Welcome to your C_IV SGOTM 2 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?p=4354542) for this game, where teams and staff may post non-spoiler information of general interest.

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

You are cast in the role of Tokugawa, mighty leader of the Japanese. Tokugawa's brother has left the island city of Kyoto to avenge the death of his wife and only son. He has travelled to a distant land without finding their murderer. So the brother of Tokugawa will settle and found a new Japanese colony, and the Japanese have sworn to conquer the rest of civilization in order to hunt down and destroy their enemy.

The game is on a Standard size fractal map, modified as only Gyathaar knows how, at Epic speed. All victory conditions are enabled, but the laurels for this contest will be awarded to the fastest teams to achieve a Conquest victory. The number of AI rivals has not yet been revealed. It will be played using version 1.61 of Civ4 with locked modified assets.

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 August 8th.

Here's the start position.

http://gotm.civfanatics.net/civ4games/images/SGOTM02_start.jpg

Map Parameters
Playable Civ - Tokugawa of Japan
World size - Standard
Difficulty - Monarch
Landform - Fractal, hand modified
Game Speed - Epic
AI Aggression - YES!
Barbarians - Raging!!

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

Notes:

A. ONLY Civilization IV v1.61 is supported for this SGOTM. All teams will compete for up to four awards - the Gold, Silver and Bronze Laurels for the fastest finishes, and the Wooden Spoons for the lowest scoring finisher.

B. All teams must play the sponsored variant - victory will be awarded for the fastest victory by Conquest.

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.

I'm sure you'll enjoy this game :D

ok guys, let's discuss this properly this time. What will be our strategy in this case.

We have monarch, but aggressive AI's + raging barbs.
Obviously our capital is safe until astronomy. This also means that until then we do no need to worry about defense there.
It should be a major commerce capital. With 4 resources it will be a whipping galore centre. But, without astro, we won't get any happiness resources there I think.
This means to me that we should head for drama and Globe Theatre and make it a happy shipping city which can be very powerful.

What do we do with the second spot? A move 1 tile NW seems logical to me to settle to grab fish, rice eventually.

Which techs are we going after? I am not 100% sure which starting techs we have. We need sailing for our capital and we also need slavery for whips (BW) and later heriditary rule for added happiness in the capital.

Any thoughts from you guys?

just saw the team list, so welcome to atombbomb and hamfist :goodjob:

since Till, Greebley, Tatran and myself are 'established' members, maybe you could introduce yourself here, so that we get an idea where you live and what gaming experience you have.

Maybe I add a little about myself. It's clear I am living in Singapore, but actually are a German. I have been active in CFC for some time mainly in SG's. As for CIV, I can beat immortal with a concerted effort from a team. Warmongering is what I enjoy, thus conquest will be nice.

so our team is:
ThERat
Greebley
Till
Tatran
A+ombbomb
hamfist

Obviously our capital is safe until astronomy.
I was hoping for Kyoto to be our brother's capital. :(

This means to me that we should head for drama and Globe Theatre and make it a happy shipping city which can be very powerful.
If Kyoto is our capital,let's forget about that city and focus on the conquest
part.To explore and conquer,some scouting boats and archers for defending.
That new found city needs enough production, so I don't care much about an
optimal placement.

Which techs are we going after?
Archery and fishing/sailing for early defending and scouting.
The resource techs,AH,BW and IW.
And the speed techs,wheel,construction,engineering.

Also I like to see the far away civs to be at war,they'll be good trading
partners until we reach their borders.

I was thinking of looking at the OCC AW wins.

Not building a lot of cities, rather going right away to war and killing AI may be a good way to go. We have it easier than those games since we don't have to declare war.

I guess the number of civs sharing the continent matters too. If it is only 1 or 2 an early war doesn't help much as we would need astronomy to kill off the others.

Just a thought.

BTW, is building the forbidden palace as good as moving our palace in terms of lowering city cost?

I'm going to play my broken record one last time for each team:


Please also subscribe to the Maintenance Thread (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?goto=lastpost&t=180489) for this game, where teams and staff may post non-spoiler information of general interest.

Anything I post there will NOT be repeated individually in every team thread. You may even find some useful information there now :p

I'd like to see some more discussion and all members here, remember last game communication wasn't really that great.

I am going to pm the members that have not shown up yet

Some late breaking news about your game:

1. We now know that there are seven rivals on the map (not including the barbs).

2. Much pixel-counting effort has been expended to try to work out the distance between Kyoto and the settler. To settle the debates, and to help your strategy discussions move forward, we'll divulge that the second city, if built where the settler stands, would cost 7 gpt in maintenance.

Now that's some important info here. So, what are we going to do? Move the settler and keep wandering until we are closer to our capital?

Maybe I add a little about myself. It's clear I am living in Singapore, but actually are a German. I have been active in CFC for some time mainly in SG's. As for CIV, I can beat immortal with a concerted effort from a team. Warmongering is what I enjoy, thus conquest will be nice.

As TheRat, i am a German Frankonian. ;)
I've lurked the Civ3 SGs for quite a while and when Civ4 came out, i finally registered. If lady luck smiles at me, i can win at emperor in solo games. I almost exclusively play SGs however.

Our 1 tile city is a whipper's dream. Sailing and bronze working would be the two techs i'd go after first. We will have to whip a lot in order to keep the city happy.

I wouldn't settle the second city just jet. Thankfully, we have a warrior as escort. Let's scout for a location, which is worth the high maintenance!

If we decide to wait with settling the second city, we could skip researching worker techs. Instead either try to grab a religion (for added happiness), or beeline for Alphabet.

The religious path would also lead us to hereditary rule, which we definitely want later on.

Another problem is to figure out, what to do with the shields, Kyoto produces. We need 4 workboats and a lighthouse. Wihout bronze/iron, units are only good for MP duty. Maybe we have time to try for a wonder?

(btw, thanks for the head ups, Rat! ;))

The more I look at the situation the more I dislike it.
Thanks to that crazy viking.

We can't wandering around too many turns,because of the barbs.
Also our warrior can be killed by animals.
To get rid of our capital we could give it away.Won't help us cause
we go for a conquests victory.
So Greebley's suggestion of removing the palace is probably the best one,
so far.The palace is cheaper as the Forbidden Palace.

Maybe I'm wrong,but I've the feeling if we start moving eastwards
we soon reach the end of the continent and we still can't get closer
to our capital.

Settling means a huge upkeep,but we gain time to prepare for the barbs.
A few turns moving with the settler won't hurt us,but more than a handful
of turns is too risky.

Conclusion : I don't have a clue what to do. :(

Losing the settler would be disastrous. But i am not very impressed by its current location, so i think moving is best.

Hi all,

Sorry to be so late to the party, but for some reason or other, the system wasn't advising me on messages and the sign up thread :(

I'm a fairly competent player and can win most starts on Monarch. I'm trying to move into emperor, but am having difficulty with that. I am not really a fast conquest player, as I tend to overbuild through the Middle Ages when I should be :ar15:. Hopefully this game will teach me something about warmongering.

Re: The start position
I definitely agree that we need to move towards drama, or consider moving the capital into the barb infesteed zone. The latter may be the better. I don't recall exactly, but I believe that drama is one of the techs that opens up philosophy for the GS, eliminating using a GS for Astronomy until after Education and Printing Press. We will need to discover whether or not Astronomy is obligatory to complete conquest ASAP.

Since we can immediately start teching, I would suggest that we find a prime coast location for that second settler.

Other thoughts re: the start

We start with Fishing and The Wheel.

The tech order depends on where we are going. I would suggest that we think about where we want to be at 1000 BC. Do we want to run a specialist or a cottage economy? If specialists, then we need the pyramids. If not getting pottery right away is an excellent choice. An early cottage or 2 would really jumpstart tech and help us with some other possible slingshots.

Do we want to do an Oracle slingshot? If so, which one? I would suspect that the standard CS slingshot will be out of reach due to early maintenace. If we have pottery first, all we need is BW to get a metal casting slingshot (colossus and an early Great Engineer could be useful if we're looking at early coastal cities).

I'm not sure if Archery is the right tech to go for early, as Animal Husbandry can get us chariots and it opens up writing. Chariots are very cheap and effective at barb control. Archery is also a dead end tech until Feudalism.

We are agressive and Organized. I'll think somew more on how this should affect our opening and post again soon.

Been thinking some more about the idea of religion:

If we discover polytheism before we settle that second settler, we will get a very high culture capital. I wouldn't be surprised if we can get somewhere with a galley by the 3rd or 4th border pop (as was the case with SGOTM1. You could get to HC with galleys with a properly placed city and enough culture.)

On the other hand, if we went for polytheism and founded it in City 2, that city could avoid other culture requiring buildings.

@hamfist
Ever played on Monarch with raging barbs ?
Unless you're cornered all those improvements will get pillaged
if you don't have the military to protect it.
Barbs show up real soon and there's no time for improvements
and building chariots/axemen.Without archers we'll playing a lot
OCC.

I think we should settle. It costs us gold, that is true, but we get a start and can start a worker. We make 5 gold right off. That is 2 worse than a city that only has gold on the capitol square (not near a river). Once both cities grow our gold will be 7-8 (+2 for city, with one city working 2 coastal and the other working 2 river or 1 river and the rice.

I don't think we should settle on the flood plains. That is our best food for now. Perhaps the Plains on the coast to the NE?

I would make our mainland city start a worker right away and start either Pottery or Agriculture.

I think I like pottery slightly better, then we can get more science to get the other techs faster. So I would start

Pottery, Agriculture would be my choices on first two techs.

I tested it with one game and I think we can get Pottery, Agriculture, Hunting, Archery before the Barb Archers appear.

if we settle (which is wise given that we need to protect ourselves, I reckon that 1 NW seems a good location. We have not determined the play order, but I guess I'll start this off.
What I would do is to move the warrior 1 tile east onto that hill and the settler 1 NW and then post a screenie to discuss where to settle

@hamfist
Ever played on Monarch with raging barbs ?
Unless you're cornered all those improvements will get pillaged
if you don't have the military to protect it.
Barbs show up real soon and there's no time for improvements
and building chariots/axemen.Without archers we'll playing a lot
OCC.

