I'm sure we've all had the time to have our share of pitched battle in this game we know and love.
Who wants something much more relaxing?

Builder's Game
Civilization: Romans
Traits: Organized/Expansive
Map Size: Large
Land Type: Pangaea
Number of opponents: 3
All other settings default

Variant Rule: We don't declare war. Ever. We at no point in time will press the Red Button. If somebody attacks us, then bust out the :hammer::hammer::hammer:, but until then we remain strictly peaceful. This probably rules out Conquest and Domination as victory conditions, but we'll see what happens >D.

Roster:
BotlGnomz (on deck!)
Panth (just played!)
KabeDerlin (up!)
Mike Lemmer
Tundra Wolf -=retired=-

Who wants to have a nice relaxing builder's game? Salads come free :lol:

There is a always peace button on teh custom game setup screen...

I know, but that's no fun.
I want there to be the possibility of conflict, because otherwise it's just boring =/

Sure, I'm in.

Do we have a specific goal other than not declaring?

Oh, and I'd prefer not to start but I will if need be.

I'll be starting. It's custom for the initiator to start the game ;).
We're trying to play a peaceful game and win in a peaceful way. This game is pretty much meant as a joint learning experience for those of us who are relatively new to SGs and Civ4 in general, though if an experienced player would like to come on board to guide us, we'd appreciate it :D.

I'll join up. It'll be my first Civ 4 Succession game, but Im in.

I'll join in as well.

And I'll grab the last spot :goodjob:

Very well then. Our roster is set. Let's try for a 24/48 rotation (24 hours to "got it", 48 to play and post).
I will play twenty turns to start, then the rest of you will play fifteen, then beginning with our second rotation we will play ten turns each.
I'll post the first turnlog and save later today.

Great to see a bunch of new faces in the SG forums.
BTW you guys need a makeover so go get a new avatar once you get 30 posts and a month on the site. These people love doing it...Avatar Thread (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=99969&page=105)
Panda boy Whomper is a Mistfit creation. :cool:

I hope to SG with you sometime in the future. You can find me anywhere the idiots hang out. :crazyeye: Good luck you peaceniks! :D

I had just reappeared here at the forums a couple weeks ago when I found out Civ IV was out - the last time I was here before that was 2002 I think.

So yeah, my avatar's a bit dated :lol:

4000 (1): Listen to Leonard Nimoy read from the Bible. kfinewhatever. Aha, here we are! We are BGZ01 of the Romans. The start is on a freshwater lake with gratuitous river. We have THREE Ivories, TWO silks, and a moocow with a hut on top nearby. Found on recommended site. Hut pops a Scout, Rome starts a Warrior.
3960 (2): Since I got a Scout and don't feel like another, start researching Mysticism. Warrior heads W while Scout heads E. We have corn to the NE.
3920 (3): Pigs to the NE.
3880 (4): Another corn to the W. Spot a hut to the E.
3840 (5): Pop hut, get 46 g.
3800 (6): Borders expand.
3760 (7): Mysticism comes in, start Polytheism, due in 10.
3720 (8): See hut in W. Wheat to the E, by the pigs.
3680 (9): Warrior built in Rome, another dialed up for defense. The new warrior starts heading north.
3640 (10): Pop hut, crack a SETTLER! :beer: [party] :dance:. The settler heads NE to grab the corn, spotting a cow within range. Yauss.
3600 (11): New warrior spots a cow and hut in the N. Move settler in position to settle next turn; on fresh water, with irrigatable corn, a cow in range, and Horses in range to the north. Yay. Four peaks in range, but I'll count my blessings :lol:. Western Warrior continues on his way, sees clams. Scout finds more cows in the east.
3560 (12): Warrior pops hut, gets 60g. Scout finds another hut. Settler founds Antium which starts working on a Warrior to play defense. Reveals a hut that will be cracked when the borders expand.
3520 (13): Warr finds ocean to the north. Another hut in the W. Scout pops hut and gets 32 g.
3480 (14): More silk to the N. Clams to the NE.
3440 (15): Panther attack our W warrior, kills one figure before dying. Rome finishes warrior, starts Worker. Warrior fortifies. Western warrior pops hut and gets 32g.
3400 (16): Polytheism comes in, Hinduism founded in ANTIUM. Start agriculture for the corn, with plan for the next guy to pick up Animal Husbandry for cows and horses, then Hunting for the ivory. Buddhism founded in distant land. Scout pops hut in E, gets 54g. Start conversion to Hinduism.
3360 (17): zzzz
3320 (18): Wolves attack W warr, promotes. Woodsman I, baby!
3280 (19): Wine found in the N. Antium's borders expanded when I wasn't looking, probably last turn. Checking the event log, popping the hut yielded 78 g. Yay?
3240 (20): Hut found in W. Next guy gets to pop it, and gets all the blame if it yields yokels :lol:. Scout makes contact with Genghis Khan far to the E, in a desert peninsula. If we expand REALLY aggressively to the E, there's a chokepoint we can cut him off at. But that doesn't seem to be in the spirit of the game, so let's be nice to our buddy Genghis, especially as he didn't found Buddhism :goodjob:.

Some screenshots and dotmapping:
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads10/romedotmap1.JPG

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads10/romedotmap2.JPG

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads10/romedotmap3.JPG

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads10/romedotmap4.JPG

Lots of wasted tiles, but there's a lot of space on this map. We can afford to waste tiles; in fact, since we'll be having a lot more cities for the map size than normal, we want each and every city to be worth its maintenance cost.
It seems like the majority of our expansion will be either to the E or the NW. South is mostly jungle, and I didn't bother heading that way yet. We may want to train an extraneous warrior to go down thataway and see what lies beyond. From my rough pre-Stonehenge guess, we are slightly north of the equator.
Thoughts? Panth is up! I'll be editing the roster in the first post to reflect our position in the rotation.

I'm new to this. I realize the dotmap is ideas for city placement but do the specific colors indicate a particular order?

I think we should drop the green dot down one tile. We'd still get the corn, we'd lose the pigs for a while, but we could gain them back easily with some cultural expansion (which in a building game we're sure to do). We'd also lose the two desert tiles from the immediate vacinity and put two new hills for mining into the vacinity. What are you guys thoughts?

Ah, sorry, forgot to indicate my suggested order. I think we should grab red dot, blue dot, and pink dot first and wait for better intelligence. green dot was just a suggestion; lack of intelligence in that area cripples my dotmapping ability. I'm not sure whether to pair Porky with the corn or the wheat. One of the next two players should be able to provide us with more information; I suggest another Scout coming out of Rome soon, once we get Hunting.

Sounds good to me.

Wow, we got a great start. Antium looks to be a strong city all around with Rome being more geared toward commerce...

I agree with your dotmap Gnomz but I think that at first glance, the Green area should be the first priority. Once we get that area fully scouted there may turn up to be a better spot out there, and also, it expands towards our neighbors. We peaceable builder's don't want to intrude on our neighbors but we certainly want to grab up all the land we can so that we can have room to build all those great buildings :)

Also a question about the rules... if we are declared war upon are we required to accept their peace terms no matter what? Or how does that work?

Oh, and btw nice new avatars guys, looks like y'all already got your makeovers... guess I'd better get one too :D. Thanks for looking out for us, Womp :goodjob: .

*edit* After looking it over again, we definitely want to check out the river than runs South of Rome...

First off, wow, what a start! Popping that settler is HUGE!

Pink dot, I like.
Blue dot, I like - is that freshwater and ocean?
Red dot, it hink should go either 1E or 1NW to be coastal. Its a shame to be so close to the ocean and not do that and it wouldn't gain or lose anything else of importance either way. Check that, 1NW loses a hill and a desert, gains a grassland - about even really.
Green dot, I dunno. Depends what's north of it adn the general shape of the land. From what I see now, there are several options for it, all of them roughly even.


Got it, playin' now.

Oh, and btw nice new avatars guys, looks like y'all already got your makeovers... guess I'd better get one too . Thanks for looking out for us, Womp .

Heh. BotlGnomz already had Civ's Alexander as his avatar, so to make it less confusing (because I know I identify a person first by their avatar), I just tracked down a sculpture of Alexander and made it mine.

As for the cities, I think we should go for Green first as well. It may not be the best choice but it is the most tactical. We should cut our rivals off early and grab all the territory we can.

Anyway. I know Panth is playing now, but I'm pooped. I just finished an essay for English so I'm going to pick the game up tomorrow

Yeah, we should set some ground rules.

1. How far should we go for peace? Always take a peace treaty when offered, even if we have to pay tribute?
2. When at war, will we attack the enemy cities? Pillage their squares? Keep all of our units on the defensives within our borders?
3. Will we conquer barbarian cities?

Anyway. I know Panth is playing now, but I'm pooped. I just finished an essay for English so I'm going to pick the game up tomorrow

Hey, np Kabe. We may need the time to discuss some decisions... and grats on getting that paper done!

BTW, if you feel like passing strategy plans in-game, zoom all the way out, then select the Show Strategy button above the minimap. It'll let you post notes & draw lines on the map. Of course, you can also delete if someone goes overboard with them. I'm just disappointed there's no way to shut viewing that layer off.

3240BC preturn: scan over what we got here. Not to shabby. Swap Antiums tile to frested plains from corn for growth 6/warrior in 1 (was 2/3).

[1] 3200BC Antium: warrior built -> Stonehenge. Lotta culture for very little effort. Swapped back to corn for growth in 2. will swap back after growth. Romewarrior NE. Guy N of Antium towards Antium. New guy goes SW from Antium. NW guy pops hut for a map. Not a terribly helpful map, but we see a bit more of the ocean to the North & Northwest and it saves him exploring farther North. Probably a dozen or so turns of exploration saved and knowledge that there is either an island or penninsula one square off our north coast. It ain't a tech or another settler, but IMO better than cash. Fareast scout goes south.

http://i27.photobucket.com/albums/c189/Pantherfern/Civ4ScreenShot0018.jpg

[2] 3160BC Scout goes SE along lower Mongol border. Guy from Rome continues NE (going to check out north of prospective greendot) Brief explanation here: Since NW guy is done scouting thanks to the map and we need exploring to the south, I'm sending him to Antium, the guy that was north of Antium into Rome, the guy that just built down into the jungle south of Antium. This way we'll have defenders just in case [though everything looks clear] and we save a few moves between where the people are and where they need to be.

[3] 3120BC Agriculture learned. Masonry in 6. Might as well try for Hinjewism - worker's not built yet anyway and farming will be the first order of business even when he is. By the time we actually need husbandry Monotheism should be done.

Antium set to work corn and cow for growth in 8. Was going to do corn and lake for research money but didn't change time needed so I figured the extra Hpt would be more useful. Rome should be raking in cash shortly.

Scout goes E/SE.

[4] 3080BC Scout goes SE/S and finds marble. It's about 7 sq S of Mongol's city. Guy from Rome heads NE again and spots some kitties. Hello, what's this? Khan scout on the hill 4E of Rome.

http://i27.photobucket.com/albums/c189/Pantherfern/Civ4ScreenShot0021.jpg

[5] 3040BC Khan's scout disappears into the fog, as do the kitties. Scout goes SE/SE. They got cows over there by the marble.

