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

Checking in.

Don't like to settle one away from the coast. Move northwest one tile to get fish since we have fishing. We get the rest of the ocean tiles too. Looks good for GP farm but not much production there until we see what's east of it.

bobrath -- Black Leader -- UP
namliaM -- on deck
eektor
Cosmichail
Pigswill
LuvtoBuild -- nominated scribe (1 nomination)

Checking in too. I'd agree with nw for coastal city. Raging barbs -yum. I second LuvToBuild's nomination as Team Scribe. Assuming bobrath is willing I'm happy to play under Cap'n Bobrath.

Checking in.

I definitely like settling 1 nw for the fishes and it opens the flood plain too. Just wondering, is that position would it give us the extra 1 :health: for being next to the river?

Checking in (just to subscribe). More thoughts when I finish my morning Coke.

(done)


The only thing is, those fishes are not in the intial cross, so until we get some culture they'll be out of range (along with the rice). Also, given that this is raging barbs - is putting forests right outside our city a smart plan?

So, I'd like to propse settling 2N of our current spot. That brings Rice into our cross right away. Obviously with raging barbs, any improvement will have to be guarded and guarding something next to your city is better then two tiles away (imo of course). The downside is losing the river .

Obviously moving the warrior to the hill is the first move and if (IF) I play first, then I'll make that move and return for team thoughts.

Longer term planning... we may want to consider building a palace in our new city, if only to help maintenace out.

I see what you mean by going two north for the rice, but I'm not sure since I think the city would be in a better position overall if we go northwest with the river and all. We would still have the flood plain to grow fast. Although the warrior might uncover some terrain info that could make the move two north better.

Now an idea would be to try to get an early religion for the culture (but we didn't start with mysticism, I think), or get the tech for obelisks (I forgot which one).

The early religion would be hard, but I believe Toku is a good person to go after CoL quickly.

What I'm curious is how hard will the maintenance be for setting up a second city from the start? We can get some good commerce starting from the beginning to help us tech quickly, as long as the maintenance costs don't bring us down.

I agree that it would be best to put the palace in a city on the continent we are in.

Since we need to win by conquest, I think we should beeline to samurais and try to conquer as much of the world with that.

I'm just reflecting back to the last time I played Raging Barbs.... It was ugly fighting off so many attacks. So I'm trying to make sure that our initial landbased city is growing as fast as it can so that we can crank some units out to fog/barb bust.


Other topic to talk about: Kyoto is going to be a growth monster, how can we utilize this best? Obviously hooking up the food resources means we can regrow almost any whip to our hearts content. I do want to make sure we fit in a defender or two at some point out there, but beyond that and 4 workboats, what's next?

Its sealocked so until Astro we are stuck there.

Well, I doubt we are going to hit 10 pages before the competition starts, and probably not 5 pages either.

I think building a library as early as possible in Kyoto would be good. We should get a decent amount of commerce with the coast tiles and the fact it will grow quickly. I was going to mention using it for some GP's but then I realized there would be no way to transport them out of the island til Astronomy. Well, academy and scientists would be nice.

I hadn't thought about GP.... at least that will steam our research speed up. So it would behoove us to know what each type of GP will research and use that to our advantage as well.

I was going to mention using it for some GP's but then I realized there would be no way to transport them out of the island til Astronomy

GP's can use a caravel so we wouldn't need astronomy, just compass and optics.

Bobrath, once we get that warrior moved and see what else is there we can better determine where to settle. The Rice is good for growth but can only grow to 5 at first. I personally hate to loose river since commerce is needed having a city so far away. Mysticism is the tech we need for those obelisks btw and getting stonehenge would be a big help to getting a religion.

Of course we will have to deal with onslaught on the barbies at first (I find usually they show up after the first turnset.) So hunting -->archery is important as fighting them with warriors can be "let's say" suicide.

Are we really that far away? I'm assuming this world wraps... meaning we're just a short jump away. Sure its not next door, but we're not on the opposite end of the earth... unless gaythar ..... ah crap!


Reference for GP tech preference:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=140952

oh and interesting little note in that thread - a GP based way to get to Civil Service asap!

Checking in
I'm just reflecting back to the last time I played Raging Barbs.... It was ugly fighting off so many attacks. So I'm trying to make sure that our initial landbased city is growing as fast as it can so that we can crank some units out to fog/barb bust.


Other topic to talk about: Kyoto is going to be a growth monster, how can we utilize this best? Obviously hooking up the food resources means we can regrow almost any whip to our hearts content. I do want to make sure we fit in a defender or two at some point out there, but beyond that and 4 workboats, what's next?

Its sealocked so until Astro we are stuck there.
This setting just SCREAMS specialists, we build a lib and a defender and some workboats... Bag the Pointy Stone Thing (PST (tm)) and we go Representation, Caste System (CoL), Mercantilism (Banking) when we can Specialists all the way...
Pros: We will be going for a lot of war, when WW hits we may lose a few specialists.... Big deal
No Cottages, or not many of them anyway...
We get the max out of Kyoto ASAP. Kyoto will be best as GP farm soon, to max that to our other cities seem natural.

Point: Take note that settling 1NW will lose the 2:health: from the river...

Of course we will have to deal with onslaught on the barbies at first (I find usually they show up after the first turnset.) So hunting -->archery is important as fighting them with warriors can be "let's say" suicide.
A warrior on in a forrest or on a hill (even better a forrested hill) can hold his own vs an attacking Archer.
I hadn't thought about GP.... at least that will steam our research speed up. So it would behoove us to know what each type of GP will research and use that to our advantage as well.:nono: Unless we get to the point where techs are >1500 beakers, Scientists are to be joined or made into an Acadamy for most beakers

I'm not talking about only Scientists! There are other GPs out there that will help us leap forward with key techs as long as we plan ahead obviously. Again, the example being of getting Civil Service earlier (and thus enabling our UU faster).

I would like to try a sort of CS slingshot. I was thinking if we can get Oracle to give us CoL and then use a great prophet for CS. It will be less risky than to go the standard CS slingshot.

I would prefer to go for BW over hunting/archery.

As for world wraps, it says its a fractal map, so it should be wrapping, I don't think you can change that.

Does anyone know if maintenance costs include any path awareness? By that I mean if your capital's BFC is adjacent to another of your cities, but right down the middle is a range of impassable mountains that extend for say 30 tiles... is the distance maint cost cheap or expensive?

I would say the maintenance would be cheap...

CS slingshot on Monarch, can that even be done without 99.9% luck? Have the AIs been beefed up as well? We start with 2 cities... Tho that may end up hurting us more than anything... Due to mainenance and the palace and stuff :(

I would prefer to go BW as well... that means Mining => BW...

