Welcome to your C_IV SGOTM 1 Team Thread. Please use it for all internal team communication, turn logs and discussions. Subscribe to it to receive notifications, and do not visit the other team threads for this game until you have finished. Please also subscribe to the Maintenance Thread (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=170295) for this game, where teams and staff may post non-spoiler information of general interest. I hope you enjoy the game.

This game will be played in Civ4, patched to v1.61.

This first SGOTM will not feature any advanced variant.. the winner simply will be the team that wins the game at the earliest game date with either domination or a diplomatic victory. All victory conditions are still enabled though, with exception of Space Race, so you have to avoid getting another type of victory (and of course prevent the AIs from winning).

Individual start files for all teams will be available on the SGOTM Progress and Results Page (http://gotm.civfanatics.net/submit/civ4sgotm_submission_list.php) at midnight, server local time, at the start of May 12.

Here's the start position.

http://gotm.civfanatics.net/civ4games/images/SGOTM01_start.jpg

Map Parameters
Playable Civ - Hapshepsut of Egypt
World size - Standard
Difficulty - Monarch
Landform - Mystery
Game Speed - Epic

Permanent Alliances are turned on (can form permanent alliances after either communism or fascism is researched)
Space race is disabled.
Egypt is locked into war with Huayna Capac of the Incas.
Egypt is locked into peace with an unknown civilization.

The map is hand built, and therefore may not have a standard configuration.

Please visit the following links to ensure that you are adequately prepared:
Civ4 SGOTM reference thread (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=168439)

Notes:

A. ONLY Civilization4 v1.61 is supported for this SGOTM. All teams will compete for a single award - the Gold Laurels.

B. All teams must play the sponsored variant - victory will be awarded for the fastest victory by either domination or diplomacy.

C. All saved game files uploaded to the server are parsed through software that extracts and archives data about your save, including reload count for each turn set.

Good luck to your team, and remember rule #1: Enjoy your game :D

Hi!

I just want to say hello! Since I'm new to SGOTM I hope that one of you guys will get our team started on this long journey.
I suppose we should have some kind of opening strategy brainstorming in the next few days. But maybe we should do a team name brainstorm first! Since we are Egyptian I suggest "Memphis Blues". Lets hear some more suggestions :) .
Look forward to hearing from all of you!

Best regards to all of you from the Kingdom of Denmark - nothing rotten there!

Hi fellows :egypt: :salute: ,

Let's start talking about early strategy, and about our starting position...:scan:

For the name of the team I'm ok with "Memphis Blues" (I don't have a lot of imagination for this sort of thing...;) )

I have no strong opinions for a name, so Memphis Blues is fine with me.

We also need to pick an order I would assume. I would prefer to go later since I will be leaving town on the 12th for a few days and would prefer not to take my laptop if I don't have to.

For the more fun topics...

It's going to be an interesting decision as to where to settle the capital. Settling in place could make an amazing science or GP city. It would also have 3 possible mines it could easily support if we wanted to. If we move one SW onto the plains hill we still get 3 other hills to mine and a ton of flood plains (6 instead of 9) and a cow. It would now be a pretty good production city, especially early.

Just a short note to say I exist and I've noticed we're a team. This week is kinda a crazy for me, but when Friday night rolls along, things should be better for a little while.

I've never played in a SGOTM before so I hope there's someone else here who knows more of the mechanics of how this works than me!

As for time zone, I'm in GMT+9 (eastern Australian time), in case that's significant in deciding order.

I have no preferences regarding name, I'll go along with whatever you guys like.

Hi everyone

Just checking in. Have completed one SG so I'm no expert but looking forward to the game. Like the name Memphis Blues.

Regarding the start I would say settling on the spot would be ok but maybe moving to the hill in the SW would be good to reveal some more area around our start location.

I'm in the UK and have a hectic week ahead of me so maybe later on would be best for me. I'll keep an eye on the thread and help out if I can.

Sorry everyone I've just realised that I'm the chosen team leader is everyone ok with this?

So far everyone has checked in except Drogear, KingdomBrunel and Syntherio.

Does anyone fancy been our scribe? Also who feels like going first so we can plan a turn order and decide on the number of turns per round?

Also if anyone has any queries please post and we can get things sorted before we start.

This is going to be fun!!!

Sorry everyone I've just realised that I'm the chosen team leader is everyone ok with this?

No problem for me... we just have to think for a roster. I'm not a specialist of the opening (especially in Monarch... :blush: ) so I prefer to be the third/fourth player in the roster...

Regarding the start I would say settling on the spot would be ok but maybe moving to the hill in the SW would be good to reveal some more area around our start location.

I'd prefer not, I didn't like loosing time at the begining... I think we should settle where we are.

For the tech path..? We should probably go for Animal Husbandry for the horses and our UU (for an early expansion war...:hammer: ) and after Pottery or if we haven't horses, we should go for BW.

For the production I suggest a warrior until we reach pop2, than a worker...

That you guys do you think about this..?

Sorry everyone I've just realised that I'm the chosen team leader is everyone ok with this?

Yes, please! :)

Ideas for opening strategy:

Since we don't know how far away the Inca civilization is i think our main concern in the beginning of the game is defence. On Monarch level the AI are in my experience clearly stronger than us in the beginning of the game . Thus we could face a stronger enemy quite early. This points toward building a strong military early and maintain it at least for as long as we are unsure of the location and strength of our Inca opponent. Due to these considerations I kind of favor settling on the plains hill and making our capital a production city as suggested by BSouder. Not only to gain the extra hammer from the city square but also to get some extra defensive strength for the military units fortified in the capital.
If the Inca people are really nearby they will probably come "visit" with a mix of archers and Quechua's. In that case, researching hunting and building archers might not be sufficient for our defence since the Quecha with 10% strength (from agressive trait) and 100% strength against archers is clearly superior. So I suggest skipping archers alltogether and go directly for axemen and/or our unique unit the War Chariot (as suggested by radiopill). War Chariots are very good for a defensive war: Pillaging enemy territory, hit and run attacks. Axemen are very good both for defence and offence and with the city raider promotion they can also be used to capture enemy cities. To sum up I suggest researching mining, bronze working and animal husbandry early in order to reveal the location of bronze and horses as soon as possible. Getting one or both of these ressources early could save us from being wiped out!! Researching these techs will also enable us to build a pasture on the cow square, mine the hills and chop rush military! Even if we are not going to build archers there could be a point in researching hunting and building a scout to seek out the location of the Incan Civ.
Regarding build orders I don't have any special preferences except that I like to build a worker as soon as I have the techs available to put him to work. I guess that would be right away since we already know farming and the wheel.

Hope to hear more ideas from you guys! Since this is a team effort I think it is important that we all support and understand whatever strategy we might choose. Better a simple and clear plan that we can all follow consistently than something detailed that half of the team disaggrees with or doesn't follow for other reasons. So please explain the reasoning behind your ideas. That will also make it more fun to play.

Happy Inca hunting :D

Due to these considerations I kind of favor settling on the plains hill and making our capital a production city as suggested by BSouder.

Ok, let's go for that, but it's a dangerous gambit... we didn't know what's on the other side of this hills...
And if we settle there, we should search AH first, so we can pasture the cow sooner, and we can see the horses.
We should go for our UU first, it costs 25:hammers: (axemen 35:hammers:) and are immune to first strikes (so pretty effective against archer...).

Ok, let's go for that, but it's a dangerous gambit... we didn't know what's on the other side of this hills...

I see your point! There could be useless terrain (mountains, desserts) to the west. But worst case we could go back and settle in the original spot. Of course we would feel pretty stupid but we would only have lost one turn. Remember that the game speed is epic :).

We should go for our UU first

I see no problem in going for AH first. We need to find those horses! I think we should keep both options open and also go for bronze working fast. Chop rushing is nice and we may find that copper is closer to the capital than horses.

Remember that the game speed is epic .

I forgot this one :blush: ... So ok let's go for the gambit :)

Chop rushing is nice

We'll see, but we probably need to spare some forests for the health bonus, with all this floodplains :yuck: ...

If we settle in place the cows are going to be just outside our fat cross which means our first city will be unable to work them. By moving to the hill we will hopefully get a much better view of our start location which based on the screenshot above is pretty poor with lots of desert to the E.

At least we have the river and flood plains which should allow us to expand quite quickly. We are the Egyptians which gives us agriculture and the wheel as starting techs so we need to be looking for good farming land to start with and our traits are spiritual and creative so maybe an early religion would be useful. Also due to creative we get +2 culture for each city.

I feel that either mysticism or AH would be good starting techs but we need input from everyone then we can start to plan our first turn.

Once we have all the ideas we can make our plans.

If was playing it myself, I'd like to make the move to the hill SW of the settler for two reasons - first of all it puts the cows in the fat cross of a city founded there, and secondly, I'd get to see beyond the hill in that direction. The defense bonus of a city on the hill would be a nice extra. I'd be hoping it wouldn't ever come into play though!!

At worst, one could move the settler back if it's all useless desert or something and lose only a couple of turns, which at epic is less important. At best, there might be something quite useful within range over that way.

With our UU relying on horses and being an early game UU, it would be good to have the horses earlier rather than later wouldn't it? I'd be inclined to go for AH early on, if not first.

Perhaps we need to answer some of the following questions...

How are we trying to win? Do we need to know that now? Does this effect what techs we go for early? Maybe survival early on is an important consideration in the techs - that is, go for AH so we get get horses for our UU, and BW to get some axemen?

The culture angle is worth considering when you're creative and spiritual and therefore founding religions is handy. How important is that compared to the techs mentioned above?

How are we trying to win? Do we need to know that now? Does this effect what techs we go for early? Maybe survival early on is an important consideration in the techs - that is, go for AH so we get get horses for our UU, and BW to get some axemen?