[6] 3000BC Scout NE finds 2 sugars & whale next to cow! That city's gonna be a monster. People explore. Others head home.

[7] 2960BC warrior reaches Rome to serve as defense. A bit south of Antium there has a clam and cow. Area north of proposed greendot looking good.

[8] 2920BC Dateline Rome: we have a worker. Warrior ordered. Considered Parthenon, but Rome ain't very productive and won't be for awhile. Worker sent to mine hill SW of Rome. Figure he can work his way over to Antium.

[9] 2880BC Masonry complete. Monotheism in 10. Guy arrives in Antium for guard duty. There's a lot of land north of greendot.

[10] 2840BC Make that 3 sugars, whale and cow by the marble in the Fareast . . .and a hut. Area north of greendot looking more interesting.

http://i27.photobucket.com/albums/c189/Pantherfern/Civ4ScreenShot0022.jpg

[11] 2800BC Northern warrior attacked by wolves and wins. now at 1.6/2.0 health. Scout pops hut for $74. Bleh.
Antium grows to size 3. Set to grow 13, Stonehenge 26.
Rome's warrior will be done in 2 so I send the guard down south to explore.

[12] 2760BC exploring . . .

[13] 2720 Rome builds warrior, orders warrior. Grows in 4 so maybe another settler after that? Worker finishes mine, sent to Antium's corn. We found stone aobut 11 S of Antium in the SW corner. North warrior finds hut.

[14] 2680BC Pop hut for warrior! send him NE and find furs. Banana, cow, & spice SE of Rome. Land sighted off our southern coast. Stone, Horses, spices way SE of Mongol city.

[15] 2640BC worker farming corn. Our scout is next to kitties. He's in a forest though and has the animal bonus so we'll cross our fingers.

http://i27.photobucket.com/albums/c189/Pantherfern/Civ4ScreenShot0024.jpg

http://i27.photobucket.com/albums/c189/Pantherfern/Civ4ScreenShot0025.jpg

http://i27.photobucket.com/albums/c189/Pantherfern/Civ4ScreenShot0026.jpg


Breakdown:We're exploring everything. There's room for a lot of cities, and with Antium's corn farmed in a couple it should grow up enough to start cranking a settler or two. We should be Hinjewish in 4. Even if not, we'll be able to build monastaries. The reason I was building warriors is because there really isn't anything else to build. Could do walls to get castles later, but I'd rather wait til they can be done in a couple turns. Fareast scout may be attacked IBT but should survive. Rome's worktiles can be shifted around to taste for more growth/research cash as desired.

Excellent :goodjob:.
Just a few things:
The only rule is that we do not declare war. If we are attacked, we are fully permitted to bust out the hammertime :hammer:, pillaging and burning (or not) as we see fit. That will teach them to attack a peaceful nation!
This also goes for barbarian cities, because we are at war with them by default.
Referring to my previously posted dotmap, blue dot is on the coast, but is NOT freshwater, sadly. However, I figured grabbing the extra flood plains and less overlap with pink dot was worth it. We have a lot of +health resources, and I think we'll be fine. With all the food we'll be getting in from those flood plains, losing a few to unhealthiness is scarcely a problem :crazyeye:. Red dot is already on the coast, sillies; there's a coastal tile 1 NE of it! You think that with six coastal tiles in its radius, I'd disallow it from building its harbor and lighthouse? I'm deeply hurt :cry: :p.
I'll poke around the save a bit later and do more dotmapping of the lands near us. Since everyone seems to like pink, red, and blue dots, I'll leave them as is. But I'll take a look at the location of green dot and shift it as I see the need. Those two fog tiles are really pissing me off, though :mad:. I WANT TO KNOW WHAT LIES WITHIN!
Notes for the next leader: Get us Animal Husbandry after we write the Torah! We have two cows in our existing cities! Pasture those beef b****es! I'd recommend Hunting after that for our Ivories - Hunting is only a three turn tech or so, so after that, I'd leave it to your discretion :goodjob:.

*reviews post*
Wow, if that's my idea of a few things, I must be reading too many of Sirian's SGs. His idea of One More Thing (TM) is definitely rubbing off on me :crazyeye::lol:!

Got it.

I'll play after Greek Class. Just from Looking though, I'm going to probably begin a Worker after that warrior in Rome. Rome will be size 3. I'll continue exploring and then after thre worker... Settler?

What about peace treaties? Accept the first reasonable one that comes along? It's too easy to wait for a nation to declare war on you, then pummel them into the ground as you see fit. (I conquered Spain with my cultured civilization in another game like that.)

I figure we should be neutral like Switzerland: only go to war when it's declared on us, pillage & capture perhaps one city, offer them a fair peace treaty ASAP. Otherwise it devolves into another Conquest game where you just have to trick them into throwing the first punch. I'd suggest never sending troops into enemy territory as well, but that might be too challenging for a first game.

Oh yeah, we want to make sure we have a decent military force. Civilizations are like jackals; they can tell when you have a weak army and they'll rip you to shreds. I remember 3 civilizations simultaneously declaring war on Saladin because he had the weakest army. I also remember being thrown into constant wars my 1st Culture Game because I had the smallest army. They razed all of my cottages... *sob* My 2nd Culture Game, I made sure I had a respectable army on hand (in the middle range). I've only been attacked once. (Of course, it might help that I converted every civilization more powerful than me to my religion.)

BG, I've built a few cities in positions similar to reddot now and found they weren't coastal that's why I had asked. It seems to need a full side on the coast rather than a corner like that. Not sure how to check for sure though.

There are 2 warriors now in the northland above greendot - one could be sent down to clear those spots.

Good turn Panth... you what, like tripled our army? :lol:

Just from Looking though, I'm going to probably begin a Worker after that warrior in Rome. Rome will be size 3. I'll continue exploring and then after the worker... Settler?

I think we are ready for another settler... I say put it over by the river East of Rome by the pigs and the wheat.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v359/foxfyre_242/citylocale.jpg


As an alternative to that, we could settle South of Rome on or by that river. That would probably be cheaper, and it gets us closer to that stone. Without ironworking we can't clear the jungle though...

Yeah, and what a powerful army it is :lol:

I would also say settler before worker #2. We have Soooo much land that I honestly have no real preference for placement. North to the coast may be good to get some oceanic exploring done as well, but heading East has it's points too.

Initial State - 2640 BC
---Explorers are becoming confusing. Renamed them for Easier Recognition
---Eastern Scout Renamed, "Erin"
---Western Warrior renamed, "Will"
---Northern Warriors renamed, "Norton" and "Nancy"
---Southern Warrior renamed, "Sam"

Turn 1 - 2600 BC
---Erin attacked by Lions. Victory with .9 Life left
---Erin makes contact with persian Scout
---Exploration...

http://home.comcast.net/~wufeichang05/cyrus.JPG

Turn 2 - 2560 BC
---Erin killed by Lions! :cry:
---Sending Sam eastward
---Will spots goody hut

Turn 3 - 2520 BC
---Rome builds warrior --> Settler (17)
---Warrior renamed Edward. Sending him East... naturally
---Will pops hut. SETTLER!!!!! :band:
---Waiting Set for this turn. Will send him to Green next turn. Afraid to send him into Jungle unprotected

Turn 4 - 2480 BC
---Monotheism Discovered --> Pottery (5)
---Judaism founded in Antium
---Declined offer for revolution to Org. Rel.
---Worker finished farm, sending him to mine

Turn 5 - 2440 BC
---Exploration
---Nothing New

Turn 6 - 2400 BC
---Sam attacked by Lions. Victory with 1.4 hp
---Pathers threaten Will and Set. Glad I decided to wait before sending Set.

Turn 7 - 2360 BC
---Will fights off Panthers flawlessly :clap:
---Will pops goody hut, 40 gold

Turn 8 - 2320 BC
---Norton fights off Bears
---Nancy fights off Lions --> Promoted --> Combat 1

Turn 9 - 2280 BC
---Pottery Done --> Hunting (4)

Turn 10 - 2240 BC
---Worker finishes Mine. Sending him to mine another hill

Turn 11 - 2200 BC
---Settler and Will emerge from Jungle.
---Letting Settler go alone from here.
---Sending Will back south

Turn 12 - 2160 BC
---Nancy pops goody hut, 26 gold

Turn 13 - 2120 BC
---Hunting finished --> Animal Husb. (7)

Turn 14 - 2080 BC
---Cumae founded!!! :D
---Beginning Cumae on Scout (5)

http://home.comcast.net/~wufeichang05/foundingcumae.JPG

Turn 15 - 2040 BC
---Stonehenge Finished!!! :dance: --> Worker (6)
---Contact with Asoka made by Sam!
---Worker completes Mine. Sending him towards Rome

Our Empire:
http://home.comcast.net/~wufeichang05/empire.JPG

Newly Discovered Land in South:
http://home.comcast.net/~wufeichang05/south.JPG

Newly Discovered land in Southeast:
http://home.comcast.net/~wufeichang05/southeast.JPG

Wow, ANOTHER settler! That's awesome! :goodjob:

Where should we send our next settler guys? There's just too much land :crazyeye:

2000-1440 BC

Summary: My scouts discover the bases of all three civilizations, a city is built to grab the east river, organized religion gets things done and the tech rush continues.

The Three Civilizations: My scouts discovered the borders of the Syrian and Indian civilizations. I sent one warrior apiece to circle them and gather recon while my other scouts explore unknown lands.

http://www.public.iastate.edu/~mikelem/neapolis.jpg

Neapolis: I adopted a "fill inside the lines" strategy of settling far away from my existing cities to build up my borders at the chokepoints. That way we can deny access to half of the continent by closing our borders and bear incredible cultural pressure on any rival settlers that do sneak by. Since my two strongest rivals are on the eastern part of the continent, I concentrated on that river first. I sent my settlers with a scout escort to a hammer-rich hill nearby, nabbing both the pig and the wheat. I suggest we expand along the river unless India (currently last place) tries a land grab to the south. Two cities could cut off India's chokepoint to the south, while 4-5 would be needed for the east river.

Infrastructure: After the worker/settlers were built, I switched to Organized Hinduism to increase building speed in Antium. To spread both religions to my other towns, my workers began building a road connecting Antium and Rome. Granaries were built, along with warriors to guard the border towns. Once Hinduism has spread to all Roman towns, we can begin churning out missionaries to convert our allies.

Tech Rush: Animal Husbandry and Priesthood were researched. We are one turn away from learning Writing. I learned Priesthood to build the Oracle, which grants us one Free Technology. With our specialized tech tree, we could use it to learn the Alphabet immediately, saving us 20+ turns of research and giving us the ability to trade techs with our, erm, less "cultured" neighbors, saving us the trouble of researching military techs.