I think the oracle slingshot to CS is out of our reach, but the GP based one would be possible:

Research Meditation, Poly, Priesthood, Mysticism, CoL
Do Not Research Masonry

At this point, a Great Prophet will give you CS since you're skipping Monotheism, Theology, and Divine Right due to the lack of Masonry. CS is the next up in the GProph's tech tree.


Oh and a GEngr can be used to move us to Machinery very quickly as well - just a matter of getting the prereqs lined up!

I think the oracle slingshot to CS is out of our reach, but the GP based one would be possible:

Research Meditation, Poly, Priesthood, Mysticism, CoL
Do Not Research Masonry


I like the GP approach to the CS slingshot as well.

Yep always want that Mining ==> BW too. We could skip archery to get here but I have my doubts about getting copper nearby. NamliaM, as you said warrior on forested hill is all and good but once the barb axes show up forget that. (and they will). Protecting a city with warriors is risky at best and really should have a couple CD2-3 archers. If we go there soon we can get those upgrades from the onslaught that we will eventually face.

As to settling it really depends on the eastern tiles.

Big problem with Kyoto will be happy cap unless there's a coastal trade route to our island (maybe after second expansion). If that's sorted then its a tasty science city/gs factory.
I'd still go for nw coastal city, healthy river, flood plain that don't need working. Tech wise hunting archery bronze mysticism. Until we know what size islandwe're on, neighbours, resources etc its difficult to plan in detail. I would not be at all confident about pyramids unless we had stone and copper available in first two cities. No pyramids makes early specialist strategy sub optimal. Ilike to get a religion, CoL/confuciansim being fave though theology/christianity is another option for warmongers.

I'd prefer to go the CoL/confused route for our religion. It fits very nicely into the rush for Samurai.

Happy cap will be our bane on the single-tile-island-city-kyoto (STICK), especially when we start applying the whip to turn all those wonderful citizens into something more productive. We do want to get to Bronze fairly early to take advantage of the food of STICK. Since our first workboat is 23 turns off (screen shot based logic), we do have a bit of wiggle room.

Seeing as that Plains tile is NOT showing any commerce, settling on that tile DOES NOT give you access to the river and its 2:health:

Well we must be war mongers, but I dont like the early Theology path much... those 2 XP just dont make that much of a difference... Where an early tech lead makes that much more of a difference....
I.e.
CR2 axe vs CD1 Archer or CR1 Mace/Samurai vs CD1 Archer
CR2 axe vs CD1 Longbow or CR1 Mace/Samurai vs CD1 Longbow

I know which one I favour....

About a pallace jump, I would suggest not jumping it to city #2... Our third city would/should be more inland and a better spot for a new Palace...

The happy cap in STICK or anywhere for that matter is another pro for us to build the PST or capture it real early like... With Representation and the +2:) and the +3 for specialists... That would really help

and PST is short for?

I didn't propose to do a standard CS slingshot. I meant we research Mysticism, Meditation or Polytheism, Priesthood. While building oracle research pottery and writing, Oracle gives us CoL and then use a great prophet for CS. That's what I was trying to say.

One problem if we do it this way or doing the GP way you said, it would be very hard for us to get the pyramids with us putting Masonry on hold until after we get CS.

For the question if a CS slingshot is even possible on Monarch. All you have to do is check out SGOTM1 CFR and you can see its been done and it didn't seem like there was any luck involved, they built the Oracle early enough to get it.

I agree with namliam that the palace would probably best be built in a city more inland once we get an idea of the shape of the continent we are on.

Is PST the pyramids?

Yes Pointy Stone Thing (PST (tm)) = Pyramids, I dont know that many Pointy Stone Buildings currently in CIV....

Avoiding masonry and getting the PST is not .... the easiest thing to do... ;)
Is it worth it doing a narrow beeling for CoL and bagging CS with the Oracle? No worker techs => No workers => More settlers => More research power?
Myst => Meditation => Priesthood => Writing => CoL
Do you need AH or Pottery for Writing?

For the question if a CS slingshot is even possible on Monarch.

It's doable with marble and good production.

Don't forget we are on raging barbs and have to make sure we have adequate defenses. Also avoiding masonry is a pain and beelining to COL risky. We don't really have the production there and should get a third city happening that has production for the Oracle and then maybe try for slingshot. If we come across marble then we might have to research masonry.

How long would it take to do this. We would need AH for writing or pottery, then Meditation > Priesthood (oracle) and then start COL. Oracle would have to finish just afterwards. Skipping archery/bw and the necessary defenses we would need against raging barbs. Getting the settler out with weak defenders is a crapshoot. We definitely would have to get archery (who knows maybe a hut will give it to us if there are any) and then proceed down this path since we can hold out with archers and forego axes for a while.
Copper is another crapshoot in the way it very rarely shows up in the BFC and sometimes distant.

So tech path suggestion:
Hunting>archery
Meditation>Priesthood>COL

Build path
warrior>warrior>archer>settler (do we have any worker techs at this point)

I always like BW too sooner than later for whipping/chopping.

What are toku's starting techs? I thought they were Fishing and the Wheel. From the discussion I think its Fishing and Mysticism.

I would much rather beeline to BW first before we think about researching hunting and archery. BW gives us more flexibility. If we don't have copper, ok we can still revolt to slavery and we can also chop the forest. If we do hunting and archery and then later discover BW and have a copper beside us, we wasted our early research on something that wasn't needed.

@namliaM if Toku's starting techs is Fishing and the Wheel, we would just need Pottery to research Writing.

His techs are indeed fishing and wheel

Respectfully disagree re bronze first. No guarantee we'll have copper anywhere near us. Going mining/bw/hunting/archery is not good with angry barbs around. Archers are rarely wasted.

Ok let me see what we got so far

City placement
1. NW
2. 2 North

Tech line (a bunch of different opinions, tell me if I missed anything)
1. Hunting, Archery
2. Mining, BW
3. Mysticism, Pottery, Meditation, Priesthood, Writing


How about build order?
For Kyoto, I think workboat, warrior, workboat, workboat, workboat, warrior or archer or spearmen or axeman, library

New city (Tokyo?) (I think would depend on the tech line)
But maybe (1) Worker, Warrior, Warrior or (2) Warrior, Worker, Warrior

For Kyoto, I'd leave a warrior until... well imo until we've got all four sea resources hooked up. Barbs galleys are a ways off, and I don't know the last time I saw one with actual units in it. My thought on defenders is hat once the first caravel spots us, then we start prepping defense. Only reason to do defenders earlier is for HR happieness.

I think with raging barbs, the first build would be warrior and not an unescorted worker.

Yeah, I agree with you for Kyoto. I just put that there because I figured we can just pop rush a warrior np. Pushing it back shouldn't be bad and we wouldn't encounter any barbs anytime soon. I haven't seen any units on barb ships either.