If we really want to win the SGOTM (and not only the game), the only real option is Domination (Conquest isn't possible with the always peace we'll have...). So IMO we should search first AH, then BW if we didn't have any horses, and if we have horses we could think at a CS slingshot so we can grab hopefully the confucianism...

victory will be awarded for the fastest victory by either domination or diplomacy

We can also try a diplomatic victory, but IMO it will be really hard to achieve this goal without a good plan, and a lot of ressources for lobbying some AI... :mischief:
Nevertheless, if we can't go for an early domination, we still can go for UN. But that means, we failed at war, and we'll have a bad background with some of the AI... who won't vote for us, unless we are really really sweet with them... :spank: :dubious:

New Team #2
BSouder, Drogear, Frederiksberg, Hyfrydle, KingdomBrunel, Mad Professor, radiopill, Syntherio

So BSouder, Drogear, KingdomBrunel, and Syntherio are still missing... what are we going to do..? Did someone send them PM..?

And when the first save will be released..?

Please PM your missing players to chase them up. We have a few standby players ready to move in if you can't retrieve them all.

See your first post for starting info.

How are we trying to win? Do we need to know that now?

I don't think we need to decide on that in this early stage. If we focus on staying alive and building our civilization there will be plenty of time later to contemplate the type of win.

I'm a bit worried about war weariness. Since we cannot make peace with the Incans our only option seems to be to destroy them as fast as possible. I kind of hope they are not too far away!

Religion is nice for boosting happyness and gold if you can build a shrine. I suggest we postpone the decision of whether or not to go for founding a religion. We do not start with Mysticism and are thus handicapped in the race for early religion. And maybe we get lucky and capture a holy city from the Incas (They do start with mysticism). Religion may also spread randomly in our lands.

I aggree with radiopill that we should not chop rush indiscriminately. Still it could be critical to have the ability to chop rush or pop rush (also available with the slavery civic enabled by BW) in order to get the Oracle for CS slingshot or even to get an army fast if the Inca Civ. turns out to be our next door neighbour.

Did someone send them PM..?

Forgive my ignorance, but what does "PM" stand for? :confused:

Private Message. Click Private Messages at top right on each forum page, under your 'Welcome Frederiksburg' text. You can send messages directly to up to five forum user names,

I send this PM to the missing players... I hope they see it, and come soon...


SGOTM1
Hi,

the New Team #2 (A.K.A the Memphis Blues) are waiting for you for the first SGOTM.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showth...10#post4030110

Are you still UP for this challenge..?

Hey, I'm not missing. I was the 3rd reply in the thread. :confused:

Anyway my opinion is to settle the hill unless moving there reveals some REALLY crappy land. Although, even if the hidden squares behind the hills are just peaks, it will still be a nice city.

My vote would be to go for AH first. That's the only resource we know of, so we might as well get it hooked up. It also gives us our UU if it reveals close horses.

On more mundane topics, this thing starts in 2 days and I think we should really set an initial order and maybe decide a turn length. Anyone want to go first? :)

Hey, I'm not missing. I was the 3rd reply in the thread.

Sorry about that... :mischief: :crazyeye: :lol:

On more mundane topics, this thing starts in 2 days and I think we should really set an initial order and maybe decide a turn length. Anyone want to go first?

My only request is, I don't want to be the first... and I think the first player should go for a small turnset (20 turns max), so we can have a better overview of our land, and prepare a better tech path.

I think we should really set an initial order and maybe decide a turn length.

I was hoping that someone who knows the mechanics of SGOTM would volunteer and go first. I wouldn't mind being second though...

Regarding turn length, 20 turns is probably fine in the beginning but later in the game each turn takes much longer time, so we should decrease the number gradually as the game progresses.

Have any of us ever played a succession game? I know I haven't.

20 turns to start sounds good, we can always adjust as we go.

Our valiant captain is the only one to admit every playing a SG before. Maybe we should nominate him to play first. :mischief:

How about this for an initial roser:
Hyfrydle
Frederiksberg
Mad Professor
radiopill
BSouder
Drogear
KingdomBrunel
Syntherio

That is assuming the last 3 get the PMs and join in. Even if all of them don't we have a guaranteed 5 players so should be fine.

In general I think our short-term goals for the first few moves should be:
A. Find / hook up horses if possible
B. Find the Incans (high priority!)
C. Find our ally if possible (low priority until we can trade)
D. Prepare some basic defenses (as Frederiksberg pointed out if Inca is close, we could get hit soon). This means archery (bad idea against Inca) or axes if horses aren't handy.
E. Maybe found a religion? (I NEVER found anything before confucianism, but part of my goal in playing this is to learn other tactics.)

Have any of us ever played a succession game?

I'm involved in one, so I knew the etiquette for SG, but I feared that my opening skill completely kill us in Monarch (I'm more a Prince player but I'm starting playing in Monarch:king: )...


How about this for an initial roser:
Hyfrydle
Frederiksberg
Mad Professor
radiopill
BSouder
Drogear
KingdomBrunel
Syntherio


OK for me, sounds good.:goodjob:

How long do we wait for the last 3 players..?

Sorry, I was ill.

My thoughts on...
...Defense: archers are insufficient. We need War Chariots and Axemen against the Incans
...Religion: We start with agriculture and wheel (?!), so it would be hard to get one of the three starting-religions. Lets go for confucianism, we need the courthouse and the caste system anyway soon.
...turnlimit: 20 turns in the beginning and 10 turns later should are okay.
...technology: AH must be first tech. It enables the cows and shows us horses.
...war waeriness: In a few testgames, I had no problem with ww. The negative effect seems to be lower, when you are always at war with someone.
...permanent alliance: I never played in an alliance. Has anyone experience with this? We must know, if the victory-conditions are altered. Is the population and the landmass of both civs combined for a domination-win? And how is the voting-behavior of our ally?
...Incas on Monarch: Even if the Icans are close to our capital, we should not attack them before we found our second city. The unit-bonus for the AI on Monarch-level is dangerous. We will need a strong force, maybe swordsmen to crush them. War Elephants can be our war-winner. There will be a staedy stream of units between our two empires: If we are unable to carry the war to his cities, he will bother us with countless attackers...
...the paecefull mate: He could be the optimal partner in an alliance or for a diplomatic victory.

EDIT: My 200th post, hurray ;)

I'm here too - didn't think things we're kicking off until today. I'll post some more at lunchtime, I'm supposed to be working now.

Hi, I'm glad to see you guys.

permanent alliance: I never played in an alliance. Has anyone experience with this? We must know, if the victory-conditions are altered. Is the population and the landmass of both civs combined for a domination-win? And how is the voting-behavior of our ally?

That's a really good question, I made a little search on the forum but didn't found a lot on PA (Permanent Allaince). But the small information I found, let me think that the victory conditions are unaltered... So a domination is easier, but as we cannot be in PA before Communism or Nationalism, it will be hard to win the SGOTM this way.
For the diplomatic way, I really don't know how our ally will vote, specially if he is himself eligible... :crazyeye:
However, founding a PA is pretty hard, and the civ we are at always peace, won't necessarily be our ally. If he dislikes us (because of religion, border tension, war with his friend, etc...), he won't help us much, he only won't attack us... I hope they didn't choose an AI like Izzy or Toku as our always peace civ...:cry:

Orginially posted by BSounder:
In general I think our short-term goals for the first few moves should be:
A. Find / hook up horses if possible
B. Find the Incans (high priority!)
C. Find our ally if possible (low priority until we can trade)
D. Prepare some basic defenses (as Frederiksberg pointed out if Inca is close, we could get hit soon). This means archery (bad idea against Inca) or axes if horses aren't handy.
E. Maybe found a religion? (I NEVER found anything before confucianism, but part of my goal in playing this is to learn other tactics.)

That seems a pretty good summary of what's been posted so far, and it sounds a good plan to me (not that I've played a SGOTM before). Horses for war chariots has to be our number 1 priority doesn't it, and Syntherio's suggestion to hold off an offensive war until we're more powerful has won me over. Founding a religion will be tough, so maybe we could just hope to pick one of those up from a neighbour - it may make sense to share a religion with someone if we're having to handle the Incans early on. Two early wars could be fatal.

Are we going to know who we're at peace with permanently? I've not played with a conidition like this before and I'm assuming that we can find this out other than by trying to declare war on everyone.

In terms of where to settle at the start - I vote SW hill unless it looks awful when we get there. Extra defense, and gets the floodplains out of our FAT cross so we don't pick up as much unhealthiness. I also agree not to chop the trees, at least to start with.

In terms of playing order, I'm going to be on holiday May 20th-28th, and so an early slot will suit me. Don't worry - me going AWOL is not a regular thing - we're just making the most of being able to go on holiday in term time before my eldest starts school in September. If an early slot's not possible, you'll just have to skip me until I'm back.

Looking forward to this over the coming months

Looks like we are getting close to a consensus on the opening strategy! As I see it most of us are in favor of the following:

Where to settle:
SW on the plains hills unless there is only useless land (desserts, mountains) to the east.

What to research:
AH first in order to work the cow square and find horses. If no horses are visible we continue with Mining and BW to find bronze. Otherwise we may continue with Pottery (to get cottages) before going for BW. Mysticism has also been proposed - I think the idea was to go for founding a religion. In my view this is quite a gamble on Monarch level since at least one of our opponents start with Mysticism and thus has a head start. What do you guys think?

What to produce:
Hmm - not much input here. My suggestion would be to either build a worker first or maybe start building something else (warrior?) and then switch to building a worker when our capital grows to size 2. My reasoning behind this, is as follows: We want to maximize the total sum of hammers, food and gold from our city. In the beginning this can be done in only two ways: By growing the population and by improving the tiles in the fat cross. While we are building the worker, the city won't grow. But when the worker is ready, improving the cow square will increase the food with 1 and the hammers with 2 which is more than the increase when adding one extra citizen (working unimproved floodplain gives 3 extra food and 1 extra gold but the extra citizen will consume two of the food units). And even more important, as soon as we have produced the worker we are able to both let the city grow and improve the available tiles with farms and later cottages and mines.

Please comment if I missed something or you have other ideas!

Syntherio: Even if the Icans are close to our capital, we should not attack them before we found our second city.

I fully agree with this. And maybe it is better to let them come for us in the beginning and attack them in open land with (hopefully) our War Charriots :D. Also it will be important to get intelligence regarding their strength and type of units before any full blown attack is launched. We should also locate their strategic ressources (horses, bronze etc) and unhooking those.

