If the little tag of FS (1) is reserved for some other group, I am sorry. I didn't know, and I use FS1 as my normal name to use on any forum or site is Farae Slayer. :)

World Size: Large
Map: Continents
Difficulty: Noble
Sea Level: Normal
Era: Ancient
Speed: Normal
Victory Options: No Space Race, No Time. And no Diplomacy.
AI: 11

Rules: While all victory options are enabled besides Space Race, Time, and Diplomacy, we personally MUST win by culture. :king: In addition, we must force at least 4 (we could change that number if it is too many or too few ^_^) cities to flip via culutre. We are however free to conquer as much as we want. :hammer:

Civ: Frederick of Germany.

Roster: (Closed)

1) pessimist
2) Farae (too busy!)
3) S.ilver (up?)
4) ucel
5) Liquidated
6) ndthsmdy

I'll join in. As of Civ IV I find myself liking peaceful cultural victories more (seems I can't fight effectively yet with the new combat system).

I'm not very experienced though. Played a game on Warlord in Civ IV. At Civ 3 I played mostly at Warlord, though I won a few at Regeant. So hopefully there'll be a vet signing up to help us out.

Hopefully :worship:

I'd be interested in joining.

However...

1) I'm stuck with an ATI 7500 (the video that was supposed to work but didn't). As a result I'm playing by the grace of Sovz's temp fix and can see the whole map (just terrain--no yet-to-be-discovered resources or other civs). I of course pretend that I can't, but I still can, so...

2) My game has lately been crashing about 50% of the time when I convert a city or build a shrine.

I'll leave it up to you. Haven't done a SG yet, but I'm winning easily on Noble and am close to winning reliably on Prince.

Check me in if you want noble. Even as the first one. Hmm, maybe Arabia as a Civ? And why only 12 civs on large :)?

ok Liq is clueless, just finally got out from the pc rebooting anytime ghandi looked my way so well behind on the civ4 learning curve.

New to all of this SG goodness (I'm so very impressed with it all honestly) but old to civ 1 and 2 (skipped 3).

I excell in infrastucture based goals but I'm a total stump when it comes to hostilities.

My basic skill level is strong warlord/ weak noble and well figure the best way to learn is jump into an SG.

If you want a noob, let me know!

I'm fluent instant message services and such for any hand holding/lashings needed lol.

Cheers!
-Liquidated

I'm interested if you've still got room, although I can't claim any expert knowledge with culture victories. My vote would be for standard, continents, noble.

I also think four culture flips will make Noble plenty challenging :)

Creative has got to be the most important LT for this game, right? +2 culture per city and cheap theatres for artist specialists (read: culture bombs)? Unfortunately, no Creative civs start with Mysticism (even Hatty, Cre/Spir) :mad:

Frederick would be good (Cre/Phil). So would Cathy (Cre/Fin). But if the desire for religion trumps being creative, I'd agree you can't go wrong with Arabia.

You've got 6 replied Farae, and only 5 slots! What's going on? This game still on?

This game is still on, we just need a bit of aid, that's all. :)

Hm? I got 5 replies S.ilver, ndthsmdy just made a second reply.

If anyone who has signed up so far wasn't included on my roster, let me know!

:)

Arabia is good for religion and Great People, but they focus on that soley. Creative, Spiritual, Philsophical, and maybe Financial or Organized for money. ^_^

1) Who of those who signed up actually has the game?

2) Who knows how to upload the game save to here and put the link on a post so everyone else can play it?

3) Who knows how to take pictures?

4) Who knows how to post pictures?

Any vets that see this topic, if you could answer #2 and #4 for me, I would be grateful!

As for me...

1) Yes.
2) Don't know how.
3) Know how.
4) Don't know how. :)

Oops! Maybe I should read screenames more closely :P.

And yeah, I can take the pictures, and I do have Civ IV. No idea how to mess with these forums though, as you can tell from my post count...

I'm easy whichever. 6 people are fine. If no vet joins in then well the odd lurker can always whack us over the head.

I've been goofing with the crash free game much to my sleep pattern's demise and tinkering with start games.

I really like the creative trait for the same reasons I like an early religion (hinduism my normal priority).

At the the start, the free culture expansions from creative makes a major difference in hooking up those just out of reach resources (the 2 to 5 square range). The half price theatre doesn;t really excite me since they are not too expensive to start with. I really like creative.

Snagging bud or Hin as a first religion has the same culture effect with the focus on the capitol. The addition of being in early control of temple creation is really nice for the happiness and minor culture. If you miss hindu though you have to devote more time to snag jud though which just delays development the spiritual trait really helps this.

Other traits I've been liking are philisopical and financial.

Phil is really nice if you can snag stone or oracle early on, as great priests just start chain popping. I'm still experimenting what to use great people for, an early perma specialist is really nice.

Saladin is nice as seen in sulla's walkthough for the spiritual/phili as those two dove tail nicely.

Financial is another favorite as coast/lake squares are nice as are spamming cottages if one is food wealthy. The extra commerce is really really nice in that it's very flexible in terms of culture/research/cash flow for the civ.

Cathrine's finacial/creative combo is a ton of fun escially if one can start near a lake or coast as shooting for hindu is not too bad odds even without mystisim. From there, mass commerce can really make theatres and collosiums viable happyness tools.

Still trying to wrap my head around the peacful traits and how they combine.

oh btw ndthsmdy if you still having crashing issues shoot me a pm, I just got out from under that rock the other day using an ati 9800 pro. I may be able to help a bit.

Cheers!
-Liq

Hm...

Creative- That culture boost is NICE.

Spiritual- No anarchy is a HUGE benefit and it REALLY helps religion founding and spreading.

Financial- Money money!

Organized- If we need expensive civics, this REALLY helps us cut costs.

Philsophical- Nice Great Person bonus, and it does aid religion. ^_^

Hm...which to choose?

Ok, I balanced it out and I think we should go with either Hetshupsut of Eygpt or Louis XIV of France.

Hatty- Hatty is Creative and Spiritual, thus giving her the edge to found religions and build places of faith at low cost. She is also creative, giving a nice culture boost and allowing us to build theatres and collesums at half cost, which both aid culture. This allows us to combine religion and normal buildings for a solid move. We can also keep growing during turns that would otherwise be spent in fruiltless anarchy, so this is a MAJOR plus.

Louis- Louis is Organized and Creative. The Creative trait adds the above mentioned bonuses and we can focus om expanding and building lots of culture buildings to take the win. He is Organized and this will save lots of costs. Where he cannot switch to something without anarchy, he can make use of the civics like Organized Religion or Caste System which normally drain funds. He can build lighthouses for coastal growth at half cost, and courthouses at half cost as well for reducing maitenance.

EDIT: There is ONE downside to both of them. Though they are REALLY useful for Cultural Victories, neither start with Mysticism.

1) We can research a later religion.

2) We can just research it, hope for the best and shoot for Hindiuism, if we fail, take Judaism, if failing that, take Christianity or Confucianism. We WILL get a religion, we just need to do our best.

3) One more thing, are we playing on Noble or Prince?

Hm. I will use this post to test how to upload a picture.

http://i18.photobucket.com/albums/b120/farae_slayer/Civ4ScreenShot0025.jpg

Edit: YES! I got it to work!

The way I did it was simple; register an account at Photo Bucket, and IT'S FREE. Upload the file there, then copy the URL they give it. Use the "Insert Image" button when making your post, paste in the URL and voila! ^_^

2) Who knows how to upload the game save to here and put the link on a post so everyone else can play it?

4) Who knows how to post pictures?

2) Haven't done it personally yet, but apparently all you really need to do is zip the file, click on Manage Attachments when you post, and go on from there.

4) You have to find a place to host your pics. You can get a free account at Photobucket (www.photobucket.com) which has worked nicely for me. Then you just copy and paste the img link into your post.

Hm...which to choose?

Philosophical, if it is managed right, is actually better than Creative for the cultural victory. +2 culture per city * 350 turns + multipliers comes out to 1,000-1,500 extra culture per city (2-3% of needed total). Each Great Artist, though, is worth 4,000 culture minimum (more if used as a super specialist), so if you milk 2-3 more Artists than you usually would via Phil it comes out to more like 5-8%.

It seems like Creative (while certainly not hurting in an attempt for cultural victory ;) ) would be more useful in dealing with the four-flips requirement. Depending on how many civs are close to us, we may have to flip a city early, then turn it around from having 0 culture (once we've flipped it) to being able to flip another, older city :eek: Creative would be pretty essential in that regard.

Then there's religion. I may not be giving it its fair due, since that bug in my game has forced me to play a lot of games without it, but I'm not sure being Spiritual just to ensure an early religion is going to outweigh the benefits of Phil or Cre. An early religion is going to make us want to make Great Prophets, when what we really want is lots of Artists. And if the cards play out right, we may get a chance to take one from another civ anyway :D

So I guess my vote would be for Frederick (Phil/Cre), or Saladin (Phil/Spir) if we decide we want to go Spir. Keep in mind the Cre/Spir leader (Hatty) does NOT start with Mysticism...

1) Farae
2) S.ilver
3) ndthsmdy
4) ucel
5) Liquidated
6) pessimist

You may want to consider putting me last, since I'll be able to see the map and should probably do as little exploration as possible :)

:)

Spiritual however goes with no anarchy. Thus we can switch religions and civics without any restrictions other then we can't switch again for 5 turns.

Mysticism is an easy tech to get, though it will hurt our progress to Buddhism or Hinduism. You may be right with the points you made, but I don't know about Saladin, Creative is a useful trait. :) And Frederick will have Anarchy.

We have time, I hope that everyone will contribute thoughts on who to pick so we can get underway. :)

BTW, that roster is NOT the permanent order. I need EVERYONE to tell me if they have the game and if they are having any technical problems, and if they will be away for more then 3 days or so. I think I can manage this. :crazyeye:

Spiritual is good for the lack of anarchy. The question is, will we be switching civics around a lot this game? I mean, of course our goal is cultural dominance, but we may still have to fight people (or at least maintain a decent standing military).

Also, it would also be very nice to found 2 or more religions, as mass building of temples will allow us to throw up the super temples in more than a few places (and maybe stack them too).

I've not yet played a game as Saladin, however, from his traits, it seems that he may be what we want to get this done as painlessly as possible.

Spiritual is good for the lack of anarchy. The question is, will we be switching civics around a lot this game? I mean, of course our goal is cultural dominance, but we may still have to fight people (or at least maintain a decent standing military).

Also, it would also be very nice to found 2 or more religions, as mass building of temples will allow us to throw up the super temples in more than a few places (and maybe stack them too).

I've not yet played a game as Saladin, however, from his traits, it seems that he may be what we want to get this done as painlessly as possible.

IF we get into war, Spiritual allows us to switch from say a peace trait like Pacifism to a war trait like Theocracy.

I have no objections to Saladin, though we must consider our choice carefully.

While pondering the Civ choice, lets get our map parameters confirmed.

I say a large world. With 12 AI. Any objections? Anyone scared if their comps will slow too much?