Just ran a test game. First Barb Rush at 2650 BC. Pretty heavy but still survivable. I wasn't totally happy with the result. I'll do some similar type tests from here to Monday and see what I come up with. I'm mostly in favour of the tech order proposed. I think we can do something, as the AI will be facing the same barb threat as we will.

I do see Archery as being needed as Horses are not a guaranteed thing.

I'll test to see if I can hold off the barbs and get Colossus, which I think would be the absolute best early wonder for our capital with all its ocean.

BTW, I will be on vacation for the latter part of August. My current plan is to be away august 19-Sept 5 or 6. I will have no computer access during that time.

well, I will be away from 27th to 30th August (on conference) and then the last week of September - first week of October. Should be ok though.

anyway, as said, I will start to shift the 2 units and then see what we get and post it before playing on

The plains NW look good because those fish won't be pillaged
until Astronomy, but I still don't like the fact that city won't have
much production.Also it needs culture for border expansion.
I won't mind to scout a few more turns to find a better place
to settle, something with a plains hill.

I think exploring for a turn or two could work. If we did that I think the warrior should go W to see what squares are coastal and the settler SW, then SE. At least we can start researching even if we are not settled.

Problem is if we don't find anything better. In that case we had delayed our worker.

I would say 4-5 turns should be the absolute max for exploring.

Also I think if we do that we should post a picture of every turn to discuss.

Edit: I do want to stay near the river to get the extra gold from it. We will want it to offset the high cost of the town.

After running more tests, I've come to a couple of conclusions: Some will be obvious to the players more experienced than myself, but they seem correct to me and I'd like to hear from others on this.
1. Since we are Agressive, Warriors out of a barracks (Cover I on a forested hill, Combat II and cover I after a single encounter) are enough to hold off the barbs until axemen, making Hunting and Archery not an immediate necessity. My first build was a barracks followed by 4 warrior. I stopped playing at 485 AD and my best unit was still a warrior. Raging barbs slows everyone down.
2. Even if we walk that settler, we'll probably end up having to settle in a -6 gpt location, which will kill the economy. That makes every tech essential and a specialist economy far more powerful. If we go Agriculture/Pottery/Animal Husbandry/Writing/Mining/Bronze Working, we get beaker bonuses for both Pottery and Writing for having 2 prereqs, making research a bit cheaper. Or we can beeline Pottery/Writing, which would probably get us our libraries sooner. Our research rate is going to suck severely until we can get some specialists going. It might be worth putting Mysticism in there for border expansion via an Obelisk.

3. If we settle 1NW, it will be a VERY long time until we can use the resources, as that settler will not be getting border expansion anytime soon. I think we need to see what is over the hill E of the warrior and possibly move that way.

4. Bronze Working is VERY expensive, and will be researched much faster once we have libraries and scientists. I honestly feel we should avoid going that way.

5. Only possible early wonder will be The Colossus after Metal Casting. Early research rate makes Pyramids or Oracle non starters unless there's stone or marble on the other side of those hills to the east.
6. As a refresher, moving the palace isn't available until we have 4 cities. 4 cities early on will kill us.

7. I see our first (and hopefully only) war of conquest being driven by Samurai and catapults, nothing sooner. We lack the early production and tech to rampage any sooner. A quick run to Samurai and possibly Astronomy could allow us to seal this up the soonest. The quickest team to Samurai will win this game. If we have a very close and backwards neighbour, perhaps this could change as the cash from razing their cities could be quite useful.

8. I don't like the Bronze Working Beeline because it is based on an assumption that we will have copper in the fat cross. Any thought of getting out and protecting a settler and 3rd city in time for an Axeman rush is not taking into account our research penalty which the other AI's do not have.
This is a very challenging scenario, and will require input from everyone if we wish to avoid defeat or a conquest finishing with Modern Armor.

These are all thoughts and opinions. I look forward to hearing others.

The plains NW look good because those fish won't be pillaged
until Astronomy, but I still don't like the fact that city won't have
much production.Also it needs culture for border expansion.
I won't mind to scout a few more turns to find a better place
to settle, something with a plains hill.

I feel the latter is the better way to go. The unpillageable part is not quite true. With Raging Barbs there are Galleys that will come and munch up those fishing boats. My vote is to look to the east. It may also allow us to settle in a -6gpt or -5gpt location, which will be huge in the early going. Plains Hill settling just rocks in the early going. I definitely think we should look for one.

You almost convinced me that Bronze Working should be avoided. But then, what will we do with that one tile city?
It will never amount to anything before slavery.

I would say that BW is a very important tech to us. Without it, our capital is totally useless. It will grow so fast but without any hammers that we need whipping galore there.
Maybe a library later to employ some scientists for the philo slingshot.

I would modify this
'Agriculture/Pottery/Animal Husbandry/Writing/Mining/Bronze Working' to

sailing, mining, BW then agri and pottery. followed by archery for some better defense

There was a discussion about barbs in another SG I'm in.
As soon a tech (with a new unit) is known by several civs
the barbs will be more advanced.So I expect to see barb
axemen real soon.I prefer to have a handful of archers first
in stead of the improvements.

The tech discussion can be simplyfied.
If we start building units first we don't need improvement techs.
(The way I play with raging barbs on,unless you're cornered or
playing a creative civ.)BW is a must.You don't want to fight archers
against barb swords.We need to know copper,if there isn't any we
need IW for iron.
This is still vanilla so chariots won't have the 100% bonus against
axemen.So they look almost useless to me.Maybe for some scouting.

I agree as soon as ThERat starts his first turn he will give us some
more info about our situation,so the discussion can be more clear.
Let's do this a couple of turns to look for the best the settling spot.

When I suggested NW, I had forgotten we don't get the normal palace expansion. Agree this makes the spot less than ideal.

It looks like the trade-off is between research vs Barbarian Defense. I think seeing our settling site is imperative to determining which is more important. We can make the final decision after we know where we will settle.

I don't see an immediate need for sailing unless we're planning to settle on some other island or build the Great Lighthouse. Work boats are cheaper and explore just as well as a Galley.

If we're going to go with BW, we should just beeline towards it. Much like the Libraries, it's a sooner is better approach.

If we move the settler for the first few turns, our reasearch rate won't immediately tank. I really want to see what's to the east. Taking a pass on the immediately visible seafood may be the smart move. We can probably afford up to 4 turns before we see the first animal.

If we find no copper, then we will need to decide on Archery. Archery and Mounted Units really don't play to our strengths as Agressive (No free Combat I promotion), whereas Axemen and Warriors do. If we find copper I feel that Archery can be avoided. Tech is so slow that the 55 turns invested in Hunting and Archery would be better spent going towards Metal casting. Actually, if we find no copper I think the game will be pretty much a writeoff.

BTW, our unique unit which replaces Macemen actually requires Iron, unlike Macemen themselves. I wouldn't be surprised if the lovely map modifier actually swapped copper for Iron, which would make the early game very interesting...
Do we have a play order worked up yet?

You almost convinced me that Bronze Working should be avoided. But then, what will we do with that one tile city?
It will never amount to anything before slavery.

I wasn't trying to say that it should be avoided, just that my early tech pref would be to avoid it in preference of Libraries and Scientists. It is an absolutely essential tech.

no play order yet determined. I think we play the first round as it suits players best. In fact another new member hasn't even signed in yet, maybe he was too enthusiastic about the game and lost interest?

Maybe hamfist is right about the need for sailing. That could wait. Maybe we should go for BW straight though we can't use it anyway until we have a worker.
I'd say we discuss once again until we have the warrior moved onto the hill east and the settler NW. That way the settler will have a move left.

no play order yet determined. I think we play the first round as it suits players best. In fact another new member hasn't even signed in yet, maybe he was too enthusiastic about the game and lost interest?


Probably saw that he was playing with me and ran away :lol:


Maybe we should go for BW straight though we can't use it anyway until we have a worker.


The reasons for BW are straightforward: Where's the copper... and gimme that whip :D

mining and BW take currently 10 and 23 turns respectively
the work boat in our capital will take 23 turns

ok, checked and moved the 2 units as discussed and we get this very interesting situation
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads12/ratpack024000.jpg

my gut feeling is to settle on the coast north of the sheep to grab all 3 resources in the first ring. This would let us mine the gems (once we got mining) and also give us the rice and sheep.

The gems will make a lot of money for us to overcome the starting penalty.

The settler can move onto the forest this turn, then move into location and settle on turn 3, not too bad. Meanwhile the warrior can scout more.

I would start a worker immediately to mine the gems. The we can come up with a warrior.

Reasearch is set for my turns with mining and BW. I would play 20 turns

The tile below the gems looks interesting too.
It still has the river, not coastal, but one more hill for production.
Maybe the warrior should go on the plains hill next turn, to reveal more.
The settler definite has to go east.

you're right, the warrior would go on the plains hill anyway next turn. I don't know whether I can move next turn and post again or AlanH would get angry?

ok decided to play another turn so we can decide better (hope AlanH doesn't kill me for 2 saves and posting here, but we did not reload etc.)
in the IT we meet Isabella's scout, that means they must be very near
move warrior onto the hill and spot this

we better decide now where to settle

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads12/ratpack023970.jpg

I edited the screenshot for possible settling locations:
1 rice/sheep/gems immediately, but somewhat weak 2nd radius tiles
2 would get us 2 gems/sheep immediately and rice/gold + 3 floodplains in the extended radius

I clearly vote for 2 as this seems a superb city with enough food to support all the hills and 2 happies
I would work the sheep immediately while building a worker, then better get some defense up in case Izzy gets itchy

City 1 looks also too close to Spain, remember we mat here in the 1st IT, that means her settler must be pretty close. We do not need such culture pressure early on. City 2 would be little further away

what do you guys think?

Maybe Izzy will go after a religion and hopefully it will spread to us so that we can get up some culture?