Regarding the rooster I hope our captain will go first. I can be placed whereever it is convenient.

However, founding a PA is pretty hard, and the civ we are at always peace, won't necessarily be our ally. If he dislikes us (because of religion, border tension, war with his friend, etc...), he won't help us much, he only won't attack us... I hope they didn't choose an AI like Izzy or Toku as our always peace civ...:cry:
Having someone, who will never declare war on us, can be very usefull. For example we can give him cities, we are about to lose to the Incans. Maybe we are even able to avoid a high city-maintenance, by giving him cities, which we conquered before and achieve domination-victory anyhow (If the landmass is added in a PA). And avoiding a dispute over religion is easy, just change to no-state-religion if you cannot change to his religion... All this can give us a good relation to our peaceful neighbor.
I think we should not ignore the benefits of a PA. But you are right, it is a long game till communism or nationalism...
If anyone has enough time, it would be nice to hear of a testgame with PAs...

Are we going to know who we're at peace with permanently? I've not played with a conidition like this before and I'm assuming that we can find this out other than by trying to declare war on everyone.
When highlighting the names and points of the opponents on the right side of the screen, you will see a "Can not declare war". So no need to start a world war :cool:

Capitals position:
I would also prefer the plains-hill SW. We would still have six floodplains, but get the cow and (thats most important) an extra hammer for the city-tile.

Religion:
I really recommend not to go for one of the three starting religions. Without mysticism and with an aggressive AAW-opponent the possible damage is much greater than the possible gain from this. Confucianism or a later one: okay, but not the first three...

Production:
Building a worker early is a good strategy, imo. We will need roads to and a pasture on the horses (I hope for them ;) ). Maybe working on barracks instead of a warrior, until the city grows?

I agree - worker to start with. I've not started on buildings until after I've produced a settler before, but I'm quite happy to try that if that's what everyone would like to do, especially if we've got horses in our fat cross and no close neighbours. Perhaps we could start it, switch to a war chariot ASAP, then finish the barracks. I'm nervous about us having only one military unit for too long.

I'm gone for the day now - I'll check back tomorrow.

checking in

Seems to be a good start positin. Never played this type of team game.

The spot right to the left of the warrior seems optimal, granting all of the floopplains, a cow and 4 hills for prod.

Im opting for a early search for stone to gain easy pyramids for representation.

If I would played first my starting strategy would be as follows.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=161445&highlight=drogear

But when nessecary changes for this map

"Animal (pastry) – Mysticism – Meditation – Priesthood (oracle) – Writing – Code Of Law (found Confucianism)

Capital: Start oracle build so it completes right after writing* is researched (Code Of Law)"

then

Alphabet (Tech Trade) – Literature (Great Library – Music (Notre Dame) +(Great person) – Math (HangingG)

Capital: Great Library, Notre Dame (happiness)
2nd City: Hanging Garden

Ok this is vs AI so some wonders has to go

Religion:
I really recommend not to go for one of the three starting religions. Without mysticism and with an aggressive AAW-opponent the possible damage is much greater than the possible gain from this. Confucianism or a later one: okay, but not the first three...

Production:
Building a worker early is a good strategy, imo. We will need roads to and a pasture on the horses (I hope for them ). Maybe working on barracks instead of a warrior, until the city grows?


For the religion you are right, going for meditation or poly isn't a priority, but we should go for mysticism sooner rather than later, for Stonehedge... We don't really need this one as we are creative, but we really need the :gp:Point for our GProphet.

For the prod order, I suggest worker-warrior first, and then settler or barrack depending on the environment...

"Animal (pastry) – Mysticism – Meditation – Priesthood (oracle) – Writing – Code Of Law (found Confucianism)

Capital: Start oracle build so it completes right after writing* is researched (Code Of Law)"

then

Alphabet (Tech Trade) – Literature (Great Library – Music (Notre Dame) +(Great person) – Math (HangingG)

So IMO, we should go for stonehedge, it's much easier to grab, and the GreatProphet will provide us CoL (and confu hopefully), if search Poly (possibility of grabing Hindu..?)/ Meditation/Priest and writing, but we musn't search Masonry, or the GP will give us Monotheism... And if we go like this, we can grab CS by the oracle (or by another GP, but it will take longer)...

Stonehedge got 2 uses, culture and great prophet.

Culture we already get

And a prophet is only good if we found a religion, and the enemy might get it before us if we go for the early ones. BUT the floodplain start might give a tech headstart if we dont go cray with building loots of other than warrior units at the start and into later on in the "start phase"

The startposition and cottages makes for great techlead possibilities. Might want to exploit that.

Hi Guys

Been out for the night but should be able to start us off tomorrow night will follow the current consensus and play 20 turns then we can take it from there. If anyone has some last minute strategies please let me know.

Thanks.

Pl dont go over the top with military units in the beggining, warriors is all you need unit the wild animals turns into barbarians, then just a few heavy hitters are needed to keep the peace.

With our UU relying on horses and being an early game UU, it would be good to have the horses earlier rather than later wouldn't it? I'd be inclined to go for AH early on, if not first.

Perhaps we need to answer some of the following questions...

How are we trying to win? Do we need to know that now? Does this effect what techs we go for early? Maybe survival early on is an important consideration in the techs - that is, go for AH so we get get horses for our UU, and BW to get some axemen?

The culture angle is worth considering when you're creative and spiritual and therefore founding religions is handy. How important is that compared to the techs mentioned above?

Going to heavy on defens units and tech will crippel the whole game from start to finish. IMO the beggnings should be focused on getting the right techs and the right wonders to keep a solid lead in the game.

Pyramids is still essential even with the representation nerf, giving rep for +2 happy is importent in this game diff and that start possition.

Oracle -> code of law is a standard mornachy diff approach, the oracle will give prophet for extra gold or the pyramid will give enginner for rushing other wonders.

Pyramids is still essential even with the representation nerf, giving rep for +2 happy is importent in this game diff and that start possition.


I don't think pyramids are "essential"... they are a good Wonder, but not(IMO) "essential". We shouldn't focus on it, unless we'll really have a very good chance to grab it (lot of forest to chop and stone easily hooked up...).

Furthermore, for hooking up the potential stone, we need to research Masonry, denying any futur CS slingshot by GP. Nontheless we could go in this case go for theology, wich allow us theocraty (not bad for kicking some a$$)...

Hm never gone for theology, so I can comment on that strategy. But for religion I beliwe codfe of law is better (iva oracle, that research patch is providing alpabeth for an easy access for gret library in the super tech starting city)

One very abvius suggestion is to cottage the floodplains and main the hills an make Thebe the tech capital, going for library-great library. But some healt resoruces might be needed to battle unhealth.

+2 happiness with pyr/rep (and the +3 science/specialist) makes pyramids essential in my book, specially in monarch diff where 9/10 the time you get time to build essentially all the important wonders.

But with so many "chefs" this strategy might prove hard to maintain if all the players arent familiar with it...

Hm never gone for theology, so I can comment on that strategy. But for religion I beliwe codfe of law is better

I agree, I also prefer CoL, but if we researched Masonry (for stone), we are bound to build the oracle for CoL, where we can grab it with a GP (from stonehedge, much cheapier), and we still can build Oracle for Civil Service...

+2 happiness with pyr/rep (and the +3 science/specialist) makes pyramids essential in my book, specially in monarch diff where 9/10 the time you get time to build essentially all the important wonders.

But with so many "chefs" this strategy might prove hard to maintain if all the players arent familiar with it...

It's true, I'm not familiar with this strategy, but as I understand it, this strategy seems really effective for a Space Race win, but I'm not sure this strategy will lead us to an early domination win...
I'm pretty sure, that with all the good players in this team we are going to win this game, but what we all want is winning the competition...:mischief:

So, IMHO, I don't think that we need Pyr and the Great Lib, for me it's a "waste" of hammer... but I might be wrong... ;)
Anyway, we are in democraty and I will follow the majority. :)

I normally don´t build wonders, not even those, which give you a great prophet. You can get a prophet from specialists after building a temple and our Capital can become a nice GPF, but I am open for new strategies :)
Drogear, are you sure, we will have the time to build the important wonders on Monarch-Level?

Informations on the PAs:
I played a fast testgame with PA and must say, radiopill was right. It is indeed very difficult to form an alliance. I had a very friendly neighbor, but he don´t want to ally with me. He said I´ve "grown too powerfull" for him... Really a logical reason to reject an alliance :rolleyes:
Both Civs need the same religion I think, there is no chance with free religion or no-state-religion.

I normally don´t build wonders, not even those, which give you a great prophet. You can get a prophet from specialists after building a temple and our Capital can become a nice GPF, but I am open for new strategies

Yes it's true you can have gpp by specialist... but first you need a religion before building any temple... It can be a real problem, if we are alone on an island, or if our religious neigbour is HC, as he won't give us his religion by OB...

Informations on the PAs:
I played a fast testgame with PA and must say, radiopill was right. It is indeed very difficult to form an alliance. I had a very friendly neighbor, but he don´t want to ally with me. He said I´ve "grown too powerfull" for him... Really a logical reason to reject an alliance :rolleyes:
Both Civs need the same religion I think, there is no chance with free religion or no-state-religion.

I've read in an article that to get rid off the "grown too powerfull", you have to disband or give units to your ally... In fact this message happen, when you are tne civ n°1 in power, but when you give units to your ally, he musn't become the most powerfull, or he'll say something as "we can do it by ourselves..."
I search, but i didn't find this article anymore unfortunately...

And for facism, you are right, it would have been to easy with nationalism... but I also read that a defensive pact must be done during 40 turns to increase the chance to have a PA...

I agree, I also prefer CoL, but if we researched Masonry (for stone), we are bound to build the oracle for CoL, where we can grab it with a GP (from stonehedge, much cheapier), and we still can build Oracle for Civil Service...