I also suggest continents. I have the utter inability to be good at maintaining an advanced and narge navy, and how can we culture flip on archipleago? Lakes would be fine, but without any oceans there is no safety measure of decent isolation. Then again, it might help reduce our navy size. On continents, we get a measure of protection from some nations but we get other nations to attack with culture. We must be careful though and seal off areas for our use.

Now as for victory conditions, we are NOT being threatened by Time, and Space Race is too simple for the AI to score. Diplomacy might be bad, so we should consider disabling it.

Also, who knows how to draw dotmaps? I tried once on Paint, but my hand was too wobbly to get a straight line. There must be a program or function to make it easy to make dotmaps.

I'm fine with those map parameters.

As I said, I'm cool with Saladin, though I'm still not sure I see how trading no anarchy (a nice luxury to have) is better than +2 culture per city (a nice luxury that directly impacts our main goal). Silver's point about not changing civics much is a good one, and if we do Frederick and get lucky enough to start on a river we should still have a pretty good shot at (at least) one religion.

But whatever, I've made my argument :) Let's hear from some of the other dudes.

WEll I vote noble if we are all new... I too need to study the posting of images and making dot maps :lol:

imo Organized's (is that a word?) benefit is a not too useful on noble or prince since it only halves civic costs... NOT city or unit costs. Keep in mind that Civic costs rise as difficulty rises meaning it would be most useful on a deity level game, not say noble.

options I see off hand would be
Salidin(arabia) - spiritual and philo. blitz for hindu then play it by ear. starts mystisicm and roads so the possible early worker has stuff to do hehe

Cathy (russia) creative and finanical - see the options for 2+1 commerce options on start to kick in the financial trait right away, maybe try for early hindu concentrating on maximising beakers. Not a sure thing by any means, fishing is a cheap skill if there's a fish or lake resource nearby would speed the path to polytheism. hunting and mining start such that she gets a scout instead of a warrior and a leg up on jud pulling her even with any other leader for the race to mono other than ghandi and mansa I think.

Mansa musa (malinese) is spiritual and financial starting with mys and mining making him prolly THE strongest contender for early religion as financial can really crank the starting game beakers if popped down in the correct location and having the 2x short track to jud not to mention bud and hin. His unique unit, the skirmisher is based off the archers 3-1 adding 1 str for total of 4 and adding another possible first attack. This unit would be major in dealing with barbs at the start both defensively and offensivly. hmm seems I miss read the starting techs, he doesn;t get mysti at start.

other leaders; isabel from spain, ghandi from india (fast workers!) and frederick (panzers!) hatshewhatever from egypt (good chariots). All are fine choices, just highlight the strengths of the chosen leader and try and hammer them home in the long term.

I would vote cathy or saladin from that long list myself but any of those leaders would be fine as long as we skip organized. I personally love love love cathy, the combination of finan and creative is stunning.

3 am is always free for me so no absences planned at least (suddenly the sky falls)

As for CIV4, have game and FINALLY ironed out the reboots so gtg with 2g system memory and a random unlocked oc'd 3200+ athlon barton with aggresive memory timings.:crazyeye:

Map choice is fine maybe a few less civs but then I normally play smaller maps, not sure how much bigger large maps are.

Whichever, I'm good for fine tuning a civ.

Cheers!
-Liq

First, sorry to be late to reply here. I didn't realize so much discussion was going on last night! (I was playing civ at the time...)

1) I have the game, and have had no problems playing it thus far.

2) While I'm new to this forum, I've been on other forums for a long time, so I've got no problems with attaching the save game.

3) All set on taking screenshots.

4) Fine with posting pictures.


Lets see what else...

I think I'm with ndthsmdy and leaning towards Frederik. You guys hammered out a lot of the fine points already, but while I think no-anarchy is useful, we need an awful lot of culture and artists to pull this off.

For the map, continents is fine with me. It will be slow for me in the late game with 12 civs on large though. I can probably manage, but I'll need to turn the graphics settings down a bit. The game I am currently playing is 6 civs on large and it gets a little jumpy wen scrolling and zooming, but that's the worst of it. If I had my choice, I would vote for 8, but you guys probably want more than that.

No time, space-race, or diplomacy victory conditions is fine with me.

I will not be able to play around the thanksgiving holiday (specifically Wed 11/23 - Sun 11/27, inclusive) So if you really want to optimize the roster, put me in a position where I'll get to take a turn on Tues 11/22. That way I shouldn't need to be skipped.

Edit: Also, in my current game (noble, Kublai Khan: agg/cre), I've flipped two cities without using any artists. Just good city "flanking" early on in the game, followed by a lot of cultural buildings. That creative culture bonus can be very handy. I think that effect in addition to the 100% extra great people from Phil, and we should be in good shape.

Large world is OK for me. Do we really need Spir civ? Anarchy in Civ4 is ONE turn, practically not to mention. And 5 turn latency after religion / civic change is valid for all civs.
How many turns do we play? 20 first, 10 then? I vote for Phil+Cre civ then (whoever it is).

I count 3 who prefer Frederick (me, pessimist, ucel) and 3 leaning toward Saladin (farae, liquidated, silver).

I also count 2 (liquidated, pessimist) expressing a preference for fewer civs, with the rest not caring so much.

Farae, you want to make an executive decision here? :)

We will have 11 civs then. If anyone wants to take it down to 10, that is fine. Remember that I am counting our civ into the mix, so 11 civs means us+10 others.

Hm, I hate making executive decisions. So I bring in a compromise.

Louis- Louis gets the Creative bonus and the Organized trait. The Organized trait lets us build lighthouses and COURTHOUSES at half cost. Courthouses reduce city maintenance by 50%.

I am reading out of the Guide here, and it makes these claims.

Cultural Victory Leaders

1) Hatty=Louis

2) Saladin and Frederick

:) I notice that the last two give us a Great People bonus, but Hatty and Louis give us nice ones too. I dunno, who likes the compromise leader of Louis?

Also, who has AIM? Mine is faeraeslayer.

Ok, I relent.

We will go with Frederick, as he is Creative and Philsophical. I really would rather go with Hatty or Louis, but I am will go with the flow here. And our final parameters:

World Size: Large
Map: Continents
Difficulty: Noble
Sea Level: Normal
Era: Ancient
Speed: Normal
Victory Options: No Space Race, no Time, no Diplomacy.
AI: 11

Rules: While all victory options are enabled besides Space Race, Time, and Diplomacy, we personally MUST win by culture. In addition, we must force at least 4 (we could change that number if it is too many or too few ^_^) cities to flip via culutre. We are however free to conquer as much as we want.

Civ: Frederick of Germany

Roster: (Closed)

1) pessimist
2) Farae
3) ndthsmdy
4) ucel
5) Liquidated
6) S.ilver

---> I put myself as 2nd as I do not know how to upload saves, while pessimist does.

Fredrick sounds like a good choice. After thinking about it, ucel is right, since the anarchy is so short, it shouldn't be a major problem. And I'll agree that great artists are important to getting these flips.

As well, on second thought, getting the religions FIRST is probably not as big of a deal as getting enough temples around to churn out the culture (and then those nice +50% culture supertemples). Although the cash bonus from the special buildings would be nice.

We are ready, pessimist, start the game and upload the file when you wish. I will do my best to pick it up tomorrow and post my report.

What number of turns are we each running?

We will each get 10 turns.

I hate making executive decisions.

Hey, it's your SG. I don't think any of us are going to have a problem if you cast deciding votes to break deadlocks.

We will each get 10 turns.

Even the first time through?

3) ndthsmdy

Still should probably put me last.

We are ready, pessimist, start the game and upload the file when you wish.

Go for it. And pray for marble (parthenonparthenonPARTHENON) :D

We will each get 10 turns.

Hm, fine.

Pessimist will have the first um..Turn. And in that Turn, he shall have 20 Civ4 turns. When he hands it to me, I get 15 Civ4 turns. And after that, we all get 10 for the remainder of the game.

Still should probably put me last.

I will rearrange it later. Didn't someone say they can help you fix your bug?

I'll go with frederik, have never played him yet whereas I have all the others mentioned. creative and phil sounds fun.

I'm easy any which way it goes with just my reccomendation again organized...I'm not in the "organized is useless" party, it's really meant for higher difficulty levels than noble imo.

Vote Fred

Cheers!
-Liq

Didn't someone say they can help you fix your bug?

The occasional crashing is one thing. The lack of hardware is another...

OK folks. The save game and log should be posted by 8 PM tonight. (I haven't started it yet though.)

Just a few notes from my experience thus far. Flipping one or two cities we can manage depending on where we build early. Getting 4 though, will probably mean that we go after late game AI expansions, either in areas where we've taken out a few cities and another AI comes in to build, or on an island somewhere. It is hard to culture flip a city that's been around for a while, even with artists. And we'll want our artists to drive up the culture in our cities we're taking to Legendary status anyway.

At some point we're going to need to devote three cities to culture production, and throw some of our research into the culture slider as well.

That will put us behind on a number of fronts, so in general I think we should try to be accommodating and peaceful with the AI. Aside from civs immediately around us, on our continent, I think we should avoid war unless absolutely necessary.

We're going to want Pacifism and Freedom of Speech as early as we can get them. Hopefully we can stay out of war enough at that point to keep up Pacifism.

Also, we're going to need to decide relatively early on what we think our culture cities should be. In order to get artists flowing, we'll need to tip the great person scales in favor of artists as early as possible. Theaters will let us make artist specialists, but we can't build them until somewhat later.

Seems like you mostly come around here later in the day, but if anyone has any thoughts for me before I get this going, lets put them out here.

Those are all very good points.

I did a little checking on World/Natl Wonders that give us both high culture AND Great Artist points: Parthenon, Notre Dame, Sistine, Taj, Heroic Epic, Natl Epic, Globe, Hermitage. Most of these become available at about the same time, and a whopping 6 out of 8 get production cut in half with marble.

Not that we will necessarily be able to just pick when we get Golden Ages, but the idea of a late Medieval/early Renaissance GA with wonders, cathedrals, and universities sounds awesome to me.

Another civic we might want to get to know and love: Caste System.

I'm most worried about our finances/tech prospects. A below average military can always be helped by a little accomodation and a little duct tape, but bad money is death. There's no need to farm all over the place early in the game in anticipation of the day when we're going to want lots of specialists in that city. Cottages are going to be the best use for high food tiles until the city starts getting up over size 12 or so.

Go for expansion early (worker techs, etc), at least until we realize we have enough room to expand. On continents with lots of AIs, we're probably only going to have 0 or 1 early religions on our continent anyway.

Guess that's all I got. Less talk, more culture.

I agree.

I also suggest that we try to found at least three religions and spread them through our nation. The catch? Unless we can somehow convert the surrounding AI civs to our faith, we may want to stick with No State Religion even before Free Religion becomes available so we can maintain good relations. Under No State, we get a culture boost for every religion in our city, we just don't get the happiness bonus until Free Religion, and we will NEED a religion under Pacifism or it will basically do nothing other then drive up unit support costs.

