looms large.

Sorry, but i just dont see what South Green Dot does for us right now. Settling that far from the capital will push maintenance costs up. It's a good city site, but it should not be our second city.

Impressive work Ragnoff.

Just a FYI, but I am unable to run civ IV at the moment. I will post once I get it operational.

[0] 2080 BC - Settler comes in in 4. No scouts to be had, but we're more or less fine for exploration. I'm still a big fan of South Green Dot, but I seem to be the only one, so we'll go with Ragnoff's spot and see where that gets us.

[2] 2000 BC - Road completes, move the worker west into the forest with the idea of roading through there and the corn to our next city site.

IBT - Pliny lists the most cultured civilizations. 2 civs we don't know are #1 and #2, Fred's #3, we're #4, followed by Caesar, Nappy, and Khan.

[3] 1960 BC - Monotheism comes in, and we found Judaism! I go right ahead and make it the state religion. We need a new tech, and...hrm. We need Writing for Calender, but Bronze Working could be useful with all the trees, and I think we'll go with that.

[4] 1920 BC - Settler comes in. Rather than keep going on the rax, Timbuktu switches to a skirm. We could also be going for Stonehenge, but we'll do it this way for now.

[6] 1840 BC - The game really liked that hill, too, it seems. Djenne founded. Start a skirm, for lack of a better idea.

[7] 1800 BC - And the road to Djenne completes.

[8] 1760 BC - Skirm completes in Timbuktu. We'll work on the rax for a bit, though somebody should feel free to swap that out for a settler or something. I am utterly unconvinced of the utility of a rax this early, personally, but I just played a solo game where I was swapping out warrior garrisons with mech inf, so.

[10] 1680 BC - Bronze Working comes in. Start on Pottery, though this can be changed. Swap to Slavery because we can. There is copper NE of Timbuktu in the hills, among other places.


Thoughts:

1. Switch Timbuktu to something that isn't a rax. I favor either another settler, or Stonehenge.

2. In a few turns, Djenne will grow. It might be worthwhile to swap to a worker or settler at that point, rather than keep on with the skirm.

3. I went with Pottery for lack of a better idea. Feel free to switch that.

I think I left teh rax when i was waiting for Timbuktu to grow in 2 turns (if I remember right it was queued up hen I started). I don't know how fast we decay though, so that may have been a mistake.

I would not be at all opposed to going for stonhenge, especially when that stone is hooked up! Not sure if we waited too long though.

There is so many possibilites that I think the "one right move" syndrom of civ3 is gone!

Although i must say stonehenge seems VERY popular in teh SG threads, maybe sullla or sirian will comment on if they think it is ever worth passing on it?

BTW, VERY glad we still got Monotheism and founded a relegion, I was kicking myself about that and if we missed by 2 turns I would have felt that i had :smoke: it up!

I'd second Stonehenge. It'll guarantee us a religious great person down the line, enabling us to nab the Jewish shrine as soon as possible to get some good gold flowing in our empire. It'd also allow us time to get those food resources up and running and allow time for the capital city to grow before we start settler production in earnest.

Keep in mind that you can chop to get a wonder sped up. And later in the game, u can "buy" a wonder. In a test game i played, Hollywood cost me 5.6 K gold. :D

Even if you build a farm, cottage or workshop, the forest will still go towards the wonder.

Am I up?

Got it. But i will not be able to play until tomorrow night.

I think I have civ working now.:king:

Hi,



A great and free program I use is Irfanview (http://www.irfanview.com/), an image viewer with some basic editing capabilities. It can crop images (just select an area, then select "crop" in the image menu), and it can save the image in jpg format with varying degrees of compression. It also can shrink pictures, either to specific sizes, or by specifying a percentage, and its shrink algorithm is quite good for preserving image quality,

-Kylearan

I use that as well Kylearan. :) Irfanview is a good app, and it's free. :)

Hmm, sorry I missed this thread the last day or two. All right, a few thoughts...

1. When I founded Timbuktu it had the little 'road' graphic fromt he city to both rivers, thus my assumption that it was connected to both, but I don't know for sure. I don't see the North river flowing into the sea, so I'd think the trade route we have with Frederick is via the southern river that goes East into the German lands.

2. Umm, we -need- to send any settlers South to block off Frederick sooner rather than later, since once the Germans border expands we have zero chance to build there.

3. It's too late for this but I liked your city placement further south Dwip, than the one on the hill. Desert's provide -zero- food, hammers and commerce unless there is a special there so avoid them if at all possible. They are essentially a wasted tile until late (is thre a tech that ever allows them to be worked?) in the game. COnsider them like mountains.

4. If you have more than one religion then you almost have to not have a state religion since you lose 4 (assuming only one other religion) culture points per turn for each religion you have that's not the state religion.

5. Stonehenge is a great early wonder, IMHO, since it gives GP points as well as the free oblisk, which can help cities grow borders relatively quickly (10 turns) after they are founded.

6. Don't chop all the forests around since later on they provide good health boosts, also, found cities on fresh water if at all possible since it gives a +2 health that way. Founding the second city on that desert hill means the city won't be as strong as the one a bit further South could have been.

7. If you want an early religion, I'd suggest going 100% towards it otherwise wait. I'm glad Fishing didn't cost us the religion, but I didn't choose fishing mainly because we had just that one lake tile and it seemed low priority.

8. The barracks, or whatever, I was using mainly as a placeholder while waiting for the city to grow, it wasn't 'set in stone' as a must have. :D That's a great feature, since the shield put towards something doesn't decay that fast. :)

9. We don't need to squeeze the cities in like sardines anymore, so we need to pick the best places to build them even if we don't get every tile used. It's better to have optimal city placement more than it is to make sure we work every tile, especially mountains and desert, since early on at least, both of these tiles are useless and simply wasted space.

I've played a few more games (started them at least) and have a better handle on what to do, regarding research, and such, or at least like to think I do. :D Usually while building the first warrior/scout and waiting for the city to grow, I've found is a good time to try to snag one of the early religions and/or flesh out the worker abilities so when one is finally brought out they can work on everything. :)

Hmm, sorry I missed this thread the last day or two. All right, a few thoughts...

1. When I founded Timbuktu it had the little 'road' graphic fromt he city to both rivers, thus my assumption that it was connected to both, but I don't know for sure. I don't see the North river flowing into the sea, so I'd think the trade route we have with Frederick is via the southern river that goes East into the German lands.