Spot 2 is supreme if Izzy's capital isn't in the five dark squares.

Let her found a religion so we can focus on the military part.
After she found a religion let's overrun her,I don't care how,
and save us another settler and the pain of cultural border expansion.
She has already a worker. ;)

are you suggesting that we do no even bother to build a worker and go for a warrior rush?

Spot 2 looks good to me.

No warrior rush,just a couple to steal that worker.
Maybe switch our research towards archery.
Or we let her build a couple of cities and then
take her out,save us settlers too.

I am still waiting for hamfist's agreement, but I would settle 2 then spy on izzy and build a worker while going for mining and BW
will play a total of 20 turns...

I agree with the early attack on Spain. I do not have a lot of familiarity with grabbing a very early worker (though I have heard it is a good strategy) - what is the AI response? How long will the war be and how many units will Spain send?

maybe we can really steal a worker first with our warrior...should be a good move then we can get that city up much faster...I think that's the way to go

build city at spot 2, start warrior and spy on Spain waiting for their worker to come out and then grab it

Site 2 looks great. I'm really happy to see al that early commerce. It changes things SIGNIFICANTLY.
1. One mine gets us almost even on maintenance.
2. Mines makes us money.

We should avoid whipping below 2 pop unless it can't be avoided.

Looking forward to seeing BW and finding where that copper is.

Looking some more at this, I do have some concerns about spot 2.

1. Food - We don't get the rice until after a border pop. We'd need hunting or agriculture to get at Animal Husbandry for the Sheep.
2. Exposure - The Barbs will have an easier time getting at us from spot 2. With those Gems and Gold, Barbarian activity will be heightened. Spot 1 lowers the number of places they can come at us from.

I think we need to begin moving the warrior 2NE, 1N, and 1NW. Maybe move the settler on top of the sheep and wait there. Site 1 or 2 can still be settled in 1 turn. This also gives us a couple more turns at normal research before it tanks until the gems come on line. 1 SW of site 2 could be a good third city. I see floodplains, an oasis, gems and eventually gold for city 3.

I'm all for spot two as well. An early rush sounds terrific!
It would be great to snatch Isa's worker, hurting her and saving us the trouble of having to build one ourselves.

maybe we can really steal a worker first with our warrior...should be a good move then we can get that city up much faster...I think that's the way to go

build city at spot 2, start warrior and spy on Spain waiting for their worker to come out and then grab it

Worker steal is a great idea. We need all other production for defense. If you can pull it off with the scouting warrior, even better.

This is still vanilla :crazyeye: ,so 1 warrior should do the trick.
In Warlords you can't move the stolen worker anymore,
so you need more units to protect it.
The AIs start with 2 archers IIRC and I don't like to defend the
capital with a lone warrior.The AI will attack.But let's scout first
to see what Izzy has and where Madrid is founded.

the full 20 turns:
as posted moved warrior 2 times to spot the great starting location
founding the city get us to -8gpt at 100% science :eek:

lower science to 40%, I think we need to steal workers from nearby Spain, start warrior

pop hut and get a scout, that scout pops a hut and we got cash for research
back to 100% at -8gpt, but where is Spain?

after a while find out there is no Spain after all, so switch back to worker in 23 turns...(sorry for that)
at turn 17 our capital grows and we can now afford 50% science

situation after 20 turns
BW in 22 turns, but since our capital gets a workboat in 3, this should change from then on
animals are running around and our warrior defeated one of them, the scout is now moving south
surprisingly no religion founded so far


we surely grabbed the best spot available anywhere near
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads12/ratpack023400a.jpg

Spain is pretty far away in the north
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads12/ratpack023400c.jpg

our capital will be able to get some land access after all
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads12/ratpack023400b.jpg

in case you wondered why I swapped back to worker, it's due to the fact that Spain has access to its land by a mere plot and I couldn't see any unit near.

I think we better get our worker up and hook up the gems. I am not in the mood to wait and see and maybe luckily get the worker. It's all jungle and we might also lose it.
I think better have our own worker in 10 turns and then check where is copper.
We need roads by the way after gems or do we head for archery?

oh, and who wants to play next btw?

That is one of the best city locations i have seen. Getting the worker would have been too much to ask, i guess.
I'm a bit tied up in a project until the end of the week, so i would appreciate if somebody else went next.

I'll take it next if noone else wants it.

2 Questions: Should I build a Barracks so our warriors can get Cover I?
What are the opinions on next techs? I would say Hunting followed by AH since the sheep are in the 1st ring. Other alternative would be mysticism, to later build an obelisk.

I just looked at the save.
How on earth did that spanish scout get there with all those
jungle tiles. :confused: Madrid is more than 10 tiles away.

The rush option is out.
Also I think it's too risky to wait 22 turns for BW and hoping for
copper.And we still have to build axemen.We need archers.Soon.
I've a bad feeling that we aren't ready in time for the barb terror.

Our capital can build some scout boats.We can even settle on the
other side.

Tatran,

You seem to have some fairly solid ideas of the early defense. Perhaps you want to take the save for the next 20?

How about this order?

ThERat
Tatran
hamfist
Greebley
Till

Tatran, do you think we should switch to hunting and archery straight away then go for BW?

I also have a bad feeling since the Spanish are far away and it seesm we are all alone. Lucky we have a scout that we can use to uncover some terrain. We must not lose that guy. I wouldn't go for a rax. I would go for worker then warrior and once we have archers, build them until we are safe.

So, maybe we swap to archery then back to BW?


Buy the way, that Spanish scout must have been a set up by Gyathaar to fool us. :nono:

Tatran, do you think we should switch to hunting and archery straight away then go for BW?

I also have a bad feeling since the Spanish are far away and it seesm we are all alone. Lucky we have a scout that we can use to uncover some terrain. We must not lose that guy. I wouldn't go for a rax. I would go for worker then warrior and once we have archers, build them until we are safe.

So, maybe we swap to archery then back to BW?


Buy the way, that Spanish scout must have been a set up by Gyathaar to fool us. :nono:

I think more than immediate archers we need to switch the worker for more warriors. It'll slow tech, but we need defense of any type. The immediate switch to Archery will probably net us 1 extra archer by the time axemen show up. Tough call.

warriors take very long at the moment, the worker only takes 10 more turns. If we can connect gems after that and produce warriors then archers, we should be fine in my mind.

We need BW after that though for our capital, also we need to think of a wonder tech for our capital to whip, it can only produce so much.
But maybe with sailing we can settle on of those small Isle's there

It seems very risky, but getting at least one mine will really help research. I suspect we'll be rebuilding it a few times before we're done, though. It's this type of situation that made me suggest that Tatran take the next 20. I think this game will be won or lost during the next few turns. If we can hold this city, we should be able to stay in the race.

Pre-turn
Switch research to Hunting.
I'm not sure about the worker, he can't do much in the near future.
But a gems mine will add 5 extra commerce + 1 hammer.

3100 BC (10)
Our worker is ready.

3070 BC (11)
Hunting is in, start to research Archery.

2950 BC (15)
Our first gems mine is ready, science up to 70%.

2800 BC (20)
Archery is in, continue to research BW.
We have 3 forests for chopping.
Buddism is out.

http://img228.imageshack.us/img228/6749/pic327rezv4.jpg

Turn 3: Second mine done
IBT: Scout damaged to .2
Turn 4: Move scout to forest Defense position
Turn 5: Start Mine on Plains Hill
Fortify Scout till healed.
Turn 8 IBT:Kill First Barb Warrior
Turn 9: Bronze Working Finished - Revolt to Slavery
Begin Animal Husbandry
Kill another Warrior
Turn 10: Whip 1st Archer
Turn 11: Build another Archer, due in 2 turns
Turn 13: Scout healed, continue scouting
Turn 14: Kill 2 Barb Warriors Lose 1st Archer
IBT: Lose Scout to Barb warrior
Turn 19: Whip Another Archer
Lose 2 Warriors at 90+% Odds :mad: while trying to force a Barb Warrior off of the southern Gem Mine.
IBT: Southern Gem Mine Pillaged
Turn 20: Animal Husbandry complete. Begin Pasture. Switch to Sailing. No beakers yet applied, tech can be switched to other without penalty. I think we need sailing so that we can get a settler and an Archer over to the coast by the capital.

Barbs are being attracted to the Gem Mines like crazy. I Think we may have to just hole up and accept the loss of the mines until we can get Archers into the forests around this city. Barb activity is getting very heavy. We currently have only 2 Archers. 1 damaged. 1 more 8 turns away.

Save Rat_Pack_SG002_BC2170_01.Civ4SavedGame (http://gotm.civfanatics.net/saves/civ4sgotm2/Rat_Pack_SG002_BC2170_01.Civ4SavedGame)

these 3 losses hurt a lot I think. We need more archers to defend those improved tiles and also send them out to prevent them from coming into our territory in the first place.

The next few turnsets will be crucial. We cannot afford to lose the city.
By the way, where is copper since we have BW, I heard no comment on that?

I agree with sailing, since we would like to settle those 2 other Isles. After sailing I would head for iron in case copper is not easy to grab. Hopefull Izzy founded a religion.
In case the religion spreads to our city, revolt for cultural growth as soon as we get it.

Copper is relatively close but we're not in condition to be putting out a settler yet, so I didn't feel it would be worth mentioning.

ThERat
Tatran
hamfist
Greebley - up
Till

Looking at the map, the islands seem pretty small to me. I think I would rather go for pottery or Agriculture before sailing, but am not sure.

Another possibility is Mysticism for Obelisk and a border expansion.

I won't start yet to give ppl time to voice an opinion.

Sailing, Pottery, Mysticism or Agriculture first?

Also there is Copper (why I didn't list Iron Working as higher priority). It will be gotten faster if we build another city.

The first two pictures show our two sources of Copper:
http://i13.photobucket.com/albums/a251/Greebley/RatPack_BC2170.jpg

http://i13.photobucket.com/albums/a251/Greebley/RatPack_BC2170a.jpg

And here are the islands that benefit from Sailing. They seem to be size 2 and size 1 to me.

http://i13.photobucket.com/albums/a251/Greebley/RatPack_BC2170b.jpg


I will play tomorrow to give us time to discuss.