On another note, it is quite impossible to maintain relationships with all the AI, they have their own AI feuds and keep asking you to help them, cancel deals, etc, so we will probably have to pick sides and we have to choose wisely.

Good. Let's start.

Well, I'm at work right now, and will be playing as soon as I get home. Then I'm heading out tonight with some friends. But, the ball will start rolling with my initial post here sometime between about 6 and 8 eastern time!

Looking forward to it.

I also empathize with Farae about the religions, probably because we've both read Sulla and Sirian's RB1, and we've seen how much cash religion can make. If we're able to spread it everywhere, it may help to curb any financial problems (on top of being a nice culture addition).

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v137/ringmir/FS1/FS1-start.jpg

1)4000 BC:

Starting position looks OK. We got clams, cows, dye, and bananas very close. I'm a little concerned that it's all jungle to the NE, but we shall see.

Founded Berlin, and set production to warrior. View around the city reveals rice to the NW. Scout goes to the hut, gets a map from the villagers revealing horses not too far north.

Set production for Mysticism on a gamble, we'll want an early religion for culture. I also want animal husbandry so we can get those cows.

2)3960 BC:

Send scout to explore more around the NW, mostly because SE is coastline and E is jungle. Find more coastline.

3)3920 BC:

Scout goes N some more, find two incenses.

4)3880 BC:

Borders of Berlin expand! Scout goes E and finds some Ivory. That could be handy in an early war...

5)3840 BC:

Scout goes SE and find a hut and some Dye. Will check the hut next turn.

6)3800 BC:

The villages provide me with a map that reveals most of the S and SE. Looks like we're on the southern tip of the landmass, so the scout will be going N. Some cows and Corn are revealed in the SE area.

7)3760 BC:

Scout moves E, he's in the jungle still though so moving is slow. Next turn he'll be back in the open field.

8)3720 BC:

We get Mysticism. Going to shoot for Polytheism...lets cross our fingers! Scout moves NE and finds some rice.

9)3680 BC:

We finish our warrior, who I fortify. Given what appears to be the state of the surrounding land I set production for another scout to go NW. I want the city population to increase before I make a worker or settler.

10)3640 BC:

Scout noes north, finds a hut which I'll check next turn. After ten turns here is the state of things:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v137/ringmir/FS1/FS1-turn-10.jpg

11)3600 BC:

Buddhism has been founded in a distant land! (We knew that would happen...) Scout investigates hut, and we get 45 gold. There's more horses, ivory, and cows up to the NE.

12)3560 BC:

Drat! Hinduism has been founded in a distant land... crap! :mad: I tried guys... do I go ahead from here and try to shoot for Monotheism? Or switch to Animal Husbandry so we can get the cows... I stick it out, maybe we can build the parthenon. I don't want to make a worker yet anyway because the city is small.

Scout moves east. Berlin is pop 2 now, not sure which turn that happened on...


13)3520 BC:

Mansa Musa (henceforth M&M ;) ) find us with a warrior, I say we'll have peace. At this point I notice his city to the north, the culture line for which is barely visible in the fog. I decide to scout him out.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v137/ringmir/FS1/FS1-Mansa-Musa-City.jpg

14)3480 BC:

I scout more by the M&M...nothing going on.

15)3440 BC:

We get our new scout. Berlin grows in 9 turns, so I set a warrior in production, should be ready in 5. I think we should get a worker and settler after we hit pop 3.

Scout-1 checks out M&M. Scout-2 heads north.

16)3400 BC:

Scout-1 moves W and discovers coastline! So far we appear to be sharing a very small continent...
Scout-2 moves N into the jungle.

17)3360 BC:

A lion appears out of the fog south of M&M. Scout-1 decides to finish scoping W and Scout-2 goes E.

18)3320 BC:

Scout-1 confirms my suspiscions about the W coastline. Scout-2 heads NE.

19)3280 BC:

Scout-1 heads for the slightly un-explored SE, while Scout-2 goes NE to finish the exploration there.

20)3240 BC:

We get Polytheism. I set up the wheel and a Warrior as our production. Feel free to change these as nothing will have happened on them. I forify the new Warrior.

Scout-1 moves SE. Scout-2 moves NE and ends up next to a lion!:eek:

Wrap-up

That wraps up 20 turns. I'm leaving it before moving to turn 21, not sure if that's how it's supposed to work or not, but that's what I'm doing.

The situation at this point seems to be that we're isolated on a small continent with M&M. If that's the case, I think we should wipe him out and try to set up shop here. The religion situation I'm not so sure about... Of course, the land could open up to the NE. In that case we will probably still want to make a land grab down here, and maybe religion will spread to us.

Edit: Some additional thoughts: We are behind M&M in power, but ahead in culture. That's why I made another Warrior. We will clearly need better units if we try to go after him. If the land does open up to the NE, our two scouts should be able to search around up there decently enough for the time being.

For more advanced units we'll need archery and bronze working, and to take advantage of some of the food in our borders we'll need fishing and animal husbandry. I think any of those would be a better choice that the wheel right now, which is what I left it on in the save. Once the city turns to pop 3, I'd get a settler out and move him NE with the extra warrior to settle by the horses over there. We'll have the hills and can hopefully get copper there. The land is more workable too as we won't have the desert tiles. At this point I'm not too optimistic about getting monotheism. If you ant to try for it go ahead, but I'd be surprised if we get it. I think we might do better to try to get some troops up and make a land grab vs. M&M.

Sucks about the religions, would've been nice. Maybe we can still get Judaism.

If M&M is really the only one on the continent with us, it would be prudent to try and flip his cities, and if that fails, smash him to little bits. Don't know how this will affect us in trying to flip other Civ's cities (who may be on other continents and have time to build culture). Who know's? Maybe M&M founded one of those religions and we can grab it from him (wouldn't put it past the AI).

We likely have a dead scout now :sad:, but at least we know where stuff is! Lots of food resources, 2 lux and the elephants.

One thing... if we want to fight M&M, we will need copper or iron. He has an archer UU, so that will be a pain if he manages to amass enough of them.

Any chance of a screenshot of what we see at the end of the turn?

Hm, I will play now. Please keep in mind I still go to school (damn mandatory public education!), and in EST it is 8:35, so I may have to get it up tomorrow. BTW, while I work, someone post the EXACT process for uploading the save file.

the exact process is fairly easy. When replying, click the "go advanced" button.

On the page you get, there'll be two main areas at the top: "Reply to Thread" and "Additional Options"

Under "Additional Options" click "Manage Attachments". A pop-up will appear.

In this pop-up, under the "upload files from your computer" box, click "Browse..." and then select the save game file. Then click the "Upload" button. At the bottom of the pop-up window then select "Close this window"

Continue with your post as normal, and the save game file will appear at the bottom as it did in my post.

I edited my first post with some additional thoughts.

Here's the upper area on the last turn. I was getting some wierd artifacts on globe view due to the cloud cover so i took this screen shot instead. I was thinking that if we place a city to grab the horses and ivory in the NE, we should hem in M&M pretty well. Of course, the stone to the NW would be handy for wonders. We definitely need copper or iron, which is why I was also thinking the hills by those horses and ivory would be good.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v137/ringmir/FS1/FS1-turn-20.jpg

OK, I finished. I may go for a redo on my part. Though. Tell me, was it wise to construct an obelisk and let Berlin grow a bit before building a settler?

Can't see the problem with that... Did it gain an extra pop point in the process?

The settler better have an escort too...

I thought about the obelisk, but figured that we had a culture edge already. That's why I opted to scout and then go for an expansion. But more culture is a good thing too. Lets see what others say. I definitely thought Berlin should expand to size 3 before making a settler and worker.

Edit: We have two warriors in Berlin from my turns...So there is an escort. And also I think we should generally avoid redos...that's cheating!

Does Civ IV still have older culture buildings generating more culture? If so, the obelisk wasn't a bad choice. And yeah, redoing is cheating, and makes you a worse player :cry:

I don't think the obelisk was a bad choice at all. It just wasn't my choice! That's the whole point of the succession game anyway right? Let different people take a turn at the wheel and see what they do with things. I think we need culture and have no religion, so all culture buildings are going to be good. But yeah if my post made it seem like I thought it was a bad choice I appologize. I was more trying to explain why I didn't build one myself earlier.

I wanna know what happened to the scout! And also, Berlin ought to have grown to size 3 during his turns. I think there were 9 turns left untill growth when I left it. So basically the obelisk would have carried Berlin until one turn after growth, at which point things were thrown over to the settler. Seems sensible to me.

edit: spelling

Preturn-

Chief Farae, having ascended after the dissapearence of Chief Pessimist, observes the technological progress of the Germans. Deciding to forgo research into a crucial technology called the Wheel, he asks the Sages to teach the people about piling rocks on each other in a manner that will prove useful, and not simply lead to bruised foots.

The training of warriors to defend the village is approved, and so Germany goes on.

The land left to me: http://i18.photobucket.com/albums/b120/farae_slayer/Civ4ScreenShot0058.jpg

Turn 1: Move scout to hill to defend against lion attack.

Turn 2: Meet Washington and decide to go for peace. Our scout wins!

http://i18.photobucket.com/albums/b120/farae_slayer/Civ4ScreenShot0059.jpg

Turn 3: Set scout to heal.

Turn 4: Other scout is unexpectedly attack by panthers, but we take the victory.

Turn 5: Warrior produces, I set construction to obelisk for culture.

Turn 6: More exploring. Hm? Is that a village?

http://i18.photobucket.com/albums/b120/farae_slayer/Civ4ScreenShot0060.jpg

Turn 7: Masonry discovered, set on Monotheism. We get 74 gold from the village!

Turn 8: Yawn. We meet..Isabella. And..OMG!

She was the one who founded Buddhism! No!

Turn 9: Meet Asoka. He has no religion, so he didn’t found Hinduism.

Asoka's lands are in the north. They threaten our settlement ideas I think.

Turn 10: Chief Farae has gathered the Sages to meditate and create a great mental image of the surrounding lands.

http://i18.photobucket.com/albums/b120/farae_slayer/Civ4ScreenShot0061.jpg

Turn 11: Yawn once more.

Turn 12: Build obelisk, set on settler. We need to build a new city. Stonehenge’s power won’t benefit us until we found a new city…no, it works on new cities, so it will be useful! Should we switch and go after it?

Turn 13: Yawn.

Turn 14: Nothing interesting to report.

Turn 15: The people think of the reign of Chief Farae. The people have prospered, and have learned the stone piling art of Masonry. They have also constructed a beautiful new obelisk and made contact with foreign civilizations. They evaluate Chief Farae to not have done so bad at all. But they need new leadership. Chief Farae steps down for the next in the Cycle to take the mantle!

Overview: There are several key resource areas nearby. If they are taken from us, we may have to increase culture for some flips or go to war. Prepare our military guys.

http://i18.photobucket.com/albums/b120/farae_slayer/Civ4ScreenShot0068.jpg

Nice resources, desert outpost needed.

http://i18.photobucket.com/albums/b120/farae_slayer/Civ4ScreenShot0069.jpg

http://i18.photobucket.com/albums/b120/farae_slayer/Civ4ScreenShot0070.jpg

There are only a few spaces in the jungle that can be settled upon. We may wish to settle those spots and block off our foes.