I missed this completely! You are right, we must have trade access along the southern route.

2. Umm, we -need- to send any settlers South to block off Frederick sooner rather than later, since once the Germans border expands we have zero chance to build there.

I am REALLY not a fan of this, It causes friction with the AI, so unless you have already decide to go AW with fredrck, blocking him into a corner, with a city that will no be productive for a long time (we need to be able to clear jungle), when we ALSO have a slow growing/producing main city seems like you are begging Fredrick to start a war we cannot win. The Art of War says to ALWAYS leave your opponent an escape route. Backed into a corner, the AI is smart enough to attack.

3. It's too late for this but I liked your city placement further south Dwip, than the one on the hill. Desert's provide -zero- food, hammers and commerce unless there is a special there so avoid them if at all possible. They are essentially a wasted tile until late (is thre a tech that ever allows them to be worked?) in the game. COnsider them like mountains.

Look closer, there are 3 desserts spaces, true, but one is UNDER the city center, transforming it into a 2/1/1 desert (city centers are always 2/1/1, unless build on a resource, then they are 2/1/1 + the unimproved resouce benifit). A second has a stone resource with a quarry (that we will want anyway) so it will be a 0/3/0. Not great, but not horible. That leaves us with one dessert Hill (can be mined for 0/2/0 if needed) and it gets BOTH wet corn, and wet cows. (5/0/0 and 4/2/0). this city will get up and running quickly, and can easliy grow into the teens.

4. If you have more than one religion then you almost have to not have a state religion since you lose 4 (assuming only one other religion) culture points per turn for each religion you have that's not the state religion.

This is on a per city basis. I often feel the +25% to buildings and happiness bonas, plus the ability to create prophets without monastaries is worth losing 5 culture in only 1 or 2 cites, or the +2 exp. It also depends on whether you are going for a cul tural victory. the nice thing is, as a spiritual civ, we can switch back and for to what ever is the best on a turn by turn basis!


5. Stonehenge is a great early wonder, IMHO, since it gives GP points as well as the free oblisk, which can help cities grow borders relatively quickly (10 turns) after they are founded.

Agreed, especially if another city is well set up to do workers/settlers.


6. Don't chop all the forests around since later on they provide good health boosts, also, found cities on fresh water if at all possible since it gives a +2 health that way. Founding the second city on that desert hill means the city won't be as strong as the one a bit further South could have been.

That assumes that health will be the limiting factor in that city, some time happyniss is the problem rather than health. Freshwater is a consideration, but only one of several considerations. Actually, south green dot is not adjacent to fresh water either, and has much more jungle, so it would be less healthy, at least untill the jungle is choped down.

7. If you want an early religion, I'd suggest going 100% towards it otherwise wait. I'm glad Fishing didn't cost us the religion, but I didn't choose fishing mainly because we had just that one lake tile and it seemed low priority.

yes, but with our finance trait it was one GOOD tile I did not need a worker to improve! As I said, this proved to be a mistake after I found rome and decided that the settler became ultra important, but it givs us an option we did not have. <shrug> at the time i thought eh 3 coins would make this at least a wash (3 turns to reserach, But gained back by the extra commerce.

8. The barracks, or whatever, I was using mainly as a placeholder while waiting for the city to grow, it wasn't 'set in stone' as a must have. :D That's a great feature, since the shield put towards something doesn't decay that fast. :)

LOL I used it the same way!

9. We don't need to squeeze the cities in like sardines anymore, so we need to pick the best places to build them even if we don't get every tile used. It's better to have optimal city placement more than it is to make sure we work every tile, especially mountains and desert, since early on at least, both of these tiles are useless and simply wasted space.

true, but all else being equal, a closer city has less maintainence, is connected quiker by the workers, and is easier to defend. a sloty overlap is fine if that is the best placement resource wise (although I am so glad ICS is gone).

I've played a few more games (started them at least) and have a better handle on what to do, regarding research, and such, or at least like to think I do. :D Usually while building the first warrior/scout and waiting for the city to grow, I've found is a good time to try to snag one of the early religions and/or flesh out the worker abilities so when one is finally brought out they can work on everything. :)

Yes, although I actually have had a lot of success going for monotheism about like we did, after a *few* worker tecks, if you do nto start with mystisism. The AIs, if they lose the budism/hinduism race, usually do not seem to go for mono until later. If you try to get all of the worker tech first you will not get mono in time.

grr double post

Variously:

Blocking Fred

We are not, from my perspective, blocking Fred in so much as we are making sure we have enough space. He can still escape to the southwest, and maybe the east. We are, in any event, going to wind up with "Our close borders spark tensions!" anyway, whether it's us settling those spots or him, so I can't really get behind that argument.

There are a couple of things we can do in the short term, though. #1 is simply garrison everything with skirms and laugh a lot when they try and attack us. #2, and this has worked well for me in two solo games thus far, is to go to organized religion (we can do this in 5 turns and should), crank a missionary, and make Berlin nice and happy and Jewish, which will cause Fred to convert, and be our best buddy anyway because the religious diplo bonus is gigantic.

Doing this to Caesar is probably a worthwhile plan, too.

Stonehenge

I'm all for leaping on Stonehenge with both feet, and having the workers run over to the stone and quarry it as soon as they get done. I think we're all in agreement on how great Stonehenge is.

Of course, we do need to be cranking lots more settlers sooner rather than later.

Religion

I think we get religious building culture bonuses regardless of the state religion, but I may be wrong. In any event, there's really no reason for us not to be Jewish with Organized Religion for a long time yet, for the obvious reasons.

Dotmapping

See attachment.

Commentary as per previous dotmap. I moved the NE Red Dot city a bit to snag the copper over the crabs, since NW Purple Dot will grab some as it is. Also note the existance of Black Dot in the far north, which is a totally craptacular "Well, at least we get all those furs" type of city. Definitely an "If we get around to it" sort of thing.

A bloodless coup ensues in Timbuktu and Tamerlane's ugly brother, Talamane, now sits on the throne. His plan is to build Stonehenge. A stone mine is commanded to be built. His majesty contemplates chopping the silk forests around the capital, since plantations he wishes to build later will necessitate their removal. He plans to institute Organized Religion. When his finance ministers questioned him as to how the royal treasury was supposed to pay for this, they were executed.