As for the new city, we can build a worker and get two warriors out before the barbs come. But I would go for warrior first if we aren't planning on researching any worker improvements. If we settle NW and go pottery, I would want the worker to get a cottage on the fp asap. If we go 2N and research agriculture a farm on the rice. If we go 2N and research mining a mine on the hill. If not then lets go warrior first.

I'd rather get kyoto up to its max growth asap. So instead of pop rushing a defender near the start, wait and get that city cranking sooner. Add in the extra income from the worked ocean tiles and that means we're accelerating the research rate as well. Avoiding Kyoto defenders will keep the unit costs down as well.

We have a "worker" tech already with the wheel. What's the research time on pottery or agri or mining in epic (as compared to worker build time)?

We have a "worker" tech already with the wheel. What's the research time on pottery or agri or mining in epic (as compared to worker build time)?

I don't know, I've never played a monarch game with two cities right at the start and paying maintenance at the beginning. :D

The way I see it we would have at the best 5 commerce to start with and the worst 4 commerce from the tiles worked on the two cities. The palace gives some commerce right? 7 or 8? Well if we can figure out the maintenance we can see how much time the worker techs will take.

I'm going to try to run a small test case this weekend and see what the maintenance usually is and whether distance is going to affect it that much at the beginning.

How about build order?
For Kyoto, I think workboat, warrior, workboat, workboat, workboat, warrior or archer or spearmen or axeman, library
Warrior to be timed when/where needed. No need for archer or anything upscale defence for a long while.... Having a (token) defender @ Kyoto gives +1 happy even if we are not in HR (or actualy saves a -1 we need protection penalty, them dumb Ch*ts dont know they cannot be attacked). Ideally we want to have the warrior just before we hit the happy cap, if we can time it that good.... + we want to have some angry pop once we get Writing. Getting a lib FAST in Kyoto will make for some nice extra beakers.

New city (Tokyo?) (I think would depend on the tech line)
But maybe (1) Worker, Warrior, Warrior or (2) Warrior, Worker, WarriorI would start with 3 warriors, why?
1) With only 8 tiles there will not be much to improve
2) Early grow will offset the upkeep of the second city a little...
3) Potential worker steal :evil:
4) 2 scouts = more land scouted fast. And if they can survive the early animals (bears in particular) they may just pick up a promotion or 2 and may end up surving us well as fog busters.

Both 2N and NW lose us the :health: of the river... I am verry tempted to use the settler for a scout for a turn or 2 to try and find a good spot down the river...

Tech, as I would not build a worker of the bat... and if coastal and with Fish want a workboat first to... I would feel comfertable getting BW first. Tho there is a good chance we have to found a third city before we can hook up Bronze....
We want to have Axemen early enough, so we can deal with the barb axe'

Both 2N and NW lose us the :health: of the river... I am verry tempted to use the settler for a scout for a turn or 2 to try and find a good spot down the river...

Tech, as I would not build a worker of the bat... and if coastal and with Fish want a workboat first to... I would feel comfertable getting BW first. Tho there is a good chance we have to found a third city before we can hook up Bronze....
We want to have Axemen early enough, so we can deal with the barb axe'

Remember that given the location of the fish, that until we get something generating culture in the second city ... fish are out of reach of our workboats.

The thing is, if this were a normal game, then settling in place gives you the best chance at the hidden resources laid out in starting city spots. There's no such guarantee here (I assume). Course in setting up the map, they could have left the starting position in place and "built" a new city on that island - therby preserving the initial city optimal spot. Too much thinking!

Moving the settler may not be a bad idea, aside from the bad luck of moving it and then finding nothing better and thus having to move back home! Of course holding off on settling helps our fledgling economy.

Oops I thought NW was on the river. I should have realized by the lack of coin on that plain :blush:

Anyways, I like your idea of moving down river. That way we can save the fish and rice site for a good city later on.

@bobrath I don't think we should think too much on whether we are in the original starting position or not. I think its safe to assume the map is edited alot and we can never be sure what surprises are going to come up!

Remember that given the location of the fish, that until we get something generating culture in the second city ... fish are out of reach of our workboats. true but workboats are good scouts as well... ;)

The thing is, if this were a normal game, then settling in place gives you the best chance at the hidden resources laid out in starting city spots. There's no such guarantee here (I assume). Course in setting up the map, they could have left the starting position in place and "built" a new city on that island - therby preserving the initial city optimal spot. Ah yes but then TPTB are evil and my anticipate us thinking that, thus moving the capitol... Or they are even more evil and anticipated our anticipation :crazyeye:
Too much thinking! ah Yes...

Moving the settler may not be a bad idea, aside from the bad luck of moving it and then finding nothing better and thus having to move back home! Of course holding off on settling helps our fledgling economy.A couple of things I am allmost sure of....
1) There will be a "nice" space between us and any AI to prevent to obvious a worker steal.:mad:
2) There will be N O goody huts anywhere nearby:cry:
3) There will be a few surprises...:sad:
4) The more things you know, the more you know you dont know anything :rolleyes:
5) We will have fun :)

What would constitute a better spot, than the one(s) we are presented with here?
1N is a reasonable spot with FP, Rice and a hill in the first 8. But no river...
On the spot, not coastal. But I think I see 2 plains hills (likely spot for Bronze?) E-E and E-SE of the settler
1NW, FP but no other "power" tiles untill border expansion
2N Coastal, to much coast? Rice + Hill, lose 1 turn on settling.

I think it be obious we cannot delay settling untill we get BW...
I like the idea of Mysticism ASAP (first even) so we can start an Obilisk to pop that border....

I favour nw despite it not being riverside (totally didn't notice). If we get bw before mysticism then we can whip obelisk in one turn; once nw city has had its first expansion then it becomes a much better city.
No rush for a worker in that case, warriors or exploring workboat to start. Kyoto will be much better once its got a library and two scientists but that'll be a bit later.

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

Thanks Alanh! I just saw the information just now.

So the maintenance cost is 7 gold. I think that might be a big enough reason to explore a little and see what site is the best. I'm thinking Mysticism should probably be the first tech so we can build an obelisk asap.

Checking in. Some comments to be considered (or completely ignored :))

I favor scouting one or two turns before plopping down the second city. I like the coastal plains tile for the long term but I would concede that it probably isn't the best choice for the short term.

Once the second city is founded, research is going to be slow with -7 maintenance (~50/60%:science:?) so I think Mining -> BW is a big risk. If we have no copper in easy reach then we are stuck with warriors until either IW or Hunting -> Archery. I think you guys are WAY underestimating the importance of archers early on. Those barb archers come quick and constantly replacing fogbusters won't be much fun. We also can't afford to have a ton of warrior fogbusters because maintenance is already going to be a problem. I suggest we make archery our first priority followed by BW. For axemen we need a source of copper + a worker to mine the copper AND road it to at least one city for building axemen. If copper shows up some distance away, we need a settler to build next to the copper + a worker to mine the copper AND road the copper to the city (which we hope is going to be a high production city). In other words, axemen require more than just BW. They are a lot of work and a much bigger risk than you guys are thinking. Raging barbs come fast and furious on Monarch. I know because my current Pacifist SG was the same thing. We had archery and things were no cakewalk but they got better by the time barb axemen started showing up. We had our own axemen by then so it is possible to have both before barb axemen.