Miscellaneous:
-A tribal hut gave me a free Worker. I promptly sent him to build the first road to Rome.
-No one died.
-Stone to the SW, marble just E of the east river, gems SE of the east river.

http://www.public.iastate.edu/~mikelem/romansnake.jpg

Heh, it seem as though Antium is the real capital :lol:.
WE NEED MORE WORKERS! GET ROADS BUILT! LOTS OF ROADS! BWAHAHAHAHA! REMEMBER, ALL ROADS LEAD TO ROME! :hammer::hammer::hammer:
Seriously, nice job all of you.
I won't be able to pick up the game until Monday, so if Panth would like to switch places with me in this rotation, that'd be swell.
Remember, after TundraWolf's turn, we go to ten turns apiece!

Excellent work Mike...

-No one died.

That's incredible... how did Norty survive the lions in the Northeast? As I recall from the save he was at 1 health on a desert with lions to the Southwest. Did they go after Nancy?

Anyways, we're looking pretty strong... I'll post my got it now, but I am going out of town tonight and will be back tomorrow afternoon at which time I'll finish my turn.

So for tomorrow my goals so far are:
1. Build more workers
2. Start the Oracle
3. Research... ? Bronze Working?
4. Possibly start a new settler

Anything else?

Sure, I can take it. Probably tonight, tomorrow at the latest.

I'll have to check the actual map, but it looks like we should try to cut off that northern area from the Mongols and then fan out south in every direction.

Workers needed indeed. We suddenly have a lot of land and little of it is improved.

Question: is anybody opposed to automating workers to build road? I find it useful in my single player games to save tedium and get things hooked up without worrying about it. Usually once I get to about 4 workers I set one to auto-network or whatever it's called and do all the improvements myself. Yea or nay?

edit: I misunderstood BG's post, I'll take it after Tundra tomorrow then.

Question: is anybody opposed to automating workers to build road? I find it useful in my single player games to save tedium and get things hooked up without worrying about it. Usually once I get to about 4 workers I set one to auto-network or whatever it's called and do all the improvements myself. Yea or nay?

It doesn't bother me any, but I probably won't use it on my turn. I'm a control freak ;)

Actually, he may have died, but only because I already figured he was dead. There is a chance through some stroke of luck he survived.

Anyway, nobody died from my actions. (But what about those scouts you-) [Shut up.]

Ok guys, I'm back and playing now...

Rock on Tundra. I just finished up my turn in Tkid1, so I'll grab it whenever you're done. Take your time though :cool:

Alright guys, well I decided to only do 10 turns as I was starting to get stressed out towards the end. So anyways here goes:

Initial Turn: 1440 BC

1. Took a look around and you were right Mike, everyone’s alive. We’ve got Warriors all over the place! Also we’re 4 turns away from the Oracle. I must’ve misunderstood Mike.

2. Changed Rome from Settler to Worker (5 turns)

3. Checked our finances and this is odd:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v359/foxfyre_242/money.jpg

Notice we only have a 1g maintenance on 4 cities! (Must be because we’re on Warlord?)

1st Turn: 1400 BC

1. Research on Writing completed. Cyrus comes to us asking for open borders but I deny him.

2. Now researching Code of Laws (due in 27 turns!) from what was selected as the target technology before my turn. I may veto this after we see what techs we can trade with the AIs… leaving it for now.

3. Move our forward warriors to continue scouting. Sam fortifies to heal (in forest).

4. Bump research back to 100% (we’re only losing 3g a turn with a 433g surplus). Code of Laws now down to 20 turns from 27.

2nd Turn: 1360 BC

1. Antium and Rome are now connected and Judaism IMMEDIATELY spreads to Rome

2. Nancy and Will are headed back towards Roman lands while Norton and Edward continue scouting East. Sam is still fortified in the South

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v359/foxfyre_242/Warloc.jpg


3rd Turn: 1320 BC

1. Neapolis trains a warrior and starts a granary (10 turns). Warrior fortifies and scout that was defending is now headed East-Southeast.

2. Work begins on the road from Rome to Cumae. 2nd pair of workers head to Cumae to begin construction on a road from there to Neapolis.

3. Drew a proposed southern, eastern, and southeastern border on the map, and put signs labeling the frontier we will need to compete for to achieve those borders.

4th Turn: 1280 BC

1. Sam gets attacked but survives.

2. Antium completes the Oracle and now I have a decision. On the one hand I could take Alphabet like Mike proposed (1 turns to research) OR I could take Theology (26 turns to research) and nab Christianity with Code of Laws and Confucianism due in 17 turns… After mulling it over for a while I decide to go with Alphabet. While getting Christianity was certainly tempting, that would mean that we would be waiting a seriously long time (15- 30 turns) to get the basic military techs (we still don’t have archery or bronze working), with the trade-off getting 2 religions. Now we are still set up to get at least one of those religions and a good chance to trade for the military techs.

3. We have entered the Classical Era

4. Antium begins work on a Jewish Missionary (3 turns).

5. Well whaddya know… everyone’s got what we want

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v359/foxfyre_242/techcheck.jpg

6. We give Polytheism to Genghis Kahn for Bronze Working (didn’t want to give it to Asoka since she has founded Buddhism) and we also give Kahn Agriculture in exchange for Archery.

7. Sam has earned a Promotion and I decide to save it.

8. Everything looks good so I hit enter.

5th Turn: 1240 BC

1. http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v359/foxfyre_242/Neaexp.jpg

Rome is now working on a settler so we can grab some more land and Neapolis' borders expand.

2. http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v359/foxfyre_242/cyrusexp.jpg

Well as you can see, Cyrus has different plans for our proposed southeastern border. I’m gonna put Nancy on a Forested Hill overlooking Cyrus’ new lands.

3. Scouting Warriors continue scouting.


6th Turn: 1200 BC

1. Worker arrives at Cumae and begins a road to connect it to Neapolis. Also, I didn’t notice it before but Neapolis has a source of copper in its borders. There is quite a bit of copper in all directions, but Neapolis is the only one with access to it, atm.

2. Keep scouting, nothing new to report.

7th Turn: 1160 BC

1. Jewish Missionary completes in Antium. Started another one (3 turns).

2. Missionary heads for Neapolis.

3. Scouts move around. Turn down research to 90% (-1g per turn) Code of Laws in 13 turns.

8th Turn: 1120 BC

1. Cyrus demands Polytheism and I reject.

2. Our horses in Antium are now hooked up to Rome. And Antium’s borders have expanded.

3. Worker starts building a road from Rome to the South (where I plan to put our next town).

9th Turn: 1080 BC

1. Not too much happened this turn. Kept exploring.
8th Turn: 1040 BC

1. Antium builds another missionary who heads to Cumae. A barracks is ordered up next (3 turns).

2. http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v359/foxfyre_242/cryuscheck.jpg

Cyrus expands again but stays on his side of the line. Good boy Cyrus, gooood boy

3. http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v359/foxfyre_242/barbs1.jpg

Norty is threatened by barbs and retreats to the woods.

4. http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v359/foxfyre_242/barbs2.jpg

Well so much for putting a town down there, looks like the barbs beat us to it.

10th Turn: 1000 BC

1. Cumae builds a granary and starts on some walls (16 turns).

2. Sam is threatened by Barbs in the South and is in the forest. I decide to promote him to Woodsman I.

3. http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v359/foxfyre_242/barbscatandmouse.jpg

Norty is playing cat and mouse with the Barbs in the East.

11th (and final) Turn: 975 BC (umm whoops)

1. Sam defeats barbs in the South and fortifies to heal.

2. Settler complete in Rome which I am gonna leave up to Panth decide where to send him.

3. Judaism spreads in Neapolis.

Well I seemed to have made a mistake and played 11 turns. Sorry about that guys... it seems that as I was writing the report I had two 5th turns and I caught it after re-reading it.

As for the Civ:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v359/foxfyre_242/civcheck.jpg

Nancy, the scout, and Edward are watching Cyrus. Norty's up there playing with the barbs. I have Sam headed to the Souther Border. Will is by the Barb city. And the new guy from Rome has been going back and forth guarding workers.

I just realized that Antium is unhappy... crap. Sorry guys. But the barracks should comlete next turn and I think we should get some archers to our cities.

We also have a Jewish Missionary right outside of Cumae and there is a settler in Rome. Oh and our maintence for cities has gone up to 4 now and we are incurring some distance from Capital as well...

...I think that's everything...

*edit* hrrrm seems i didn't crop quite enough, I'll fix that next time

"Got it" Probably play tonight, maybe tomorrow.

Questions:
1. Why is Cumae building walls?
2. Why are we making Jewish missionaries if we're State Hindu?

We could try to take the barb city as it's strategic to isolating India in the South. If we could push SE of Cumae and E/NE of Neapolis that would lock Cyrus & Ghengis in to the East. With Ghengis' agressiveness and if we keep a decent number of soldiers, he could go after Cyrus instead of us. If those two are throwing rocks at each other, all the better for us. It would also lock our northend up to settle as we wish.

Guh...

I recently decided it was that time of the year to pull out a compressed air can and clean the insides of my computer.

The result was that I put it all back together to find that... I can't start windows. I'm now getting a blue screen error while windows is starting that says "Unmountable Boot Volume"

I have no idea what I might have done. My guess is my comp is somehow not reading the Boot System... or something. I dunno.

Point being, to play Civ 4 now, Im going to be forced to depend on my roommates computer, until I can get my own fixed. I should be able to play regularly still, but if I don't post a "Got it" or something, don't hesitate to skip me."

And if anybody has any suggestions about this computer issue... That'd help.

Questions:
1. Why is Cumae building walls?
2. Why are we making Jewish missionaries if we're State Hindu?

1. Because there was nothing else that looked good to me

2. Grrr... man, I was so focused on writting the report that I wasn't even paying attention... When Judaism spread to Rome I just took it as our state religion. Sorry yet again :sad:

I would also like to say that these succession games are something else... there's so much you have to pay attention to. Add in the reports and it's quite a chore only doing just a few turns (and hardly anything happened on my turn!)...

In light of that, I don't think that I would like to continue this game...

I'm terribly sorry to bail on you guys like this, but this just isn't as fun as I thought it might be.

Tundra,

Can't stop you from leaving if you feel like you don't wanna do it anymore. Just know that it's not like life or death if you do something wrong. Hell, we all screw up. I felt like I could've made a better decision about where to send that second settler that formed Cumae, seeing as it took him about 11 turns to get there, when i could have dropped him where I found him or at least close by, giving us about 10 more turns of production.

Point being, it doesn't really matter so much. You dont have to feel pressured or anything. None of us are going to feel less about you if you make decisions we don't agree with. Thats what makes succession games so great. It combines so many different playing styles that the team just has to cope with. It's a great way to learn. Just reading the Succession Games in Civ 3 brought my game from Regent to Emperor.

Anyway. Point being, I'd ask you give it another chance, but if you feel like you don't really wanna do this, then I'm not going to think any less of you for backing out.

As for the turn logs. I've seen many players just list important events that happen, and not nessicarily document every turn.

I appreciate the comments Kabe, but my decision is based less upon the mistakes I made and more upon the general feeling I had while playing my turn. As I said before, I didn't do my 15 turns because I started to feel stressed out towards the end. That was due to this feeling of tediousness I had while playing; everything just seemed to take forever. I can't even imagine what it would be like with a huge civ in the late stages of the game...