[00] 1680 BC Pre-flight looks good. Pottery will help our gigantic empire grow faster. And building it adds +1 health to the metro areas with corn, rice, and wheat, which are the resources we should be able to grab. Move one of our inexperienced warriors to Djenne since a settler will be built there. Scout some of the map towards the south, and hope to avoid the bears. Start Timbuktu on Stonehenge, due in 20.

[01] 1640 BC Since Timbuktu is food poor, creating priest specialists will be problematic, and our Great Person will probably be a Great Artist, if we build Parthenon. The Oracle is a possibility, but it requires marble to do so in a reasonable amount of time. We have marble, but it is way in the future.

[02] 1600 BC Frederick builds a city to the southeast of our capital near the cows and coast. Send warriors to scout it out. He has probably taken out the bears. Corn farm completes. Djenne will grow on the next turn.

[03] 1560 BC Start the workers on a quarry, which takes 8 long turns. Djenne can now complete the skirm in 6 turns, and will grow to size 3 in 5 turns. At size three, i will switch to settler.
[04] 1520 BC Pottery comes in, and we start on Priesthood (due in 4) to enable building the Oracle.
[05] 1480 BC Continue moving scouts to Fred's new town.
[06] 1440 BC Judaism spreads to Djenne, and to Berlin! Berlin is size 6, has wet rice and gems. It's garrisoned with three archers.
[07] 1400 BC Frederick converts to Judaism. It might not be possible to get a peek at his new town. I circumnavigate with the warrior.
[08] 1360 BC Priesthood complete, and start on Writing in 6. Bad news. It looks like Rome has settled just south of South Green Dot.
[09] 1320 BC Djenne makes its skirm, and i start it on a settler, due in 13.
[10] 1280 BC Worker will complete quarry next turn, start him on road. Talamane is killed in a chariot accident before he can institute Organized Religion, and a new ruler ascends to the throne.

Summary: Khan has been scouting our north (and no doubt likes what he sees), and the south is beginning to look crowded. We may want to send our settler to claim the horses/cows. Stonehenge is due in 10, remaining turns will drop in half when the stone quarry road completes. We can still settle on South Green Dot, and probably convert Rome to Judaism. I am glad i dont have to make that decision. I forgot to to throw the switch on the Organized Religion civic, before you do so, check to make sure we can afford it--it will speed up Stonehenge.

Am I in this game? I haven't been added to the player roster, but in the SG topic Ozzy said "The more the merrier," or something to that effect. I suppose I'd be on deck right now i I were the sixth person in the rotation.

Ragnoff: Blocking the AI's and having close borders is a factor in the game. It's either we get the spot first or he (AI) does, so I'd always vote in our favor. If you sign an "open borders" agreement they don't seem to mind as much anyway. Do you want Fred to dictate where we settle in the South? I don't. :D

Tidus: I think Speaker made the roster so I'll have to PM him to add you add the end of the list, so yes I'd say you're up next. :)

General: Looking good so far, but we need to keep cranking settlers, which my initial choice of city site hampered, oops. ICS may be dead, but REX sure isn't, as long as we can defend the cities and keep at least 50% going on science.

Regarding culture, umm, everyone does know that culture helps with defense and the rapidly expanding borders help close off vast tracts of land without having to immediately have a settler found another city there right? I suppose the question is do we want to use the religions as more of a 'denial' tactic to keep them from ghe AI, or to boost the culture of the cities where they found in and thus help expand the borders of our empire without having to build a ton of military? Remember in Civ4, unlike Civ3, borders actually are worth something and rapidly expanding culture can help a lot.

Just a thought, not saying we have to do things my way at all, but I'm a fan of somewhat peaceful border/territory expansion without having to divert everything to military if at all psosible. Unless it's an AW game or something.. :)

Preturn:

Adopt Organized Religion. Stonehenge now due in 9 turns. We have 97 gp in the bank and are running a -1 defecit as a result of our new upkeep costs.

Turn 1 (1240 B.C.) Quarry finishes, start on road.
IBT: Genghis Khan shows up asking for Open Borders. I agree.
Turn 2 (1200 B.C.): Not too much
Turn 3 (1160 B.C.): ditto
Turn 4 (1120 B.C.) Writing comes in, start on Theology. Spot a French scout to the north of Djenne-it’s Napoleon, who tell me to fear his Archer. Stonehenge is now due in two with stone hooked up.
Turn 5 (1080): I decide to start roading towards the NW red dot in an effort to close off our borders on that flank.
Turn 6 (1040) Stonehenge finishes in Timbuktu! Djenne’s borders expand. I decide to let Djenne finish its barracks.
Turn 7 (1000) I bring back our worker to start irrigating the land around our capitol.
Spot a Roman worker connecting his Elephant city to the rest of what I presume to be his empire. Lose a turn on Theology as I temporarily move one of Timbuktu’s pop units off of a river tile in order to speed up growth; once the farm is built, it can be switched back.
Turn 8 (975): Judaism spreads to Antium, the Roman Elephant city to our south.
Turn 9 (925): Djenne builds settler, starts worker. I hate to screw up its growth curve like this, but we really need another worker ASAP and once Timbuktu finishes its barracks it can fufill our military needs or build settlers as appropriate. Warrior/Settler pair heads north.
Turn 10 (900): Timbuktu finishes ‘rax, starts Skirmisher.

Sorry, no pictures this time :cry:

Got it, will probably play later tonight.

Arg, had a great report together when BSOD took it out. At least it didn't strike while I was playing.

Anyway, to make a long story short, Freddie has control of the two southern turquiose dots on Dwip's dotmap. I sent the settler toward the red dot on dwip's map, near the cows. Worked on getting a road to this city. Both of our mature cities are working on settlers; however, I noticed that there is barbarian cultural control in the north, so we may have to swap over to some military to deal with the threat. Two civs came knocking for open borders, but I turned them down.

If you are getting BSOD's after C4 has been running a while, chances are something in your computer is getting too hot, usually the video card.

Somehow, our player name became YOUR-KKXX5RXWD9, lol. I have no idea how to fix this.

Edit: I loaded the file into a hex editor and poked RB2c into the player name. It works. However, it looks like your file format is different from the others that have been loaded. This is new territory for me, so i was poking around. Did you startup the game in some odd way? (i find that hard to believe, i presume you loaded DeceasedHorse's game and went from there) . Was it an autosave?