I think cottages give us no benefit at this moment as we can't build and keep them anyway. Looking at the screenshot, I'd say we would be lucky to keep the city in the first place.

With 3 units gone we are down to bare minimum. We don't need to think of making any settler in the near future or even a obelisk. First we need more settlers and in the meantime we could research sailing to get us the Isles. We can send out a work boat to check whether there are sea resources around those plots of land. There might even be another land connection for all we know.

After sailing, I would head for iron first (we can't build anything but archers for the time being anyway). The 2 copper spots are currently not very attractive.

I find the setup of this game too dangerous. With combat odds being so weird in CIV, any unlucky team might face the loss of the city and lose the game. I think this isn't really fair. That said I am confident we might hold the city anyway.

I did look at the last save.
We had a lot of bad RNG luck.

And to bring in more bad news :
Izzy has copper 2 tiles away from Madrid IIRC.
She has also founded Hinduism.
If we can build a coastal city, maybe her religion will
spread to our cities.

I've never played with the agressive AI option on, but
we can get +8 relation if we share her religion.
We will have enough on our hands with the barbs and there is
too much land to settle.

Iron Working is definitely a priority. I'd still go with Sailing, as we can whip a galley, settler, and Archer pretty Quick out of the capital.

Since the copper is far away, and Horse not much nearer, I'd assume that Iron should be fairly close.

I like the border expansion idea.
An obelisk can be chopped between the unit build.
And maybe later also chop a granary in Osaka.
This will give us some more options.

What do we want with Iron Working ?
There's copper nearby.

I like the border expansion idea.
An obelisk can be chopped between the unit build.
And maybe later also chop a granary in Osaka.
This will give us some more options.

What do we want with Iron Working ?
There's copper nearby.

We can't defend a settler at this time, so we have time to hunt for the ideal city location. Getting Iron is preferable for this game because:

Our Unique Unit (Samurai) requires Iron, unlike a maceman. I suspect we will destroy Izzy with Samurai.
All the Bronze Age Units can be built with Iron.
If it's nearby, it would be better to send a settler there.
It will be difficult to afford two cities in the short future: 1 for copper, 1 for Iron.


Thumbs up on chopping an Obelisk. Just don't do it too soon, as the 1st ring forest can be used as 50% defense for one of our archers.

agree on chopping forests for archers / obelisk.

I cannot forseee any other urgent tech than sailing and mysticism at the moment. Cottages won't be built at the moment. Thus, I really recommend ironworking.

This is a obviously hand built map. Gyathaar tried to fool us with a fish in the starting position (I hope some people settled there). He then tried to fool us with a nearby scout making us believe Spain is closeby. Copper and horses are just out of reach making people try and produce a settler and maybe getting killed in the process. (by the way the nearby copper site is really ugly and not worth it).

Thus I suspect that there IS iron very close. As mentioned, we need it anyway to get after Spain. So, I do not see any reason why we should NOT research it after sailing/mysticism.

edit: I can see in the screenshot that we mined a hill already, maybe we can work it to get an archer faster for better defense.

Believe me, the barbs will be holding us back until after those techs even.

Well,Isabella is cautious at the moment.
Writing could be an option to get open borders.
She'll definite go after Monotheism, maybe she'll
send over a missionary.

With Writing we can also whip a library in our capital.
There's enough food for 2 scientists.

In my opinion, any worker worker tech is a waste of time at the moment. I don't really see how an obelisk would turn the tide, either. I would suspend all expansion on the barb continent until we are ready to face them. Thus sailing and then iron working seems like the best combo to me.

With Writing we can also whip a library in our capital.
There's enough food for 2 scientists.

The sooner we do writing,the sooner we get our GS and associated slingshot or Academy. I think we could do well with Writing-Iron Working-Sailing.

This looks good as we can get IW while the capital is recovering from the whipped library, and then whip up a galley and a settler.

I agree that we need writing, however I would go for sailing/ironworking/writing and maybe mysticism in between depending on the situation.

We can build 2 more cities next to our capital and we would gain stone from there. We should be able to whip libraries in those sea cities and maybe even get the Great Library later on. But for now the focus should be to get our main city up and safe.

by the way, if we whip libraries, we can then employ scientists that net us philosophy via a GS slingshot. That is very powerful as a tactic.

We met a LOT of Barbarian warriors. With only two Archers I felt I had no choice but to keep both in the capitol.

We now have 3, so one can defend the gems. I am rebuilding the mine.

Started barracks.

I also explored the islands which are worth a town. See the picture:

Played to an even multiple of 10 turns. Didn't feel like a full 10 turns, though. I didn't count how many it was.

The 1900 BC Save (http://gotm.civfanatics.net/saves/civ4sgotm2/Rat_Pack_SG002_BC1900_01.Civ4SavedGame)

http://i13.photobucket.com/albums/a251/Greebley/RatPack_BC1900.jpg

I think hamfist played 21 turns that why you played only 9 turns Greebley. You could have played 20 turns and I suggest Till does that.

The cow Isle looks worth settling, I would build a settler straigth after the current work boat finishes in 1.

As for defense, we should try and play with barbs and lure them to attack the forests. We must try and get our archers out so that we can defend the land before the barbs reach our core.
Once the barbs come with archers, we need them to attack the archers outside our borders.

ThERat
Tatran
hamfist
Greebley
Till - up

Now that we have 3 archers we can try the forest attack. I didn't want to have only a single archer defending against 1 or 2 warriors - it was too risky to lose our only mainland city - so I couldn't do that before. We were attacked every single turn so both archers had to stay in the city and watch us get pillaged.

I'll get it later today. It'll be fun to play hide&seek with the barbs. Research will go to Iron Working, after we are done with sailing.
There's still the odd chance that the stone island opens a way new lands.

I had a look at the save. I wouldn't build a rax now, we need warm bodies for zone defense and they'll promote quickly anyway
I rather have more units than a rax at the moment.

This is my zonal defense suggestion (of course only achievable under good conditions)
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads12/ratpack1900.jpg

I think we need a time-out.
Here are my thoughts :

Main concern, Osaka grows to slow.A granary would help.

Forest and jungle in the first ring are more a pain than it will
benefit in defence.Barbs aren't that stupid anymore.

Settling those little islands we give more maintenance if we do a Palace switch.

How to handle the barbs in the future.They'll keep coming as long
there's fog.
Settling the lands around Osaka means less room for the barbs.
Settling the best spots and use some culture to get rid of the fog.
Stationing units is also an option, but those units bring supply costs.

Instead of playing 10 turns the next round, maybe we should do
15 turns for everyone.There isn't much to do at the moment.

Until we get astronomy we have those cities not that useful. However, with courts their maintenance should be fine. We can whip courts there.

we can support 2 cities there I think. Imagine one city runs with 2 scientists and 1 with a prophet, they can produce nice GP to lightbulb nice techs.

As for Osaka, at the moment I rather see more archers. How do we want to fight more units when we have none to counter. The city will grow, don't worry. With the sheep connected and later on rice and the flood plains, it is a supperb city (I think we should irrigate the floadd plains for faster growth). The happy limit at the moment is pretty low (pop 4-5). I think warm bodies first, then maybe a settler sneaked in.

I am sure that Spain has a much easier time than us due to their location and they should be able to settle the jungle for us. Let them clear the jungle and we build a few nice cities until we go after them.

As for the turns, first round (for Till) 20 turns are fine, second rotation we should go for 15 turns, as long as we have the plan laid out.

At the moment I guess that Till and myself will finish sailing and ironwork, then we can discuss what's next (guess it should be mysticism and writing).

Agree with a time out for discussion.

I think we need to recheck the strategy for this one. We are going for fast conquest, and need to ensure that we can do that. For fast conquest we need:

1. Very few cities. Conquest involves burning cities for cash, not taking and growing cities. 1 science city and 2 or 3 hammer cities is right for a standard map.

2. Era wars: Warring in one era to generate upgrade cash for war in the next era.

3. Limited techs: Economy is not too hampered by many cities, so only essential techs are researched.

4. Pyramids: Pyramids allow Cash rushing with Universal Suffrage. We need to capture the Pyramids. Once we are burning cities everywhere, cash rushing plus Slavery will allow us to pump out many units.

My thoughts on each point:
1. With our maintenance where it is, I'd say we don't put any more cities near Osaka if we have Iron. Osaka needs to be a Food and Hammer city, with Gems paying for it's Maintenance. The only other city that might be worthwhile would be a coastal city for building Galleons. We are alone on this continent with Izzy, so once she's dead we'll have barb cities everywhere which can also be burned for cash. Rinse and repeat for the rest of the game and money will not be an issue. The beauty of this is that warring with barbs causes no war weariness. Barb cities also make the barbs less agressive, as new barbs don't spawn in the cultural boundaries of a barb city.

2. We should be seriously considering taking out Izzy with Swords and or Swords and cats. This will give us Cash for Samurai Upgrades and lead us to the happy barb situation in point 1.

Samurai are a very powerful UU, especially as they are mixed with the Agressive trait. Samurai plus barracks it one encounter away from having Combat 1 and City Raider II. With that configuration, Samurai eat City Garrison I Muskets for breakfast and are a near match for unpromoted grenadiers. We should be aiming to win the game with Samurai.

3. Construction for cats,Civil service and Machinery for Samurai, and probably Astronomy for Galleons. All techs do not lead to one of those can and should be ignored. If there are two branches to a tech, we must choose only one. Discovering whether Astronomy is required is a key issue. If Astronomy is not required, we can skip many techs and go into massive unit building mode.

This is the case for Civil Service, which requires Code of Laws. There are two routes to Code of Laws. One through Math and Currency, and the other through Mysticism, Polytheism, and Priesthood. I would say the Math route and ignore the religious route. Math is a required tech in both Construction and Astronomy, whereas the religious techs are mostly useless and easily traded for.
Metal Casting allows for early forges and the possibility of a Great Engineer, which can be used for Machinery.