Even farther north:

http://i18.photobucket.com/albums/b120/farae_slayer/Civ4ScreenShot0071.jpg

Don't forget our coastal resources! We have two clams near our immediate coast!

http://i18.photobucket.com/albums/b120/farae_slayer/Stone.jpg

We need that stone!

I suggest you remain on Monotheism, it will take most of S.ilver's turn to complete, but getting Judaisim will REALLY be worth it. It will kind of be a waste if we don't, but hey, it is a new technology. So even if someone else steals Judaism, research it to then end. Then start on the wheel, and agriculture, and all the key, VITAL, basics.

Keep in mind this: We have a LOT of plantation resources near us. To use them, we need Calender. Stonehenge and obelisks are obsoleted by Caldender. Should we get Stonehenge and wait before getting Calender? I would forget Stonehenge and go for Parthenon, and try to get Calender soon, We have plenty of bananas and dyes in the areas we have placed Manifest Destiny on. :)

Good luck S.ilver.

Just checked out the save:

1) We've got a capital that's going to be a sweet specialist factory one day.

2) We need to think hard about which city is more important: horses/ivory or stone. Both are in M&M's backyard and even if we rush to settle them both we may only get one. On one hand, we are going to be dependent on wonders to pull this variant off and we already have another source of horses closer to home; on the other hand, losing horses/ivory means M&M will effectively block us off from what is looking more and more like a decent-sized (and crowded) continent. Tough call.

3) This is not a bad start from a cultural victory standpoint, but for the moment it doesn't look so good for a four flip variant. We appear to be in a crowded part of the world on a peninsula that will guarantee short borders. We're going to have to jump on whatever opportunities we get to apply cultural pressure.

4) Am also a fan of ignoring Stonehenge and pushing for Parthenon. With Phil, we'll get an Artist a mere twenty turns after we build ;)

Good luck Silver. Pump that settler out and get us Jewish :D

Turn (0): Noticing that Berlin could be making A LOT more cash if working the dyes tiles. 5 turns as opposed to 7 on mono. Hopefully will help.

http://i30.photobucket.com/albums/c320/rtchin/Berlin-cash-optimized.jpg

Also noticing that said scout in the north has not yet moved. Hoping it will not need the healing, and that we need map info a lot more, I send it west, and find incense and horses. Interesting. But its a bit far away.

Turn (1): Go northwest and find two shiny gold tiles. Too bad they are so far away.

Turn (2): Move scout again. Nothing interesting. I notice the south one is on autoexplore. I dunno if the AI is better at pathfinding than me, so I just leave him. He's a bit far away from unexplored territory anyways.

Turn (3): Cows up north. Nothing else to report.

Turn (4): I take it back... the AI is horrible at pathfinding!!!

http://i30.photobucket.com/albums/c320/rtchin/scout-panther.jpg

Turn (5): Now this is what we want...

http://i30.photobucket.com/albums/c320/rtchin/judaism.jpg

And we have religion! I choose NOT to suffer through some anarchy now, as we still have 3 happy faces to go through (and we haven't connected the dyes yet!). I start on agriculture, because we've got all this nice river real estate, and that rice over there. Although the wheel and roads would be nice later. Also switch Berlin back to the shield to make that settler in 5 less turns!

http://i30.photobucket.com/albums/c320/rtchin/berlin-back-to-shields.jpg

Scout continues north, finds Washington's cultural borders.

Turn (6): I now turn the autoexplore on this guy OFF! What bad moves!

http://i30.photobucket.com/albums/c320/rtchin/scout-lion.jpg

Turn (7): Stay AWAY from the lions! Good scout!

http://i30.photobucket.com/albums/c320/rtchin/scout-run.jpg

Turn (8): Silver up north! I'm gonna have to claim that for myself! ;) Also, this spot is looking sweeter for a city, although settler will NOT be done my turn...

http://i30.photobucket.com/albums/c320/rtchin/sweet-spot.jpg

Turn (9): Nothing much. Found some furs up north, some gold near the sweet spot...

Turn (10): Just more scouting. We have a decent map now.

http://i30.photobucket.com/albums/c320/rtchin/world-view.jpg

Also looking near our sweet spot area. I notice a river on the other side. If we're fast, we can make a city there to take advantage of the fish, and the floodplains. The other spot has more resources, but less available food.

http://i30.photobucket.com/albums/c320/rtchin/red-dots.jpg

Thoughts... we seem to be getting behind here. I really hope that settler is done fast, we need it out and founding a city. Also, we've got serious infrastructure problems due to our rush to get a religion (which we got 1 of 3). We need to get farms up and maybe a mine or two. Road network needs to connect our 2nd city, wherever it is. Good thing we are planning on being peaceful.

Good luck to ucel!

EDIT: One final thing I thought of; it would probably be bad news to spread our religion to other Civs if they don't yet have a religion (or are going with no state religion) since our religion would just give them extra culture points (making our job all that much harder). It would be good to stick the religions in their larger cities, which we have little or no hope of taking.

Wow, that was fast. Three persons one night. I will play it today evening CET.

wow guys watch out. zoom out map and click the culture music icon in the bottom right....

Malinese culture is directly north of us near the stone. We need to place next city north near there to help stem mansa so he goes west, not south.

If we can secure the southern portion of the continent that's plenty of room. as such though mansa is our number one issue. The land is too wide to have a reasonable chance to block it off in time but first city must be just south of mansa imo.

As for resources, we have cows and clams... to hook up the clams we need fishing tech for 56 and a work boat. building a work boat doesn;t eat city growth like a worker or settler.

as for the cows, that's hunting OR agril tech to access animal husbandry for . Fred starts with hunting so animal husbandry is a striaght one shot tech for 140 beakers, why are we researching agri when
A) no need for farms right off the bat - no corn/wheat
B) we have no worker to even exploit that tech if we had it.

ai yi yi.

well we have no worker, clams are around and we built a obilix for?

ok look,
a fishing boat is 30 hammers no stunted growth
a worker is 60 hammers with all food going to and aiding 'hammers' but no city growth.
settler is 100 hammers with the same traits as a worker.

We stalled on infrastructure to secure jud (imo needed) but in that time we still have no worker for the cows nor are we a beaker closer to hubandry than we were at year 4000 AD for those cows.

now we are researching agril :confused:

not to sound negative but we are way behind the tech curve here and the growth.. pushing jud like that was a calulated risk but we need to focus on growth now.

imo change tech to fishing, fishing and the settler will finish in 6 turns, change to work boat to get the clams and set tech to husbandry.

Depending on the time to finish husbandry having a worker out would be boffo on or AFTER that time so it has something to do other than mine that hill to the east.

if we make another costal city from that settler we can use sails tech to set up a trade path instead of linking roads to and from our sities, letting us use the worker to work on improvements for growth.

a first city at the square just south of those rocks looks promising? we have quarry from the push to jud and it's costal AND south of mansa's mature culture borders as of now. have more cows in initial city radi and more dye sounds like a goal? we can fit another city south of that site to pick up the fun jungles for rice and horses well later when we have the idle workers to clear that jungle. that area will be safly in our cultural borders

techs we want near term...
fishing (56)- AVAIL NOW -for clams leads in to...
.........sailing (140) for coastal trade, lighthouse for extra food from clams, gally to scout the coasts

Archery(84) - AVAIL NOW - for defense from the incoming barbs (coming from the east)

Animal husbandry (140) - AVAIL NOW - lets us build pastures for those cows.

Wheel (84) - AVIL NOW - roads to hook up that stone if we grab it but with sailing no need to waste worker effort on a connecting road between cities. also leads to pottery

wheel and fishing leads to...
........Pottery(112) for the graneries.

bronze working (168) - AVAIL NOW -tree chops and reveals bronze leads to iron working later.


keep in mind mansa's UU (skirmisher) is a really kick ass archer unit meaning conflict with him must be avoided before longbows.

Our UU, panzers, btw are VERY strong against other tanks so a oil era fight favors us even if techs are similar.

Oracle is not really an option for us saddly since we do not have preisthood yet( it's AVAIL NOW for 84 beakers) and we need to stop stalling on growth.

I really think though that we are drifting off focus here and are squandering our start on a crowded continent.

Anyway I'm done rambling, I think :lol:

Keep in mind Liq is a noob so be kind poking holes in this post!!!! :D


Cheers!
-Liq

oh yeah move at least one of our warriors towards next city now since settler is twice as fast and speed is of the essense.

it's gonna be close if we can snag a city that far north. might just be out of our control at this point.

Cheers!
-Liq

By and large I'm with you. The reason I wanted animal husbandry over fishing at this point is so that we can grab the horses by the second city site. But as you point out, fishing is 1/3 the cost. I'm glad we got our religion, but I think we've delayed far too long now on the settler.

I think we should get a settler, a worker, animal husbandry, the wheel, And then hook up the new city (I'm fine with either site.) We also have the most pathetic military imaginable right now, two warriors? Is that really it?

So...yeah lots to do. I also didn't think it would go that fast last night! You guys were itching to play huh?

I am very glad we got our religion though, lets take advantage of that and try to assault M&M with some culture. Two cities, one directly under him, the other sligthly east. Hopefully we can get both sites.

Precheck - nothing much to change. We can do NOTHING. Who ordered to build settler before worker? :(
It'll take about 30 turns before we stand up :(
I stay by agri since we need much food in Berlin.

1) M&M developed BW and adopted slavery
2) exploring
3) zzz...
4) Agri->Fish
5) Woody Scout meet some lions. I moved him into forest.
6) Settler->Worker. Settler is going to build Stone City. Woody wins, but now he spots some barbs :o
7) At the moment it is not bad, but I started 2nd, now I'm 4th.

http://i28.photobucket.com/albums/c222/ucel/Civ/Civ4ScreenShot0011.jpg

8) zzzz...
9) zzzz...
10) Fish->Ani. I thought about Priesthood/Oracle, but we have no productive fileds neither by Berlin nor the second city. We need to find better location for our Wonder city!
11) Hamburg settled, ordered Warrior. We are at -1 because of the distance :(.
12) Nothing.

Sorry guys, that I played 12 turns instead of 10, but wanted fo finish at the even year. This is our little empire by now:
http://i28.photobucket.com/albums/c222/ucel/Civ/Civ4ScreenShot0012.jpg

I have whitedotted our potential wonder city. On the red point we could build mines, on green farms. Additionaly we have corn in the neighbourhood, so the city will be really productive.
Berlin should build second Worker and then the next settler. After that maybe workboat and worker->settler again. We are backward!
With the yellow dot I have proposed the 4th city - we get horses and incense, but the growth will be the problem...
Now it's up to you Liquidated.

Excellent.