It's true, I'm not familiar with this strategy, but as I understand it, this strategy seems really effective for a Space Race win, but I'm not sure this strategy will lead us to an early domination win...
I'm pretty sure, that with all the good players in this team we are going to win this game, but what we all want is winning the competition...:mischief:

So, IMHO, I don't think that we need Pyr and the Great Lib, for me it's a "waste" of hammer... but I might be wrong... ;)
Anyway, we are in democraty and I will follow the majority. :)

You are absolutly right about the space race win. This is an strategy I developed in the very early civ4 days for Beta gauntlet I (space raece only) got a top10 spot but thats beside the point.

But I think its valide to compete on a toplevel still with some modifications so suite the specific task in hand.

Stone would make life very easy, IF we find it, I strongly opt to get the second city within its area an provide us with the resoruce and go for the pyramids.

Even with no stone I vote for pyramids but Im open for debate.

The floodplains are madefor cottages, cottages = science/money so making the capital a super-tech city might be a good ide, and for that you´ll need the great library.

Great Lib works wonders with Pyr/Rep due to the +3 science/specillist.

All the floodplain will give us a big pop = we need loots of +happy +health
And all the extra food makes for good GP farming to add the GP points from the wonders.

The 4 hills makes for ideal for giving the city hammers to build these and the suner we mine them the better, always a good chance for special resoruces poping up on epic speed.

Drogear: Pl dont go over the top with military units in the beggining, warriors is all you need unit the wild animals turns into barbarians, then just a few heavy hitters are needed to keep the peace.

We are locked in war with the Incans, so a peacefull start is probably out of the question except if the Incan tribe is not on the same continent as we are. This is also the reason that the discussion has been very focused on military considerations. As the game progresses and we get more information about the world we should of course constantly be revising our strategy to fit this.

Drogear: Going to heavy on defens units and tech will crippel the whole game from start to finish. IMO the beggnings should be focused on getting the right techs and the right wonders to keep a solid lead in the game.

I'm not sure what you mean by "too heavy". We have to prepare for the eventuality that the Incans are close to us otherwise this could be a very short game. Having said that I do agree that we have to provide gold for research and expansion as well. But this can be done without wonders. And I don't believe there are any "right" techs or "right" wonders - it all depends on how the game develops: Where and who are our neighbours, which ressources can we get access to, which techs do the other civs have and so forth. I myself often tend to forget building wonders, because you can easily win on all levels without building any (haven't played above emperor level though, but I believe it is even more true on the high levels). So I would encourage you to keep lobbying for wonders but I have a feeling that you need to build a stronger case than just providing a standard top 5 list of wonders in order to persuade the rest of the team (the many other "chefs". Btw does that mean you are the swedish chef :D ).

Looking forward to many discussions :)

I normally don´t build wonders, not even those, which give you a great prophet. You can get a prophet from specialists after building a temple and our Capital can become a nice GPF, but I am open for new strategies :)
Drogear, are you sure, we will have the time to build the important wonders on Monarch-Level?

Informations on the PAs:
I played a fast testgame with PA and must say, radiopill was right. It is indeed very difficult to form an alliance. I had a very friendly neighbor, but he don´t want to ally with me. He said I´ve "grown too powerfull" for him... Really a logical reason to reject an alliance :rolleyes:
Both Civs need the same religion I think, there is no chance with free religion or no-state-religion.

I usually get most of the wonders I shot for, but It might be an gamble in this game. But given stone resource there is no question, the lead of other wonder builder are hugh and give you a lead troughout the whole game (proven you maintain tech lead). The AI will loose every importent early wonder race if we get stone, and with a proper tech lead we could in genereal build every possbile wonder (just the importen ones matter really) and make them waist hammers trying to cach up.

But this is an team game, so Im up for the majority vote on things. So please just see my discussion just as discussion and its up for debate. Ill fold to other plans due to the sometimes complez nature of my plan that might be hard to implement in a team game.

The most importen thing is that everyone workes against a common goal and not to try do their own thing everyime the player switches.

We are locked in war with the Incans, so a peacefull start is probably out of the question except if the Incan tribe is not on the same continent as we are. This is also the reason that the discussion has been very focused on military considerations. As the game progresses and we get more information about the world we should of course constantly be revising our strategy to fit this.



I'm not sure what you mean by "too heavy". We have to prepare for the eventuality that the Incans are close to us otherwise this could be a very short game. Having said that I do agree that we have to provide gold for research and expansion as well. But this can be done without wonders. And I don't believe there are any "right" techs or "right" wonders - it all depends on how the game develops: Where and who are our neighbours, which ressources can we get access to, which techs do the other civs have and so forth. I myself often tend to forget building wonders, because you can easily win on all levels without building any (haven't played above emperor level though, but I believe it is even more true on the high levels). So I would encourage you to keep lobbying for wonders but I have a feeling that you need to build a stronger case than just providing a standard top 5 list of wonders in order to persuade the rest of the team (the many other "chefs". Btw does that mean you are the swedish chef :D ).

Looking forward to many discussions :)

Damit I missed that, Im sorry. Ok them some initial defens units are in order...

I would hope that we still treat the capital as a super tech/wonder/GP city and make us oh the other cities as unit producers. This would grant os the best of two worlds.

All the eventuall cottages in the capital makes economical room for a larger early empire, thus having 3-5 other cities that provides with unit buildnings.

"(the many other "chefs". Btw does that mean you are the swedish chef :D )." No not really :) refered to an old swedish "saying".. hm I cant seem to find the proper translation. Im a student (political science) BTW, but ATM Im an intern at the city hall of Umeå = loots if time behind the computer, but no play :(

The floodplains are madefor cottages, cottages = science/money so making the capital a super-tech city might be a good ide, and for that you´ll need the great library.

I agree with the cottage part and I still think it is too early to decide on any wonders. Lets wait and see how the war develops and what ressources we can get.

"(the many other "chefs". Btw does that mean you are the swedish chef )." No not really refered to an old swedish "saying".. hm I cant seem to find the proper translation. Im a student (political science) BTW, but ATM Im an intern at the city hall of Umeå = loots if time behind the computer, but no play

I know this saying - in danish it says "For mange kokke fordærver maden". I was hinting at the swedish chef from The Muppet Show. But maybe you are too young to familiar with that. Anyway I prefer French cooking to Scandinavian :) . And finnish mobile phones to Korean! (I work for Nokia in Copenhagen).

Drogear: The most importen thing is that everyone workes against a common goal and not to try do their own thing everyime the player switches.

Yes!! Its very important that we are consistently following a common plan even if it is not "optimal". A bad plan is better than no plan!

I know this saying - in danish it says "For mange kokke fordærver maden". I was hinting at the swedish chef from The Muppet Show. But maybe you are too young to familiar with that. Anyway I prefer French cooking to Scandinavian :) . And finnish mobile phones to Korean! (I work for Nokia in Copenhagen).

To young!? Well thanks but Im to old.. :D Never where into the muppet show thats all. Go nokia but got a s.ericsson atm (I decent partly from Finland)

I have see, that some team have already started...

here (http://gotm.civfanatics.net/submit/civ4sgotm_submission_list.php)

We should probably start to, by just making one or two turn just to see the land next to the hill, shouldn't we..?

So we play like BSouder said before?
Hyfrydle
Frederiksberg
Mad Professor
radiopill
BSouder
Drogear
KingdomBrunel
Syntherio

Do we have and official strategy yet?

My suggestion for early mirco managing

Settle first turn right to the left of the warrior.

Build 1-2 warriors until the capital is size 3, then settler. Let it grow to size 4 (use warrior building to let it grow) then a settler or worker.
At this point the capital has done its work in the spawning stage and could go on to other duities.

Pottery - Animal Husbanry could be an very early tech aim?

Priesthood (via the organized religion line) and oracle starting to be build (to be macthed for completion the turn alpabath is discovered), After pristhood I would suggest an Alpbabeth run, late litt for an eventuall great lib.

Other thoughts on this plan? I know some seems prone to lesser the wonder building, lets us discusse.

If think we can go with the initial roster, but if it goes to fast, I probably need a swap (I'm not sure if I can play this week-end...) So if you want Syntherio (or anyone else), you can take my place if the turns come to me before Sunday...

For the initial strat... 2 main options settle on the hill SW if the W tiles are good, or settle SE next to the warrior for a science powerhouse capital...

For the tech path: AH, then Pottery (if we have horses) or Mining-BW...

For the production worker-warrior-warrior-settler

That's enougth for 20 turns in epic ;)

If think we can go with the initial roster, but if it goes to fast, I probably need a swap (I'm not sure if I can play this week-end...) So if you want Syntherio (or anyone else), you can take my place if the turns come to me before Sunday...

For the initial strat... 2 main options settle on the hill SW if the W tiles are good, or settle SE next to the warrior for a science powerhouse capital...

For the tech path: AH, then Pottery (if we have horses) or Mining-BW...

For the production worker-warrior-warrior-settler


That's enougth for 20 turns in epic ;)

why worker first?

Why dont:

+It makes the city halt at size 1 instead of evovling to size 3 = more gold/sience

+worker prod goes faster at size 3

+the very early worker might not have anything to work at

+The 1-2 warriors acts as scouts and early defens av barbarians an other civs.

My suggestions:
Settle on the plains-hill SW. (6 floodplains are enough for the capital, I think)

Research: AH
If we reveal horses: mysticism
No horses: mining

Build: warrior until city grows to size 2, then worker
After that Stonehenge, war chariot or barracks.


btw: in a monarch-epic-testgame i played, budhism was found in 3670 BC and Hinduism in 2440 BC

We need an early worker to bring horses into our city.

Radiopill - I'll swap with you if you'd like to? I think I'd end up missing my first turn otherwise too, cause I'll be in France. Hope it's nice over there this time of year.

Strategywise - SW hill gets my vote. Slight preference for worker rather than warrior first, and decide on whether this is a production or commerce city once we know what we've got in our FAT cross. AH for research then mining, BW. As always though, majority rules.

Why risk 1 turn to see if the SW plainshill are better? Im all for speciallicing the cities not going for general mediocracy. All you need for a gold/tech city are visable on the screenshot.

What is the profit of an first build worker?
To gain horse to city?? Does this valide all the negativs of buildning a worker first? No need for a horse in the early turns. We dont know the horse resrouce might be, so scouting with 2 warriors might be a good ide.