If Astronomy is not required, we should be able to win this by 1200-1300 AD or sooner.

I do agree, barbs can be useful, even for training our units
to level 4 (10 XPs).
We shouldn't worry about the Astronomy path.
Great Scientists will lightbulb techs like Compass,Optics,
Machinery and Astronomy.
The majority of the team wants IW, I think Sailing can wait,
so switch to it immediate or after Writing so our scientists won't
be delayed.
With barracks we can train a medic warrior, looks handy to me.

With barracks we can train a medic warrior, looks handy to me.

Good Idea. Also, once we Have IW and get some swords, it'll be very useful to be 1 combat from City Raider II plus Combat I. We wouldn't even needs cats to take out Izzy.

What are others' thoughts on how many cities to settle on Izzy's continent? I'm definitely thinking that this continent will be of limited usefulness and I think that with 2 close city locations near the capital that it would be better to build around the capital. Kill off Izzy and this continent turns into a barb only zone, with us burning and reburning their cities for cash. We can even let a few of the barb cities develop so as to keep others off of the continent.

I played my turns before Hamfist and Tatran posted.
First the report:
- Barbs are comming hard and fast. We didn't lose any units during this turnset, but once the barbs upgrade we'll be in dire straits indeed.

- Current military: 5 archers. One in a terrific position(hill+forest+hill promotion). The one souteast of the capital is in a sweet spot as well. Barbs will have to attack across the river in most cases.

- We learned sailing and are now researching ironworking. Settler and galley are on their way to cow island.

- Stone island:
http://img62.imageshack.us/img62/5138/stoneaf1.jpg

- There is a Spanish city just north of us:
http://img57.imageshack.us/img57/9537/spainly3.jpg

- Research is set to ironworking.

- Overview:
http://img157.imageshack.us/img157/8351/overviewnc8.jpg

- I managed to crash my computer during the last turn. Reloaded the autosave.


With Spain so near and barbs so active, i don't think we'll have to worry about settling on that continent for a while.
My suggestion would be to wait until we know the whereabouts of iron and concentrate on pushing the barbs back in the meantime.
Hamfist's strategy sounds good to me, but we really need to create some breathing space from the barbs first.
Barracks weren't an option during my turnset. But now that the hill near Osaka has been mined and we control 5 archers, we might be able to spare the 9 turns or so it takes.

As for the total number of cities on the continent, i would settle for 2-3 (including Osaka). It all depends on where the iron is and whether there are any further killer sites.

edit: It appears as if i played 22 turns. Apologies!

Good turnset Till. Good job getting those pillaged resources back up with all the barb activity.

I like the defender positions, though I think we need an archer standing on our only real source of hammers.

I really like hamfists idea of settling the Island with 2 cities onle (I guess the Spanish capital would be a nice spot to keep too).

That said, do we found another Island on that stone spot? It could help with wonders for our capital.

I think I play now until we have iron and then we stop for a proper and comprehensive discussion on the further proceedings.

we wouldn't even be able to build a granary even if we wanted to since we do not have the necessary tech
ironworks is 6 turns away and then we can check what to build

1: defeat an archer, capital got lighthouse -> worker for the cows
2: settle Tokyo and research drops by 1 turn working the water tiles
3: defeat barb warrior and archer
4: ironworks is in, iron on hill close to city :dance:
we need border expansion, so go for mysticism and an obelisk
5: beat 1 archer and 2 warrior with superior setup in forests :) whip work boat in Kyoto
6: start to work the cow with worker, we have a rax now in Osaka
7: get a second work boat. lack of builds makes me build a settler on Kyoto that can be vetoed later on
8: argh lose archer on forest, win against warrior, beat that archer then. connect clams
9 beat archer, mysticism is in, writing next in 11 turns, swap Osaka to obelisk
10 whip obelisk, we want border expansion as fast as possible
11 beat 2 archers, Osaka goes for another just in case
12 beat archer, Osaka goes archer -> worker as we have enough defenders,
at Tokyo the cow is done, road it
13 Tokyo grows and writing drops to 5 turns
14 finish forest chop to speed up worker a Osaka
15 beat archer, disband worker at Tokyo as his job is done
16 beat 2 archers, then game crashes, reload autosave as I want to stop this turn properly at an even date
beat warrior there as well

the situation:
Osaka now has 5 archers, then we can go for swords and axes to go after Spain
we get writing in 2 turns, then we should swap Tokyo and Kyoto to libraries and whip library in Kyoto and lightouse in Tokyo before a library (both are on high food now for faster whips)

we still need agriculture for rice/granary, it will help lessen the impact of whips as well (it will take 5 turns currently)
pottery would take 6

worker is due in 3 turns to help with improving iron/gold etc once we get border expansion in 10 turns
no barbs ever showed up from the north, guess Spain is there to make live easier
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads12/ratpack850.jpg

we need to discuss whether we want to settle that stone Island, it would also produce a lot of beakers once we have optics and whales.

Do we want to go after Colossus, it would be a great wonder for our Island cities.

I really like hamfists idea of not settling the Spanish Island, that way we do not need to shift the capital and can go after barbs and train military only in Osaka.

Whales give +1 :) and with a marketplace another :) .
Those 3 cities could use some happiness.
Maybe we should try to found our own religion and hope
one of those 3 cities will be the holy city.
I don't think, because of the very low production in those 3 cities, we will
get the Colossus.We need a forge too.Same thing for the Great Lighthouse.
But, one can try and if we fail we get some cash.
The Great Lighthouse requires Masonry and despite the ocean squares
there is already a trade route.
I think too, we should keep Madrid.The city has already 3 resources and
is probably the Hindu holy city and coastal.

so, do we all agree on hamfists plan to not found many cities on Spanish Island and thus we could create city#3 on that stone hill (which would give at least some good hammers)

We should do that. We should also try and get philosophy via lightbulbing it, that could be our holy city source.
But for that we need to go for CoL first (which we need anyway for Osaka). Maybe the next techs should be agri and pottery? What do you people think?

if you guys check the progress charts you can see something interesting
the score graph

there is one team in serious trouble with score decreasing, how can that happen? lose the settler or a city?
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads12/ratpack850b.jpg

we ain't too bad in the power graph (ugly brown line)
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads12/ratpack850c.jpg

The score graph indicates some teams found more cities earlier than
we did.I don't think they built a wonder.

The barb terror started around 2500 BC, so we'll have to wait and
see how the other teams have suffered after the first wave.
The power graph will be really interesting once the barbs show up
with axemen.(and some teams still lacking copper and/or iron. :D )

We can get CoL via Meditation + Priesthood (cheap techs) or
the more expensive, but needed techs Mathematics + Currency.
(Meditation is needed for Philosophy.)

Also, do we want the sea wonders ?
(Requires Masonry + Metal Casting + Pottery)

Colossus seems really worthwhile to me and worth pursuing.

For Osaka, i think a few more archers, then a lib and then sword/axemen is the best course of action.
Colosssus would help us a lot, no doubt, but i am not sure if we can get it. If you think there is a realistic chance, i'd say go for it!
Otherwise i would follow Hamfist's advise of more or less beelining towards samurai and catapults.
I good two tiles suited for cottages near Osaka, but i think Agriculture can take a backseat until our happiness limit is higher.

IBT 835 BC
The Oracle has been built in a far away land.
Well, not that far away.

820 BC (2)
Writing is in, start to research Pottery.
Isabella has 5 cities.

A few barbs die.

745 BC (7)
Pottery is in, start to research Agriculture.

715 BC (9)
Edo founded.

http://img206.imageshack.us/img206/6183/pic330rebo0.jpg

More barbs die.

700 BC (10)
Osaka expands its borders.

Izzy is expanding towards us.

http://img206.imageshack.us/img206/1614/pic331revc3.jpg

670 BC (12)
Agriculture is in, start to research Masonry.

625 BC (15)
After the library in Osaka, I think it's time to focus on Isabella.
She has chariots, so we need a mixture of spears,swords,axes and a medic.

I looked at the save, things look fine with us making swords and axes soon.

We will pop a Great scientist in abbout 20+ turns. This fellow should give us philosophy, but in order to do that, we need few techs.

I am not too sure whether there is an alternative way, but we need mediation/priesthood/ code of law and mathematics and then we can lightbulb it.
EDIT: I just saw hamfists post that says we can get CoL via maths and currency, now that looks much better, I'd say let's go for maths/ currency / CoL and lightbulb philo for free then go to civil service and machinery (we need optics later on for the whales).

CoL is needed for Osaka anyway to reduce the horrible maintenance. But if we would want a Colossus slingshot then metal might be a choice though I think its too late for that.

If we decide to fight Izzy first time (and we should given the cash we can gain for research), we have to have alphabet so we can extort techs once we go for peace (and we should in between to maximise the war gains).

Litarature seems to be another good choice since we would like to have heroic epic in Osaka and national epic in our capital. drama and the Globe Theatre for one of our Island cities looks good too.

We should start the pyramids in our capital even if we don't get it, at least we make some cash.

hamfist is up, Greebley on deck

I checked again and that maths/currency path doesn't work to pop philo

thus, we need to go meditation/priesthood/CoL/maths to get philo.

It's ok and will open more expensive techs to extort from Izzy.
By the way, we can sometimes try and extort money from her, it works. It did in the muti/acid games and it should work here as well. So, before we declare we might as well extort some money

To go back to our goal of Conquest, Philosophy doesn't help us there unless we are planning to go with Pacifism. It's a whole separate side of the tech tree. Best use for a GS will be for techs on the way to Astronomy, or Astronomy itself. GS prefers Philosphy over Astronomy. Generally speaking, once Philosphy opens for a GS Astronomy is blocked until after Paper. In that case, Astronomy has to be produced by hand, which is insanely expensive. Philosophy requires Drama or Code of Laws as a prereq, but also requires Meditation. I say we avoid Meditation at all costs and keep Philosphy locked up. If we must go up the religious side for some reason, we should be thinking of Polytheism, which opens Literature. We will only need Philosphy if at a later date we notice that this will be a very long game and will race for Liberalism. If the first scientist will only lightbulb Math, we should settle him somewhere. Any tech that's not on the hitlist and on the core research path should have a very solid reason for it.