I really think we should build another city NE of our starting position before building to the east. If someone does move in down there and build, we can envelop that city in culture and potentially take it. If they move into the area with wheat, horses, and ivory to the NE though, it will be much harder to get it back without war. I would say that we should build to the NE, then to the N, and at your white dot location after both of those.

I agree. We need those resources.

well was a long night seeing as I just got home at um 2 pm :eek:

let me get some sleep, remind me not to effing start an epic large at 430 am.

ok took a look at the last setup before turning off the monitor (bad liq bad), for city placement, sealing the northern edge from mansa seems like it's the way to go next. White dot looks like a good local but that can wait I'm guessing.

for yellow dot, I'm more in favor of taking the dot in the 9 (upper right adjacent) that means no overlap with hamburger and nets us an elephant which we can use now.

lot of desert still but this is border guard.

let me take a long look in game with it later so I can more clearly judge the land.

Liq is sleep deprived tho so feel free to veto that rambling while I go comatose ->:coffee:

Cheers!
-Liq

hmm ok took a peek agains all better judgment (who needs sleep) and 9 from yellow dot spaces cities just far anough to seal from west in one culture jump... easy for creative even for a stunted city.

also after worker I'll push out a work boat for those clams, that will let the city grow a size just barely. I'll wee about tweaking the timings a little better as current layout just loading up file is 8 turns on work boat, 10 turns on size 4.

ok ok turning off the monitor for sure lol

Cheers!
-Liq'd

Took a look at the save, and I'm posting the culture map because I wanted to see it myself. I checked the stats screen, and we are WAY behind in military. I mean painfully pitifully hopelessly shamefully behind. If I were the AI, I would wipe our pathetic excuse for a defense off the map without a second thought.

Our production is on the low side of average, and our culture is pretty good. So, based on where we rank with respect to everyone else on those fronts, we need to get archery and those worker techs, and get our production up as fast as possible. Another city or two should help on that front, although it'll cost us some cash. Then as much as we want culture, we have to get some archers defending our cities first.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v137/ringmir/FS1/FS1-culture-1800BC.jpg

Hm...We need to expand fast and set up defense. Then we can focus on spreading our culture like mad and flipping 4 cities.

If we HAVE to, we can give an average, interior city to someone, and then flip it back ASAP.

(I mean MUCH later in the game when we have a real country set up.)

ok well not much to change.. seems pretty auto pilot... lets see if liq's horrible scout luck lands them next to bears..

1800 BC: ending turn

1760 BC: scouts!

1720 BC: Asoka adopts slavery ho hum. hmm seems with 2x city attack on those american warriors, I know where the animals are hehe

1680 BC: Find the second american city's culture in the north need to swing it down south to get updated view of mansa and find out where he's expanding.

1640 BC: Hamburg's borders expanded!! moving scouts back to mansa area to get updated info on his layout


1600 BC: grr game crashed so had to restart. ok back to 1600. pray for a patch!

1600 BC again: worker built!!!! set him on cows and build pasture once husbandry comes alive, in meantime starting a farm on a river grassland. Gonna switch to work boat since our producion is tied to those forests and another worker can wait. work boat in 7, berlin will hit size 4 in 5, worker will complete farm in 5

1560 BC: spot the first barb, scouts's days are numbered, pulling them back to home area

1520 BC: hamburg finishes warrior... still size one and going to need to escort next city eventually so start on another warrior. Fortify new warrior in hamburg, got 2 there now.

1480 BC: Animal husbandry done!! gonna finish farm then get those cows done, Tech is a toss up on wheel for roads and archery for defence. thinking roads wins so our workers have stuff to do.

1440 BC: find mansa's second city sw of his start.. imo start settler next for the land grab. Aim for the modified yellow dot. scout at mansa is hemmed in by barbs

1400 BC: farm done working on cows, trying to sneak scout back to south for us to see where the likely barb city is. Mansa will have sealed north off from us soon btw.

5 turns on wheel, queued up settler in berlin for the push 10 to size growth but the clams and cows will help push out a settler faster.. hamburg's warrior is 2 away need to move him east. please get the scouts back south for the homefront, if they can make it.

Ndy you up, can you beat my single crash? huh huh?

lets see if I got this attach file thing working.

Cheers!
-Liq

Ndy you up, can you beat my single crash? huh huh?

I'll take that challenge.

*dusts off my lucky German yarmulka*

(0) 1400 BC:

Here's a pic of M&M trying to poach our horses and ivory:

http://i33.photobucket.com/albums/d59/ndthsmdy/Civ4ScreenShot0080.jpg

And just to reinforce what Pess was saying about our anemic military, here's the power graph:

http://i33.photobucket.com/albums/d59/ndthsmdy/Civ4ScreenShot0081.jpg

Guess who that puny gray civ at the top of the screen is?

(And, incidentally, guess who that powerful brown civ who happens to have the same color as M&M is?)

(1) 1360: ...

(2) 1320:

Berlin Work Boat>Settler (13)
Hamburg Warrior>Worker (12). We've already got three Warriors up there and it's going to take forever to grow anyway.

(3) 1280: ...

(4) 1240:

Wheel>Archery in 5. I've only played 4 turns and I'm sick of Warriors.

Grr, no Pottery yet. The Pasture on the Cow came in and I wish I could get a Cottage started...start on another farm instead.

(5) 1200: ...

(6) 1160: Berlin expands.

(7) 1120: ...

(8) 1080:

Izzy adopts Organized Religion.

Oh, hello Manny.

http://i33.photobucket.com/albums/d59/ndthsmdy/Civ4ScreenShot0082.jpg

He's got Axes on top of his UU Archer. Yeesh.

(9) 1040:

"Do not throw the arrow which will return against you."

http://i33.photobucket.com/albums/d59/ndthsmdy/Civ4ScreenShot0083.jpg

We can get Pottery in 6 or Bronze Working in 9. I pick BW, but Pessimist can change if he likes.

I've got my Scout trailing that Ax/Skirm/Settler. I'm afraid he's heading for yellow dot vicinity.

(10) 1000:

I had to write that two seconds before I pressed enter, didn't I? :mad:

http://i33.photobucket.com/albums/d59/ndthsmdy/Civ4ScreenShot0084.jpg

Our eastern scout ended its turn next to barbs, but it's Woodsman 1 and in the Forest.

Berlin: Settler in 2, Hamburg: Worker in 4. Pessimist will have Archers to build when he comes out of these.

Bronze Working in 8.

M&M is kicking our butt in expansion, but there's not much we can do about it. We could build White Dot/Wonder City with our Settler, but it will require Workers to get up and running that we don't have right now. A better option might be to build 2 tiles S of the horses in the NE and put pressure on M&M's second city. We're already in position to put pressure on Kumbi Saleh with Hamburg. We will need culture AND military up there, because right now if Manny sneezes he'll blow us into the ocean.

http://i33.photobucket.com/albums/d59/ndthsmdy/Civ4ScreenShot0085.jpg

Keep an eye on this.

(Final crash score: Liq 1 - Me ZERO :D )

darn I was assuming you'd crash 3 times over just over mousing mm stack. hehe

looks like we are presed in pretty severely... might wanna get a boat out fast to soo if there's an island free.

keep in mind that UU is a really mean archer such that an early fight would be bad for us.

Cheers!
-Liq

well alrighty then....we're hemmed in on a small region of land that's mostly covered with jungle, the person we'd need to attack to get out has axemen and killer archers, and our best military unit is the good old warrior. I'll check the save and everything as soon as I get home, but this isn't good. If we don't get copper or iron, we're essentially toast. Even if we do, we're going to have some serious trouble keeping up pretty soon. I really doubt M&M is going to be very friendly with us, we might want to try to convert him so we at least have religion keeping him from attacking us until we can catch up somewhat.

This will require some thought. Pessimist, put up a screenshot of the general region we are in.

pessimist is back at the helm...

Pre Turn:
Somehow our name became "Liquidated". I have found this happens if you open the save game directly (double clicking) rather than opening it through the "Load game" option. Not that it matters, but we are now called Liquidated in the game and not FS1.

We've got a scout sitting pretty with no movement right next to a barbarian, hopefully he can make it through... The other scout fortified, presumably keeping an eye on Kumbi Saleh.

I'm going to leave it on Bronze Working as I really think we need a military...

1)975 BC:

Scout who ended by the barbarian gets whacked. Poor fella. I send a warrior to what I think will be our next city site (screenshot later), he's slow moving, so this will give him a head start on the settler.

Worker builds a road.

2)950 BC:

Berlin: Settler -> Archer! Worker moves to make a mine.

3)925 BC:

Worker starts on mine. Settler and Warrior keep moving, now accompanied by the remaining scout.

4)900 BC:

Hamburg: Worker -> Archer! Worker builds pasture on the cows for growth.

5)875 BC:

Yawn. Settler & escort moves.

6)850 BC:

Berlin: Archer -> Archer! Archer forifies Berlin. Settler & Escort moves.

7)825 BC:

Worker finishes mine, I shift people around in Berlin to improve production. Archer now due in 3. Worker moves north to build road towards our new city.

As if our position weren't bad enough, there's barbarian city to the east of Berlin now...

8)800 BC:

Bronze Working finishes. After some deliberation I opt for Priesthood. Only takes 4 turns and we'll be able to build temples. Berlin is almost at max population before unhappiness, so we'll need temples for more than just culture.

We could switch to slavery but I opt not to. I don't want the year of anarchy, and with our limited-in-number and small-as-heck-anyway cities, I don't forsee us pop rushing anything soon.

Worker by Hamburg goes to build a road. Worker by Berlin builds a road. (Nice work on the wheel, btw...)

Munich is settled! Now, I didn't take any screen shots up until now because I didn't want to get yelled at. But I'll elaborate on my thinking with this screenshot. (Procuction set to Archer!)

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v137/ringmir/FS1/FS1-Munich.jpg

Actually I hope it's clear anyway what I'm up to. Note the barb city. I want to get that rice at some point, and from here we can put the culture pressure on both Kumbi Saleh and the other new city. Heck, with a well placed city placed below the barb city we can pressure it too, although I don't know if you can culture flip a barb city...?

9)775 BC:

Hamburg worker builds a road.

10)750 BC:

Hamburg: Archer -> Archer. Archer fortifies.
Berlin: Archer -> Archer. Archer begins walking towards Munich. (NOT on autopath.)
Worker by Berlin moves north to continue on road.

So the state of things is now pretty much what it looked like in the screenshot. We have a few archers at least, with more coming. I recommend leaving production on archers or at least another set of them.
Priesthood will complete in 2 turns, so when the archers finish we can potentially get temples in the two new cities and get some culture flowing. Also we should get missionaries to M&M so he converts and is friendly with us. As I see it those are the priorities, in order. if the barb threat from the city increases we may need walls in Munich.

I think the workers should keep road building over to Munich, and then mine Munich's hills so production there turns up a notch and we can get more culture buildings going.