Ozy? If you want i can post a "fixed" save of his game.

If you are getting BSOD's after C4 has been running a while, chances are something in your computer is getting too hot, usually the video card.

Somehow, our player name became YOUR-KKXX5RXWD9, lol. I have no idea how to fix this.

Edit: I loaded the file into a hex editor and poked RB2c into the player name. It works. However, it looks like your file format is different from the others that have been loaded. This is new territory for me, so i was poking around. Did you startup the game in some odd way? (i find that hard to believe, i presume you loaded DeceasedHorse's game and went from there) . Was it an autosave?

Ozy? If you want i can post a "fixed" save of his game.

Actually, yes it was an autosave. I hit a wierd bug on about turn 3 when Caesar came calling asking for open borders. Basically, the deals area obscured the diplomatic area. It allowed me to click "yes," to the deal,"not a chance" was obscured, so I couldn't click it. So I reloaded the autosave from the turn before and then clicked no to his proposal.

Somehow, our player name became YOUR-KKXX5RXWD9, lol. I have no idea how to fix this.


Alt-D brings up details on your civ and let's you rename the leader.

Thanks a bunch, LK. I hope someone makes a list of all the undocumented features soon. Was this feature in Civ3? I can't recall. Shift-D was diplomacy, IIRC.

Edit: Sheesh, ALT-D is in the book.:eek:

So where are we at? whos turn is it?

Ozy is up and you are on deck.

ok, been a day and a half, hate to skip the captain though. If I do not see a got it by this evening, I will play it.

Well, could I get a second opinion, should I skip?

In the interests of keeping the game moving, I'd say go for it. We can always swap Ozy and you for this round if he shows up soon.

OK Got it, playing soon (ozy if you post a got it before I am done with turns we will go with your turns).

The second Ragnoff dynasty takes the throw in much to the dismay of the people. They are screaming where is Ozymandous is dynasty? They at least didn't screw everything up!!!! However, a spokesperson for the Ragnoff that the Tidus dynasty has left the Empire, and since the Ozymandous dynasty is for some reason the seriously absent (Ragnoff dynasty’s spokesperson make sure he's paid off the people who are terrorizing Ozymandous and his descendents in their house). Somebody has to lead the Empire! Several families, both common and noble, eagerly volunteer, as their ancestors recorded how questionable the first Ragnoff dynasty affected these groups volunteered was greatly helpful, all dissenters rounded up and executed one fell swoop.

The advisers are summoned. These are all new families than before, and seem eager to prove how much better they are as of the previous Ragnoff dynasty's advisers by taking the current Ragnoff, Ragnoff the devout, through all the decisions of that original dynasty and the succeeding dynasties pointing out all their problems. They particularly wanted to show how bad the tightest dynasty was (guessing here that they're looking for justification for the coup I mean sudden departure of the Tidus).

First, finances. It turns if we both 90% of our empire's production to the wise men, we will discover Theology in 14 turns and add one coin profit or 94 per turn. If we run at 100%, will lose three per turn, but Theology would finish in 12th. As the Ragnoff dynasty will not likely stay in power long enough to see the treasury run dry, sciences ordered full. That brings us to sciences. Why have the last two dynasties been researching Theology? We have one religion, and it doesn't look like were in position to build the chapel. The dynasty decides that, while were not certain why Theology is being researched, we will not anger as the descendents of two former dynasties by switching away. Besides, they can't blame this one on us.

The military's not particularly strong. We have six units, one guarding each city, one guarding the worker that's connecting the distant city, and two that are in cities producing settlers for escorts. While this is not particularly strong, one additional soldiers being produced, and the others will have to wait until we have finished the settlers. There's a barbarian village to our north, which I doubt that I'll be able to deal with during my dynasty. As far as the city plays and goes, there is one spot left in the south we could take along the river, which would get us gems. There are a couple places along the coast to the east. One of the original spots chosen would now be right on Germany's border, but would still get wheat, fish, and, if we push Germany's borders back one, spices. This is the original turquoise dot, and I say we teach Frederick a lesson! Although I will be the one building it, because of the barbarians, I would argue that south purple but should move one studies used to the other side of the river. This the city will then take up both the ivory and the cows. This makes Southeast red dot not as good a city, I don't see astounding that for a long time anyways, and we could possibly turn that into another coastal fishing village. I'll try to settle due South and East. This I would think is more dangerous if we didn't have our religion already spread to both Rome and Germany, and both like us at the moment. This will mostly seal the continent, although Rome would still be able to slip someone in to the north until culture growth seals that route.

Speaking of religion, we got God. More importantly, Germany and Rome also have our God! Given the chance, will try to get a set of missionaries started so that they can be sent to what should be each of the three godless cities we will own. The one in the south and east are particularly important, as we need to start pushing borders back with those cities. Ragnoff the Devout is happy to hear this, and orders the advisers to go find something useful to do! It is time to start the next dynasty!”

(1) 625 B.C. - Worker starts a road on the cow pasture. Another section on the road finished in the north.

(2) 600 B.C. - Julius Caesar has built another city, northeast of Rome, almost between Djenne and Kumbi Saleh. The road on the pastor finishes in the worker is ordered to build the road to Timbuktu. The other workers moved adjacent to Kumbi Saleh and starts to pasture before the road that will connect the city to the rest of the Empire.

(3) 575 B.C. - Genghis Khan has canceled his open borders with us, the heathens following a different religion and is getting difficult.

(4) 550 B.C. - Kumbi Saleh has its orders expand. It still does not quite connect to the central region, but there is now only two rows of hexes between them.

(5) 525 B.C. - Kumbi Saleh Gross to size 2. Worker next to Timbuktu is ordered to start cutting the forest on silk plantation directly south of the city.

(6) 500 B.C. - a settler finishes in Djenne, and missionaries are started. The settler is sent south. A skirmisher finishes in Kumbi Saleh, and a work boat is started. The worker in that area finishes the pasture and begins connecting the city with a road.

(7) 475 B.C. - a skirmisher in the north, having stopped on top of the hill to confirm the new Roman city, is now moving towards a hill outside the barbarian city to check its size. If we end out been able to take that city at size 2 or more, we would capture instead of destroying I believe. Hamburg adopts Judaism, and now we can see where that other German city is.