I agree with you, that we shouldn´t build the worker as long as our city is size 1, but waiting until size 3 is too long I think.
An extra hammer in the city-tile is very useful and 12 floodplains are too much anyway... that is -4 health, isn´t it?

ok size 2 is perhaps better, warrior - worker - ? warrio/settler - ? settler/warrior

Health will be a problem for sure. We need so secure health resources, that why we need warriors to scout out the area +acts as barbarian defens

I'm OK with a warrior first, as this is what I do most of the time, but here with the cows, it could have been a good idea a worker first... anyway, let's go for a warrior, it helped finding our horses... But after the warrior, worker..!

For the settler, 1 SW on the plain hill, is a risk we can take. Placing the city 1 SE and having a city with so much good tiles to work, and we don't know if we can afford a city like this... ATM we can see nor health (except cow) nor happiness ressources...
If we have to rely on building for :health: or :) it will be hard to let this city grow, thereas we can place one or two other medium city, plus our capitol and then work almost all the good tiles...

In the meantime, we have to keep in mind to not do to much overlap, so our cities can cover more surfaces for the domination...

For the tech path, I agree with Syntherio.

[Off Topic ON] KingdomBrunel Ok for the swap. Where do you go in France..? The weather is really goo today, but for this week end, the forecast is not as good, it will rained all over France. I hope it's only for a few day... [OFF Topic OFF]

Radiopill: I'm OK with a warrior first, as this is what I do most of the time, but here with the cows, it could have been a good idea a worker first

Me too. This might also ensure that we are done researching HA before the worker appears. But as soon as our capital has grown to size 2 i think we should switch to worker. As i explained in an earlier post the total food, gold and hammer output will increase with 3 when we improve the cow tile but only with 2 each time the city pop grows with one. So we really need to get working on those tiles! Early cottages will also give us improved economy so i'm inclined to go for pottery first instead of Mysticism. If we don't want to gamble for an early religion why do we need Mysticism. Please add some arguments!

Early cottages will also give us improved economy so i'm inclined to go for pottery first instead of Mysticism. If we don't want to gamble for an early religion why do we need Mysticism. Please add some arguments!

Mysticism allow the construction of Stonehendge, wich is the easiest (IMO) way to have an GProphet, who will give us CoL/confucianism, if we search writing before of course...

Mysticism allow the construction of Stonehendge, wich is the easiest (IMO) way to have an GProphet, who will give us CoL/confucianism, if we search writing before of course...

OK. I understand you argumentation now :) . My argument is, that if we build an early worker (and I think we should) he must have something sensible to do. And the best improvement I can see is to build cottages on the floodplain tiles. This will allow them to grow into monster tiles producing lots of food and gold. Have you got any idea of how often we will be able to grab Stonehenge? Remember, that some civs start with Mysticism and some may be industrious and/or have access to stone.

OK. I understand the mysticism argument, and I'm happy with that too. You can normally grab Stonehenge if you make it a priority. If we miss it we get a load of gold and can keep our research high for a while. I've no problems with that.

I guess the first moves will have been played before I check this again, so good luck Hyfrydle, them Incans don't stand a chance!

Radiopill - I'm afraid I'm probably going to the least French part of all of France - Disneyland Resort Paris. We're planing on heading into Paris itself once we've had our fill of Mickey & Disney Princesses though. Thanks for the swap too.

Got the start save will play 20 turns and post my report tomorrow.

A lot of good discussion today, too bad I didn't have board access at work today.

One comment I would like to make though is I don't think we should concentrate on much of any long term strategies until we know where Inca is. In my opinion that one piece of information will greatly infuence how we have to handle the rest of the game. And keep in mind that this map was hand built, not auto generated so I suspect that Inca is closer rather than farther away.

My opinion is proceed assuming Inca is about 5 squares away from our capital until we know different. :p

Wow. You guys have been busy here while I've been busy elsewhere haven't you?

Like Drogear I don't normally like a military emphasis early, but in this particular case, being locked into war with an apponent who could be over the next hill makes me keen on an early military emphasis for a change. Scouting may confirm or relieve our worries here.

I'm happy with the warrior first, then worker. I agree we need a worker early, but not while our city is at size 1.

I'm inlcined to like the AH first - one to get the cows online ASAP and two, to start looking for horses, which may be important if we are forced into conflict with Inca earlier that we (I, at least!) would like.

I've read the different city starting suggestions with interest - if I had to vote, I'd say go for the hill SW of the current settler position. Reasons for that have been mentioned in discussion already, so I won't repeat here. The alternative of going with more floddplains is good for food, but the health problem deters me. Especially if we also have to deal with extra unhappiness because of the war we can't get out of.

SGOTM 01 Memphis Blues

Well here we go we are finally going to find out what lies to the W and see if all our early planning will pay off.

Turn 1 4000 BC

After checking the local area the warrior needs to move either N or S to explore our surrounding area I decide to move S to begin with this uncovers a clam resource which may be useful later. After moving the settlers SW we don't uncover anymore resources but the new city position has three forests so we will gain health benefits also the cows are now in our fat cross. I will found our first city next turn. Before ending I set research to animal husbandry.

Turn 2 3970 BC

We found Thebes and the move to the SW was a good one:

http://i55.photobucket.com/albums/g138/Hyfrydle/Civ%204%20SGOTM%2001/FirstCity.jpg

We have a rice resource close by and stone with more cows to the N.Set production to warrior which will complete in 11 turns and continue exploring to the S with our warrior unit.Looks like we may be in the SE of a continent. As you can see animal husbandry is due to complete in 18 turns. Thebes is due to grow in 11 turns after checking demographics we are trailing in military by a large margin the early game should be fun till we get ourselves established.

Turn 3 3940 BC

As suspected after moving the warriors onto the hill to the SW we uncover a peninsula jutting out to sea.

Turn 4 3910 BC

Warriors start heading to the W nothing else to report.

Turn 5 3880 BC

Thebes cultural influence will increase next turn and we keep heading W with the warriors.

Turn 6 3850 BC

http://i55.photobucket.com/albums/g138/Hyfrydle/Civ%204%20SGOTM%2001/BordersExpandShot2.jpg

The borders expand in Thebes and we find more cows!!! and some fish off the coast to the SW. The city will grow in 4 and the warrior will complete in 4 as you can see we are 6 points behind the Inca's in score if we can close this gap we should be able to make some progress. We discover a source of sugar on this turn too.

Turn 7 3820 BC

All quiet

Turn 8 3790 BC

Our demographics are as follows:

http://i55.photobucket.com/albums/g138/Hyfrydle/Civ%204%20SGOTM%2001/DemographicsShot3.jpg

We have the most land area but are really low on soldiers we are 50% less than our nearest rival when the warrior completes I'll check this again hopefully the figures won't be so depressing. On a more positive note Thebes is number 1 in the the top 5 cities so we can celebrate that.

Turn 9 3760 BC

Still exploring

Turn 10 3730 BC

Our warriors find wait for it more cows!!!! This would be a dairy farmers paradise!!! Halfway throught the first set of turns and animal husbandry is due to complete in 10 turns and the city will grow in 3 which is also when the warrior completes. We haven't come across any Inca's which makes me feel they may well be on another continent or island but we still need to be vigilant.

Turn 11 3700 BC

Decide to head northwards with the warriors to explore the area to the NE of Thebes we don't want any nasty surprises!!!

Turn 12 3670 BC

May well head our current warrior unit to Thebe's and explore the NE our new unit which is due to complete next turn.

Turn 13 3640 BC

http://i55.photobucket.com/albums/g138/Hyfrydle/Civ%204%20SGOTM%2001/ThebesCityView.jpg

The warrior completes and we start on a worker which will complete in 15 turns as can be seen from the city view we have a happiness limit of 5 and health of 6 which restricts growth to 5 until we increase our happiness. We have plenty of health resources nearby but nothing for happiness. Maybe we'll find something in the NE.

Turn 14 3610 BC

This is going to be a really difficult game we are still really trailing military wise hope you guys have some ideas or we could really struggle.

Turn 15 3580 BC

Animal husbandry completes in 4. We continue exploring.

Turn 16 3550 BC

http://i55.photobucket.com/albums/g138/Hyfrydle/Civ%204%20SGOTM%2001/Impassable.jpg

Our warriors discover a barrier of 4 peaks I wonder if our Incan friends are on the other side?

Turn 17 3520 BC

We find wolves this could be our first fight.

Turn 18 3490 BC

Our warriors defeat the wolves but are injured so I set them to heal which will take 4 turns. Our other warrior group reaches Thebes and will fortify there next turn.

Turn 19 3460 BC

complete animal husbandry but there are no horses so we start on mining. Warriors are now fortified in Thebes.

Turn 20 3430 BC

Our Lands So Far:

http://i55.photobucket.com/albums/g138/Hyfrydle/Civ%204%20SGOTM%2001/OurLandsSoFar.jpg

Well that's my 20 and we are on our way not too much to report but lot's of information for discussion. We still need to explore and find those damn Incans as there a real shadow hanging over us also somewhere out there we have an ally again we need to find them hope it's the big military power :-)

Thebes:

http://i55.photobucket.com/albums/g138/Hyfrydle/Civ%204%20SGOTM%2001/Thebes.jpg

In Thebes we have a worker completing in 8 turns and we will expand culturally shortly too. We need to increase our military as soon as possible so maybe we should aim for archers.

Final Demographics:

http://i55.photobucket.com/albums/g138/Hyfrydle/Civ%204%20SGOTM%2001/FinalDemographics.jpg

Here are our final demographics we are really trailing militarily so I feel this is one of our main priorites again open to discussion. Hope I didn't do too badly and good luck to Fredriksberg.

The save has been uploaded and the running order is as follows:

Hyfrydle (Just Played)
Frederiksberg (Up Next)
Mad Professor
radiopill
BSouder
Drogear
KingdomBrunel
Syntherio

The Save:

http://gotm.civfanatics.net/saves/civ4sgotm1/Memphis_Blues_SG001_BC3400_01.Civ4SavedGame

Good Luck

Thanks Hyfrydle :goodjob: !

Looks like you got us started on the right track. Also we are not doing bad compared to the other teams.