Two final things to note in my comglomerated screenshot here:
1) Power is climbing. Still low which is why I want more Archers, but looking a bit better.
2) Culturally we are doing well. Dominating over M&M and if we can keep up that momentum we might be able to snatch one of those cities of his away from him.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v137/ringmir/FS1/FS1-culture-power.jpg

ok well less than fantastic start for sure, we are pretty hemmed in, barbs in the east was pretty obvious at start with that land sitting alone. Not too bad though as it gives us a reason to build up our military and saves building a settler if the city is in a good place.

getting mm on jud is a very good idea but that has to wait a bit obviously... organized religion means we do not need to build a monistery to build a missonary so that may be a goal after our archers are done. No point changing before the units are done.

This is going to be a low land game unless we roll over mansa. Best to wait til longbows and macemen first though.

sorry about the name change :mischief:

Cheers!
-Liq

We need to flip Kumbi Saleh if we can. it will give us a solid foundation to progress on.

I would play now, but it is 2:37 AM, and I am exhausted. I will play tomorrow. Ananlyze the situation and see if we have any paths open for now to strengthen us until we have to culturally our militaristically face Mansa Musa.

hehe civ and the term AM goes hand in hand. :lol:

nice placement on munich in that first expansion will seal the east and west from mansa (as if he has no where else to go :twitch: ). That lets us take our time with the barbs without fear of mansa taking it.

As for the incoming culture flip, kumbi whatever is screwed; our innate creative trait alone will assure that. To help that along make turning it to jud a priority after a few more archers. Revolt over to organized religion to get the temples and obs going and aim for writing to get open borders.

Should try and deal with barbs first, maybe aim for iron working to see if we have iron close by. We need ironworking to clear all that jungle come to think of it so prolly best bet next.

Need pottery as well and can prolly fit it in before writing I guess.

If we can get 3 or 4 missonaries (they are not that cheap) set before open borders we can bum rush convert him and close borders again if need be.

Keep in mind asoka is to the east of mansa and you know for sure he has bud or hin. Turning mansa to jud early will help keep him off us and on asoka for comflicting creeds if we keep pressing with missionaries.

Keeping mansa sedate while we try and flip his first cities will require he go jud.


ahh looking at the save, seems the barb city is another one of those "one tile off the coast" jobs... sigh. Space is at a premium might just want to raze it.

Cheers!
-Liq

Asoka has no religion, it was Isabella who founded Buddhism and we haven't found the Hindu founder. We need to get to Asoka before Isabella does.

Preturn- I notice that we have a LOT of dyes in our lands, and we have a banana supply, and we also will get incense when we flip Kumbi Saleh. Methinks we need Calendar. So, after these archers finish I will switch to increasing Munich’s and Hamburg’s culture, and take Kumbi.

http://i18.photobucket.com/albums/b120/farae_slayer/Civ4ScreenShot0108.jpg

Also, about the barb city, we should prepare an assault force ASAP. After we arrive there, stay by the city until it reaches size two, then capture. If we ever get copper, it would be nice to have some axemen for the job.

Turn 1: Set worker to connect Berlin to horses. And YAY, we have another worker neam Hamburg! Set him to get that stone, and then he will build the Berlin Road.

I move the archer to this hill as a defense force, barbs shouldn’t be able to get past him and pillage too much now.

http://i18.photobucket.com/albums/b120/farae_slayer/Civ4ScreenShot0109.jpg

Turn 2: Priesthood finishes. Set on pottery.

Turn 3: The people of Munich push their borders further! Glory to the Empire they cry as they inform the heathens of Kumbi Saleh that they now share an official border with Germany!

Arhcer finishes in Berlin, I start on Jewish temple. We need more hammers, it will take 50 turns to do Parthenon now! But there are no tiles AT ALL in its immediate borders that can be made to make more hammers (the hills are out of work range of the city, just a tile out of it!)

Turn 4: Hamburg finishes archer, set to obelisk for culture.

NO!! Confucianism is founded in a distant land!

http://photobucket.com/albums/b120/farae_slayer/?action=view&current=Civ4ScreenShot0111.jpg

Not good, it means someone is quite tech advanced! We need to get moving and flip Kumbi so we can turn Mansa Musa into a virtual protectorate! Later, we may even wish to conquer him totally and take his resources. I begin the quarry near Hamburg, which will also give it an extra two hammers in addition to stone.

I fortify our archer on a hill and get a peak at the barb city.

http://photobucket.com/albums/b120/farae_slayer/?action=view&current=Civ4ScreenShot0110.jpg

Turn 5: Barbarian warrior moves to attack Munich. We will be fine, but the archer is still a bit distant there. And Washington becomes Confucian! He is the Founder!!

http://photobucket.com/albums/b120/farae_slayer/?action=view&current=Civ4ScreenShot0112.jpg

Turn 6: Warrior moves closer to Munich, begin pasture for horses.

And Berlin is unhappy! :mad: The recent citizen growth was a waste as the gained citizen caused another citizen to become unhappy! The Jewish temple will fix the unhappiness, but it won’t be done in my turn.

Turn 7: Pottery finishes. I go for Writing, as it gives us libraries and allows open borders, and like 3 advances need Writing.

Turn 8: Yawn.

Turn 9: Obelisk in Hamburg finishes, and I begin Pyramids which will take 25 turns and is INVALUABLE for its culture and government bonus. I also get my workers who finished the quarry to start connecting Hamburg to Berlin. If I had gotten Sailing, I would’ve connected them anyways but Sailing would take 7 turns and this will take 3 or 4. And the horse pasture finishes, might want to get Horseback Riding sometime for horse archers, but it is NOT a priority.

Turn 10: Ok, the archer in Munich finishes. I accept an Open Borders with Washington for no real reason, it may offer trade. I also OFFICIALLY convert to Judaism and begin a turn of anarchy. If I make the conversion, the unhappiness in Berlin goes away! I switched around Berlin’s citizens so that it should take around 20 turns for it to grow, giving us more then enough time to build the Jewish temple which will allow us to safely grow. I set a worker to connect Munich to Berlin and Hamburg.

Turn 11: I honestly did not want to be a jerk and give the next player a wasted turn of anarchy, so I took another turn. This makes it so I am no longer on an even year, but oh well. Nothing happened.

Overview-

We are now officially Jewish.

There is a barbarian city, with no cultural defense bonus and two warriors inside it. Take it ASAP, it is size two.

We have an Open Borders with Washington.

We have linked ourselves to Stone and Horses.

We can easily pressure and take Kumbi Saleh.

Washington founded Confucianism.

Right, so I did my part. I advise S.ilver (who is up next) to put us on Organized Religion ASAP, it will give a production bonus to all Jewish cities, and we can then make missionaries to make Hamburg and Munich Jewish, and convert Mansa. When the Berlin Road is done, Hamburg and Munich might turn on their own, but better to get them converted sooner then later.

Good luck!

Globe View on Culture

http://i18.photobucket.com/albums/b120/farae_slayer/Civ4ScreenShot0115.jpg

Globe View on Resources

http://i18.photobucket.com/albums/b120/farae_slayer/Civ4ScreenShot0116.jpg

P.S. I know I went name happy. :)

THis is practically end of our expansion. I think we can start following:
S.ilver: build a wonder city - we need REALLY productive city fast. Skip writing for now, what we need it for? Open Borders? Start IW instead. We have no copper, but maybe iron will be in the range.
We have place for one more city, between Berlin and Munich, but I think it can wait till my turns. And BUILD MORE WORKERS! We have to cottage the neighbourhood of Berlin - techs become more and more expensive.
Hamburg will grow due 22 and build Pyrs in 24 - move production to hill. City becomes stagnant, but Pyrs will be built 4 turns earlier.

This is about my suggestions, but it's all up to you.

Open Borders is necessary to convert M&M. That is a top priority!

Turn (0): Adopt Slavery and Organized religion. Hey, if we're gonna have 1 turn anarchy, might as well make the most of it. I might want to whip some people to :P

It also appears that our switch to Judaism has annoyed some people (like Isabella). Also, Washington is not very pleased about it either.

Ucel is right about the pyramids. If we want to stand any chance of getting them (which is still slim at the moment), we need better production. I stagnent Hamburg to take advantage of the forest. Also I accept 1 less food in Munich for 1 more hammer. I want that obelisk done my turn!

Open borders enables better trade. We're in defecit spending right now, so I'm sure we need that. Spreading our religion to M&M is both a good and bad idea. If he adopts it, we stand less chance of getting crushed by him, but then again, it would most definately spread to Kumbi first, and make it harder to flip (as either way, unless he adopts a different religion, it gains culture).

Mansa's copper is also RIGHT INSIDE his cultural border, just barely. If we wanted to we could attempt to steal it, but we risk being flipped ourselves. I won't make that descion this turn. Mansa must've founded another city to the northeast of Munich (note the wierd cultural border). This will be prime for flipping.

I set the scouting archer, and both archers in Berlin, to move towards the barb city. We're gonna need some firepower to do this.

Turn (1): A bunch of our units are going to predetermined places. No orders this turn. Order re-established.

Turn (2): More moving around... Nothing much happening.

Turn (3): Temple is done. Start on Missionary. I want him UP at Hamburg increasing our production ASAP. Also, building cottages ATM would not be that helpful, as we're not even making complete use of our tiles anyways. Bad news though...

http://i30.photobucket.com/albums/c320/rtchin/Confucianism.jpg

Mansa converted to Confucionism. Washington got to him... Good news. Destroyed a barb warrior without taking a scratch. Building a cottage with the worker at the crossroads (at Berlin of course!).

Turn (4): Accept open borders with Asoka. Can't really hurt now, and we might get trade... Gonna need to wait for those reinforcements at barb city. They have an archer now... I fortify.

Turn (5): No orders to be given out...

Turn (6): I manage to sieze the barbarian city. Lose an archer unit though. Pillaged gold will keep our defecit spending going...

Turn (7): Missonary finishes. Berlin is polluting now too :P. Can't expand well anymore, because it is 1 over in health, and at the happiness barrier. If I can get another worker, I'm farming that rice. I therefore set Berlin to a worker, and send the missionary on his way. Trying to get that worker that just finished a Berlin cottage to go and make a rice field. Also start mining near Munich. Want more hammers!

Turn (8): Start on a road in the forest near Berlin. I think we may have to wait on the rice field, because it appears it has jungle in the square (which we can't cut for another 7 turns till we pop iron working).

Turn (9): Wow... that sucked. Production at Hamburg is up by A WHOLE TURN! Whooo! That's the equivalent of us NOT doing the anarchy thing to get organized relgion. At least we get the culture point there now. Barb city is absolutely useless. It's health is GARBAGE due to all the jungles, and it has no hammers easily accessable. I set a worker (which will take 20 turns, more than enough time for us to finish Iron Working).

Turn (10): Mansa's border has expanded at Kumbi. Not good.

http://i30.photobucket.com/albums/c320/rtchin/Civ4ScreenShot0024.jpg

Oh, and Asoka is Confucianist now too. It looks like Washington is gathering allies.

On the whole... not much happened. We gained a city, but it's pretty much useless. We may have room in our territory for 2 more cities (in the south and near the dyes. Mansa definately has copper, and he's definately Confucist. That means we may be in trouble. Kumbi's expanding border is ALSO trouble.