(8) 450 B.C. – Gao is founded to the south. It sits right where the southern river splits east and west. When the borders grow one, and will incorporate a hill with gems. Although this is a particularly great city at the moment, it is almost entirely surrounded by grassland (although much of it has jungle were forced on it). Because it was on the river system, it is already considered connected to the capital no roads needed, although we probably will need roads eventually. As I see this eventually becoming a large city, and as I was able to move a skirmisher is there for a garrison, I start a granary here. The next emperor is free to override this.

(9) 425 B.C. - the forest chop finishes and causes the settler to finish. A missionary is started there as well. I start the settler moving towards what was the original North turquoise dot. I'm more and more confident we should still found that city. The next dynasty will start with the settler and a skirmisher on the hill 2 spots east of the location I am advocating. After one expansion, we will get both fish and we cheer, and if the expansion pushes back the border of Germany, spices. We'll also steal an improve grassland tile. The skirmisher to the north reveals a size 2 barbarian city, guarded by three archers! Archers are not good against us. I pulled the other skirmisher off his guard duty for the worker, who is now roading his way toward the horses within the boundaries of Kumbi Saleh.

(10) 400 B.C. – 2 skirmishers by the barb village.
http://img427.imageshack.us/img427/928/ragnoff117jv.jpg
This is not enough to take the city, but if they both move to the same adjacent spot the barbarian may attack out, which our skirmishers should do well at.

Road on silk plantations. I would get him to road toward the new city, but I left him for you to choose. As for teh new city, I would put it where originally planned, the solid circle. THe outline circle is an alternate spot. We have really good relations with fredrick, so I do nto think the colid cirle would provoke an attack. The 2 queued missionaries NEED to go to the two new cities for culture borders.
http://img427.imageshack.us/img427/9971/ragnoff105gz.jpg
Here is a big culture map.
http://img427.imageshack.us/img427/2364/ragnoff096br.jpg

Ozymandous (Captain) (skiped)
Ragnoff (Finished)
Dwip (Up now)
Talamane (on deck)
DeceasedHorse
Tidus4444

Just finished up my 2nd practice game (Mali, Noble) and i founded 5 religions (turned off diplomatic, which was stupid, since i founded 5 religions :smoke:). You would think i would have won, but i lost the space race to Bismarck by 4 turns in 1996 AD :cry:. Same setup as here, Rome and Germany are neighbors. One of Rome's cities flipped to me, but i tried to keep my nose clean, and it did not pay.

Considering our situation here, my gut feeling is pointy stick. We need to get really big--which is problematic in C4 (maintenance). Once the other continent is trading, the AI will NOT TRADE TECHS to the human, whilst they trade like crazy amongst themselves.

Taking cities is hard. You must have siege, and you must have combined arms. To take that barb city, you will need at least 1+ skirms vs the defenders. In my 5 religion game, i had skirms that had xp vs archery and it was still dicey.

Sorry, had a long weekend and did not expect both other players to finish Friday night.

I can jump in here or wait another round, up to Dwip and everyone else.

Erm, either way, TURN OFF STATE RELIGION if we have more than one, becasue you're -killing- the extra culture per turn that we'd have in Timbuktu.

With Stonehenge we don't need to add a missionary for each city but it doesn't hurt because the free ob will expand borders in 10 turns after the city's founded.

If we haven't already we need to get Bronze & Iron Working as the next two tech's after Theology. Lots of Jungle to clear and the Swordsmen/Axemen might come in handy.

First, as their has not been a got it, why don't you grab it Ozy.

Second, if we are building buildings the +25% is better than the +culture as the + culture ONLY applies in cities that have more than one religion. Right now, we have 2 cites with state religion, 3 cities with none. Turning off state religion is ONLY useful if you are going for a cultural 3 city victory AND several cities in the empire have multiple religions (not the case at the moment). Our captial is not where we need the benifits right now, IMHO and we can really use the +25% to builds to get granaries and baraks up. Even when Theology founds another religion, as it is unlikely to found in our capital, be VERy careful about turning off organized religion in several citys for cultural benifits in one. Next, State religions provid a happiness benifit, which are hard to come by in the early going before our cities are set up and all the happiness benifits realized. Finally, realize since both Germany and Rome are adopting Judiems, realise that we are getting diplomatic benifits while we have the same state religion, so be sure that abandoning the state religion does nto lead to war! I agree that there are times it is better to run no religion and get more cultural beifits, I disagree the simple preasance of more than one religion means no state religion is hte only right choice!!!! There are advantages to each!!!! (Not saying you don't know that Ozy, just seems like you are kinda berating us for a choice that may have 2 situationally correct answers rather than one right answer always.)

Third, although we get the free OB, we are in a culture war for boarders in the 2 new cities, so missionaries will be VERY helpful to not loose tiles to Rome and steal some from Germany - both of whom have some culture in the neighborring cites. One missionary is 1 turn from complete, one is 2 turns. Use them in the south city (Gao) and in the city that you will found in the East, on Fredericks border (which I still advocate for the solid blue dot).

Ragnoff

Oh, and could i make a request? if you start researching a tech, ESPECIALLY on that will take 1 or 2 full dynasties to complete, please explain WHY. I continued Theology, even though I think we will get little or no benifits from having done so this early, and we are ingoring other techs that I think would be QUITE valuable. however, as there was no explaination of why Theology, I was worried about changing it and messing up some agreed on plan.

Even if for some reason your report gets eaten by the great soul of the machine, PLEASE explain choices that will affect futre players. Otherwise, we will, as a group, act haphazardly!

As far as my ongoing discussion about state religion vs organized religion and Judism, I hope you will all realize this is a discussion! i have a strong opinion, but only in discussing them can we see the various advantages to others style of play!

BTW, Sirian or Sullla, are you reading our thread? would love some opinions or comments (or even knowing people are interested in what we do!)

All right, then "Got it".

And Ragnoff.. Since you have all the answers about how 'State Religion' is the -only- way to go I won't comment on that anymore. *shrugs* Sound fair? Good.

Should we swap away from Theology when I get the save then? It seems that we don't really need about another boring religion and the FIVE culture per turn we'll get if we found it first. That five extra culture to close off borders, push back opposing borders or anything like that.

Sigh, I am sorry, I don't think it is the only way to go. But it did not seems you were considering the alternative to No State religion.