Since we didn't find horses I guess we carry on as planned with Mining and BW in order to locate bronze. So what I plan to do is:

Research: Mining, BW
Units: Use one warrior to do some more scouting. When the worker appears I will use him to improve the cow tile and the rice tile first.

I will probably start playing tonight (i.e. 6-7 hours from now), so if you have any last minute comments don't wait too long!

So there's good and bad news in this report...

The SW gambit was a good idea, we gain rice/stone/5 forests/1 plain hill... This city will "rock" ;) in production... Just pray for copper on one of those hill, and it will be heaven...

No incas, for the moment is good as we don't have horses (for the moment, perhaps in the N or in the far west...

Worker due in 8, what must be his first task..? Cow or Rice, I think cow is better for the :hammers: ...

Tech wise, we should continue for BW, as we are really weak for the moment, let's hope we have copper near... Then BW is ok, let's go for Mysticism, if we have copper, or if we are alone on this continent, otherwise we would have to think at archery...

Just a few observations:
In the infoscreen you showed us in turn 8 we see at land area rival best 18.000. That means that civs city has already expanded and controls now 18 land-tiles. And that means that civ has the creative trait. So one of these leaders is on the map: Louis XIV, Frederick, Kublai Khan, Cyrus or Catherine.

Our lack of soldiers, compared with the other Civs is okay, the AI starts with extra units on Monarch.

I am surprised that we are just second in Food Production, but last at Life Expactancy - did the Ai start with workers or how did say managed this?

Really a pity that we didn´t discover horses...

Research:
If we have copper nearby and because of the stone I would suggest this: Mining, Bronzeworking, Mysticism, Masonry

Building:
Whats after the worker? Another warrior or barracks? And at what time should we start with stonehenge? As soon as possible, or when we have connected the stone?

First job for the worker:
I would suggest to improve the rice first. We have not yet a need for fast production, but fast grow can be useful.

Our warriors discover a barrier of 4 peaks I wonder if our Incan friends are on the other side?

Since this map is handmade I wouldn't be surprised if we share an island with the Incan tribe on the other side of those mountains. We might consider going for sailing earlier if it turns out that there are no other civs on our side of those mountains.

I think we soon need to consider city specialization also. One possibility is to research pottery early and put a lot of cottages on the flood plains. That would make our capital an excellent tech city and keep us well into the tech race from the beginning. Another possibility is to make it a production city by farming (some of) the flood plains and mining the hills and maybe later put some water mills on the remaining flood plains. This would - combined with the stone ressource - allow us to build both military units and wonders. One possibility would be to research Masonry, build a quarry and go for the Pyramids (Or Stonehenge). Of course provided that the Inca's don't come knocking on our door. Getting Pyramids would be particularly nice as it looks like we don't have many luxury ressources and thus need other means to get happyness (Representation or Hereditary Rule).

Research:
If we have copper nearby and because of the stone I would suggest this: Mining, Bronzeworking, Mysticism, Masonry

Building:
Whats after the worker? Another warrior or barracks? And at what time should we start with stonehenge? As soon as possible, or when we have connected the stone?

First job for the worker:
I would suggest to improve the rice first. We have not yet a need for fast production, but fast grow can be useful.

Research:
I think we should research Masonry after BW - we need this tech to build the quarry and get the extra wonder production speed

First job for the worker:
Rice first is fine with me. Afterwards cow.

Building:
I'm not in favor of building Stonehenge. It's normally used to get an early culture boost, but we already have that. Pyramids on the other hand would provide means for handling the lack of happyness we might be facing. And getting some extra great engineer points would have good synergi with making Thebes a production city (Later we could build a forge allowing for engineer specialists). But we don't need to decide before my turn - I can always start producing barracks and then we can switch later.

I didn't think we should go for masonry, before we get CoL with the GP, stonhedge would give us... I think we could get StoneH without the help of the "quarryed" stone... and we can chop the forest north of the city, it won't harm the health bonus...

After Worker, start a barracks, until city size 3, then a settler... IMO

I didn't think we should go for masonry, before we get CoL with the GP, stonhedge would give us... I think we could get StoneH without the help of the "quarryed" stone... and we can chop the forest north of the city, it won't harm the health bonus...

After Worker, start a barracks, until city size 3, then a settler... IMO

Building the wonder without the 100% bonus from stone seems like (forgive my french ;) ) a bloody waste of hammers. Remember that the chopped hammers also double! I also don't understand why we should build Stonehenge when we can only use the GP points. Building pyramids will give exactly the same number of GP points plus it enables all government civics. This could be extremely helpful in increasing science and happyness.

Regarding build order I guess barracks is a safe bet and also my first idea. But maybe we should build a settler? Founding a second city basically doubles growth in our empire, and we might discover that bronze is outside our cultural borders. This means that we need the settler to get the bronze fast.

Building the wonder without the 100% bonus from stone seems like (forgive my french ;) ) a bloody waste of hammers. Remember that the chopped hammers also double! I also don't understand why we should build Stonehenge when we can only use the GP points. Building pyramids will give exactly the same number of GP points plus it enables all government civics. This could be extremely helpful in increasing science and happyness.


Pyramids give GE gpp, thereas stoneH give GP gpp, by this GP I hope we can grab confucianism of CoL, wich would "solve" our happines problem partially +1 :) in cities with the state religion, and +1:) with a cheap temple (we are spiritual)... This means we can have the same bonus as the one give by representation (for the happiness). And if we follow the path I suggested, (writing/Meditation/Poly/priesthood), must be researched before we used the GProphet for CoL) then we can go for the Oracle and grab Civil Service, then we can run Burocracy in our powerfull capital...
I think both strategy are good, but the one I suggested :king: ,is better ;) :joke:

But it's up to the team to decide...

For the production, I agree we should go for a settler then Thebes reach size 3... but we can put some :hammers: into a barracks until we reach this size.

I think both strategy are good, but the one I suggested :king: ,is better ;)

:D I kind of suspected that. I feel the same way and I will try to explain why:

First of all, in order to make a fair comparison between two competing strategies they should take approximately the same number of turns. And I doubt that your proposed strategy can be completed in the same time it would take to research Masonry, build a quarry and build the Pyramids.

The Pyramids enable all government civics not only representation and the effect stays for the whole duration of the game. This means we also have at our disposal Hereditary Rule (happyness only limited by number of military units), Police State (+25% military production and -50% war wearyness - could be very relevant when locked in war) and Universal Suffrage (Rushing production using gold - not very useful in early game, but later!).

GE points are not bad, a great engineer can be used for instance to rush Oracle if we want a free tech...

Religion can spread to our lands in many ways: Randomly, through missionaries and by founding a religion. So following my proposal does not rule out that we get religion somehow, but following your proposal definitely rules out that we get the Pyramids!

I sometimes feel that too much emphasis is put on "standard" strategies like this CS slingshot. I would rather let the information we get from exploring the map and meeting other civs guide the decisions. That also breaks the routine and allows you to explore different possibilities. In our case it is the presence of stone and the fact that our capital is a potential production powerhouse that is the basis for my suggestions. Normally I would make the capital my tech city and go for pottery and cottages early. And I wouldn't build any early wonders at all. But not this time!!

But it's up to the team to decide...

Of course. But I want to persuade you as well :) .

First job for the worker:
I would suggest to improve the rice first. We have not yet a need for fast production, but fast grow can be useful.

Changed my mind on that one! I found out that working the rice tile (farm) only yields +1 food whereas working the cow tile will yield +1 food and +2 hammers! So I will start improving where it really counts. I think this is a minor decision so I will just go ahead and do it.

I begin to prefer Frederiksbergs strategy. It could be nice to build the oracle (for CoL and Great Prophets) with a Great Engineer from the Pyramids...

Changed my mind on that one! I found out that working the rice tile (farm) only yields +1 food whereas working the cow tile will yield +1 food and +2 hammers! So I will start improving where it really counts. I think this is a minor decision so I will just go ahead and do it.

I remember it as followes:
That improved Rice-tile would give 5 food
(2 from grassland, 1 from rice, 1 from improved rice and 1 from irrigated farm)
The improved cow-tile would give us 3 food, 3 hammer and one commerce
(food: 1 from plains, 1 from cow, 1 from improved cow
hammer: 1 from plains, 2 from improved cow and 1 commerce from river)

Ok, you convince me (partially ;)). Let's go for Pyramids, after all we're Egyptians, aren't we..? :egypt:

But if we have to build the Oracle with a GE, it should be done in another city than Thebes. So we have a city who spawn GE, and another city for GP... :p and no risk with a 50/50% odd for GP/GE...

I remember it as followes:
That improved Rice-tile would give 5 food
(2 from grassland, 1 from rice, 1 from improved rice and 1 from irrigated farm)
The improved cow-tile would give us 3 food, 3 hammer and one commerce
(food: 1 from plains, 1 from cow, 1 from improved cow
hammer: 1 from plains, 2 from improved cow and 1 commerce from river)

I don't think the farm will be irrigated since it doesn't have fresh water access. So I think I will farm one of the flood plain tiles instead to get the extra gold. We can wait with the rice tile until we need the health bonus.

I have loaded the save now and I'm ready to start my 20 turns. The new save should be available later this evening/nigth :)

Very interesting to see that first set of moves. I'd bet the Incans are on the other side of those mountains too. Disappointing not to have horses yet - we really need copper to show up don't we?

I think we should look to make Thebes a production city - we've got good production bonuses, and plenty of hills. I think the mountain barrier makes the area N/E/S safe from other civs in the immediate future, so should we be looking to base our next city west of here to cut off others expanding into this area? I agree with Radiopill to start the Settler when we're at size 3, I got annihilated in GOTM3 by not expanding quickly enough.

I'm happy enough to go for the Pyramids too, as long as we've got the stone hooked up before then. Not sure how long we should delay starting this though.

Look forward to reading the next installment.

I would suspect that the "sea" to the south of our capital may be in an inland sea. The landmass to the west seems to curl back. I wouldn't be surprised if the Incans are east of those mountains and we are connected south of that sea. We'll see though.

By the way, I am game to go for the Pyramids since we have stone so readily accessible.