I guess a lot of the tedium was due to report I wrote, like you mentioned, but that's the cool part about these games - getting to read the reports and "seeing" the game as it unfolds, right? That's what drew me to these games anyhow...

What I'm getting at is that I did the report the way I wanted to, but I just didn't get much enjoyment out of it. That's really the reason why I have decided against continuing on.

IMO, documenting every turn makes it easy to miss the forest for the trees. As long as people know your general plan, the details usually don't matter much.

Preturn: Examine map . . . swap Cumae to Archer from walls.

T1 950BC
--Antium Barracks done -> Settler in 6
--Neapolis Granary done -> Archer in 6 --- Worker set to mine copper
== Will steps in to reveal Liguarim (barb city) - it's size 2 so won't autoraze - 2 warriors guarding.
** Well . . . I really want to settle south but with ironworking at least 16 turns off, there's too much jungle we can't clear.
==Eh, why not . . .Settler sent SE of Rome

T2 925 BC
--Will fortifies on Liguarian's rice hoping to draw them out until support arrives.

T3 900BC
--Pisae founded - set to build archer (25) - worker pasturizing cow
** worker from south Rome sent up to road cow. We have 2 pastured but neither roaded so we're missing the benefits.
== Norton's been heading north to clear the fog and encounters barbs - stays on hills for now.

T4 875BC
--Norton fends off a barb and goe to forested hill to heal (75% defense bonus)

T5 850BC
-- Barbs coming in from the NW towards Antium
== Workers road Cumae corn and Neapolis copper

T6 825 blah . . .

T7 800BC Wow . . . busy one
*Ghengis wants open borders . . .I think not
*Pisae founds Confuscianism!
*Set research to Iron working - we need this jungle cleared asap
*Copper hooked up
*Moses born in Antium!
--Rome grows
--Neapolis grows, builds archer -> settler in 9
--Cumae builds archer -> archer in 5
--Antium builds settler -> archer in 1 - we got barbs comin' in
--Pisae gets Confuscian missionary - sent to Rome

Moses can either discover a tech (meditation, which is just a waste), make a super specialist 2h5g, or build a shrine. With 4 Jewish cities, this would put us back in the black - we only have 1 hindu, and soon-to-be-2 Confuscian . . .

Temple of Solomon built in Antium!

Antium's Settler/escort move south

http://i27.photobucket.com/albums/c189/Pantherfern/Civ4ScreenShot0032.jpg

T8 775BC
Cyrus wants to give us sailing for Polytheism; I say no - we have nothing coastal yet and I'd rather keep him in the dark. He doesn't have writing either, I notice.

*** I set a worker to chop forest by Rome. It will complete in 3 turns, the library in 2. After library builds, order settler and we have an insta-settler there.

Antium is guardless and they're really mad, but I've got to get this new archer out to take care of that barb before he destroys everything.

We have barbs coming in south of Rome as well and I have an archer going down to cut them off.

T9 750BC
-Barb destroys our horse pasture North of Antium. Our archer makes him pay.
-Archer south of Rome takes out 1 barb on elephant. 1 more in jungle. Archer fortifies.

http://i27.photobucket.com/albums/c189/Pantherfern/Civ4ScreenShot0033.jpg
http://i27.photobucket.com/albums/c189/Pantherfern/Civ4ScreenShot0034.jpg
T10 725BC

Here's where we stand: We can build axes and spears. We have workers going but could use more since we're spreading so quickly. We are WAY up on score to the others and have a major jump on them for the land grab thanks to the 2 free settlers. I founded one, have another in position south of Antium to found in place on the hill - Rome & Neapolis both have settlers due in 6. Iron working due in 5 so we can clear this freakin' jungle.

Norton is due east of Neapolis healing still - should be done in a turn or so - has an ungranted promotion.

http://i27.photobucket.com/albums/c189/Pantherfern/Civ4ScreenShot0035.jpg
http://i27.photobucket.com/albums/c189/Pantherfern/Civ4ScreenShot0036.jpg
http://i27.photobucket.com/albums/c189/Pantherfern/Civ4ScreenShot0037.jpg

***Important stuff for next leader***
+ Antium is seriously uhappy and unguarded - the archer is routed to land there next turn though. As a result, their production is currently in the toilet. That will return when archer arrives. (It was either guard Antium and let the barb tear up our land, or kill the barb and suffer some production loss. I chose the latter.)
+ There is an archer fortified just south of Rome on the elephant. He just killed a barb and there's another one diagonal to him. The barb's on a jungle hill [75% defense bonus] so try to draw him out rather than attacking.
+ I figure this archer and the axer being built @ Antium can go down to join Will for the Battle at Ligurian. Maybe the the archer being built at Pisae too.
+ We need a worker over to Antium to re-pasturize the horses and road the cow.

I really think we ought to consider swapping state religion to Judaism since we'd get more of a bonus from that than Hinduism.

================================================== =

Tundra, I hope you don't think I was bagging on you or anything, I was just asking. I don't know what I'm doing either, so I figured maybe you had a plan. As a positive, since we have 4 Jewish cities now, the Temple of Solomon is helping, and if we swap state religion to Judaism that will boost production in 4 cities (as of now.)

I would really like you to stay, but if you're not having fun then I understand. It is a lot more than I expected as well. As for the turnlogs, I'm just wordy by nature :D As the game progresses I expect them to become less detailed.

For my part, as long as I can get a general feel for where we're heading, I'm cool. Mike's writeup was fairly concise, but contained all relevant information.
I go turn-by-turn because I'm afraid of taking too many :lol:

I got it. Will play tomorrow.
Anybody know if civic and religion swaps share the same turn of anarchy?

EDIT: Wait, I don't got it. Where's the save o_O?

Yes, you can swap mutiple civics at once for 1 turn anarchy.

And . . .oops. I could've swore I remembered this time . . .

Damn, those are some large lakes. Are they fresh water lakes or salt water inland seas?

Alright guys, got my comp up and running again. I panicked over pretty much nothing. Just had to fix the boot files. All good.

IIRC in Civ 3 a lake was freshwaer if it had less than like 21 tiles of water. Otherwise it was Salt water. I dunno if thats correct anymore...

I think the single-tiles are fresh and the rest are salt . . . don't remember . . .

So am I going after BotlGnomz this round?

I've lost track and the roster isn't updated . . .

FWIW, I'm up in two others right now so you can go after BG anyway if you want. Glad your 'puter's fixed . . . I know the pain of troubleshooting :D

Come on guys, this is rediculous. lets get this game going again. Botlgnomz posted a got it but he really didn;t get it, so I'm going to wait until 3:30 (After History Class) and if he still hasnt come back I'm going to skip him and play my turns.

No disrespect of course, we just gotta get this moving again.

A'ight.

I know it's partly my fault for not getting the save up. (I found out what I did btw. . .I browsed, selected the sav, then forgot to hit upload. Doh!)

Where'd that gnome go? :D

I'm going to go ahead and play turns. If he wants to go after me, I have no problem with that. We'll have a really weird turn order this round. We just gotta get moving again...

Eep.
My intarweb was screwed up on Monday, so I couldn't grab the game.
Go ahead and play, Kabe. I'll follow you.
Oh, and TundraWolf, I am sorry that you feel that you can't play with us any more. Your feedback on how we're doing will always be welcome.
Anyone want to take our now-open slot?

Sorry Botlgnomz. Didnt wanna take your turns but I was afraid maybe your comp messed up or something... No harm done I guess as long as your cool with switching.

-----------------------------

Initial Turn - 725 BC
---Plan to take Ligurian during my turns (lets hope)
---Am gonna move Settler one more tile south to give more distance from Antium

Turn 1 - 700 BC
---Scout killed by Barbs
---Archer defends elephants against Barbs successfully
---Archer put back into Antium
---Cumae Archer = Fortified
---Barbs spotted north of Neapolis

Turn 2 - 675 BC
---Ravenna founded -->Archer (9)

Turn 3 - 650 BC
---Antium builds Axeman --> Jewish Temple (4)
---Pisae builds Archer -->Courthouse (15)
---Four Barbs north of Neapolis now.
---Sending Cumae Archer to help defend
---Moved the warrior defending Neapolis to the Pigs to keep it from being pillaged

http://home.comcast.net/~wufeichang05/barbattack1.JPG

Turn 4 - 625 BC
---Warrior defeats attacked Barb. Sending him back to Neapolis
---Khan wants to trade us Sailing for Monotheism. Denied.
---Defending Pigs with Cumae Archer now.

http://home.comcast.net/~wufeichang05/barattack2.JPG

Turn 5 - 600 BC
---Pig Archer defeats first Barb but loses to second.
---Iron Working done --> Literature (7)
---Decide to attack Barb on Pigs with wounded warrior. Odds 0.9 to 0.7
---Suspense....
---VICTORY!

Turn 6 - 575 BC
---Last barb kills Pig Warrior...
---Attack barb with Archer from Neapolis, eliminating Barb threat for now...
---Rome builds Set --> Worker (6)
---Cumae builds Walls --> Archer (3)
---Neapolis builds Set --> Archer (3)
---Sending warrior from Rome to escort Settler. Rome is now undefended

http://home.comcast.net/~wufeichang05/barattack3.JPG

Turn 7 - 550 BC
---Antium builds Jewish Temple -->Archer (2)

Turn 8 - 525 BC
---Another barb near Neapolis, but coming in from the East this time.
---Lingurian attack
------Axeman vs. Warrior #1 -- VICTORY
------Archer vs. Warrior #2 -- VICTORY
---Lingurian taken...

http://home.comcast.net/~wufeichang05/ligurian.JPG

Turn 9 - 500 BC
---Persia offers open borders... Couldn't hurt. I accept
---Antium builds Archer --> Praet (3)
---Cumae builds Archer --> Praet (4)
---Neapolis builds Archer --> Walls (I forgot to check how many turns)

Turn 10 - 475 BC
---Neapolis Archer kills attacking barb
---Barb Archer incoming


---NOTES TO NEXT LEADER---

We got a Settler ready to plop south of Rome
Possibly two Barbarian Cities near Neapolis.
New Settler spots

http://home.comcast.net/~wufeichang05/barbs.JPG


http://home.comcast.net/~wufeichang05/setsuggestions.JPG
Blue for first spot. Dunno which Red for second spot... Suggestions?

First off, good fightin' :D For the Empire!!!

Second, I'm curious why you moved Ravenna South off the hill. Not complaining or anything mind you, just wondering if you had a reason I missed. My logic for the hill was defensibility and proximity to other borders.

Third, I'm not personally liking reddots too much. I was thinking of one city 2West of stone, and another either 1 or 2 East of rice depending on what' in the black. (2 E would be best unless it's mountain.) I think bluedot should go 3 North.

Just my opinios of course.

I moved Ravenna south one because I was trying to spread our empire as much as possible. At the rate we're expanding I don't think we'll be able to keep our financial game stable. The more cities the more maintainance cost. It was a tough decision but I figured throwing ravenna two spaces away from the Antium border would be a better choice than right outside. As for defense, I thought about it, and at the rate we're going, and if our empire will stretch as far as we want it too... No enemy strong enough to take a city will ever reach ravenna.