Wonders? It depends. The AI will have trouble with the barbs too but they have production advantages and we lack the Industrious trait. Getting to Priesthood really isn't going to be a priority while we fight for survival and we don't start with Mysticism so even Stonehenge might be a stretch. If you guys want Civil Service early then we're not going to get The Pyramids by skipping Masonry. The AI will have Masonry much sooner than us because it doesn't think in terms of "I need to put off this tech in order to grab this one with a GP". If somebody like Bismarck or Ghandi gets Masonry and has stone, bye bye PST. Having said all of that, if we find ourselves bumping up against the AI on this new land, then its possible the barb situation will vanish soon because of the AI settling quickly. This might allow us to concentrate on wonders more and less on survival. However, with an aggressive AI, things might still be tenuous. I'm not opposed to trying to get the Oracle for CoL and then a Great Prophet later for Civil Service but I think we need to be realistic. Kyoto will help our economy but a lot of its commerce is going to go towards supporting our second and eventually third/fourth city. I just don't think we're going to be able to research all this stuff and do all these things so we need to settle on some early priorities here that don't end up with us sitting in the smoking heap of our second city wondering what the h*ll happened. Luckily we would at least have the option of sitting around Kyoto for a few centuries until we finally get a boat to take us across the sea again and maybe fight some macemen (or riflemen) with all of our stockpiled warriors. :rolleyes:

I agree with nearly all of that (playing the same SG on monarch with raging barbs). Only comment would be that Kyoto with a library and two scientists should make a big difference to tech, which should be achievable with a couple of workboats +BW +writing.
Once we've got archers we've got some leeway for copper city (assuming there's copper around!). Bronze working is good for chopping and whipping anyway.

Great points there. Thanks for all of them.


I'm really trying to figure out where the breakover point is between not screwing up our maintenance by founding our second city and having enough time to build up a defense. Raging barbs and aggresive AIs means that we can't put off building a defense, but at the same time, every turn we can avoid settling is a "normal" 100% research turn that will help us get the more useful techs faster.

Re: Second city and bronze - we can always found on top of the bronze, sure we lose the production bonus of the improved tile, but it become unpillagable for that city. If survival is the key constraint, then settling on the resource is the superior choice in every way.

The key with raging barbs is to balance long term goals with short term survival. Settling on the resource is good for instant accessibility but the production capacity will likely be much poorer so actually building the axemen will take longer than settling near the copper and then working it after building the mine. We also have to keep in mind that maintenance is going to kill us so every new city we plop down better be a good long term city and not just a convenience for the short term.

We will have to settle the second city soon if we want time to start cranking out units for protection and fog busting. We MIGHT be able to put it off until Archery so that our first units are archers instead of having a lot of warrior fog busters. I'm not sure I recommend waiting that long but its something to consider.

A library in Kyoto would help and could be whipped but it would require a few techs that we won't have as part of the path to archery and BW. We should probably go Agriculture/Animal Husbandry/Writing after BW. That will pop up horses and allow us to improve the rice eventually, if we settle near the starting location. I'm hoping that we might find a better site further inland that would be on the river and won't require a border pop right away. I suggest moving the warrior as discussed AND scouting down the river with the settler one turn or maybe two turns before continuing. That would give us a better idea of where to settle hopefully. We SHOULD be safe from lions for a couple of turns but then who knows what devouring mouth they might have waiting for us in the darkness. Its a risk for sure.

Our capitol will produce 8 (palace) + 1 (City Center) + 2 (Water tile) = 11 + 1 free beaker which you allways make if you have atleast 1 city even at 0 science.

The new city at best will make 1 (City Center) + 2 (Coastal tile) = 3.
We will have 14 commerce, 7 maintenance = 50%

I suggest we run around with the settler and warrior for a bit trying to find a nice city spot... Preverably a lot of hills and Research Myst as #1. The moment we can whip an obelisk do it... Researching Myst + Mining + Bronze will take (way) to long to wait for to settle the second city.

Another possibility is researching AH, but we need Hunting/Agriculture => AH, which also takes to long I think.

Funny setup this... A gambling game on finding just the right spot to settle the second city...

There are 2 ways to go West and East, either way we are getting closer to "home"... Lowering the Upkeep..

I suggest we run around with the settler and warrior for a bit trying to find a nice city spot...

I agree but let's hope there are no bears out there. (lost a few settlers/warriors that way). LuvtoBuild makes good points and I think we should go for archery first. I've had Huyana (if he's here) declare on me early in the game (when I didn't get axemen yet) so we'll have to tread carefully with aggressive AI's out there. NamliaM you don't think there are any huts around?? I hope not as we might get a tech from that. That first city will be a commerce center with all those fish and will contribute considerably to science as it is. We can grow to pop 5 in capitol and should work all resources for maximum science output.

Time for a contrary viewpoint. Settle on coast. Go hunting, archery, mining, bronze (whip barracks (1 pop for aggressive)), mysticism (whip obelisk), poly, (whip workboat after 1st expansion) priesthood (start oracle), writing (whip library in Kyoto); Get CoL for (half-price) courthouses then expand; build settlers merrily; chance of picking up confucianism. GP for CS from Oracle/temple. Makes it a slow start but much better chance of dominating later. If we want any wonders we need to go for them quickly.

I'm personally feeling a bit ambivlanet about this start folks. If someone else out there is really feeling this start and wants it, I'll be more then happy to adjust the play order.

So reply back here if you *want* to be the first player. No pressure on anyone to actually take it, but I'd like to have the first player be someone that is really juiced about the moves and has a clear(ish) picture in their head for the first 40 turns.

Seeing as I am next on bat... I will take the settler on a walkabout ;)

Ok, new (and perm) order:

namliaM -- UP
bobrath -- Black Leader -- On Deck
eektor
Cosmichail
Pigswill
LuvtoBuild -- scribe

Sounds good to me....so let's play and I am sure Namliam will find a nice spot to hang.....

If only to bring my (finalish) thoughts to the table. The longer we can explore with the settler safely, the better off we may be. Losing the settler will be game ending (obviously), so lets make sure we don't end our second move next to a beastie.

Holding off on founding will let us knock out our first (and second?) techs that much faster. I'm not sure that it will result in a better founding site, but at the very least we can get a good dotmap out of it!