We really need Alphabet so we can trade techs. We're quite far behind in that respect. If we don't get anything from Iron Working... we might be in trouble.

http://i30.photobucket.com/albums/c320/rtchin/Civ4ScreenShot0025.jpg

Precheck:
nothing to change in 4 cities...

1) 200 BC
Berlin: Worker -> Worker, this one started cottage

2) 175 BC
zzz

3) 150 BC
We are connected with the rest of continent now

4) 125 BC
Munich: Archer -> Barracks

5) 100 BC
Vicki contacted us, she is also Confucianist
IW -> Math. We should develop Construction and build some cats maybe
Berlin: Worker -> Worker
Aaaaaand...

http://i28.photobucket.com/albums/c222/ucel/Civ/Civ4ScreenShot0026.jpg

Yes, we have iron near berlin

6) 75 BC
zzzzz...

7) 50 BC
Judaism spread in Kumbi Saleh!
Sci to 80%

8) 25 BC
This is what I call really bad luck :(
http://i28.photobucket.com/albums/c222/ucel/Civ/Pyramids.jpg


9) 1AD
Berlin: Worker->Settler
Hamburg: Barracks. We got 418 gold from unbuilt Pyramids, so I set Sci back to 100%

10) 25AD
Washington canceled OB with us :(
Munich: Barracks -> Library

Really nothing changed, so I don't post the map

Ok, we are going to turn into a missonary FACTORY. Pour out missionaries and send them to Asoka. Only one of his cities is Confucian, so if we get it to all of them, we can make him Jewish. Heck, we may even be able to convert Washington if we try hard enough, though it may be better to aim for Vicky. Alphabet is needed, and hook up that iron. Things are going better for us now, and with Iron Working we can slice those jungles down near the barb city and establish some farms and later work shops. If we haven't done so, spread Judaism to Hamburg and Munich.

Goooood, you will be spreading our culture with faith, I'll do the same woth sword :).

I'll play tonight when I get home.

just skimmed past the read so if you have time please just post what all you need me to do. If not no problem, I'll study the turns in depth.

need to flood missonaries for sure, seems washington is overzelous for sure.

connecting roads alone to hamburg and barb will prolly convert them to jud fast. sailing too would help auto spread to hamburg plus a lighthouse for +1 food off water is a good idea for berlin right off the bat.

gg on iron, that makes a huge diff.

Cheers!
-Liq

I've started a settler. Use it either for building the wonder city or city between Berlin and Munich. We need to cover Kumbi Saleh culturally.

ok got home gonna chill a bit and actually eat or something, as for white dot, seriously why not move the city down south to the forest or sw for the desert...

Both are costal (nice health from harbors as we'll have 2 sea born resources at least and a high production dock for a quick navel push) AND it nets us that clam which will be fast food in the form of a workboat.

I prefer the SW because that lands us on the lone desert tile which is a worthless tile normally and it leave the forest intact.

clams and corn in same city means lots of extra food for mass specialists. Extra health will help.

keep in mind we need to add caverals from optics and galloens from astronomy to rush the islands that are surely out there. Circumnaving the globe first with a fast caveral push from both directions will aid us with a faster land grab.

Please review my ideas on white dot moving sw, thanks.

Cheers!
-Liq

Makes sense. Who votes aye for the move? It really is up to who uses the White Dot settler though.

25 AD: my how time flies. Whack end turn after scrutinizing the setup, notice cows were never linked via roads at Berlin AND Hamburg, guys that's 2 free health we are missing out on :confused: . will fix that oversight. Fixed our name btw!! sorry about that name change before, as GI Joe says though, "Knowing is half the battle! Yo Joe!":crazyeye:

50 AD: Asoka adopts universal sufferage :( . Iron is now gtg, minned and roaded :satan: . getting cows linked near Berlin.

75 AD: Road linked to future wonder city. moving worker to Hamburg to link those cows there.

100 AD: Cows at Berlin linked... mining hills next to wonder city that's due soon. Hamburg Barracks -> library in 7

125 AD: Roads on Munich worker, going to aim for activating rice then linking the barb city... why by the way did we keep that thing lol. They need to fix that "one tile off the shore" crap the AI does. See Vicky's archer scouting mansa... wheee.

150 AD: Berlin finishes worker, wonder town inc! switch to library in 6, we really need the beakers. btw missonaries 3 turns right now at Berlin. Finish roads to both cows, guess what, berlin is no longer unhealthy. Barb city won't be either once we get a road to it.

175 AD: Munich worker wastes turn moving to jungled rice, going to activate the rice because Munich desperately needs the food. Cologne is our new wonder burg. yay. Set up workboat for the first unit as the clams (and corn) will be up by then. more worker madness! building a road on the cottage... we can stop with the cottages btw 3 going on 4 unused cottages. Two of those cottages are on watered land.

200 AD: Mathematics comes in for Aqueducts and the hanging... hanging gardens is 6 culture a turn 2 great eng points and extra health and double speed with stone, imo jump on it. First AI asking to build settlers.. need to learn what turns that crap off lol. Jud spreads to Cologne!! Xi Ling Shi is born elsewhere. Build a cottage near hamburg. Set research on sailing as we need that for calendar. oo 5 turns. Cologne is up to 3 culture a turn... will pop borders in about 3 I think. Nice. Switched cologne to work on those freshly mined hills to make up for faster culture bounce... workboat in 6 (instead of 9) turns now for one less food.

225 AD: Nabu whatever is born far away... Move one of Berlins 2 warriors to cologne, need to build archers in Berlin sooner rather than later, well someone (preferably with a barraks) needs to build them.

250 AD: Munich expands but mansa's borders stay still. Zoraster is born far away. Phoenician builds it's workers, get them started on cows now. DO NOT FORGET THE ROADS :D . Start on an ugly long grainery, we are gonna need all the health that poor town can get until an army of workers falls on the area. An empty barb galley is sw of barb city heading north.... no troops in it but will pillage our clams if they head back south.

Will only take 9 turns to end up on an even turn. how generous is Liq? eh?... um ehh??:eek:

we have a metric ton of calendar based resources, imo make a bee line for calendar and all our cities can grow much larger.

Cheers!
-Liq

Got it, but won't get to it until after 10 CST tonight. If Pessimist wriggles free from RL before then and gets the urge, feel free to take it and we'll do a swap.

oh good idea to build 2 gallys to park them one each on the clams.. they will fend off the barbs and with two, one barb is 100% dead.

not a rush job.

Cheers!
-Liq

I should be able to play before then but I'm not sure. I'll make sure that if I do pick it up for ndthsmdy I'll have the save and summary posted before 10 CST.

Also, just to remind people, I will probably need a skip on my next turn. I won't be able to play from Wednesday the 23rd through Monday the 28th. So, if it's during that time just skip me. I'll let you guys know when I'm back. (IE, this set of turns will be my last for a rotation or two, don't get us killed!)

50 AD: Asoka adopts universal sufferage


So now we know who finished the Pyramids before we did... I think we really need to go on a killing spree soon. With Iron, we should be fit to take a city or two, and if not, at least some damaging pillaging. The AI is very likely to run away with technology, and I don't know if we have Alphabet yet to trade techs...

Hm. Can we build swordsman? When we get Alphabet, check to see if Mansa has Iron Working. We need to flip Kumbi Saleh and maybe the other city to aid our objective. But we can conquer Timbuktu later on and end Mali to reduce the competition. Got to make him Jewish or something first so the others don't get pissed off. Or we could leave Mansa alone after we flip Kumbi and make him go Jewish, and then we go on the warpath up north. We need to turn some people from Confucianism though.

(0) 250 AD:

Berlin is going to become unhappy when it grows to 9 in 3 turns, so I'm going to take advantage of our Phil trait to snag a Great Person: Berlin is now not growing, has a Priest and Scientist, and we will get a GP in just 9 turns :D I'll take either a shrine or an academy at this point.

We're still nowhere close to where we want to be militarily, so I will try to work on that. We have libraries building in Hamburg and Munich, even though they are only generating 2 and 4 beakers respectively, but I leave them since they are our cultural battleground cities. Hamburg's will finish in a turn anyway.

(1) 275 AD:

Christianity is founded :rolleyes:
The Barb Galley goes away.
Hamburg: Library>Aqueduct (8)

Okay, on second thought, I'm going to make a push for the Hanging Gardens in Hamburg. Hamburg has equal shields to Berlin when it is not growing. Berlin could actually use the health from the aqueduct, but Hamburg could use the culture more. Hamburg also has a forested hill that we can chop and mine to speed it up.

(2) 300 AD:

Sailing>Alphabet in 9. Our science rate sucks.
Berlin: Library>Axeman (2).

(3) 325 AD:

Worker gets to forested hill outside of Hamburg. The Aqueduct will be in in 6, and the Mine and chop will be in in 7.

(4) 350 AD:

Okay, I screwed up. I thought I'd checked to see that Berlin had a Barracks, but I was wrong. So now our first Iron unit is unpromoted. Lamely attempt to make up for it by ordering one now.

M&M wants open borders :mischief: Tell him it ain't gonna happen, but he may be getting restless.

(5) 375 AD:

Heh, don't see this every day:

http://i33.photobucket.com/albums/d59/ndthsmdy/Civ4ScreenShot0086.jpg

(Earlier today in my other SG I couldn't take screenshots. Now suddenly I can. I hate my computer.)

We now have clams at Cologne.

(6) 400 AD:

Okay, you have GOT to be kidding me...

http://i33.photobucket.com/albums/d59/ndthsmdy/Civ4ScreenShot0087.jpg

I swear, it went away in turn 1, waited until the turn I put the fishing nets down, then came back. That's so frickin infuriating :mad:

(7) 425 AD:

Someone founds Taoism.
Looks like Asoka is out of room

http://i33.photobucket.com/albums/d59/ndthsmdy/Civ4ScreenShot0088.jpg

(8) 450 AD:

Berlin: Barracks>Ax
Hamburg: Aqueduct>HG

The Barb Galley finally gets around to pillaging our nets at Cologne. If it heads for Berlin, I will let it take them too, because we don't need the food, don't need the health now that rice is hooked up, and land units are more important. Berlin can pop a replacement quickly anyway.

(9) 475 AD:

Finally, a good year:

First, Phoenician is connected up with the rest of our empire.
Then, we get a very sweet 67 shields toward the Hanging Gardens from the chop.
And...

http://i33.photobucket.com/albums/d59/ndthsmdy/Civ4ScreenShot0090.jpg

Looks like we got the Prophet. So now we have a shrine.

http://i33.photobucket.com/albums/d59/ndthsmdy/Civ4ScreenShot0093.jpg

Cuts our deficit in half from -9 to -4. Not bad.

(10) 500 AD:

I again was stupid. Munich's Library came in, and it DID apparently already have Barracks, so I should've cancelled that at the beginning and built something military. A Swordsman is up, but Pessimist can change.

The Barb Galley is in fact heading for Berlin. I say let it go.