I will stop posting opinions, I mistakenly thought talking these out would be a learnign experience.

Theology will finish within a turn or 2, might as well finish it.

There are advantages and disadvantages to running a state religion. On the positive side, you get an additional happy face in cities with your state religion and the ability to use the civics in the Religion column, many of which are quite powerful. On the negative side, you lose out on any culture that you would be getting from your non-state religions and holy cities.

Which is the preferable course of action? That entirely depends upon the situation. :) In RB1, we flip-flopped back and forth between having a state religion and not having one as the situation dictated. We also changed our own religion frequently for the same reason (although that's not typical of most games!) before finally settling on Judaism. There is no "one right answer" when it comes to this question. If there is confusion as to what path should be taken, usual SG protocol is to ask the other team members what their opinion is, and then come to a consensus. Both positions here have merit - let's just try to be careful so that no one's feelings are hurt. :)

Everyone just calm down, mmkay?

To throw my two cents in here, I do think that theology was a suspicious decision (but like Ragnoff I decided to keep with it since the previous dynasty had thought it was important). However, since we're only a few turns from researching it now, we might as well nab it. As for state religion, I think for now we should keep it, but if we get Christianity and it spreads a bit we should swap to nothing so we can reap the benefits from culture.

BTW, does the +4 culture/turn for each religion just count in the founding city? Or is it every city that has the religion will get +4 culture/turn? Big difference there.

Sorry, folks. It was DeceasedHorse that started on theology--i finished priesthood and started writing (for diplomacy). The reasoning is sound, however, based on my experiences with other continent games. Denial.

If any of our neighbors had gotten it, they would have switched to it immediately, and the diplo situation (as well as the shrine cash) would have tanked.

Usually a religion will found in another city, if you have more than one. In all likelihood, it will found in Djenne, but it appears to be an RNG thing.

Of course, one can get carried away with this, like my 5 religion game. Somewhere, there is a happy medium. :confused:

400 BC (1):

I take a look around and realize that we’ve only founded one religion (so far), so the whole debate about state religion or not is moot. Depending on if we get Christianity and where it founds (last city built I think) I may or may not change from state religion if the added culture will help our borders expand to close off our hinterlands.

Looking around I change Djenne to settler, due in 8, in hopes of grabbing a site to the SW of that city. If we’re really lucky we might even get a second city there on the coast between the two rivers and next to the banana’s. I also swap Timbuk to settler (due in 12) and hope to chop the forest on top of the silk to the SE of the city since it would be chopped later when the plantation is built there and would do us more good now.

I’m also curious if that work boat being built in Kumbi will be able to grab the fish on that ocean square since we don’t have a tech that allows ocean travel, but I guess we’ll find out.

The Settler on the East coast I send to the grassland spot in hopes that we can get there and found the city in two turns. I very briefly debate turning down research on Theology in hopes that Christianity would be founded in the new city, but veto that pretty quickly mainly because I don’t know if that’s how the Holy Cities are picked, but mainly because I don’t want to loose the religion and the benefit’s it would garner.

One of the North Skirm’s I auto move to help escort one of the South Settlers. Due to arrive in 6.


375 BC (2):

Christianity founded in Kumbi in the NW. I check and see what the difference is since we’re spiritual and suffer no anarchy. Kumbi goes from 1 to 6 culture per turn. This means that as is, the borders will expand to close off the narrow path to our back areas in 14 turns as opposed to 40+ if we kept a State Religion. Gao is the only city building a building right now so I don’t feel the loss is that acute. Free missionary sent to Djenne in hopes that an extra +1 culture will generate per turn there since Timbuk’s next expansion is not for over 4000+ more culture.

Skirm outside the Barb city on the hill fortifies to watch and wait on the Swordsmen we will hopefully be able to build when IW comes in next (9 turns).

Worker near the Kumbi horses moves up to road/pasture them and the worker near Timbuk start’s the chop, forest cleared in 4.


350 BC (3):

We find out that we’re in 5th place for Technology. :( The work boat completes in Kumbi and I queue up a Skirm. No barracks there but we’ll need another escort for that second settler out of our cities.


325 BC (4):

The settler did make it to the Eastern Green dot and Walata is founded. Library queue’d up to help fight the culture war there. The missionary from Kumbi successfully spreads Christianity to Djenne and boosts culture there to +3/turn. Borders expected to expand (as long as no one changes us back to a State Religion) in Kumbi in 12 turns and Djenne in 11 which close off the back lands sooner rather than later. :) Please, please, please wait for our borders to expand before swapping back, thanks! :)


300 BC (5):

Borders to Gao expand and I finally catch a clue and realize a temple might be better there than the granary that was queued. Temple queued up instead of the granary and due in 19.

The forest near Timbuk is cleared and both settlers now due in 4. :D If we get both site’s to the SW we’ll have a way to both coasts, or at least what is hopefully the other ocean there.


275 BC (6):

Judaism spreads to Walata on its own so later we can swap back the state religion once we’re constructing more buildings and less units. Worker on the forest set to “road to” the gem’s south of Gao. That hill, when mined, will provide both gem’s and hammers. The worker should arrive on the hill about the time IW is discovered.


250 BC (7):

Kumbi builds a Skirm, I queue up a Christian temple to help with culture. Due in 6 with the city growing in 4. We need more workers so that might be a good place to pump out the occasional worker in between everything.

“Escort” Skirm sent to the SW city site, due to arrive in 3.


225 BC (8):

Moved a worker. IW due in 2, science funding slowed down so we don’t go broke. :D


200 BC (9):

Two settlers produced and IW due in 1. I queued the settlers and the skirmishers to the proposed city sites to the SW, the furthest one is due in 5.
With the settlers produced two Jewish missionaries are now both due in one turn each.


175 BC (10):

Two missionaries built, one sent to Kumbi and the other sent to the SW for the first site on the river. Hopefully Judaism will move to the other city there naturally.

The borders of Walata expand but still don’t push the German border back. We seriously need to build lots of culture buildings there sooner rather than later.

Settlers and their escorts on the way to their site’s to the SW (see pic). We have iron, but we NEED MORE WORKERS!

http://ozymandous.home.mindspring.com/Public_Stuff/Civ4/Civ4ScreenShot0001_8X6.JPG

IW came in, Meditation picked for lack of something better, due in 4.