As for the red dots... Yeah two west of stone would be perfect. Can't believe I didn't see that. And then another city later on the opposite side of the rice. For blue... Either way would be alright...

BTW. I forgot to post the save :crazyeye:

Cool. Makes sense.

Erm . . who's up now?

I think me and Botlgnomz agreed to switch so he's up next.

BTW, what became of Mike? He hasnt said much since his last turns.

I got it and will play later today, post tomorrow probably.

Well, you just posted the save 12 hours ago. Give me some time to play it before you assume I'm dead!

The Natives are Restless

The barbarians continue their onslaught while population caps and deficits cause trouble at home.

To stem the tide of the barbarians, I took Kabe's advice and searched the area north of Neopolis. It didn't take long until I found the first city:
http://www.public.iastate.edu/~mikelem/romans/barbariancity01.JPG
I relocated most of our troops up there and prepared a siege. As I was gathering up, Genghis Khan showed up with a stack of archers. Who will capture the city first?

Further barbarian raids convince me that there's another barbarian city just NW/N of this one. There might even be one on our NW borders. How else do you explain this double-teaming of our settler?

http://www.public.iastate.edu/~mikelem/romans/settlers.JPG
Luckily the warriors escorting them fought off the archers long enough for the praetorians to join them. I'd hate to lose those settlers just before they established our new city:

http://www.public.iastate.edu/~mikelem/romans/arretium.JPG
I thought our proposed location for a port wouldn't provide enough food for growth (always a problem in the early game if you aren't near a river or a food source), so I looked further NW. This site had 2 food resources, 4 hills in range and a source of copper, giving us a well-fed & well-hammered port, perfect for making our navy...

Entirely defensive, of course.

The tribal hut nearby also blessed our praetorians with Compass technology. How do these primitives learn these things?

On the homefront, our cities were growing large enough that they were bumping against the Happiness & Health limits. Thanks to the Romans' +2 Health Expansive bonus, Happiness was our major problem. Check out this chart:
http://www.public.iastate.edu/~mikelem/romans/cities01.JPG
Our Max Happiness is lagging behind our Max Health by an average of 3-4 points, putting a real dent in our growth. Our rush for Christianity (see below) precludes the research of colliseums and theaters to up that, so I turn to God:
*Temples provide +1 Culture & +1 Happiness.
*You can build one temple per religion in each town.

With 3 religions under our belt, simply spreading the faiths would let us up our Happiness by 3. I built missionaries to spread the word & temples to make my new followers happy. Each convert would let us up the population by one.

When our 2nd set of settlers discovered their original acreage was taken:
http://www.public.iastate.edu/~mikelem/romans/doh.JPG

I decided to send them to a gem mine near the eastern river instead.
http://www.public.iastate.edu/~mikelem/romans/newsettlement.JPG
Gems provide a +1 Happiness to every town on that trade route, and we were sorely lacking in Happiness-increasing trade goods. We have multiple Health ones, though. Perhaps we should discuss some trade routes with Cyrus once he builds up his puppet kingdom a bit more...

Once Literature was learned, I switched to Sailing quick to learn how to build lighthouses (a must for any port city), then plunged into Theology. Only a dozen turns until we have a 4-headed hydra!

I also started the Parthenon in Rome. We may not have Marble, but neither does anyone else. Its +50% Great Person reproduction rate is great for a peaceful civilization like ours. Now we just need to make enough specialists to use it.

Goals:
-Increase Happiness by spreading religions & gathering gems.
-Capture/raze the first barbarian town.
-Clear out the jungles around our new villages.
-Double-check the automated town villagers. Make sure that Suspend Growth iis turned off in the (now) happier towns.

Haha! Great turns Mike. I didn't to offend or anything, I was just making sure you were around. No actually you... played Botlgnomz turns. Lol. I hope he finds out before he posts his own. We've had a really weird round, so no worries.

Great turns. Awesome spot for a port city. And good job dealing with those nasty barbarians...

-____-.
So I guess I was entirely skipped.
I had played about five turns when I saw this.
Time to replay *sigh*

So then, you're up now BG and we're back in our regular order?

150 (0): Change leader name back to BGZ01. Note: Don't open the save file directly. Open Civ4 first and then open it, otherwise leader name changes. Which is annoying for saves. Micro Antium and Neapolis to prevent growth and maximize shields... er, hammers. Change Ravenna to a Courthouse; why build military in a Barracksless town? Go to full science to race to Christianity.
125 (1): Praetorians kill a barb.
100 (2): Missionary built in Antium, start Courthouse. Visigoth is razed by Mongols. Missionary heads to Ravenna. Cyrus has Math, not selling. Judaism gets spread by a Missionary in Liguria (can't read notes and don't feel like looking up names of Roman cities :lol:).
75 (3): Temple built in Neapolis. Begin Courthouse. Workers do stuff, like build roads and farms and cottages. Missionary spreads Judaism in Ravenna.
50 (4): Pisae Granary -> Jewish Temple. Found Arbium (see previous note :p), start Granary. Hindu Missionary converts Neapolis, switch Courthouse to Hindu temple.
25 (5): Antium Courthouse -> Settler
1 (6): Cumae Courthouse -> Worker
25 (7): Theology discovered, we get Medieval. Arretium founds Christianity. Begin Monarchy, dialing science down to 90%. Christian missionary heads to Antium.
50 (8): Missionary fails to convert antium :cry:.
75 (9): Fight some barbs. Now is as good a time as any to mention that, though I forgot to put it in my notes, at some point a barb Archer threatened the worker on the wheat north of Neapolis, so I whipped the Hindu temple and moved the Archer out to protect, killing the barb on my next turn. As such, Neapolis will be ready to grow during the next turn; I currently have it Stagnant.
100 (10): Antium Settler -> Library, Cumae Worker -> Missionary, Neapolis Courthouse -> Library, Ligurian Granary -> Courthouse.

I left the active Workers and Settler unmoved for the next leader. I think the Worker in Neapolis should road to the river in order to form a trade route with Arbium or whatever it's called. The Settler should go take the tile two west of the Stone, and I think the other Workers should start roading to it so we can hook up Stone ASAP and build Pyramids, possibly in Cumae or Neapolis, as Rome needs to catch up on infrastructure and Antium needs to pump Settlers and military from its rax. Also, I believe our deficit at 90% has fallen to 0 because of all the Courthouses I built, so we may want to put Science back at 100. All the cities with happiness issues are stagnated; the "Prevent Growth" option SUCKS. I just manually reassigned the workers, because Prevent Growth was delaying it, not stopping it. I signed Open Borders with Asoka somewhere down the line, hoping to build up friendly with him.

Prevent Growth has worked for me. It waits until you have almost enough food to grow, then switches citizens so it's stagnant. That way as soon as you turn it off, the city grows the next turn.

"Got it"

Will play in a couple hours when I'm off work.

I opened the sav to look around a bit. . . kinda boring right now, really. We need lots of workers down in that jungle. I'd like to see us get another city in the SE area and NE to close off the Great North and then start filling in those areas north of us that we've cut everbody else off from. I do agree that Copperstone city down there should be priority though since we're supposed to be builders and, hence, should be hitting those wonders.

Oh, and I've never used the governors options so I can't really comment on that. I just make a habit of checking each city every few turns to see how they're doing adn make any necessary adjustments.

100 AD: Precheck.

I note that we have several stalled cities due to happiness limits with 2 uncamped elephants.
Check of info screen says we have 6 workers for 9 - almost 10 - cities, half of which are socked in by jungle.

We need a workforce, stat!

- Swap Antium to [alt]worker every 3 turns for now.
-Swap Pisae unimproved grass -> mined hill: temple in 8 instead of 18
- Try to swap Neapolis and find barb archer on copper mine . . .grab Neapolis axer and kill dat dude. Swap Nea around.
- Settler Antium -> Ravenna
- Swap Cumae missionary -> Settler
-Swap Ravena tiles courthouse 18 -> 8

**** Commentary: we have a TON of unimproved land, much more to settle, few workers, barely enough soldiers to guard cities let alone escort/fight; I'm not a fan of the courthouse builds right now but maybe there's something I'm missing.

Aaaaand Go!

T1 125
-Arretium Lighthouse -> workboat
- Settler + Sam head to Copperstone

T2 150
= Norton finds 2 barb axers up north . . .

T3 175
= Nancy finds barb archer south of Madras :D
= One of the ones Norton found is headed for Neapolis. our axer sent to forest in hopes of cutoff.
- Antium worker ->worker
*** Circei founded -> lighthouse

T4 200
Monarchy -> Divine Right (might as well)
- Rome Parthenon -> Praetorian (we need defenses badly)

T5 225
blah

T6 250
Neapolis something -> Pyramids (gotta get those governments)
Antium worker -> Sistene ( +2 culture per specialist is HUGE, especially when combined with representation)
Mahavira (prophet) born in Antium -> sent to Pisae to build shrine (Pisae is quite pisaed right now . . .)
*worker sent to stone

T7 275
*Cyrus wants compass for math . . .I change to alphabet and it's a done deal

- Cumae Settler -> worker
- Pisae temple -> settler
- Ravenna court -> library

T8 300

*** worker routed to wine north of Antium . . . will arrive in 3. We need lux!
. . . btw Ghengis has nothing! we're about 6 techs up on him and he has 3 cities . . .loser . . .

*** Kong Miao built in Pisae . . .every confuscian city means $1 now there. We needs cash. -$3/turn @ 90%sci

T9

+ Setia founded -> library (gonna be a lot of cash here)
- Ghengis wants open borders . . . I agree since I don't want to piss him off and he really is in no position to do much anyway.
T10

Arpenium Granary -> courthouse
Arretium wrokboat -> galley


Photobook

http://i27.photobucket.com/albums/c189/Pantherfern/Civ4ScreenShot0048.jpg

http://i27.photobucket.com/albums/c189/Pantherfern/Civ4ScreenShot0047.jpg

***Breakdown***
We now have 8 workers, 1 more due in 2. We need waaay more.
We now have 2 new cities, settler due in 5
Rome has been cranking Praetorians

A couple of these cities should be getting big enough to take over worker/soldier duty so Rome can get building good stuff.

Wines are being hooked up now, so that should help some.

Probably Pisae & Cumae should be full-time worker pumps. We need at least 20 working in pairs preferrably. Massive expansion like this is possible if the workforce can improve everything to keep up with maintenance.

Our score is just under the other 3 COMBINED!

Nice! :goodjob:
Just one question: Did you check our cities before deciding what Shrine to build? Because I can't remember, but I *thought* we had more Hindu cities than Confucian. Unless we built the Hindu shrine in addition to the Temple of Solomon when I wasn't looking :lol:.
I don't really like Divine Right. There's a bunch of other techs with infrastructure, wonders, and worker advances that we could be trying to get. We need CURRENCY! CURRENCY WILL CURE OUR MONEY WOES! GUILDS TOO! MARKETS! GROCERS! MORE COURTHOUSES! MOOOOOORE!
...Of course, Divine Right has Versailles. If/when we get a Great Engineer, I vote we save him for Versailles.