Alphabet in 1, Hanging Gardens in 8.

Pessimist: most of the City Govs are off, for various reasons, so you may want to take a peek inside before you start. I also left a couple Workers unmoved for you.

Over the course of my 10 turns, KS's first ring tiles next to Hamburg went from 80% to 78% Malinese, while the city in the NE next to Munich went from 84% to 77%. Seems pretty good to me, especially as Hamburg getting HG will help speed up the pressure on KS.

So much for building military. I instead built a shrine, started Hanging Gardens, let a Galley pillage our clams, and screwed up military builds in Berlin and Munich :crazyeye:

Heh... I'll check it out when I get home from work. I feel like we're hopelessly behind M&M at this point militarily, and might want to pop out a few missionaries and see if we can get him to convert. We need a tame neighbor to the north if we expect to last very long. At the same time, you saw how I took my last turns! (archer, archer, archer...) So, we'll see.

Edit: I would have accepted open borders and tried to trade with him a bit in order to help our diplomacy out some. I might try to do that come my turn. We'll need open border with him to convert his cities anyway, which will bring us some more income.

Pre-Turn:
Our name still isn't right. At the moment we're FA1 instead of FS1. (Again, not that it makes any difference!)

Hamburg is configured to churn out the Hanging Garden in 8 turns, I leave it.
Berlin has an Axeman coming in 1
Munich has a swordsman just starting, I leave it but might switch off later and hold production on it.
Phoenician is one of the more worthless cities I've ever seen and has a granary due in 12...
Cologne has a gallery starting, due in 4. I leave it.


1)520:

Alphabet comes in, we can now trade techs... I set it to Construction, due in 10 turns will let us build catapults, which might enable us to take a city.
Berlin: Axeman -> Missionary. Axeman fortified UNPROMOTED.

I trade M&M Alphabet and Polytheism (420, 140) for Calendar and Meditation (490, 112). I trade Victoria Alphabet for Monarchy (both 420)

Set a worker to mine and clear the jungle near Phoenician, 8 turns, hopefully will make that city more useful.

Worker starts on a farm by Cologne. That city has potential, lots of food. Good great person city...

Now that we have Calendar, I get a worker going on a plantation on some dye.

2)540:

Asoka settles East of Cologne! This city is cultural suicide on her part, we NEED to overrun it and take it.
Worker finishes on rice by Berlin and moves to hook up another dye.
Worker by Hamburg moves to hook up incense.

3)560:

Worker by Phoenician moves to hook up bananas.

4)580:

Cologne: Galley -> Work Boat. Galley moves to clams.

5)600:

Berlin: Missionary -> Missionary
Negotiate Open borders with M&M. Missionary moves towards M&M.

6)620:

Washington wants to trade fur for rice. I decline for now.

The Parthenon has been built in a far away land!

Worker moves to help with the dyes near Phoenician.
Worker builds road from Cologne towards Phoenician.

Barbarian galley dies attacking our galley by Cologne.

7)640:

We meet Alexander! He is the top of the food chain (we are 5/7). I say lets have peace...
Judaism spreads to Canterbury, one of Vickie's cities quite far away.

8)660:
Isabella demands rice. She's 7/7, so I decline, not that we can really handle a war right now...
Berlin: Missionary -> Missionary. Missionary moves towards M&M.

Hamburg completes The Hanging Gardens! I set it to make a temple for the culture pressure on M&M.
Munich: Swordsman -> Walls. If anyone does come pouring down into our lands, Munich is almost certain to be the first stop along the way.
Swordsman forifies UNPROMOTED.
Missionary spreads Judaism to M&M in his capital Timbuktu.

9)680:

Construction comes in. I set it to Drama for culture.
Judaism spreads to Munich!

Worker moves to continue road to Phoenician.
Worker continues work to hook up Phoenician dyes.

10)700:

Phoenician Granary is finished. Set production to Aqueduct because it needs health. Going to take 16 turns though so feel free to change this.
Cologne: Work Boat -> Temple. I want to pressure Asoka's city to the east sooner than later with culture. Work boat moves to clams.
Missionary spreads Judaism to Djenne. (The last of M&M's cities we know about.)

Now, not sure what to do next. We could try to demand that M&M switches to Judaism. I've done this before in a game and had it work. The civ gives you a -1 in diplomacy for making demands on them, but if they switch it could be better for diplomacy in the long run.

I didn't want to do try that though without asking you guys first. The only time I tried it, it worked, so I don't know what happens if fit doesn't work.

Had some wierd behavior when trying to take screen shots. I'll get it resolved and hopefully there will be no problems in the future. I would love it if someone would put a few shots up from the current state. Namely Asoka's suicide city, and M&M's cities all Jewish.

Edit: I will be able to post here over the next few days, but will not be able to play. So don't assume that if you see me posting it means I can take a turn. I'll explicitly state when I'm able to play again. Until then, skip me.

Yawn. I just got off school today and I fell asleep when I got home. Will pick up later.

Asoka settles East of Cologne! This city is cultural suicide on her part

hehe ahem... HE...:D

hard to tell huh, but Asoka is not a she.

just a kindy humourous FYI :)


Btw indeed did install the patch tried a game and proptly uninstalled CIV and reinstalled it hehehehh. all good.. I hope.

Cheers!
-Liq

Preturn- Hm…so Asoka settled near us. Time to kill that city!

Turn 1- Missionary finishes in Berlin, start on Monastery for culture and science gain. ^_^ M&M CONVERTS TO JUDAISM!!!! YAY! I also make a work boat start fishing and start on a dye plantation.

Turn 2- Yawn. Hm? It will take Cologne 75 turns to do a Jewish Temple?!?!?!?! WHAT?!?!? I check this anomaly out. In order to let it grow, I keep it like this.

http://i18.photobucket.com/albums/b120/farae_slayer/Civ4ScreenShot0011.jpg

Turn 3- Jewish Temple completes in Hamburg. To continue to cultural pressure, I start on a Monastery. I also noticed that our military is still heavily relying on warriors. If we ever get lots more money, we may wish to correct this.

Turn 4-Vicky asks for Open Borders. I accept. Isabella demands Alphabet. I am reluctant to decline, as we NEED allies, but she is so Buddhist that it is unlikely we will ever convert her, and going to No State Religion would not help us at all. So I refuse.

Turn 5- Get Drama. Start on Music. NO!! FAILED MISSIONARY!

http://i18.photobucket.com/albums/b120/farae_slayer/Civ4ScreenShot0012.jpg

http://i18.photobucket.com/albums/b120/farae_slayer/Civ4ScreenShot0013.jpg

*weeps*

Turn 6- M&M declares WAR on us! I upgrade several units, and I am going to raid Mali and pillage them. I convince Asoka to adopt Judaism at no cost to us, but I fear he will turn back to Confucianism soon unless we flood his lands with missionaries. We need to take down M&M soon, though we should try to restore peace after basically killing his economy.

http://i18.photobucket.com/albums/b120/farae_slayer/Civ4ScreenShot0014.jpg

Turn 7-Our horses are pillaged by war elephants. There are no troops we have to counter the elephants, so I let them stay. I move an axeman into Mali, to pillage like mad.

Turn 8- The axeman dies. :(

Turn 9- I run on zero science to regain cash. We need SPEARMEN to combat those elephants! And lets buff up our navy!

Turn 10- I give the archers guarding the barb city City Defense II, and I switch the city’s production to a Coliseum as it is unhappy. I am sorry guys that I am so bad at war, I really hope that we can push M&M back, if we do, we will be able to pillage Mali and maybe take a city to give us a border with Asoka. :) We can win this. Remember:

1)Pillage that source of copper and we will cripple M&M while it is gone.

2)M&M has a galley with troops on it near Hamburg

3)A strong defense will help us out, walls might be a nice thing.

4)We need money!

5)Spearmen butcher M&Ms horse archers and elephants.

6)Catapults. That is all.

7) Music might gain us a Great Artist, which we will need eventually.

The Hamburg Front
http://i18.photobucket.com/albums/b120/farae_slayer/Civ4ScreenShot0017.jpg

The North Front
http://i18.photobucket.com/albums/b120/farae_slayer/Civ4ScreenShot0015.jpg

We need to repel the invaders ASAP, when we do that, we can send galleys to Mali and either unload troops there or besiege Mansa. Then we can restore our infastrcuture while we throw Mali into ruin. But first, we need to repel these troops and take the fight to Mali!

Ok, we can do this. Good luck! And sorry…

On a 2nd note, we are having horrible luck.

Our Mistakes-

1) Not keeping our forces as advances and powerful as they should have been.

2) Not converting Mansa earilier.

3) Not striking down Mansa when he was weaker.

4) Me just failing at life. :(

Overall we have just been funbling around this game. I propose we get on AIM sometime and discuss this in detail.

My sn is faeraeslayer!

We may have bumbled a bit, but we can still win!

uh sorry to ask this but when was mansa weaker in a relative sense? hehe.

we were at warriors still when he had axemen and his own brand of archers escorting a settler to kumbi.

Treat it as a learning experience but we did squander our start in a very closed-in space. Not that I could have expected better from myself playing as I really to work on my agressive game.

Anyway, we can salvage this if we can repel the initial attack. Coming from behind like that though against elephants is ugly =)

Cheers!
-Liq

I'll get on it... Tonight though. I have to come back, and then uninstall Civ IV. That'll teach me to use an untested patch again :mad:

Well I think we might have wanted to try to get M&M to convert like I mentioned at the end of my post. I kinda feared that once he saw how weak we were he'd come in.

But then again I sarted those Walls in Munich for a reason! Just looking at his army though, we're in some serious trouble. We need to get units up to the north in our cities asap and basically just hold out until we can negotiate peace.

Are we running slavery?

Hm, I think we are. Actually, I am sure this is our government.

Despotism (Hereditary Rule possible)
Barbarism
Slavery
Decentralization
Organized Religion

So we must eventually go back to paganism (less upkeep) and take on military. I hope we'll be able to recover after this war...

I don't want to be pessimist, but it seems we'll be liquidated soon :).

heh...that's too funny for me not to give you some credit!

Sorry for the otherwise useless post!

I'm not sure there have been that many "mistakes." I think our state of fumbling along comes down to our gamble of going for the religious techs first instead of growth, expansion, and military. We were all okay with it at the time; it just turned out we were stuck on a jungle-infested peninsula with an Ancient UU Civ blocking us off to the north :) That's just bad luck.

In any event, this is still Noble and we still have six good sets of eyes on this game. Though I have to say I don't envy being in Silver's position right now...

Wow you guys have a fight ahead of you here. Honestly I'm surprised M&M declared, I've always found him to be as peaceful as Ghandi. Was it wise founding your initial cities so far apart? EVERY time I've done that I've been eviscerated by enemies who take advantage of my long supply lines and precarious financial state. Now I play like the AI does and found cities just 4-6 squares apart unless there is an obvious blocking play (there didn't seem to be one here because that continent is so wide). If I need more land later on I can just take it since my empire will be healthy enough to sustain a military/culture bomb push.