A worker and a Judaism temple queued for Timbuk and Djenne respectively. Borders due to expand in 5-6 turns to close off that corridor as long as no state religion is chosen, then it might take a –bit- longer since both cities flanking the corridor are benefiting from both religions we founded. Right now the discount on constructing buildings isn’t worth it, IMHO, compard to the benefits of securing our back area from another civ. With our borders closed we can be a bit more liesurely about settling back there as our economy can stand it. Just do not agree to any Open Border agreements till we have all the city spots that we want founded.

We need lots more workers, then military, then settlers to secure/populate our back areas while not over expanding hopefully.

For what it's worth, I know both of the SW city spots are a bit out there but I'd rather have more land than less and I think we can hold onto the cities as long as we start producing more military to fortify them, our other cities and our back lines. That's common sense I know, more military can secure better, but if we don't get the land the other civ's will and if it comes down to us benefiting or another group benefitting I'd rather it be us. :)

Should get interesting from here on out.

Ozymandous (Captain) (Finished round 2)
Ragnoff (Finished round 2)
Dwip (Up now - waiting for got it)
Talamane (on deck)
DeceasedHorse
Tidus4444


Ozy, PLEASE do not take this as critisism, these are questions because I do not under stand why you did a few things you did!!!!

1) First, do you remember if the work boat was able to get the fish? I thought they could go anywhere withing your cultural borders, but I could be wrong.

2) Missionaries and temples. On the temple in Gao, When I passed off the game Gao did not have a religion, no religion=no temple. That was one reason the missionary was ready in one turn. Did Gao get religion on its own? And were you thinking that is what would happen? Not sure why you delayed those if you were switching to no state relegion for culture benifits (although getting those setterlers out was GREAT!) Not saying I diagree, the only reason I choose missionaries is i knew we wanted culture and was not sure what else to do!!!!

3) have you divded an empire like we will be doing to Rome before? is the AI smart enough to get annoyed about it? I think that, if it works, we might pressure that Roman city to the south and culture flip it if we make that a goal of ours! I would never have thought of the tactic you are trying, this could be cool!

3) What tech did you go for after Tho? (I am prolly just missing it) and what direction do you think we should go with tech?

Finally for everyone:
How big can we get before the combination of number of cites and distance before the maintainence costs slow us? What techs/civics can we get oto combat this?

As you found cites, please note the rising maintainence costs so we can track those.

Edited to Add: Doh, i realized i could open up the save and answer some of my own questions! lol

1) good, the fish worked!
2) Ironworking, right, you mentiond this a few times <kick self> why meditation after?
Dwip PLEASE turn off organized religion, we are paying 2gpt for a civic that does noting without a state religion. Right now most cities get the same culture with org and Judism or no Judism, but the 2 that get more, as Ozy noted, are exactly the 2 that can close the Northern culture borders.

I see it, and will most likely play tomorrow.

Without having looked at the game, a couple things.

1. Fred's culture borders are going to continue to be an issue for pretty much ever, since he'll always be generating that extra +2 cpt. So like Ozy said, more culture the better down that way.

2. That whole business with cutting off Rome worries me. I'll go ahead and do it, I think, but we need to be super-wary about A) being out-cultured by Caesar's cities and B) annoying him overly much*.My preferred method, if we decide we want some land, is to concentrate on building our more defensible core in the north, then pick either Caesar or Fred, and take his stuff. I think the way we're going now has lots of risk and not a lot of hope of payoff.

* - This has happened to me - my outculturing of a city turned a fairly good coreligionist friend almost into an enemy, and in that game I'm expecting to be invaded any time now.

3. Have we been doing anything about that barb city, which btw needs to be razed? I didn't see anything.

Ragnoff:

No worries, since we only had one religion originally before Theology, choosing that as State Religion was a no-brainer, especially since we're Spiritual with no penalties.

As you noted, some answers..

1.) Yah the boat made it. I meant to note that but was talking to a frined at the time as well as trying to take notes and play and goofed a little.

2.) Gao already had Judaism in it when I got the save, not sure when it spread there naturally but assuming the missionary to Kumbi works we'll soon have Judaism in all our cities except the new ones.

I should have started the temple there before but I wasn't thinking. Ah well, at least with hammers not being lost production is kept.

FYI, as far as I know, a city will generate culture per turn for each religion you have as long as certain civic's aren't used and/or a state religion declared. For example, Djenni had three culture per turn because it had an OB and Judaism and Christianity with no state religion or civic like theocracy to hinder the religions there.

I may be wrong but from things I have seen I think that's how it works. If someone knows differently please let us know. :)

3.) No I've not divided an empire before, but I don't see it as much different than "hemming one in" as we're trying to do with Germany as well. I guess we'll find out shortly, but that's why I said we need to build more military. :D

3 (a?)) Iron Working, then Meditation.

Oops about keeping Organized Religion on, :smoke: move on my part, sorry about that.

Dwip:

1.) Yep, have to make sure we get both religions in Mala so it's even, and then boost every culture related thing there we can in that city.

2.) I agree, we'll have to boost all the culture related buildings in those cities as well, both temples as well as monasteries, etc. We need more military in general to secure the back lines anyway, so I don't see much difference.

3.) I didn't do anything with that barb city other than watch it grow. Swordsmen are among the best to sack a city with and we didn't have that till the end of my turn.

We seriously need to get one city cranking nothing but troops for the next 20 game turns to secure all our area's. Skirm's are pretty cheap and a handful of Axemen/Pikes and Swordsmen should do well to secure our area's and clear out any barb's hopefully.

BTW our empire name has one too many Cs in it, my fault. Please use alt-d and rename us to RB2c!

About the barbs, Ozy figured we need swordsman, but ironworking only arrived at the end of his turn. So basically, it is your call.

Looking at the save, there is a "farthest SW" skirmisher, I would move that first and hope all the automatic moves do not happen. If they do not, that skirmisher can move one more SW to a hill. From that hilltop you should be able to tell if there is ba 4th Romab city down there. (I would seriously rethink that fathest SW city if there is. that would be a city just begging to flip to the Romans if it has roman towns on 3 sides)

BTW our empire name has one too many Cs in it, my fault. Please use alt-d and rename us to RB2c!

About the barbs, Ozy figured we need swordsman, but ironworking only arrived at the end of his turn. So basically, it is your call.