I'll grab the turnset and play shortly.

I think I agree with Hamfist. Lets go for military and take on Isabelle as top priority. Going for astronomy sounds an excellent alternative provided we don't lose techs we need. I haven't memorized the tech tree.

I didn't know that a GS can lightbulb astro, I am not too good at knowing what will be available, it's a little too much to memorize all that.
If that's the case, I agree with you to go for the astro path. We need metal/machinery for optics anyway. Optics will open whales. And I know we need civil service for our UU.

Turn Report:
Turn 1: Masonry In, Swith to Math
Start Granary in Osaka
Kyoto was working a 2 food tile, switched it to 6 food.
Turn 2: Move city 2 city archers to mined hills.
Start farm on rice (mistake, since it gives only 4 food, when a farmed floodplain gives 4 food + 1 Commerce :( )
IBT: Kill an Archer
Turn 3: Whip Granary in Kyoto
IBT: Pyramids built elsewhere
Turn 4: Start Great Lighthouse in Kyoto for cash
IBT: Kill Warrior
Turn 6: Start on Gold Mine
Whip Library in Tokyo
Turn 7: Start Granary in Tokyo
IBT: great Lighthouse Built Elsewhere - Nets 30 Gold
Turn 8: Switch to Archer in Kyoto
Assign 2 GS, Tokyo (should have done it 1 turn earlier)
IBT: 2 more barb archers fall to our fine defenders.
Kashi Vishwanath built. Isabella has a shrine for us to take :D
Turn 9: Start Obelisk, Edo
Turn 10: Start 1st sword in Osaka
Turn 11: Start farm on Southern floodplain Osaka.
IBT: Confucianism founded elsewhere.
Turn 13: Math In.. Start on Construction (mmm catapults)
IBT: Kill Barb AXEMAN
Turn 15: Start Settler in Osaka

Notes:
I've started a Settler in Osaka, as I think we need more hammers to beat Izzy. She's expanding fast. First Chioce is our side of the river beside the horses. Other choice is beside the wheat to the south, or overlapping Osaka to work the Gold tile. These locations need to be selected for maximum hammers based on a city size of 6 or 7.

Izzy has the Shrine, so as long as we feel confident of the odds, we should attack. I'd say an archer and axe for each city we have as defense. 1 stack with 1 spear, 1 axe, 2 cats, and 4 swords. Reinforcement cats and swords can catch up. Spear and axe primarily for stack defense. 2nd stack with less swords. Stack 1 goes north and east, with a final goal of Madrid. Stack 2 takes out the new cities to the south.

With regards to research, we need to keep it very tight to focus our great scientists. A GS popped right now would give us Alphabet. I would suggest we do Alphabet after construction as it's not too expensive. After that, the GSs can do the following for us:
Compass
Metal Casting
Machinery
Optics
Astronomy

We can take care of the following in terms of direct research:
Currency
CoL
Civil Service

By the time we are done with Civil Service, the GSs should have us up to Machinery. The moment we go up the religious part of the tree is the moment that much less useful techs become available to us. We must be VERY CAREFUL not to trade for techs like Mysticism, Meditation, or Polytheism. We also need to avoid Drama, as it opens up Philosophy as well.

I've seen several people second my idea of few cities on this continent. I'm having second thoughts on it, as we're not generating much culture, making it very easy for other civs to get onto our continent later. If we go that way, we will need to be very vigilant, possibly with settlers on standby, to prevent additional settling of this continent from abroad. I still think it will help us keep costs down. We will definitely want the shrine city. We may just want to keep Izzy's cities and whip courthouses in them. Is till think we need very few cities before attacking Izzy as she seems to be doing all the settling for us :)

One last note. On turn 1 I changed from a 2 food to a six food tile. I think we need to up the discipline a bit and review the citizen assignment for every city, every turn. Since we are only doing 15 turns each now, it shouldn't be too much of a burden. There are no laurels for 2nd place :)

I also think we need to slow down and discuss some more. We're currently ahead of the pack in turns played. Team Peanut, winner of the SGOTM, was almost the last team finished.

I'm looking forward to seeing more chatter over these ideas. I'm not an Emperor level player and this is also my first Civ game (No Civ II, II etc). I tend to overthink sometimes, and need dissenting points of view. Please don't assume that my ideas are gospel, because they most certainly aren't. Dissent is good and will allow us to move the level of play up through dicussion and resolution.

I agree with more discussion. Of course bearing in mind that our team is most probably one of the smallest...

One last note. On turn 1 I changed from a 2 food to a six food tile. I think we need to up the discipline a bit and review the citizen assignment for every city, every turn. Since we are only doing 15 turns each now, it shouldn't be too much of a burden. There are no laurels for 2nd placeI saw this too. Please do MM every single turn, it's only for this SG that we are competing with others. Every mistake will count later on.

As for the strategy.
I think Osaka can start churning out units after the settler. Swords first IMHO to train them using the barbs. We can get them up to city raider 3 if lucky. (we can later upgrade them to maces and grenadiers). This shouldn't take too long if we settle another high hammer city. We could also try and settle with the least overlap possible.
I agree that other AI's would try and settle every single corner of the empire. Thus, few cities with little overlap, but expanding culture borders. If we do that we can use forest chops (after maths chops are worth more) of forests we do not use to speed up our military build up.
I am guessing that 30-40 turns should be enough to be ready for war. The south is relatively empty and might be a good training ground for our swords/axes.

I will have a look at the save tonight and maybe come up with a dotmap which maximises culture borders and minimizes the number of cities.


As for techs, I never tried this approach but to use the GS for those techs sounds good to me. One question though, do we want to halt the war with Spain for a 10 turns to extort some techs and then proceed to take them out? I am sure if we take all cities except Madrid, we could get some nice bounty.

One question though, do we want to halt the war with Spain for a 10 turns to extort some techs and then proceed to take them out? I am sure if we take all cities except Madrid, we could get some nice bounty.

I think it will depend on available techs or war weariness. Izzy is a religious tech nut, so she might not have much for us. We don't want to trade for Meditation at any cost, unless we already have Astronomy.

I'm not too concerned about Ais settling on "our" continent. Whether we burn down barb cities or AI cities makes only a small difference to me. We need to be wary in either case.

Of course there are diplomatic entanglements to consider, but for the moment i would only keep cities that are actually worthwhile from a shield/gold perspective.

I might be misremembering, but if you don't have tier1 techs like Mysticism, isn't it impossible to demand tier2 techs like Meditation/Polytheism?
Since we appear to be in agreement to leave the religious tree alone for a while, we might not be able to extort a great deal of techs out of her anyway.

I looked at the save, actually I would just let Osaka keep on pumping units (swords and spears) and build up a small force and acquire the first few worthwhile Spanish cities.
Then we can still expand ourselves. We can let Osaka grow to pop 6 now.

as for the immediate action, get that sword out of the city to get city raider promotions and cover the hill with it, while the other archer covers the woudned archer. we need to train our swords

The 2 food for 6 food was no :smoke: from my side.
Kyoto was already running 2 angry citizens during my turns
and I just whipped a library + the city was at its happiness
limit.The only useful to build, but not urgent, was a granary.
I consider those 3 island cities as commerce income, nothing more.
When there's nothing useful to rush why supporting angry citizens ?

As for techs, let's focus on what we need instead of discussing what
a Great Scientist will lightbulb.We want him to lightbulb expensive techs.

If we can cut off the supply route from the north, the lone jungle tiles below Madrid,
we should not have much problems to secure the area around Osaka.Means 2 stacks.
One stack for attacking and a second stack for the choke point(s).

until we have CoL, cities are very expensive for us. Thus, let's build 3 swords, a spear/cat and axe and start a war aginst Spain. This will gain us and slow them down. We can start with the city north of Osaka, good to get rid of that culture city anyway. We should just raze the cities, unless they are holy cities and of course Madrid.
At the same time, we should head for CoL as soon as possible.

While we attack with that stack of 6 units, we can build another stack and maybe get more. I am sure we want to pause the war before heading to Madrid. I think a 2 staged war will be suitable and doable.
And as said, get the swords out to beat warriors/archers to get them to city raider 2 at least. No other promotions for them IMHO.

I think the first stack can also cut off Madrid from the rest of the empire while we build up more forces.

If we can cut off the supply route from the north, the lone jungle tiles below Madrid,
we should not have much problems to secure the area around Osaka.Means 2 stacks.
One stack for attacking and a second stack for the choke point(s).

Sounds good. What do you think about stack size? We don't have Open borders atm, so we can't scout it out. What type of defense do we need?

I looked at the save and it looks like the only real decision in the next 15 turns is what tech to get after construction. Feel free to suggest one. Do we want to start heading toward Astronomy yet? Go for Monarchy? I always like Monarchy.

What do you think about stack size? We don't have Open borders atm, so we can't scout it out. What type of defense do we need?knowing the AI from many games on emperor and above, nothing much yet. Spain is after religions and expanding with lot's of jungle. I guess the capital has quite a few units, but those fringe towns should be able to be taken with small stacks of city raider II swords + cats. A few spears for defense against chariots will help.

I looked at the save and it looks like the only real decision in the next 15 turns is what tech to get after construction. Feel free to suggest one. Do we want to start heading toward Astronomy yet? Go for Monarchy? I always like Monarchy.Spain surely has religious techs, thus we can gain them for peace. I would go after currency and then CoL. We badly need courts, maintenance will kill us once we go after Spain. he check what techs we can gain with the GS we will pop every now and then. OH, and we need alphabet so that we can extort techs in the first place.

Currency seems like a good next choice. It gets us one step closer to CoL, and we could interject a Market in Osaka. With all that commerce and our current low research rate, Osaka will be a serious money maker. Markets can also go in to Kyoto and Tokyo, since they are specialist cities and a Great Merchant can also lightbulb some interesting and useful techs.