A lot of stuff happened during my 20 turns and in the course of events I made some modifications to the agreed strategy. I tried, however, to remain loyal to the ideas we have been discussing.

Here we go...

Turn 21: Move warrior, find horses :cool: . Honestly, this was the first thing I did!! :D

Turn 22: Move warrior, find silver :crazyeye: Can it get any better!

Turn 23: Yes!! I score :cool: The chick is named Catherine and she claims to be the ruler of a gang called The Russians. She is all alone in the world :love: At least she doesn't know Huayna. It seems that I have the option to declare war on the poor girl, so we are not locked in peace with the Russians. I don't exorcise this option though. Wouldn't be the rigth way to treat a lady - yet :D .

Turn 24-26: Move warrior. Nothing happens - dull :sleep:

Turn 27: The worker is produced in Thebes and Mining is discovered. Now I start using my common sense :mischief: . Since we have found horses BW is not needed that badly any more. So I decide to cut a corner and go directly for Masonry. Furthermore, with Masonry just around the corner, I decide to go directly for a Settler. The idea is to produce the Settler at the time when Masonry has been researched and stone hooked up with a Quarry. This would allow us to settle a new city with access to horses. While we are building the Pyramids this new city can build War Charriots for defense against the Russians and barbarians. The worker is moved to the cow tile.

Turn 28: Start building pasture, move warrior.

Turn 29: Warrior kills lion and is promoted to combat 1. This warrior is intended to guard our next city.

Turn 30-31: Move warrior.

Turn 32: Pasture finished. Move warrior.

Turn 33: Move warrior and worker.

Turn 34: Move warrior - find more fish in the waters on the east coast. Move worker.

Turn 35: Worker start building road in direction of stone tile. Move warrior.

Turn 36-37: Move warrior.

Turn 38: Cultural border of Thebes expand. Warrior is fortified north of Thebes near the horses. Worker finalises road and is moved to stone tile.

Turn 39: We discover Masonry. I start researching Mysticism in order to keep all options open. Anyway it is on the path to CoL. Worker start building a quarry.

Turn 40: Nothing happens.

Turn 41: Hinduism founded by other civ.

I lost count of the turns somewhere :blush: . Probably doesn't matter. We are 4 turns from producing a Settler and 10 turns from having stone hooked up (finalize quarry + build road). Mysticism is 7 turns away.

I have made some screenshots of the final position (Hyfrydle, your screen shots are nicer than mine :cry: - how are you doing this?)

http://forums.civfanatics.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=126648&stc=1&d=1147557812

http://forums.civfanatics.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=126646&stc=1&d=1147557590

http://forums.civfanatics.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=126647&stc=1&d=1147557590

While playing my turns I made a small calculation of the maximum production capability of Thebes. Right now Thebes can only grow to size 5 due to happyness constraints so my calculation is based on a situation where 5 tiles + city tile are worked:

Tile :hammers:/:food:/:commerce:

City 2/2/1
Stone (Quarry) 5/0/0
Cow (Pasture) 3/3/1
Floodplain (farm) 0/4/1
Hills/Grassland (mine) 3/1/0
Hills/Plains (mine) 4/0/0

Total 17/10/3

First we notice that enough food is produced to sustain the population. And we don't want to grow anyway. Secondly we see that the base production is 17 hammers and with the wonder bonus for having stone an amazing 34 hammers per turn is output during the construction of Pyramids. At this speed it would take 20 turns to build the Pyramids. I believe this should be good enough to beat the other civs in this race :strength:. Remember that the game speed is epic! Still it will take some time (a little less than 30 turns) before we reach this population in Thebes.

I've read through the posts to this point on the first 40 turns. I see I'm next on the list. I can't see my way clear to play it in the next 22 hours or so, so there's a bit of time for discussion of where to go from here.

I expect to be able to down load and play in about 23 hours from now, and I will be sure to carefully read all discussion that takes place in between now and then!

Looks like we're doing as well as could be expected so far - we probably will be lacking some resources which we may have to use some excess cows to get hold of... Anyhow - we'll see! I look forward to reading the discussion coming up now!

We have some decision to make before the next turn set:

1. What to build before stone is hooked up (10 turns)? Maybe a warrior? Or start barracks and then switch?

2. Where to settle? East coast or west coast? Or do we need to settle on a tile adjacent to the horses?

3. Build order suggestions for new city.

4. Tech path after Mysticism is discovered.

Lets hear some ideas!

Well done, Frederiksberg.
Am I seeing right, that there is not much land in the north?
Catherine is in the west, isn´t she?
btw: You´re right with the rice, I tought the water three tiles in the south is a fresh water lake :)

Settling:
As we need strong military, I suggest we found our second city in the north - i´ve made a dotmap. Both positions are not perfect, but they provide us horses: the red one could become a GPF, the green one could become a commerce-city...
Production in Thebes:
Do we need another scout-warrior? I would prefer the barracks. We could need another worker, but I think Thebes should grow a little first...
Production in the new city (if we go north):
Barracks. Maybe they are finished, when the horses are connected.
Research:
Meditation. If we are lucky, we found budhism, if not we have a tech on the way to priesthood (Oracle, build in our second city like Radiopill already mentioned) and CoL.
Exploration:
BSouder could be right with expecting the Incans East of the mountains. Maybe the warrior in our capital should take a short journey to the deserthill four tiles east. The scoutwarrior in the south should went west.

I see we finally found some horses :lol: the warrior was heading in the right direction.

I think from looking at the current map we are safe from the north, east and south directions but we could do with exploring down in the south east this isn't high priority but at some point if we can send someone down there I think it would be a good idea.

After looking at Syntherio's dot map I think the green dot would be best we would get two food resource's to help with growth and there are also forests in the area for health. We could then fill up to the east at our leisure. It would be a good idea to try and get the silver at some point for the happiness.

Once the settler is complete I think would should start on a barracks and allow Thebes time to grow then once stone is linked up head for Pyramids as discussed earlier. Once we link up the horses we can increase our military and then see what happens.

I have made some screenshots of the final position (Hyfrydle, your screen shots are nicer than mine - how are you doing this?)

I use print screen to take screenshots and I'm hosting them on PhotoBucket which gives me a link which I copy and paste into my post. It's a free site so give it a try.

Does anyone feel like been our scribe?

Current turn order:

Hyfrydle
Frederiksberg (Just Played)
Mad Professor (Up Next)
radiopill
BSouder
Drogear
KingdomBrunel
Syntherio

Just to clarify...

We think the Russians are to the south west, is that right? Or at least, their unit was met to the south west of Thebes?

I plan to play in about 12 hours from now, so everyone put in your two cents worth by then! :)

I don't think the farm will be irrigated since it doesn't have fresh water access. So I think I will farm one of the flood plain tiles instead to get the extra gold. We can wait with the rice tile until we need the health bonus.

I have loaded the save now and I'm ready to start my 20 turns. The new save should be available later this evening/nigth :)

I opt not to farm floodplains. The +3 food is well enuff and gold via cottage is much more important. The extra food will be eaten up later by unhealth.

Damit I missed thw whole discussion :)
And im somewhat "ill" from last nights drinking endevors... Ill read up later...

Nice turns,

For the tech path, after Myst, we can go for BW (otherwise we can't chop...) or Meditation as Buddhism hasn't been found atm... We also should search fishing, for the boat, we need to explore the other side of the mountains...

For the settler I think he could go 1S of the green spot, and the red one could be moved 1E...
But we also need to block our part of the continent, so need more informations from the west...

For the prod, I agree with the barracks until the stone are hooked, then Pyramids. For the futur city, barracks, then WarChariot probably... ;)

I agree with radiopill on the city placement. I think 1S of the green dot should be our next city and 1E of the red dot could be city 3 or 4. The green city should get enough production with the 2 cows, forests and the 1 hill down near the capital to make us some chariots. I think it's eventual role would be commerce though. The red city looks decent for a GP factory with fish + farmed flood plains, it could also make a nice science city (decent number of cottages, coast and eventual windmills) or decent production center with 4 mines and plenty of food; lots of options.

What are we turning our capital into now that we know the lay of the land near it? If my math isn't totally screwed, without building a single farm (except on the rice) the capital will have enough food to work every single square in it's radius, with mines on all 3 hills. That makes it prime for what I normally do with my capital, mainly a commerce focus but mine all the hills so it has enough production for wonders or units when needed. To that end I would cottage every flood plains early and cottage everything flat without a tree on it later. The forests I would mostly leave for later unless we really need them chopped (I tend to chop outside the fat cross where possible) for later cottages as we grow or maybe lumbermills if we are maintaining a decent tech pace.

Techs is where I normally screw up early, I don't normally have as clear of a plan as I should in the opening. This format gives you time to think though. :) I would think our tech goals should be get priesthood to open up Oracle and get pottery so we can grow and get some commerce going.

Other than that I think our focus for scouting and expansion soon should be SW. That appears to be where our border will eventually be set.

One tile south of the green dot is indeed a good place for our second city. Those two overlapping tiles are not too bad.
I agree with BSouders plan for our capital, but I would prefer to chop the 3 forests directly beside the city-tile. They can become dangerous, if an enemy unit is moving into them.

I agree with radiopill on the city placement. I think 1S of the green dot should be our next city and 1E of the red dot could be city 3 or 4. The green city should get enough production with the 2 cows, forests and the 1 hill down near the capital to make us some chariots. I think it's eventual role would be commerce though. The red city looks decent for a GP factory with fish + farmed flood plains, it could also make a nice science city (decent number of cottages, coast and eventual windmills) or decent production center with 4 mines and plenty of food; lots of options.

I think the "1E" red city should be turn into a GP or science city, Thebes and the "1S" green cities are enougth for the production (the green city also have horses, wich is also good for prod...)


I agree with BSouders plan for our capital, but I would prefer to chop the 3 forests directly beside the city-tile. They can become dangerous, if an enemy unit is moving into them.

We can spare some of this forests for chopping the Pyr, or another settler... We are not forced to chop the 3 in a row...

We can spare some of this forests for chopping the Pyr, or another settler... We are not forced to chop the 3 in a row...
:) Of course. What I want to say was: "I would prefer to chop the 3 forests, which lie beside the city-tile."