First tech? I really don't have any good thoughts on this one. Mysticism is kinda of important, but only because we need the culture to make our second city able to work more then 9 squares. We can't whip right away on the second city and an oblisk doesn't do anything truly beneficial in STICK. So in my mind, we have to choose between going for BW or Archers. For the reasons stated above, BW is a risky path and might force us into an even higher maint tier if the copper isn't close to the coast. Oh and agriculture will be nice if we choose to hang out near the rice...

See all sorts of non-helpful forked paths!

One for sure path - I'd really like to make the GP slignshot to Civil Service if at all possible. I think it puts us in a great position for mid game dominance in the conquest run.

Animals seem to appear very early; anything kills off an unescorted settler; so do warrior and settler explore together or seperate? I must admit to not being comfortable relying on the RNG at this stage.

If only to bring my (finalish) thoughts to the table. The longer we can explore with the settler safely, the better off we may be. Losing the settler will be game ending (obviously), so lets make sure we don't end our second move next to a beastie.

Keep in mind that if the unescorted settler ends within two tiles of a wolf pack, he might still be history. They can come from the fog unseen, move two tiles across open terrain, and kill him. Also, a settler can only move two tiles in open terrain so if somebody goofs and moves into woods and a bear greets him, bye bye settler. You would need to be sure your first move is ALWAYS into an open terrain tile.

Holding off on founding will let us knock out our first (and second?) techs that much faster. I'm not sure that it will result in a better founding site, but at the very least we can get a good dotmap out of it!

This isn't a bad idea. If we plan to scout for more than two turns, then I would definitely say that the settler needs to travel with the warrior. This is still risky though as pigswill points out. A bad roll from a lion attack might kill our warrior AND our settler. I think we need to settle within say 3-5 turns and I wouldn't move the settler around all by his lonesome more than about one or two turns just to see what's down the river. If we are intent on NOT settling the second city until some initial research is complete, then I suggest we find a good forested hill to camp on for a while. I don't think wandering around in the open would be a very good idea. Imagine getting caught on grassland by lions or worse, bears.

One for sure path - I'd really like to make the GP slignshot to Civil Service if at all possible. I think it puts us in a great position for mid game dominance in the conquest run.

This is true. It would be nice to have the samurai while everyone else is still running around with axemen, swordsmen, and spearmen. It might be worth it to go for BW and, if we're REALLY lucky, find a spot with marble and copper to settle the second city. I'm doubting our god Gyathaar, the one who created the heavens and the earth, likes us that much though.:)

If only to bring my (finalish) thoughts to the table. The longer we can explore with the settler safely, the better off we may be. Losing the settler will be game ending (obviously), so lets make sure we don't end our second move next to a beastie.Yeah, :lol: that would be something... I think I will try and have the settler and warrior together a bit...

First tech? I really don't have any good thoughts on this one. Mysticism is kinda of important, but only because we need the culture to make our second city able to work more then 9 squares. We can't whip right away on the second city and an oblisk doesn't do anything truly beneficial in STICK. So in my mind, we have to choose between going for BW or Archers. For the reasons stated above, BW is a risky path and might force us into an even higher maint tier if the copper isn't close to the coast. Oh and agriculture will be nice if we choose to hang out near the rice...

See all sorts of non-helpful forked paths!

One for sure path - I'd really like to make the GP slignshot to Civil Service if at all possible. I think it puts us in a great position for mid game dominance in the conquest run.
I think the savest path will go thru (dead end :sad:) Archery... Atleast then we can build some defence for sure....

Not step into Forrest in move 1, Check...
Bears... Please keep em away :(
TPTB might just have a perfect spot lined up just inside the fog to compensate for the 7gpt upkeep, Gold grasslandhill? with some rice or wheat would be nice...

Well I played the first turn and a Half, I think I found a nice spot to settle...
What do you guys think? 2 gem grass, gold hill, plenty food and on a river...
http://img157.imageshack.us/img157/4268/sgotm2startea4.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

The teal circel, I dont know if you can see that real good, is water. Our best bet of getting lower maintenance is going west. Look at below mini maps per move...
http://img60.imageshack.us/img60/6128/sgotmminimk5.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
You can clearly see the map moving as the warrior can see more land... Meaning to me that moving east will increase Maintenance.... unless we plan on moving 10 turns or something (IF there is enough land that is...)
But IF the coast is sea and I am betting it is... there is not going to be much space in going west. Atleast on the dot we will be making a profit on the city the moment we can mine 1 gem. 7 maybe 8 gpt upkeep and 7 or 8 income?
Adding the second gem mine and the gold.... We are in the +...

Proposed plan about techs, go for Archery and get mining in time with the worker. Would it be smart to settle ASAP or wait till Hunting and/or Mining are in? I would settle ASAP... Settling means tho dropping science considerably... to 50 or even 40%... We will have 3 more turns of 100% so... hunting in say 8 or 9 turns and Mining in 12-14 or so after that? I dont think we can or want to wait 7 turns till Hunting is in....
Do we go worker first? or do we build a Warrior (or something) to size 2 and start a worker at that time?
Worker first would be smart I think....

Well played NamliaM. I would have been ready to criticise if your play hadn't worked out so its only fair to credit you for the move. I'd say settle by the gems asap, maybe go mining, hunting, archery. Build worker, warrior (or poss worker, start barracks, archer when on line). We wont get worker or archers until we settle so I see little benefit in delaying.

IMO, move the settler to the propsed gem spot, but hold of settling for a couple more turns - either when the settler is threatened by an animal or when we're x turns out from barbs showing up. Where X is enough turns to build an archer. We can trade off any more exploring for keeping our warrior home on the second city to give X a little wiggle room, but not much since I dislike tempting RNG.

In a "normal" game, when do you normally settle your second city? Not for quite a while, but we have to balance the fact that our capital won't be able to supply defensive units to the second city and that moves the timeline up. So much balancing!!!!!

Not sure about Archery vs mining. Mining would give us the mines, but with raging barbs they'll get pillaged fast. Northern gems have the advantage of being a river crossing to attack, but there's no forest or hill to help our defenders out more. To me those gems look like traps.

Decisions, decisions.

Plan A
Switch to Mining
Settle the dot and build a worker
Mine the Gems and finish Hunting
Build warrior fog busters
Head for Archery and build archers
Head for BW or Mysticism

Pro: We get started sooner
Cons: Scientific progress will be slower

[U}Plan B[/U]
Continue with Hunting, then Archery
Setup camp in the forest 1W of dot
Move 1E and settle when animals appear
Build archers and prepare for onslaught
Research Mining, then BW or Mysticism
When sufficient fog is busted, start worker

Pros: Scientific progress will be quicker
Cons: We get a late start and may be scrambling against barbs later

I was originally leaning towards A but now I'm thinking B might be better. Mining the gems will help to boost science back up but our leader is right. Can we hold on to the mines against the onslaught? Can we build fog busters quickly enough to keep them at bay while our worker improves the countryside? Getting to Archery quicker will allow us to build better fog busters from the getgo so it might not matter if we don't have as many. Hopefully they won't die as quickly.