EDIT: I assume military builds are coming out of towns with rax? If not... :whipped: for you :p

Actually, we had more Jewish cities last I checked. Might want to update the state religion just in case.

BG, on the shrine - I know I kinda glossed over it but it breaks down like this:
I could have
1) built a super prophet . . .not bad, but not the greatest choice right now
2) discovered meditation . . .a 2-turn tech not worthy of such waste
3) built a shrine . . . we had hindu [Antium], Christian [SW port city], confuscian [pisae]

Antium's already got 1 shrine, but I figured since confuscianism is father south, it is more likey to spread, plus pisae really needed the happiness & culture being where it is. THe other shrines will come in their own time, but I figured this was the best build at this time.

I only noticed a couple Hindu cities and 1 or 2 confuscian. We are mostly Jewish I think. Not even sure what our state religion is right now.

Hey guys. Sorry to do this, but can I get a skip on this round. I got a project I need to get done. Once again, sorry. College is bluh...

@Mike: What I meant was that I thought the number of Hindu cities was > number of Confucian cities. Jewish cities outnumber both.
@Panth: I completely forgot about the happiness, culture, and GL points. In hindsight, I think I still would have built the Hindu shrine, but that's out of my playstyle, and I certainly respect the decision you made. Just make sure to get Judaism in all our cities; it contributes money and 25% production.
Back @Mike: I believe you're up, because Kabe took a miss on his turn.

Yeah, I know we need to spread "the word," but I was focused on trying to get a workforce and defence up.

Note, it might not be a bad idea to try spreading something to Ghengis . . . he's still got no religion last I checked and we already have open borders with him. He's just sooo far away.

We have plenty of time. Right now, we need to expand our power base relentlessly and keep our economy robust in both cash and tech. If/when we snap up the remaining religions, we can send a flurry of missionaries to everyone else to keep them happy with us while we beeline to a space or diplo victory.

I've played it. The report will be up tomorrow afternoon.

We should concentrate on our robust economy before our power base, else we're going to spread ourselves into bankruptcy. I've got the details in the report, but basically we're losing 5 gold a turn & we only have 85 gold left. I figure each new city we build/capture will now cost us 5 gold a turn.

Everything okay over there? Been almost 24 hrs since that last post . . .

Yep. My activities just took a bit longer than expected.

My countrymen, we are expanding too fast! Our cities are undefended and unimproved while corruption leeches away at our income. Note these barbarian archers from the NW:
http://www.public.iastate.edu/~mikelem/romans/02mine.JPG
that successfully pillaged a mine & almost razed Arretium while the only Praetorians in a 15-tile radius were slaughtered by barbarian axemen.

Or look at our finances, which are still draining 5 gold from the coffers at 80% science:
http://www.public.iastate.edu/~mikelem/romans/03finances.JPG
We must reverse these trends before our treasury is drained and our units start disbanding!

My first step was revolting to Heriditary Rule. For 2 gold a turn, each military unit stationed at a city increases Happiness by 1. Not only do we protect our cities, but we squeeze 2-3 more population out of it as well! This is only a temporary measure, though. I begin building temples for a more permanent solution.

I began cranking out more workers, although I get the feeling each new worker we make costs 1 gold a turn. We need cottages badly, even if it means taking gahtering off the mines. My plans for a massive workforce are cut short by increasing barbarian activity all throughout the North. I revamp production: "A praetorian for every city!"

In other news:

-The winery is finally hooked up. Happiness throughout the Roman Empire increased by 1. Drunken chariot accident on the rise.
-Genghis Kahn demands that we cancel our deals with the vile Persians. We refuse. Should we fear the mighty Mongols?

http://www.public.iastate.edu/~mikelem/romans/01mongol.JPG
I doubt it.

Advice:
Right now, the easiest way to save money is to change our civic policies & build courthouses.

Reverting from Organized Religion to Paganism would reduce our expenses by 4.

The following cities have maintainance costs of 4+ & should be slated for courthouse production ASAP:
Arretium, Arpinum, Circe.

We might need to whip a few people to get it done, though.

I'll keep that in mind.
Got it.

Yes, I've been afraid our expansion may have been to rushed.

We definately need to be able to protect our cities. Wiping out the northern tribes will be too time consuming for the moment. I agree with mike. Let them come to us, and we'll just fight them off when they come. A Praet for every city...

[
We must reverse these trends before our treasury is drained and our units start disbanding!


So far, my experience on Noble has been that the only thing that happens when you get to 0 gold is that your science slider is automatically reduced. Don't know if this holds true on higher settings, though.

Marc

So far, my experience on Noble has been that the only thing that happens when you get to 0 gold is that your science slider is automatically reduced. Don't know if this holds true on higher settings, though.

Marc


Hehe, I just finished up a game a few minutes ago. Lost a space race by 1 turn $%#*(%&^!!! But I digress. I made an early takeover of the Americans and doubled my empire bringing on the dark ages. For a very long time, I was so broke I was losing 3 or 4 units a turn. I finally got it turned around but it took awhile and essentially crippled me for the rest of the game.

So yes, units will disband on noble. And it can happen quickly. Within a matter of 20-39 turns I went from running 90% research breaking even to 0% research and losing units.

Yeah, commerce is definitely a problem. I'd say it's either people concentrating on food/hammers instead of coins or trying to expand too fast. In both Succession Games I'm in, bleeding treasuries is a fact of life.

We're not that bad off right now, I don't think. We can even keep expanding at a slow rate as long as we really focus on economy in our existing cities. For now, maybe the cities we do build should be on our north coast for that coastal cash.

600 (0): Flip through. Reassign tiles to pull in extra commerce. Switch Pisae to Barracks; I don't want regular Praetorians. Send Cyrus Poly for Meditation; out of the ones willing to sell us it, he is the one I feel we should foster the best relationship with. Asoka dislikes us alread and Genghis is a wimp.
620 (1): Rome Barracks -> Jewish Missionary, Cumae Worker-> Library. Barb fighting!
640 (2): Ravenna Library -> Jewish Temple, Arretium Granary -> Courthouse, Neapolis loves the Monarch, Arpium gets Christianity.
660 (3): Liguria Courthouse -> Library
680 (4): Rome Missionary -> Monastery. Missionary heads to Arpium.
700 (5): Barb Axe attacks the Axe I deployed from Arpium to intercept. We win, but it's damaged. Fortifies.
720 (6): Our axe gets pwnt by an archer, of all things. Arpium Courthouse -> Barracks. We have a balanced budget.
740 (7): Divine Right comes in and Islam is founded in Cumae. We begin Music. Send missionary to Rome. Ravenna's borders expand. Barb archer threatens our workers, I move archer from Arpium to defend, but shift workers away just in case.
760 (8): The archer attacks and we crush him. Rome Monastery -> Explorer. Cumae Library -> Rax. aaaaaaaaand...
NEAPOLIS FINISHES THE PYRAMIDS!
We begin an Aqueduct so we can follow up with the Hanging Gardens. Pisae Praetorian -> Library. Ownz0r barbs.
780 (9): Arpinum gets Judaism, Rome gets Islam, both from Missionaries. We are now a Representative government with a caste system.
800 (10): WE ARE RUNNING IN THE BLACK!
(and/or the nineties)

Explorer due next turn. Send him out to go find the barb cities and direct our Stack of Praetorite Vong Doom (two P-dawgs and two Warriors) to CRUSH THEM LIKE BUGS! THEY SHALL BE AS DUST BEFORE US!

Sounds like a good set there.

Got it.

Oh, and I forgot to mention. Now that we're running a positive number, there was a Settler hanging out in one of our cities. I vote we send him up to the flood plains, to my original Teal Dot. It'll be a badass city, and gets us a strong presence on the northern coast.

Preturn 800 AD

Religion: 6 have been founded, 5 by us. Taoism still open.
Info: We're #1 in most categories, 2nd in approval & life expectancy, 4th in trade (no routes, I'm guessing.)
-We have 3 of the Top 5 cities right now.
- We have 49% of the world population! 22% of land area
- Everybody seems to be getting along except Ghengis & Cyrus with closed borders.

+ Start Settler N of Arpinium, East of Neapolis to help seal off the Northlands. We've got enough jungle to deal with already right now.

T1 820
+ Machiavelli proclaims the Glorius Roman Empire the largest in the Land! #2 Cyrus, #3 Ghengis, #4 Asoka.
- mm Antium for Sistene in 3 instead of 4.

T2 840
Rome explorer -> Great Library. It's a builder's game, right? Super science is handy and Sistene in 2 next door.
-Oh, and a barb archer fruitlessly attacked Neapolis. There is, however, a barb sword coming in towards Arpinium now.

Those flippin' Indians somehow snuck by Nancy and put up a city right where I had planned on going in a few turns.
http://i27.photobucket.com/albums/c189/Pantherfern/Civ4ScreenShot0055.jpg

T3 860
Neapolis -> aquadeuct -> Hanging Gardens . . .sure, why not. Free people!
***Satricum is founded*** We're @ -$2 now @ 80% but that ain't bad.

T4 880

Ghengis wants compass for calendar. I consider for a bit but we have all kinds of stuff that needs plantations. Stonehenge was going to get obsoletified at some point anyway. We're still a good 5 techs up him anyway.

***Sisten chapel Complete in Antium!!!***

Our explorer was brutally attacked by a barbarian warrior who subsequently died rather gruesomely. Explorer is now hills 2 & woods 2 and man can he cover ground!

T5 900

Music -> Philosophy (might as well try for 6 of the 7)
***Homer the Great artist was born in Rome. 14/turn is a lot of culture, but I'm not sure so I'll leave him so we can discuss.
Bombing that Indian city might be a possibility as well.

Praetorian protects Arpinum pasture from pillaging. barb sword now fertilizer.

T6 920
movin' around . . .

T7 940

Couple libraries finished -> jewish monasteries
Couple workers finished -> libraries

T8 960

Not much of interest. Explorer is finding nothing up there in the way of cities. Galley made it all the way to the north pole and found nothing interesting - no secret passages or islands. Not even much seafood.

Oh, we have gems hooked up now. By the by, plantations are going on silk, nanners, and spices as well. And I'm quarrying that stone down there - not sure why that wasn't done. It had a road. . .