Monarchy would really help the cities by our capital, but we need to go up the religious path to get there (requires Priesthood or Monotheism). If we get Polytheism, the GS will prefer literature over compass or Metal Casting, greatly slowing our time to Samurai and Galleons. Working to Monarchy probably means winning the game with Grenadiers and Cannons.

The 2 food for 6 food was no :smoke: from my side.
Kyoto was already running 2 angry citizens during my turns
and I just whipped a library + the city was at its happiness
limit.The only useful to build, but not urgent, was a granary.
I consider those 3 island cities as commerce income, nothing more.
When there's nothing useful to rush why supporting angry citizens ?


Seems like a reasonable choice to make. I think the point is worth discussing a bit: Is it better to keep the pop low so as to keep down civic maintenance, or let the pop grow so as to have more angry citizens to whip away when we get a new build (say Markets or Forges). I would go with the extra pop for a couple of reasons:
1. We have basically no hammers there, so food=hammers. The hammers accumulate over time as population. Since the citizens don't work, city growth gets slower and maximum size takes a while to reach. this actually makes a Granary a fairly high priority build.
2. The only maintenance cost we get from the population is the civics cost, which is 50% lower because we are organized.

If we were a non-organized civ, It would be much more difficult to make the decision. Since we are organized, I think we want maximum growth and size for all of our cities.

Any other thoughts?

Alphabet is a must, maybe Literature too, for the Heroic Epic.
We can use the National Epic for our capital.

I think we should beeline for Optics, so we know where to hunt. :D
Also +1 movement for sailing around the globe is handy too.

If we're going to settle more cities we need courthouses.
I prefer to start building units, building a settler costs 12 turns. :eek:
That's 2.5 swords + upkeep.

Alphabet is a must, maybe Literature too, for the Heroic Epic.
We can use the National Epic for our capital.


Alphabet is also relatively inexpensive atm. I can't open the save atm. Can anyone see when our GS will pop? If it's within the time that it takes to research Alphabet, we should consider Alphabet before Currency so that our GS can lightbulb a better tech than Alphabet.

I'm not sure if Heroic Epic will come online fast enough for our war with Isabella. National Epic will take centuries to build in Kyoto. We will probably need a forge first there (and need Metal Casting). Also, we have so much food that once we have CoL we can get great scientists out of Kyoto by running more scientists.
Literature also requires polytheism before we can research it. I'd suggest Literature wait until we can actually use it.

In terms of Lightbulbing techs, here's an excellent post on the subject:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=140952&highlight=great+person+tech+preference

Well, that's a very long list.Let's keep things simple, it's only a game.

I love to run Caste System, but it's in same civic group as Slavery.

Hehe...

The list isn't too long. Just look at Great Scientist and the tech that you want. Then look back up the list at techs that you don't want prereqs for. In our Case it's quite simple: WE want the GS to research Astronomy for us. Therefore, we want to avoid prereqs for Philosophy. As a bonus, this also opens up several other useful techs for Scientists to research. I mainly posted the link so that all could see that I'm not making this up :)

Thanks for the link! I remember seeing an earlier version of this post and couldn't quite make head or tail out of it. Now it is so much easier to comprehend.

Ok, let's take a second look at the list.
Literature isn't on the list.

From top to bottom in our situation with Mathematics :

1) Compass (897 :science:)
2) Alphabet (672 :science:)
3) Calendar (783 :science:)
4) Metal Casting (1002 :science:)

Our first GS is in 7 turns.
Our second GS is in 43 turns.

ok, so the first GS will give us compass for sure (and harbor). It will bring us closer to optics which we need.
Thus, I still suggest to finish construction, insert alphabet while building up a force to beat Spain. Forget that settler, Spain does all the settling for us. We shouldn't bother about that and any additional city now will cost us. The Spanish cities might have a shrine and are worth settling.

After alphabet we should head for currency and CoL.

Are we all agreeable that we do not build a settler and instead train my suggested first stack of 3 swords/spear/axe/cat (we do have 1 sword already). And send out that sword on the hill the fight the incoming archer. Any archer or warrior is good for training to get to exp5 (and city raider II).

That stack goes north to start attacking while we build a second stack. And to speed up that stack we should chop unneeded forest tiles around Osaka (I mean those not within the city tiles).

if i read that list correctly, the next GS would pop us either philo or optics. Now, if we keep philo unavailable, we could pop compass and then optics with the GS. Or am I wrong?

to keep it short and clear, my suggestion for the next few turns:

NO settler, but military starting 2 swords,spear,axe,cat
research construction/alphabet/currency/CoL

if i read that list correctly, the next GS would pop us either philo or optics. Now, if we keep philo unavailable, we could pop compass and then optics with the GS. Or am I wrong?
Machinery, which is low on the GS list, is required for Optics.
And Metal Casting for Machinery.
Both techs have lower GS priority as Calendar.
The best tech for our second Great Scientist will be Machinery.
After that we can research Optics ourselves and lightbulb Astronomy.

edited out: stupid ramblings...

begin real post...
I agree on killing the settler. He has no hammers applied to him so that's an easy switch. Are we confident there are enough hammers in Osaka to make the war work? Even though she is spread thin, Izzy has a lot of cities to produce units once in war mode. I'm not the expert there.

I agree on killing the settler. He has no hammers applied to him so that's an easy switch. Are we confident there are enough hammers in Osaka to make the war work? Even though she is spread thin, Izzy has a lot of cities to produce units once in war mode. I'm not the expert thereThe AI is extremely incompetent at warfare. I am sure we can quickly take out 1-2 cities with the first stack while building up another stack. Remember that they surely faced barbs as well and might have lost units as they won't be able to play as smart as we did. The only worry would be fast units such as chariots or HA, but with spears we can counter that (and playing with the terrain).
I'd say Greebley and Till can prepare us for war and I get to fight :mischief: We need 2 swords (around 10 turns) and spear/cat/axe (another 10-15 turns). With some forest chops we might be able to cut that and get a greater force. But surely 2 rounds of preparation are enough.
I would say Greebley and Till play 15 turns each and then we go for 10 turns from there onwards

Ok I think I've got the tech picture clearer now:

Research Alphabet Now. Pop for Compass.
Research Currency
Research CoL (accelerate GS production with Caste System???)
Research Calendar: Pop For Metal Casting
Research Machinery
research Optics: Pop for Astronomy
Research Civil Service (we can't research this before Astronomy, otherwise the GS will gave us.... Paper and then Education. Blah since we're shooting for Conquest before the arrival of liberalism.).

Upgrade Swords to Samurai and Kick A**

techs to not trade/extort for before Astronomy:
Meditation
Civil Service

It would be good to trade for Polytheism and then Priesthood or Monotheism, opening up Monarchy. Of the off path techs, Monarchy is probably the most useful The cities near our capital could be monsters with Hereditary rule.

Things went as planned.

We got construction and compas with the GS.

Isabelle's Hinduism came to us so I switched.

Built the settler and put it on the river in a food rich spot.

Started Currency.

Cities are mostly aligned for cash at the moment to get us courthouses.

Capitol could be rushed soon. I started a harbor in some but was not sure if that was best.

http://i13.photobucket.com/albums/a251/Greebley/RatPack_BC175.jpg

The 175BC Save (http://gotm.civfanatics.net/saves/civ4sgotm2/Rat_Pack_SG002_BC0175_01.Civ4SavedGame)

edited since Greebley played and settled though I thought we go for war. Ok, this will change things but I think we should built up military NOW and not wait any longer. We should use the 2nd city to whip a rax as soon as possible and then whip some military. With those food resources, we can keep the city small and whip fast.

We could swap research to alphabet first then currency.

Great list there hamfist. Now, while we fight Izzy, we will get alphabet and thus could extort the 'right' techs. We could also try and demand some cash from her just before we go to war (with currency in). The AI does give in at times, do not be surprised about this. Sometimes they might even give cheap techs.
We might be bold enough to demand mysiticism/polytheism or so to get to monarchy faster.

looking at the picture, it's great we got a city raider III sword, this will kick ass against archers. Now, let's get some more of them to train them, the axe is done soon, then 2 swords, cat and spear and we are ready for war.

We have a religion that's good.
I don't think we should go for a Palace switch, let's go for the
Forbidden Palace in Osaka.

An update for the GS list after Compass.

1) Alphabet (672 :science:) 12 turns
2) Calendar (783 :science:) 13 turns
3) Metal Casting (1002 :science:) 17 turns
4) Machinery (1569 :science:) 31 turns
Machinery requires Metal Casting.

The next Great Scientist is in 29 turns.
A third GS will be in 69 turns.
We can speed up the GPPs hiring some merchants and stay
in Slavery, but we'll risk to pop up a GM.
Or we can run the Caste System for more Great Scientists.

Let's see the list for GMs after Currency.

1) Metal Casting
2) Code of Laws
3) Machinery

Note : Monarchy + Civil Service will lightbulb before Machinery
if the preference tech is available.

Something else.Our relations with Isabella has improved, let's take
the opportunity to scout her territory.

interesting list, but we need CoL, so self research should go for alphabet now then we can check what izzy has for trading.
I am guessing that Till now needs to build up military, we can send an archer as a scout to check her closer cities.

As said, whip the rax then whip military units in Satsuma making use of the food bouns, Thus I suggest to wait for caste system until we fought Izzy.

I thought we were waiting for some forces before war (3 swords and what not)? I thought about it (trying to grab the worker) but we had the single sword and nothing at all do handle incoming axmen. I think we would have been massively pillaged to say the least. I also don't really remember war being a well discussed option, though I may have missed it?
Maybe I was over-imagining the attacking forces, but Isabelle is much bigger than us and could easily send pillaging axmen of doom even if she didn't take out. Given that we were committed to the settler...

Sorry if I totally missed what the plan was. I just didn't catch that we wanted to go to war now.