One question... why is settling on the river so important in this case?

On a river offcourse gives the +2:health: which is really a bonus adding to the allready great spot...
Also the river may just act as a road to our second third city...

Assuming that 1 mined & worked gems mine is enough to break even on our second ;) city... working the second Gems will put us in the Black for founding this city...The earlier we achieve this, the earlier we have Archers.

One question... why is settling on the river so important in this case?

Well, if our third city is founded on the same river, we will have an unpillageable trade route that might be helpful with raging barbs roaming the countryside. Getting copper or iron transported around with minimal roads is a good thing. In fact, if we find copper or iron ON the river, we would only need to defend the mine.

Assuming that 1 mined & worked gems mine is enough to break even on our second ;) city... working the second Gems will put us in the Black for founding this city...The earlier we achieve this, the earlier we have Archers.

The 7:commerce: from working a gem mine on the river tile isn't going to cover the -7:gold: (or worse since we're further inland) maintenance. We would have to run 0%:science: for that to compute. At -7:gold: in the 2nd city, we would need ~14:commerce: to run at 50%:science: and not go bankrupt.

Makes sense on the river, I'm just trying to think outside the box.


I was originally leaning towards A but now I'm thinking B might be better. Mining the gems will help to boost science back up but our leader is right. Can we hold on to the mines against the onslaught? Can we build fog busters quickly enough to keep them at bay while our worker improves the countryside? Getting to Archery quicker will allow us to build better fog busters from the getgo so it might not matter if we don't have as many. Hopefully they won't die as quickly.

IMO, fog busters is... the optimal idea, but the more realistic will be to get our units into the best defensive spots and let them gain exp off the barbs. Once they hit the 10 exp max, then we move them out to fog busting. There are some forested hills and some river crossing forest arounds teal dot, so the more we can lure barbs into bad attacks, the better we'll be. I do understand the mental rush for hooking up the gems, but until we can be sure that we can hold a defensive spot with no bonus to the defender from terrain... we will get better use out of our hammers by pushing back the barbs then slowing growth for a worker that will spend most of the time huddled in the city.

If we can hold off on founding the second city (and I agree that teal is the best spot from what we can see) until we at least complete Hunting, then we're better off IMO. The second city will be a drain, there's no way to avoid that with Raging Barbs on the horizon.

I'm not sure I understand hiding the settler in the forest... why not have them sit on the founding spot? Is there something I'm missing?

Just pulled this from a thread over the general forum and wanted to pass it along if the PST desiring folks are worried about missing out on masonry:

If you have both Theology and Code of Laws and yet not Monarchy (prerequisite for Divine Right), Civil Service should be your Great Prophet's technology option, so you can have Masonry and still get a slingshot. Masonry is usually avoided because it takes you down the Monotheism-Theology path. If you self-research Code of Laws and build The Oracle for Theology for instance, you can still burn a Great Prophet on Civil Service.

Plan A: We should have 20-30 turns leeway before the barbs appear. Kyoto will be producing 11-12 commerce, new city (Tokyo?) will be producing 2-3 commerce; so 7 research/turn (goes up to 9 after Kyoto gets to pop 2). 15 turns to build a worker, 8 turns to build a warrior. By the the time barbs appear we should have a second city, a gem mine and a couple of warriors and be ready to produce archers.

Plan B:hang around until Kyoto researches hunting and archery; 12 commerce=12 research. Hunting+Archery 10-12 turns. Settle and start to build archer c12 turns. Second city, warrior,archer, probably 1/2 archer.

I prefer plan A.

Well... Thanks for the ideas, but I went and played right after I posted... and this is what I came up with...

*geez* I didnt think I could make so many screenies of Nothing ;)...

Anyway, not thinking straight I sent the warrior south instead of north. Even before the settler got to its spot we meet allready our first "friend", or uhm GIRL friend actually.
http://img182.imageshack.us/img182/3824/sgotm2issabellauh3.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
Thats 3 turns of moving... or 6 tiles? Geez... OK maybe she pop a scout from a goody hut allowing for 8 tiles?? Ack ! :eek:

A few turns later and our 2nd city is barely in place as the warrior pops a hut and we gain a scout...
Kyoto's borders expand to show of more land...
http://img358.imageshack.us/img358/7776/sgotm2kyotoexpandsdg4.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
It is not as isolated as we thought it would be...
I added later some nets to the fish and added also a warrior to remove the -1 for not beeing defended... Later I added 2 citizens "on patrol" ;) to speed up the 2nd workboat.... Kyoto now looks like ...
http://img411.imageshack.us/img411/4061/sgotm2kyotoinsidean5.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

Jumping back a little in time, I found another GH.... :cry: but Issabella grabbed it, this will be known as the GH incident :cry:
http://img358.imageshack.us/img358/690/sgotm2hutda6.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

This is the world as we currently know it...
http://img182.imageshack.us/img182/9067/sgotm2knownworldlz9.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
Unfortunatly we cannot sustain the 80%, but I went with Mysticism for the obvious reason... Obelisks... But now I am thinking something else....
We want the Obelisk for the culture right? But we need hammers bad for Units... so an Obelisk is the least of our worries ATM...
Why not whip an Obelisk in Kyoto?? ==> Meaning Stonehedge???

Kyoto will not have much (usefull) to build soon, if we can get some turns of 2 hammers into and maybe some whip overflow from whipping say a galley or workboat... We might just be able to whip the Hedge into Kyoto...

Is that a good idea? or not? Anyway tech wize I switched to Mining immediatly then Hunting => Archery => Mysticism (2 or 3 turns left)
Our worker is all mined out and will have nothing but roading to do :(

And I accidentaly pressed enter 1 to many times :( the 2770 BC save (http://gotm.civfanatics.net/saves/civ4sgotm2/VQ_Black_SG002_BC2770_01.Civ4SavedGame) Sorry

Turn 3, 3910 BC: Osaka has been founded.

Turn 18, 3460 BC: Barbarian's Lion is hit for 23 (31/100HP)

Turn 19, 3430 BC: You have discovered Mining!

Turn 22, 3340 BC: Barbarian's Wolf (1.00) vs VQ Black's Scout (2.20)
Turn 22, 3340 BC: Combat Odds: 0.6%
Turn 22, 3340 BC: (Animal Combat: +20%)
Turn 22, 3340 BC: (Class Animal Combat: +100%)
Turn 22, 3340 BC: Barbarian's Wolf is hit for 29 (71/100HP)
Turn 22, 3340 BC: VQ Black's Scout is hit for 13 (87/100HP)
Turn 22, 3340 BC: VQ Black's Scout is hit for 13 (74/100HP)
Turn 22, 3340 BC: VQ Black's Scout is hit for 13 (61/100HP)
Turn 22, 3340 BC: VQ Black's Scout is hit for 13 (48/100HP)
Turn 22, 3340 BC: Barbarian's Wolf is hit for 29 (42/100HP)
Turn 22, 3340 BC: VQ Black's Scout is hit for 13 (35/100HP)
Turn 22, 3340 BC: Barbarian's Wolf is hit for 29 (13/100HP)
Turn 22, 3340 BC: Barbarian's Wolf is hit for 29 (0/100HP)
Turn 22, 3340 BC: VQ Black's Scout has defeated Barbarian's Wolf!