T9 980

Arretium settler ->harbor

T10 1000

Well, our galley killed a barb galley up north. Not a whole lot of interest really. I swear, I have the explorer, the mini-stack, and a lone praetorian canvassing the northlands and not a city in sight.

http://i27.photobucket.com/albums/c189/Pantherfern/Civ4ScreenShot0056.jpg

http://i27.photobucket.com/albums/c189/Pantherfern/Civ4ScreenShot0057.jpg

http://i27.photobucket.com/albums/c189/Pantherfern/Civ4ScreenShot0058.jpg

****Important stuff:
- Hanging Gardens in 7 (will drop with quarry in 2 and forest chop)
- Great Library in 9
- We have a lot of other wonders we could build but I held off. Notre Dame is always good, and Sprial Minaret could make good use of our widespread Judaism.
- Homer is still hanging out in Rome awaiting group decision or something. Red tape . . .
- Settler west of Antium. I think we ought to fill in over there a bit, but that can be changed.
- Philosophy/Taoism in 2.
*** We're losing $4/turn @ 80% with $40. With libraries & monasteries going up we could back off the slider a notch after philo until we're built up a bit. With Hanging Gardens & 3 luxes about to go online we can afford to get a lot bigger shortly and will catch back up. With the exception of maybe a couple more jungle cities in the land grab, most everything else will be coastal or clear land and will be profitable more quickly than the jungle ones. We also have both Forbidden Palace and Versailles available to build should we desire, both of which would help immensely. Personally, I think Neapolis should get Versailles after the Gardens. It's far enough away from Rome to be helpful, and productive enough to be able to do it. Forbidden Palace may work nicely in Our Future Northlands.

+ Notes:
- We so far have built all of the wonders of the world except the Great Lighthouse.
- We now officially have over 50% of the world's population. We're almost to 5 mil already. Cyrus has 600k.

Forgot the save again :-/

Personally, I'd build and then culture bomb big yellow @.
Then we can expand north at our leisure.

When I loaded the game, I realized this is the wrong save! hehe. I'm not leaving til tomorrow morning so as long as you can get me the save by tonight it'll be fine.

I wouldn't have edited, Kabe. Now there is nothing to call attention to this until I post this post.
Yo, Panth, FIX THE SAVE! Let's get our Rome on!

Erm, yeah. Sorry again. :blush:

It looked right . . .

I wouldn't have edited, Kabe. Now there is nothing to call attention to this until I post this post.
Yo, Panth, FIX THE SAVE! Let's get our Rome on!

Er... Yeah sorry. Didn't even think about that. I was wondering what in God's name was taking him so long... heh

Playing now....

I skimmed my turns

Turn 1 - 1010 AD
---Nothing much. I'm going to concentrate on building more workers. We have too much land and not enough of it's improved

Turn 2 - 1020 AD
---Philosophy done-->Currency (3)
---Didn't go with Pacifism because we have to much Mil.
---Taoism founded in Satricum
---Ardea founded

Turn 5 - 1050 AD
---Currency-->Metal Casting(3)
---Dropped research to 70%
---Neapolis creates Hanging Gardens-->Market

Turn 6 - 1060
---Barbs terrorizing South of Setia

Turn 7 - 1070
---Rome completes Great Library-->Notre Dame

Turn 8 - 1080
---Metal Casting-->Civil Service(5)

Turn 9 - 1090
---Cyrus wants to trade Construction and 200 Gold for Compass. We could use the money so I accept.
---Thespis (Great Artist) born in Antium. Keeping him for later to culture bomb close border.

Turn 10 - 1100
---Done

Suggestions: Cut back on Mil, we went from having none to almost too much for a builders game. Still need more workers. We got that huge jungle to chop down.

Going out of town for Thanksgiving. I should probably still post and sutff but I wont be able to play.

I agree that soldiers should be slowed down now. The reasons I was still popping Praets were 1) escorts/worker guards 2) to have more than a warrior for city defense just in case. I currently fear barbs more than our official rivals.

I think we're pretty well covered now though.

We're getting a wonder monopoply here :)

I pass. I'm out of town due to Thanksgiving & can't play.

Then I guess it's to me.
Will play later tonight or tomorrow.

1100 (0): Review stuff. Send Thespis to Ligurian. Reassign some tiles. Taoist Missionary to Rome, Jewish Missonary to Satricum.
1110 (1): Arretium Library -> Forge. Genghis Khan is now Taoist.
1120 (2): Arpinum Library -> Forge. Circei Worker -> Forge. Cyrus is Confucian. Thespis puts his Great Work in Ligurian.
1130 (3): Civil Service -> Paper for a beeline to Liberalism. Revolt to Bureaucracy. Antium Worker -> Forge. Satricum Walls -> Forge. Judaism spreads in Susa. Found Ostia on big yellow @, start Granary. Judaism in Satricum.
1140 (4): We now have a Bureaucracy. Great Work in Ostia from Homer and our eastern border is now secure against Mongols by land. Taoism fails to spread in Rome =<.
1150 (5): Neapolis Forge -> Versailles. Marshal Praets for a march on a barb city in our north.
1160 (6): Paper -> Education. Cyrus wants to swap World Maps, I throw in Code of Laws for his conversion to Judaism. Antium's borders expand.
1170 (7): Ravenna (? Something with an R...) Aqueduct -> Forge. Arpinum Forge -> Market.
1180 (8): Antium Forge -> Market. Pisae Market-> Forge. Setia Worker -> Forge.
1190 (9): Cumae Market -> Forge. Arretium Forge -> Market. Taoism spreads in Ostia. Khan and Cyrus go to war :eek:. Khan is toast :lol:.
1200 (10): Send out a Praet from Antium to deal with a pillaging Archer. Ostia's Praet kills a Warrior and returns. Give Genghis Khan Copper for Marble. Versailles is now due in 13.

Just FYI, if Cyrus asks us to declare on Khan or to break our deals with him, I vote we do it. It's worth cultivating Cyrus as a friend.

I agree with your diplomatic stance. Mongolia has absolutely nothing to give us last I checked. They're losers. I'd rather have Cyrus on our good side since we're going the builder route.

I also agree with the copper trade to Kahn though - it'll keep him & Cy fighting a bit more, which is always good for me :D

I'm just waiting for Asoka to start getting antsy . . .

BG, are we patching up for the rest of this game, or is that not going to work out changing mid-stream?

Other SG's want the patch, but I don't want to mess up games that were already started pre-patch.

I had patched and it worked fine for me.
Patch up, peeps!
(PUP!)

Thanks for clearing that up.

edit: Nov 25, 2005, 09:12PM
It's been over 24 hours. Mike never really said when he would be back. If it hasn't been picked up by morning, I'll "got it."

Well, I don't see anybody so "got it" I guess. Hope I'm not stepping on any toes here.

BG, you said above we should declare on Khan if Cyrus asks but laid out in the original setup that we don't declare war on anybody ever unless they attack us first.

Which way are we going? :confused:

Uh, Panth, you're next in order anyway. I play after Kabe.

Oh, I figured since you skipped, you'd be up after BG.

I got started here . . .turn 3 Notre Dame completed and my game crashed. Nice patch - I had zero problems before :sad:

I gonna try again. At least I have my log so I know what I did :lol:

edit: I've tried reloading from the autosave 4 times now; it crashes at Notre Dame every time. :gripe:

edit: I just tried played from the 1200 save and got the same result at Notre Dame. I'm at a loss what to do now.

As an aside, a couple interesting things happened on the 2nd run-through. I got a sgreat scientist in Rome the first time, great artist the 2nd. First run, Ghengis offered $130 for priesthhood in 1230, 2nd run he demanded we cancel all deals with Persia . . .

Anybody have any ideas what I can do? My game used to run fine - never had any problems whatsoever short of the occasional choppy wonder movie.

Errr... right. I forgot about that.
<_<
>_>
So we don't declare if he asks. But if he wants us to break off trade, do it.

@crashing: That is not good. Post the autosave so somebody can play through that turn and then give it back?

Good thinking . . .that's why you're in charge I guess :cool:

[They're not marked real well . . .I think this is it]

NM . . . I got it fixed thanks to this post I found:
----------------
Quote:
Originally Posted by Wizened
Well, for me it did break my wonder movies. Now whenever I build a wonder it will freeze up and CTD. Is there anyway to turn these movies off?


Open your Civ4 config file located in the "My Documents\My Games\Sid Meier's Civilization 4" folder, and edit this line:

"; Set to 1 for no in-game movies
NoMovies = 0"

Change the 0 to 1. That should do it.
-------------

Thanks to Low for that fix :goodjob:

I gonna finish my turn up tonight/tomorrow . . . sorry for the stall :p

Preturn 1200AD

Lookin' around . . .
-Ravenna & Circei need culture badly to squlech Lahore down there.
-Cumae isn't growing - need to clear some of that jungle out over there
* I see barbs have pillaged our winery.
+ Overall, it looks good. We stil need more workers to fix things up though. Our military's looking a bit thin. And now that our outlying borders are established (I'd still like to see one more beween Liguirian & Setia) we can slowly settle Northward.

T1 1210
- Circei forge -> Colossus (14). It needs culture, 14 turns ain't bad for such a little city. Money is good.
- Interesting . . .our superexplorer found the barb city of Saxon down between Gordium & Madras. Our wandering Praet is only a few away and it's only guarded by an archer . . .
- 2 Mongol galleys @ Ostia but they're empty so that's good.

T2 1220

- Hahahaha . . .that pillaging barb archer that took out our winery attacked the Praet I sent over there on a hill. He died of course.

*** Great Roman Artist is born in Rome!

T3 1230

Education -> Liberalism (was queued up . . .for the free tech, I assume?) <shrug> I can't think of anything we need so that's cool.

Pic

-Antium Market -> Minaret
+ Praet stack takes out barb city of Ghuzz . . .wierd palcement on neither coast nor river so it gets burned.


T4 1240

+ Ghengis wants us to cancel deals with Cy . . . I don't think so. Dude's so in the stone age it ain't even funny.
***Rome Notre Dame -> Angkor Wat (I figure we'll run out of wonders in a bit and can do basic builds like Uni, etc. . .)

T5 1250

Forge & library built -> 2 Universities

T6 1260

+ Ghengis again . . .this time he wants us to convert to Taoism! Ha! I think not. I trade him a spare corn for sugar though to keep him content. He's got axes & such wandering around our lands.

- I merged our Great artist into Neapolis. 14cpt is a lot, especially combined with the %-increase stuff we'll get later. Plus, it's $3 & 3 beakers/turn as well. If we're going for culture at all, our big 3 will be Antium, Rome, Neapolis and Neapolis was farthest behind.

* Destroyed barb city of Saxon down between India & Persia. . .$11 !!! WooHoo! :rolleyes:

T7 1270

= workers just workin' . . .

T8 1280

Wow . .flurry of activity here.

-Okay, so Ghengis comes wanting Priesthood for $120. It's an 81 beaker tech so why not. We're WAY up on him tech-wise.
-Then Cy comes demanding Theology. A bit rude, but we already got all the goodies from it, so fine. I try demanding something from him, but no go. He's up Feudalism & horseback on us, we're up 3 on him still - I forget which. Oh yeah, I sold him some rice for $4/turn. **Tidbit . . .him and Asoka are "close friends." Mmhmm.
-Now Asoka comes calling! Sheesh . . .somebody shut the ringer off, eh? Get this . . .HE wants us to cut off deals with Ghengis. I think not. I deal with Asoka a bit and find out he's just as behind as Ghengis is. And by the way, Ghengis HAS dealt with us well and fairly thusfar. I sold Asoka Theology (since Cy probably would have anyway apparently) for ~$300 and sold Asoka some more rice for $3/turn.
*We were at ~$300, -$7/turn @ 80% . . .now breaking even with ~$600 in the bank.