Dot map revised, plus 2 others possible site, the blue one is pretty similar to the red one, and the pink one is not a priority... We need more information from our west land, to know where to put our seeling city...

http://img123.imageshack.us/img123/8685/globeview2740bc00001by.jpg

Am I seeing right, that there is not much land in the north?
Catherine is in the west, isn´t she?

Yes there is only little land. Only reason for placing a city there would be to grab the silver ressource. Catherine is somewhere to the south-west and there is a russina scout sout-east of Thebes.


BSouder could be right with expecting the Incans East of the mountains. Maybe the warrior in our capital should take a short journey to the deserthill four tiles east.

I already went to that tile with a warrior. Found a new fish resource.

Do we need another scout-warrior? I would prefer the barracks. We could need another worker, but I think Thebes should grow a little first...

I fully agree. We should let Thebes grow to size 5 where it will be able to produce 17 hammers per turn. Putting some hammers into a barracks and then switching to Pyramids when stone is hooked up seems like a good idea.

I opt not to farm floodplains. The +3 food is well enuff and gold via cottage is much more important. The extra food will be eaten up later by unhealth.

We need to farm one flood plain tile in order to get maximum production in Thebes at size 5 - see my previous post regarding this. This still leaves plenty of flood plain tiles for other stuff like cottages and maybe water mills later. We are thinking of making Thebes a production city so maybe it would be better to look for a different spot for a tech/gold city. Right now we really need the hammers for the Pyramids so I suggest that the worker is used to farm one flood plain tile and build mines on the grassland and plains hills. After that he could go to our new city and hook up horses. We can always change the farmed floodplain tile later in the game when Thebes can go beyond size 5. BSouders idea of a hybrid production/commerce focus in Thebes might be a good solution as Thebes really start to grow.

For the tech path, after Myst, we can go for BW (otherwise we can't chop...) or Meditation as Buddhism hasn't been found atm... We also should search fishing, for the boat, we need to explore the other side of the mountains...

Maybe we should go for Meditation since we need it anyway if we want the Oracle. Fishing is essential if we select to settle south of the green spot which has a fish resource. We could even use a fishing boat to do a little exploration if we want. BW is nice, but it will take around 40 turns before the Pyramids are done (10 turns for hooking up stone and around 30 turns to build). This means we don't need the chopping for the next say 30 turns. I also think we can wait a little while with Pottery because we have plenty of tasks for our worker right now.

For the settler I think he could go 1S of the green spot, and the red one could be moved 1E...
But we also need to block our part of the continent, so need more informations from the west...

I think both suggestions are good, but maybe with a slight plus for Radiopills, because we get the fish resource and more water tiles in our eastern city, which we migth be able to develop into a strong tech city if we put cottages on those floodplains. Of course we loose 2 health points by moving away from the river but having the fish resource more or less compensates that in terms of food. If we go for this solution I suggest we settle 1S of the green dot first. The powerfull cow tiles will help us getting barracks and War Charriots fast!

I don't think we have any military that we can use for scouting - both warriors are needed to guard our cities. When we get War Charriots they will be ideal for scouting!

Just to clarify...

We think the Russians are to the south west, is that right? Or at least, their unit was met to the south west of Thebes?

Yes, they must be down there.

Notice that I haven't built a road on the stone tile yet, so you will have to do that when the quarry is done.

Good luck :)

Dot map revised, plus 2 others possible site, the blue one is pretty similar to the red one, and the pink one is not a priority... We need more information from our west land, to know where to put our seeling city...

Nice map :goodjob: Could you expand it to include suggestions for cities that grab the silver and sugar?

"Aussitôt dit, aussitôt fais..." :D

http://img487.imageshack.us/img487/7295/globeview2740bc00003lm.jpg

I've downloaded, and I've just played my 20 turns. I'm just about to upload it again. Description of the 20 turns will follow justas soon as I can type it up for you.

OK - here's the rundown of my 20 turns. When I opened the file, we were at 2740 BC with the turn just finished, so I presseed neter to end the turn.

2710BC - HC Adopts slavery!
2680BC - Buddhism founded in a distant land! Not Catherine or HC I don't think since neither of their scores moved. The Russians scouts are now heading north around the eastern border of Thebes' area
2650 BC - nothing happening
2620 BC - settler built in Thebes, started on a barracks as was suggested. Settler moves 1 tile north (forest). Russian scouts now north of Thebes, I moved the warrior in the north 1 tile NW towards proposed city location.
2590 BC - Catherine's score increases from 140 to 147 - population increase? Warrior moves to proposed city location, settler moves 2 tiles, now 1 tile south of the proposed new city location.
2560 BC - settler moves 1N, founds Memphis, started on a barracks, and warrior fortifies in Memphis. Russian scouts disappear to the north towards the silver. Catherine now on 160 points (a new tech?) and HC is now on 143 (pop increase?)
2530 BC - worker finishes quarry, starts on road in same tile
2500 BC - we discover mysticism. Start researching Meditation.
2470 BC - we get a "wealthiest civ list. HC is 2nd, Catherine is 3rd, and we're on the bottom. That's no surprise since we have zero gold!!
2440 BC - worker finishes the road to the quarray - stone is now hooked up! Worker moves to grass hill 1 south of Thebes. The Russian scouts are still missing in the north. Power graph looks ugly - HC and Catherine way ahead.
2410 BC - Worker start mine on grass hill 1 south of Thebes HC goes to 150 points (another pop increase?)
2380 BC - Nothing. Russians scouts still AWOL.
2350 BC - nothing still
2320 BC - Borders of Memphis expand. I now see Russian cultural influence to the south west of Thebes. Looks like Catherine has put a city around about that neck of land there to the SW. The tile I can actually see the Russian cultural influence is at 6 west and 4 south of Thebes.
2290 BC - Russian scouts appear again to the NE of Memphis. Thebes is now size 3 and our score goes ahead of HC.
2260 BC - nothingmuch happening. Scores are Catherine 204, us 163, HC 157.
2230 BC - Memphis now size 2, our score goes to 170. Workers finish mine, move to plains hill to the SW of Thebes. I spot a barbarian warrior 5 tiles west of Thebes. Our finance now at -1 per turn so our science slider will decrease this coming turn.
2200 BC - Barracks are finished in Thebes, start on pyramids, as discussed. Now there's a barbarian warrior SW of Thebes (4 west, 4 south) near the Russian cultural area. It can't be the same warrior as the other one, so there's two of them. The other one has disappeared from sight though. The Russian scouts are going in circles to the NE of Memphis. Worker starts on mine on the plains hill.
2170 BC - Barbarian warrior ro the SW disappears. Good - let Catherine deal with that one.
2140 BC - Barbarian warrior appears 5 west of Thebes again. If it comes our way we'll need to dal with it. We don't want our stone plundered. Science slider is at 90%, we have 6 gold and gaining 2 per turn. Meditation just one turn away. HC has gone to 171 points, just haead of us again - another population increase for him?

Well that's it - nothing very exciting, but a few discussion points for us.

Seems like where r doing good progress!

BTW: This might seem very noobish of me but how do I make a screenshot? And how do I post it here? Just wanting to know this until later.

Radiopill: About trhe sceenhsot, the top "orange" city, are you sure the silver resrouce offsets the cost of that city? It will not make profic for sure, cant see any other resorues it can grow of. But the +1 happy might come in handy

The orange city would pay for itself from the costal squares.

To take the screenshots, hit "Printscreen" then alt-tab to Paint and paste the picture then save it. To post it here you would need to upload it to this site or preferably to a photo hosting sight, such as Photobucket.

We seem to be on the right track and it's nice to see us pulling ahead of the Incans we are still in the early stages of the game and so far we seem to be creating a nice stable platform. We aren't doing too bad compared to the other teams either.

Would have been nice to have some screenshots to update us on the curent situation. Are we ok to download the save to have a look aslong as we don't play?

Turn Order

Hyfrydle
Frederiksberg
Mad Professor (Just Played)
radiopill (Up Next)
BSouder
Drogear
KingdomBrunel
Syntherio

Does anyone feel we should now drop to 10 turns per round?

To take the screenshots, hit "Printscreen" then alt-tab to Paint and paste the picture then save it. To post it here you would need to upload it to this site or preferably to a photo hosting sight, such as Photobucket.

The screenshots are also stored in a file in Program Files/Civ4/Screenshots or something like this (I didn't have a civ access atm...), so you don't need to Alt-Tab all the time...

A little comment on the turnset... You shoul'd have go for Pyr when the stone were hooked... The barracks doesn't needed to be finished atm.

We now need to hook the horses, and start pumping Warhorses, as Cathy is already starting to grab OUR land... :hammer:

A little comment on the turnset... You shoul'd have go for Pyr when the stone were hooked... The barracks doesn't needed to be finished atm.

We now need to hook the horses, and start pumping Warhorses, as Cathy is already starting to grab OUR land... :hammer:

Im with you radiopill

Are we buildning barracks at this early stage? just let me ask WHY? When we now got stone Pyr is very importen, will give +2happy an letting execially the capital with all the floodplains to grow.

radiopill, could you provide us some Screenshots please? Especially from the south-western region and from Memphis.

Research:
We need BW, it seems to me that Catherine will become our second enemy.
After that priesthood.

Worker duty:
Improve the horses as soon as possible! We need something better then warriors...

Production:
How long will Theben work on the pyramids?
Memphis should build another warrior as guard for Thebens fatcross. I tought we have one warrior left for scouting-duty, but that seems to be wrong.

Longtime strategy:
I suggest this techpath: Meditation, Bronzeworking, Priesthood, Writing, Code of Law.
We need another worker and at least two war chariots. What then? Another settler or axemen? Should we build a third city, or should we grab it from Catherine? Do we still want the Oracle build by a Great Engineer?

Im with you radiopill

Are we buildning barracks at this early stage? just let me ask WHY? When we now got stone Pyr is very importen, will give +2happy an letting execially the capital with all the floodplains to grow.

Well, the idea we discussed was to put some hammers into barracks and switch to Pyramids a