Turn 26, 3220 BC: Buddhism has been founded in a distant land!

Turn 30, 3100 BC: Barbarian's Lion (2.00) vs VQ Black's Scout (2.70)
Turn 30, 3100 BC: Combat Odds: 21.1%
Turn 30, 3100 BC: (Animal Combat: +20%)
Turn 30, 3100 BC: (Plot Defense: +50%)
Turn 30, 3100 BC: (Class Animal Combat: +100%)
Turn 30, 3100 BC: VQ Black's Scout is hit for 17 (83/100HP)
Turn 30, 3100 BC: Barbarian's Lion is hit for 23 (77/100HP)
Turn 30, 3100 BC: Barbarian's Lion is hit for 23 (54/100HP)
Turn 30, 3100 BC: VQ Black's Scout is hit for 17 (66/100HP)
Turn 30, 3100 BC: VQ Black's Scout is hit for 17 (49/100HP)
Turn 30, 3100 BC: VQ Black's Scout is hit for 17 (32/100HP)
Turn 30, 3100 BC: Barbarian's Lion is hit for 23 (31/100HP)
Turn 30, 3100 BC: Barbarian's Lion is hit for 23 (8/100HP)
Turn 30, 3100 BC: Barbarian's Lion is hit for 23 (0/100HP)
Turn 30, 3100 BC: VQ Black's Scout has defeated Barbarian's Lion!

Turn 31, 3070 BC: You have discovered Hunting!

Turn 33, 3010 BC: You have trained a Warrior in Kyoto. Work has now begun on a Work Boat.

Turn 37, 2890 BC: You have discovered Archery!


Edit: as you can see, Issabella isnt nearly as close as I thought. She has 1 city in the jungle up north... Her capitol is past the choke....

Plan A: We should have 20-30 turns leeway before the barbs appear. Kyoto will be producing 11-12 commerce, new city (Tokyo?) will be producing 2-3 commerce; so 7 research/turn (goes up to 9 after Kyoto gets to pop 2). 15 turns to build a worker, 8 turns to build a warrior. By the the time barbs appear we should have a second city, a gem mine and a couple of warriors and be ready to produce archers.

Plan B:hang around until Kyoto researches hunting and archery; 12 commerce=12 research. Hunting+Archery 10-12 turns. Settle and start to build archer c12 turns. Second city, warrior,archer, probably 1/2 archer.

I prefer plan A.
You forget to adjust for Epic, I think the worker took 23 turns... 15*1.5

Oh, I forget... We have a warrior on patrol in Osaka, 1 up north on the west side, the scout is up north on the east. The warrior is still building cause I had to start him before Archery came in... He will make a nice fog buster sometime...
I would start building some Archers ASAP, skip the Barracks... We dont have that many hammers (yet) and the Barbs will start comming soon... We have a lot of Barbs spawning empty land around us :(

I'll look forward to the discussion and thoughts now (plus suggestions of course).

20 turns for each of us for this set of turns. After that we can adjust as necessary.

As you can tell I think in terms of normal speed though usually the ratios stay the same. Another workboat for Kyoto should boost it up to at least 4 pop, so we could whip half ofthose towards stonehenge.

Just notices our workboats/galleys will be able to explore from Kyoto as our cultural borders have expanded to other coastal waters... Should be interesting to see if the land based guys need to just hang on while the slave driven armada wipes the world out!


So next tech: BW or AH? Pigs are in our second cities small cross, but I think with Barbs on the horizon, we might want to have the option of axes. OF course that assumes we have copper in our cross. :P The other thing that BW gives us is the ability to whip and that may be more useful to us then the axemen...

Obviously I'll be spewing out archers for Osaka. I'll probably pull the northern warrior back to bust up some fog near Osaka (and he can fall back to defend the city if needed). The scout I'll keep out wandering as long as possible, maybe finding some more civs.

No dot map yet!

I like the second city as it's appears it will be a good commerce/science city. Once we start working the gems/gold and farms to work them we should have good science as long as the maintenance doesn't get us.

I like the idea of getting stonehenge (whipping it) since it will help in getting a GP soon for theology. The CS slingshot with the oracle might be tricky on Monarch with no marble. I find it important to get at least one religion for happiness/border popping. Isabella will likely get buddhism/hinduism and might spread to us as she usually gets the shrine quick too. Depending on who else we are with we might think about switching to whatever she has to avoid any early wars or on the other hand, if we have copper in the Fat cross then go after her with axes. We should use our traits and the aggressive is great for building up an army.

Aa far as the raging barbs all we need is probably about 4 archers one for each mine and two in the city. Forget the barracks who needs it when you got barbs for promotions. We shouldn't hold off to long on BW as eventually barb axes will start showing up. Archers with melee on FH can beat them but if we have a resource on non defensive terrain protecting against an axe is problematic. We won't be able to work at the gems/gold until we have enough pop which I think is limited to 4 and the capitol is 5. Of course we can add two pop for the gold/gems so working each one would be good. Also great food sources there, and getting pop up fast to work gold gems is a good approach. Once those are hooked up we can go to 6 in Osaka and 7 in Kyoto.

Now I realize our second city will have no culture period. So putting an obelisk is a good approach as we need to pop the borders. I have found with a city like Osaka with gold/gems/food (great site by the way NamliaM and I'm glad you did the walkabout) you can jump ahead of the AI science wise. (even on Monarch) Of course this doesn't include a second city elsewhere. So getting to courthouses/markets is going to important as well as writing for those great culture producers "libraries".

Mysticism is great for stonehenge and obelisks. After that I would recommend archery mainly it doesn't take long and trying to defend a mine hill with 25% defensive terrain bonus with warriors is a crapshoot. Personally I don't do a lot of fogbusting and usually get about 5 archers and play "let's promote the soldiers" for early Heroic Epic wooohooo. Why keep them away they are great.

Osaka should have adequate production with sheep/gems/gold enough to pump out some archers fast. What I like about raging barbs is you get yourself CD3 archers combat 2 or 3 archers and melee/drill whatever you like. The raging barbs with gold/gems will be well "relentless". I have played monarch games with no raging barbs and had gold I thought I goofed in turning on raging barbs. They wouldn't leave my gold alone.