***Discover Liberalism -> free tech Nationalism (for Hermitage/Taj Mahal) -> Drama in 1

T9 1290

*Ghengis again . . .now he's cnaceling our open borders. Go figure.
** Drama -> machinery [vetoable, but I didn't see a better choice]

T10 1300

- There's a settler en route to Neapolis - probably head him North somewhere either on our immediate coast above rome, or the penninsula up there. 2 more settlers cooking now.

http://i27.photobucket.com/albums/c189/Pantherfern/Civ4ScreenShot0065.jpg

I love how we have twice as many cities as anyone else with more on the way.
Good set, sir!

Yeah, trouble is, they are quickly running out of room to expand and Asoka & Ghandi are both getting a bit antsy. I think Cumae and maybe another city (besides Antium, Rome, Neapolis) ought to churn out defenders as we are very lightly defended right now.

I agree with that assessment.
Also, with Spiral Minaret on the way, we need to aggressively spread our religion within our borders. We're Jews, right?
TEMPLES AND MONASTERIES ARE YOUR FRIEND! LET'S PUMP THE MONASTERIES BEFORE WE GET SCIENTIFIC METHOD!

Point taken, especially on the monasteries. I always end up holding off on scientific method until last to squeeze more in. Yes, we're Jews, and I think only 3 of our current cities are Jewless. Along with Cumae and another city streaming defenders, maybe one ought to be streaming Jewish missionaries for our cities and foreign missionary work. I believe Pisae has a monastery and is centrally located.

Q: are we going for cultural victory? If so, we need those Tri-Cities (Antium, Rome, Neapolis) building nothing but cultural producers & artists. In this case, the other cities don't necessarily ALL need everything built in them asap and can afford to specialize this way.

I think Cumae, Arpinium, and Setia would be a good tripartate for soldier factories (when that is needed). Maye we could flood Pisae & Satricum with all our religions/monasteries so they can be permanent missionary pumps to spread worldwide (or at least empire-wide.) The only real breaks in these patterns would need to be for science boosters or cash/health boosters. Library, University, Observatory, grocer, market, bank, etc.

If we're not going for cultural, what are we going for?

Cultural seems logical to me.

Got it, but I'm not going to play until tomorrow.

All the reports of cultural victories have made it seem that you need to absolutely focus on getting it from the start, so I'd be disinclined.
Space or Diplo would be my choices.

Okay. I just wanted to get a bead on where we were headed. I don't really know how the diplo win works in IV as I haven't yet ever had a game where anybody built the UN. We would seem to be a shoo-in for space race at this point with our huge tech lead over 2 of them and prduction capability.

I won my first game via Diplo.
See Sullla's walkthrough at http://civ4info.com/Sullla/civ4.html where he shows the world how to win with the UN.

Interesting. Thanks for that link.

Our pop should be huge, and Cy is pretty happy with us thusfar (although he'd probably be our opponent.) We might want to pick one of those little backwards civs to be our "friend."

Well, if you control 68% of the world's population, you win by default, because you always have the two thirds majority.
We're close to that, are we not?

Population, probably. Last I checked it was ~50%. We need a certain land percentage too though which, even if we fill in our northern areas, I'm not sure we'd hit without taking somebody out. Might be close though.

Oh wait . . .you're talking for vote purposes, not domination. Well, like I said, we're around 50% now and can probably put up another 8-10 cities without much problem. 2-3 on our direct northcoast; 4-6 on the NE penninsula; 2-3 on the NW penninsula. Plus a possible other SE one and we could even slap one in on our East coast by that cow as a mostly fishing/ship city.

Our rivals, on the other hand, are rapidly running out of expansion room and will probably not get more than a couple more cities each. And that south pole region is NOT going to get real populous anyway.

Yeah. I think that if we sit tight and don't get conquered, we have the game in the bag.
What this game really shows is that an aggressive landgrab is still a viable strategy in Civ4 for Organized civs. If you can consolidate it and cut off your rivals, you just get so ahead that you can't help but win.

Well, to be fair, I think that popping 2 settlers very early is what put us where we are now. But yes, large civs are very feasible in this game so long as you don't expand too rapidly and keep your workcrews up with city growth. Yes, each city has a maintenence fee attached to it, but so long as that city makes enough to cover that fee, you're cool.

The problem with very rapid expansion, or taking over another civ with small cities, or something similar, is that those cities take awhile to build up to the point where they are covering their own expenses so that in the meantime they are just idly costing a fortune.

We're doing pretty well here although we could still probably use a few more workers. Our NE cities need a lot of work, we still have quite a bit of work to do in the West, and with new cities due, we are going to start falling behind if we don't boost the workforce a bit. I'd like to see us be able to hit 90-100% science rate and I think it's possible with more rapid improvements.

One other thing I'd like to mention: if we're not going cultural, I vote that any specialist we have should be scientists so that we can plop down academies in every possible city (starting with the biggest, of course.)

Too bad huts only pop settlers in the easiest 3 difficulties. Noble+, they don't. Anyway, I'll have a report up Thursday.

Guh! Oh my friggin god, I hate my computer. I'm probably going to have to reformat. Sorry guys, I'm using a friends computer to get this message to you. It may be some time before I can get back in this game. If you wanna just find someone else to take my spot I won't mind.

This is rediculous...

Bummer, Kabe. Hope you get it worked out.

BG, are we going you, me, & Mike till Kabe is back or picking somebody else up?

If any lurkers would like to take the spot of TundraWolf, we'd be happy to let you, so that we are four temporarily and up to five once Kabe returns.
Until then, three man challenge!

Guh, I think my harddrive has just lost it. Tomorrow, I'm going to go buy another one (long overdue anyways). Hopefully I can get through reloading windows and installing everything and be back in pretty soon.

Once again, I'm sorry.

Okay. I don't think you need to update us anymore on your computer's status unless it's fixed or blows up. We'll carry on without ye.

1310 AD:
Genghis Khan, our sworn enemy, asks us for help attacking the beloved Persians. Does he really think we'll help him? Just look at our relation scores! +/-/-/-/-/-... I deny him and we add another -.

1320 AD:
Machinery learned. Researching Engineering to build the Hagia Sophia.
Versailles built. Our GPT jumps from +1 to +9.
Imhotep (Great Engineer) built in Neapolis! I put him to sleep there until we get Machinery to jumpstart the Hagia Sophia.
Our attack Praetorian by Zapotec is ready to conquer the city, but he took quite a beating in the last turn & I need him fit for attack. So I group him with the Explorer & move them both into the forest. Once he's rested (and Zapotec grows to 2), we'll be ready!

1330 AD:
Colossus built!
We need to catch up on a few techs we've left behind, so I trade with Cyrus: Divine Right for Feudalism & Horseback Riding.

1340 AD:
Spiral Minaret built! Finanaces leap to +28 GPT.

1350 AD:
Engineering learned, researching Guilds. We need Grocers to up our Health.
Cyrus steals Zapotec from under our noses with Immortals! Curse them!
I immediately start construction on the Hagia Sophia & use Imhotep to finish it in one turn! Bada boom!

1360 AD:
Angkor Wat built!
Hagia Sophia built!
Start building Chichen Itza in Antium.

1370 AD:
Velitrae founded on the northern coast!

1380 AD:
Guilds learned. Researching Banking.

1390 AD:
Viroconium founded just south of Rome! The elephants & hills will produce lots of hammers once the jungle's cleared out, and it's in a great position to culture bomb Lahore.

1400 AD:
Banking learned. Researching Printing Press.
Science increased to 90%.

NOTES:
Need farms around Ravenna to support the mines.
Last Settler heading to SE, preparing town to steal resources & culture bomb the lake. We'll have tense borders with Cyrus then, which will add a -1 to our relations.
In most of our large cities, health is the limiting factor. Build Grocers to increase it.

Back to you, Bottlz.

Yo.
I got it.
I finished RBCiv Epic 1 today, so I'm glad this came to me when it did :lol:. After that experience, I want some nice relaxing Warlord.

1400 (0) Veto the path for the settler. We have no Great Artist nor are we likely to have one soon. The Culture Bomb is an invalid strategy here. Send the settler NE of its location.
1410 (1): We are the most cultured civ of the world. India wants Paper. Why the hell not? Relations go to Pleased. Arretium Christian Monastery --> Bank
1430 (3): Neapolis Grocer --> Bank. Arpinum Christian Monastery --> Bank. Circei Courthouse --> Harbor. Setia Islamic Monastery --> Market. Arden Granary --> Jewish Monastery.
1440 (4) Printing Press --> Economics. Satricum Courthouse --> Market. Arden Jewish Monastery --> Market. Found Tarentum, which begins a Forge.
1450 (5) Asoka wants to swap World Maps. Sure.
1460 (6) Economics --> replaceable parts. Revolt to Free Market. Antium Chichen Itza --> Aqueduct. Pisae Grocer --> Bank. Circei Harbor --> Library. Send Great Merchant to conduct a trade mission, which is the optimum balance of big city and mad far (it will arrive a few turns into the next player's turn). A great scientist has also been born in Rome and I'll build an academy once I figure out which city is producing the most beakers.
1470 (7) Anarchy ends and the Academy is put in Rome.
1480 (8) Ravenna something that I can't read but starts with a C and is therefore likely a Courthouse --> Market. Rome University --> Forge. We have SO LITTLE INFRASTRUCTURE IN ROME IT IS PATHETIC. WHERE IS THE COURTHOUSE? THE MARKET? GET THAT STUFF BUILT!
1490 (9) Antium Aqueduct --> Grocer. Cumae Monastery --> Grocer.
1500 (10) Neapolis Bank --> Synagogue. Arretium Bank --> Grover.

There are Barbs outside of Neapolis. I shifted a longbow out to intercept. If the Sword attacks, we probably win. If the sword does not attack and rather moves, attack and kill it, then promote to Shock to kill the axe for sure.
Genghis Khan canceled his Sugar deal when I wasn't looking and Neapolis lost a happy, ergo my build of the Synagogue.
With us running Organized Religion, why isn't Judaism in every city? We've been too focused on building marginal Wonders (I mean, really. Chichén Itzá?) and not on core infrastructure; Banks, Grocers, Aqueducts, A FORGE IN OUR GODDAMN CAPITAL, etc. We need to send out a slew of Jewish Missionaries, converting all of our cities, and then go hit up Asoka. First priority is Tarentum; all of its good tiles are in the first border expansion.
When the Great Merchant arrives, the mission should give us enough gold to run 100% sci for quite a while.
We need more workers too.

Calm.

Breathe.

Chill.

Okay, we all better now? In 1460 we were heading for replaceable parts - one our rivals was just begging for paper and not long ago Ghengis was begging for priesthood which we've probably had a couple thousand years now. It ain't all bad.

1) Rome needs basic buildings; agreed.
2) I noted during my last set that we had 3 non-jewish cities. I'll try to get some missionaries out and about. I didn't notice any in yours or Mike's queues either though . . .:mischief:
3) Where is the Merchant headed? You never said.
4) "Got it" should get 'er done tomorrow