Looking at the save, there is a "farthest SW" skirmisher, I would move that first and hope all the automatic moves do not happen. If they do not, that skirmisher can move one more SW to a hill. From that hilltop you should be able to tell if there is ba 4th Romab city down there. (I would seriously rethink that fathest SW city if there is. that would be a city just begging to flip to the Romans if it has roman towns on 3 sides)

We needed IW for the swordsmen yes, but -also- to help clear out all that jungle. Unless you wanted to keep that nice tropical atmosphere around our poorly producing cities just because it looks good? :lol:

There is no Roman city down there that I could see to the SW (can't hurt to check though) and the border right above that furthest city spot, above the banana's, just expanded there in the last few turns because it wasn't there earlier. I'd imagine that's either the the 100 or maybe 500 (is there one?) culture border expansion from Rome itself since that was the first city in that direction we found.

I wouldn't expect that (Rome) border to expand greatly for now unless they pull a GA or build a wonder or two, and if we pump a lot of culture out of that city via temples, etc, we should be fairly safe with it, IMHO. Let's try not to run around screaming the sky is falling and be afraid to take a chance or two in this game, it's supposed to be a "test" game anyway, right? :D

Let's not forget that a good "culture bomb" or a few rushed wonders would easily swing the 'culture war' in our favor there and in other places but we have to have the city(s) settled first and then work towards those goals, not huddle up and be afraid to peek out from behind the doorframe worried the "boogey man" is going to get us. :)

As Sulla mentioned, there is a serious tradeoff between culture and xp'd military units (via theocracy civic) when you have choices with multiple religions. We can get xp from clearing out barbs, but at some point in the game, a medieval "holy war" is probably in the mix. With vasselage and theocracy (both expensive, btw) we can get +4 xp and +2 with barracks for a total of +6. After we have cranked out the troops, we can go back to previous civics to save money. We have to wait 5 turns between revolutions, so it's not considered an exploit.

You gotta love a game that gives you these choices and forces you to make these decisions. :crazyeye:

Edit: Trying out a game with no state religion (founded 2) and found that diplomacy is less problematic. There is no "we are disappointed that you have fallen under a heathen religion" crappola.:goodjob:

[0] 175 BC - We sure do have issues, and lots of them. We may or may not be winning in the land race, but we're sure not doing fantastic in the culture wars. Our army is...anemic. If we had invented rifles, they'd be wooden. The barb city in our back lines has almost as many archers as we have guys, period. Must be fixing this.

IBT - Caesar has culture border down next to SW red dot.

[1] 150 BC - I was going to have our settler bug out, but he was, er, on a goto.

[2] 125 BC - Kumbi Temple-Rax. Missionary spreads Judaism in Kumbi. I am almost completely unexcited about the red dot cities at this point, but go ahead and found Niani anyway, and convert it to Judaism. Continue to get screwed by random gotos. Argh.

IBT - In that epic struggle between barb archer and fortified on forested hill skirm, we somehow win. OTOH, Kumbi's got issues.

[3] 75 BC - Meditation comes in, start Monarchy for lack of a better idea.

IBT - Horses near Kumbi get pillaged.

[4] 50 BC - Djenne Temple->Rax.

[5] 25 BC - Our skirm up north continues to win vs barb archers.

[6] 1 AD - Kumbi Rax->Skirm. North skirm promoted to Combat I. Awdaghost founded on me SE red dot.

[7] 25 AD - Belatedly remember to switch off Organized Religion. :smoke:

IBT - Turn down Open Borders with Fred.

[8] 50 AD - Timbuktu Worker->Skirm.

IBT - Turn down Open Borders with Khan.

[9] 75 AD - Kumbi Skirm->Skirm. Gao Temple->Granary.

[10] 100 AD - Djenne Rax->Skirm.

We are, more or less, set up to go take down Alemanni now. REMEMBER TO RAZE IT. On second thought, I might have had Djenne train another settler, because we have another 3 or 4 dots to be settling.

And here's us:

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads10/rb2c_100ad.jpg

"Random GOTO's"? :lol: I pointed them out in my last report, and after the first check revealed the Roman city there I figured you would have realized to send the settler heading to the furthest spot back. :D Assuming that's who you meant (I don't think I had any others on 'goto'.)

Any particular reason why the new city in the SW is building a scout? Just curious. And yah, we need to dedicate a good city or three to military and workers, more than settlers right now, IMHO.

I thought a general custom, if not rule, on RB succession games was you dont leave units with any automated orders, although I might be mixing the RB series and the LK series. That is why i left the settler in progress on no orders in my save. AS this was my first succession game, I had not wanted to say anything earlier..

Second question, why raze the barb city? why not make use of the fact it is a settler we do not have to make, for a city that will have pop already? Unless your concer is maitances costs, which are alread getting high. But if that is the case, should we fould any more cites right now?

Barbs cities are usually on good sites. If there are (or were) 3 defenders, they will usually stand once you take them. If not, they will usually autoraze. Several posters have stated that some of their best cities were ex-barb.

Got it. Will play tomorrow. Need a question answered before I do. Do we want to keep making that scout in Niani?

Random gotos - Apparently my reading comprehension sucks, because I read the relevant posts twice before playing, and still missed it. That and, as Ragnoff points out, I'm not exactly accustomed to recieving gotos in SGs. This makes the second time ever, I think. Oh well.

I've been using Kumbi for skirm producing, because it can make them in 2 turns. I definitely think Djenne needs to go back to settlers, though, and maybe Kumbi could fit one in, too. I'd rather have our last cities founded sooner rather than later.

As far as Alemanni goes, if the position on it didn't totally suck, and didn't completely ruin the dotmap, I'd be all for keeping it, since I'm a firm believer in the greatness of barb cities. But the position does, and it does ruin it, so I think it should be razed and replaced.

As far as the scout goes, I wanted it as filler production before cranking a worker, without spending zillions of turns on a temple. This may be :smoke:, though we COULD handle some more scouting. I wouldn't be opposed to cranking a galley real quick in Kumbi, either.

Him, I would be in favor of leaving the city rather than replacing it, dot maps are just maps, (i.e. no plan survives first contact) and can be altered and replaced. I will take a look at the save and see if we would be shooting ourselves in teh feet with this, but I did not think so.

If the border between Kumbi and Djenne has closed, fell fr