Got it. I'll see how many soldiers i can whip up (quite literally ;)) What is the consensus on the immediate tech path?
I reckon, we will need at least 15 turns of war preparation plus another 15 turns of war against Izzy. That could well be enough to finish research on currency and alphabet.
Or is it better not to take any chances and switch right away? Osaka won't be producing a marketplace anytime soon, anyway, but our commerce cities could benefit.
(Plus it would give them something to do)

Currency is fine, all our cities will have second trade route.
A total of 5 commerce, not much though.
We need the Alphabet for mentioned reasons, but also
to make a plan to get the most techs after the first war.
Maybe Isabella will research some important techs for us. ;)
(like CoL or Metal Casting)

I don't think there is a big difference whether we go for currency or alphabet first.

We should really get open borders with Izzy to check on her cities to gauge how many units we need for the first round of attacks. I assume that those cities in the south are defended lightly and have little culture, thus could be taken with mere swords while the north needs the described mix of units.

In a nutshell:
Got Open Borders and did some exploring.
Santiago:
~2 archers
Salamanca:
~ 1 archer & 1 spearman
Toledo:
1 archer &1 spearman + one chariot.
Serville:
~2 archers + 1 spear + 1 axe
Cordoba:
~2 archers + 1 spear + 1 axe
Barcelona:
2 archers, 2 spears, 1 axe (but also 1 settler, so some of it might be escort)
Madrid:
dunno

Our military:
3 Swordsmen:
- 10/10
- 7/2
- 5/2
1 Axeman:
- 4/2
1 Spearman:
- 4/2
1 Catapult:
- 4/2

In production:
1 sword and 1 catapult.

It's really tough to find barbs to train on, now that Isa has cities everywhere. Only real option left is the barb city in the south.

We are 5 turns away from alphabet. Osaka is ready to be whipped.

Overview:
http://img301.imageshack.us/img301/6185/civ4screenshot0005od7.jpg

I would suggest to keep Seville and Barcelona as holy cities, what do you people think?
As for our war, I would wait for alphabet and see whether we can trade polytheism and then go for a first war trying to take out Toledo and then going for Toledo and Barcelona while we could take out Santiago and Salamanca with a few units. They got no culture and should be easy targets.
We can self research calendar after alphabet and then pop metal with the next GS.

I played 15 turns as this is better for warfare play at this stage to carry out a plan...this is how it went

Pre-Turn
the overview of the cities
Kyoto building market 1 unhappy face from whipping, 7 pop growing in 3
Osaka cat in 4 7/6 happy, can whip
Tokyo slowly building harbor, get GS in 9 turns
the other towns have to wait for whipping

whip Osaka for catapult so we can have stack 1 ready

1. 140AD
we have a 2nd catapult, spear in 6 now in Osaka

2. 155AD
start to assemble our stack near Toledo so once alphabet comes in we can start attacking

3. 170AD
stack is ready for action, but waiting for alphabet

4. 185AD
stack in position now
whip sword in Satsuma

5. 200AD
alphabet is in, set to CoL, we need that more urgent than calendar
hmm Izzy has poly, meditation and calendar , but doesn't want to trade, well we will extort some then
but she has 90gold, we might as well demand that
she is pleased and gives it to us :)

declare war and move stack towards Toledo and archer/sword combo next to Santiago

IT Izzy wastes an archer against our stack

6. 215AD
move next to Toledo, defeat 1st archer in Santiago

7. 230AD
Osaka gets a spear, go for cat
bomb Toledo to 35%, city raider swords are powerful
defeat 2 archers and 1 chariot leaving a spear for the next turn

burn Santiago for 62 gold :).

set science to 100% as we can afford it

8. 245AD

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads12/ratpack2245.jpg
raze the city, stack needs to heal before moving to Seville

9. 260AD
Izzy is sending a settler pair towards the south, that's a free worker if we can get it right
we have a scientist that can pop calendar, however, I rather we extort that tech from Izzy
move on towards Seville

whip harbor in Tokyo

10. 275AD
move next to Seville, it has 3 units inside only

11. 290AD
still no Spanish unit has shown up, but Seville now has 4 units inside
bomb it to 35% and let units heal
kill the archer covering a settler and we have a free worker, thanks Izzy :)

12. 305AD
we get a spear and cat
Seville now only 3 units left, but it has this cover 3 archer inside
promote a cat to city raider 1 and attack, lose it
attack axe at 49% odds and win :dance:
win against archer at 65%, spear takes out chariot and we get Seville, the holy city of Judaism
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads12/ratpack2305.jpg

it also has a lighthouse

13. 320AD
CoL is in, gor for metal next as we want to extort calendar from Izzy
WW kicks in now, start to move towards Cordoba
whip harbor in Edo

14. 335BC
barbs show up again, start to move towards Cordoba, Izzy wouldn't talk yet

15. 350AD
move next to Cordoba with 3 units, the rest behind, it has a mere 2 units inside
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads12/ratpack2350b.jpg


Izzy is willing to talk already
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads12/ratpack2350c.jpg

I don't think we would want meditation according to our tech plan, I hope we can extort calendar though for better yield

of our GS

here the situation in the south, there is 1 Spanish archer and a barb warrior
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads12/ratpack2350a.jpg

I suggest to press on to raze Cordoba at least, we can judge whether we want to go after Barcelona. I would stop the war for a while to get some techs and finish courts in Osaka, Seville and Satsuma. We badly need them
Barcelona with a shrine is a good target and with the resistance Izzy has put up so far, we should be able to take it on

as mentioned we have a GS in Tokyo waiting until we finish metal (and extort calendar) to bulb machinery

Roster check:

Rat - took out 2 cities and captured holy city
Tatran - up and ready to take out Spanish cities
hamfist - on deck
Greebley
Till - prepared war

by the way, we have 3 workers now currently mining a hill with forest chop to speed up the libarry in Satsuma. We should use chops to speed up the courts in Osaka as well.

The north does have sugar for added happiness, but we ultimately need heriditary rule

Well done, Rat! :goodjob:
I would press on until war happiness becomes too bad or we start to lose too many units. By the looks of it, we might even be able to wage war and build courthouses at the same time.

As for tech, we should consider researching Calendar anyway, as we can then go directly to Metal Casting with that GS.

Now that we have CoL, we need to consider building Forbidden Palace once the war is over. We need 8 citites and couthouses in 6 cities. This should make 3 courthouses in and around the capital a priority build. Follow up by a whipped couthouse in 2 captured Spanish Cities. I think Osaka is the best place for FP. We are organized so can whip Courthouses cheap.

We need to choose 3 Spanish cities to keep. Barcelona for sure. We haven't seen Madrid yet, but I'm assuming it's pretty nice as Izzy has expanded very quickly. We already have Seville, but I'm not so sure we want it. It is the Holy City of Judaism, but has no Shrine. A Great Prophet will not be coming our way anytime soon. How does Seville compare to some of the southern Spanish cities in terms of Hammer output? Is it worth holding on to for Hammers? It doesn't look like much is there, and we'll need workers over there quickly. If there is no compelling reason to keep it, other than the religion, we should gift it back to Izzy and then burn it to the ground at the start of war 2.

Edit: Forgot the most important part... Way to kick a** Rat. Always best to leave the start of the war to those that are good at it :)

I hope we would be able to extort calendar from Izzy. If we can manage to take Barcelona after razing Cordoba, maybe we can get that tech. until then I would go after metal casting.
The GS would then give us machinery and then next optics IIRC.

As for the cities, Madrid is surely nice, capitals are 'always' nice in CIV. Thus, we should keep with together with Barca. We could give up Seville though, no issue.

Always best to leave the start of the war to those that are good at itAW is good training for this for sure, but I know people that are better than me for sure.

I would say that we keep on building military units until we stop the war. We can always go after the southern barb cities in case we have extra untis later on.

Pre-turn
Izzy is running Theocracy.Theology leads to Paper.That's too bad.
If we research Polytheism ourselves, maybe we can extort the following techs
Priesthood (needed for Monarchy -> Feudalism) + Monotheism + Calendar.
We won't be running Theocracy or Pacifism for awhile.
Also OR is the only way to spread religion.Monasteries require Meditation.
So switch science to Polytheism.

The barbs are coming with swords.

380 AD (2)
Whip an obelisk in Seville.Rush an axe in Osaka.

395 AD (3)

http://serv4.imagehigh.com/imgs/3578881_pic_337re.jpg

Isabella still don't give us Calendar.So she will get more :hammer: .

410 AD (4)

http://serv4.imagehigh.com/imgs/3578883_pic_339re.jpg

The price was an CR3 sword at 89% combat odds.
And still no Calendar.

IBT 410 AD
Almost lost an axe to a barb sword at 9% near Osaka.

425 AD (5)
Polytheism is in, continue to research Metal Casting.
Izzy has indeed Priesthood.

IBT 440 AD
The barb axes and swords are a bigger problem, than Izzy's army.

485 AD (9)
Whip the library in Edo.

IBT 500 AD
We are beginning to make some progress.

http://serv4.imagehigh.com/imgs/3578892_pic_343re.jpg

515 AD (11)
Rush an axe in Satsuma.

545 AD (13)
Isabella has Literature too.

575 AD (15)
Lose an suicide catapult on the assault of Barcelona.
I could have captured the city, but a sword lost to a wounded spear at 97% combat odds. :mad:
So the next player should capture Barcelona.And all those techs without Meditation.

Note : Izzy send a settler pair from Barcelona.Our lone sword should deal with them.

575 AD (15)
Lose an suicide catapult on the assault of Barcelona.
I could have captured the city, but a sword lost to a wounded spear at 97% combat odds. :mad:
So the next player should capture Barcelona.And all those techs without Meditation.


Good Choice on Polytheism. We can probably extort Literature easily as well.

Bad luck with the RNG.. I thought that I was the only one that got crap like that.

Before my turnset, I'd like to hear from the team about Seville. Do we keep it or give to Izzy and burn it? I'd vote for the burning, as the city doesn't have hammers and we won't be able to build a shrine there. I'd like to know if anyone has a dissenting opinion..

This war seems to be going very well.