So maybe it's me but they come on stronger when you have money resources. So archery is a definite must and going for BW right away is just too big a risk imho. AH after that would be good to see if we have horses which can be a big help fogbusting but they suck otherwise.

So are you playing now Bobrath?

EDIT: I see in the spoiler that NamliaM has finished archery so I agree Bobrath AH would be the way go to for the sheep.

bobrath -- Black Leader -- UP --> Our fearless leader he's scared of bears (me too)
namliaM -- just started --> Found the great commerce site
eektor --> on deck --> Sooner or later you get to fight the barbies
Cosmichail --> --> Let's play kill the barbies
Pigswill --> --> Will he have set up the third city or start war??
LuvtoBuild --> --> A complete warmonger at heart so must love the barbs
__________________

Just notices our workboats/galleys will be able to explore from Kyoto as our cultural borders have expanded to other coastal waters... Should be interesting to see if the land based guys need to just hang on while the slave driven armada wipes the world out!

Those three northern tiles are ocean. Can a workboat travel through an ocean square to another coastal square? I think maybe a galley can but I'm not sure about a workboat.

So next tech: BW or AH?

I vote BW. I still think we need to find the copper if any is around. Plus the slavery would be useful as you suggested. AH will only allow us to grow more quickly but we don't really want to grow too quickly with the happiness cap and all. The extra food would allow slavery to be useful in Osaka but for now I think we can wait on AH.

Pigs are in our second cities small cross, ...

Pigs? :dubious: Them's some funny looking pigs with all of that wool :rotfl: (Feel free to slap me any time now)

I like the idea of getting stonehenge (whipping it) since it will help in getting a GP soon for theology.

Should we try to get CoL with a GP from SH? I think if we skip Masonry for a bit we can, right? Theology is good too for theocracy I guess. We could shoot for CmbtIII Samurai that way. All this slingshoting gets me :crazyeye:

@ pigswill On a sidenote, I had to reinstall Civ in order to get the save to load. So apparently my Civ install had an edited file somewhere from screwing around with modding a while back. Thats why the original lock modified assets for The Pacifists was screwed for you. Live and learn. Don't screw with the original files, :nono: even if you think you know what you're doing :lol: Anyway, everything seems cool now.



ADDED THOUGHT: I'm also thinking that the barbs will be coming from the south primarily, especially after Isabella starts settling the north and sending out her own fogbusters to roam the countryside. So I would see about finding some decent sites down that way to camp out. I wouldn't suggest leaving our north exposed of course but I suspect the south will see the most action.

As you can tell I think in terms of normal speed though usually the ratios stay the same. Another workboat for Kyoto should boost it up to at least 4 pop, so we could whip half ofthose towards stonehenge.
Kyoto is allready at size 4 and capabel of sustaining 5 happy people... A total of 7 pop is possible....
Just notices our workboats/galleys will be able to explore from Kyoto as our cultural borders have expanded to other coastal waters... Should be interesting to see if the land based guys need to just hang on while the slave driven armada wipes the world out!
I would use the next workboat to scout a bit... Atleast see past those 2 little islands... I think we want sailing ASAP so we can pull some settlers out off Kyoto and colonise those nice little islands....

So next tech: BW or AH? Pigs are in our second cities small cross, but I think with Barbs on the horizon, we might want to have the option of axes. OF course that assumes we have copper in our cross. :P The other thing that BW gives us is the ability to whip and that may be more useful to us then the axemen... We can use :whipped: but our worker will have nothing to do... But what good is a worker if all our improvements get pillaged?
Uhm.... BW => AH => Agriculture => Sailing?Obviously I'll be spewing out archers for Osaka. I'll probably pull the northern warrior back to bust up some fog near Osaka (and he can fall back to defend the city if needed). The scout I'll keep out wandering as long as possible, maybe finding some more civs.

No dot map yet!
You still have some scouting left to do in the south east, tho I doubt there will be much (usefull) land there. Dotmap is a bit early I think, lets get a handle on the barbs first... ;)
Once those are hooked up we can go to 6 in Osaka and 7 in Kyoto. Unfortunatly the capitol and Osaka are not linked, which means that Kyoto will stay at happy 5 (7 is the food limit tho, at the moment 8 with another workboat)
EDIT: I see in the spoiler that NamliaM has finished archery so I agree Bobrath AH would be the way go to for the sheep. Uhm, it wasnt only in the spoiler ;)

Those three northern tiles are ocean. Can a workboat travel through an ocean square to another coastal square? I think maybe a galley can but I'm not sure about a workboat.Any ship can travel anywhere within your cultural boundries....
I vote BW.:agree: If not for Axe', for :whipped:

I also agree with LTB about the south vs North thing, would like to add thought on the East tho... ;) Dont forget about that... And dont unfog the place to good... we want some barbs to promote our sorry archers ;)

Edit:
Just thought of something in the shower ;) Maybe we dont want to finish that second workboat just yet... I am just thinking, leave 2 or so hammers for the workboat to finish.... Start putting hammers into 'Hedge... Bronze comes in, whip with workboat (adding 30 hammers) Overflowing as much as possible into 'Hedge... I think building a third workboat would be overdoing it. With 2 netted fish we have 12 food and +1 health, with 1 netted fish and 1 crabs you have 11 food and +2 health.
This evensout to 13 food, thats working only the 2 nets... we can grow to size 6.... 3 people to whip = 3*30 = 90
Add to that some 20 of the workboat whip = 110, we need 180 for the 'Hedge...
Or: we get 20 from the boat, 4 hammers per turn (CC + 2 citizens)
We can whip 90 hammers, so we need 70 hammers from normal production = 70/4 = 17 turns :crazyeye:
Seems crazy, but I think doable....

Random thoughts.
Once we've got four cities we can build palace and move capital to main island so leave Kyoto in isolated splendour as our GP Factory.
Too early to dotmap until we've finished exploring island and discovered BW to locate copper (hopefully).
Expand south; leave Izzy to settle north.
Hopefully Izzie will get a religion wot we can pinch from her later.
We can get to AH direct from hunting, don't need intermediate techs.
Would be good to explore from Kyoto after SH; raging barbs may mean barb galleys making workboats a suicide mission.

Well, I have been having problems with my internet recently. So here are my comments:

I vote to go for BW as well. Afterwards I think we should go AH, then Writing.

Its great to see Izzy as the person next to us. Unless Gyanthaar put random personalities, Izzy would go after all the religious techs until she has a religion and tries to get the religious wonder right away. All we have to do is wait a while and take it. Is Izzy's capital in the southeast or up north?

I agree on using a workboat to explore the islands close to Kyoto. I guess Gyanthaar decided to be nice to us just in case we had problems in the main island.

I will be playing in about 8 hours. Lots of good thoughts so far.

(and yes them are some fuzzy pigs we've got there!)


MY plan at this time is to go for BW in the research, more for slavery then for copper discovery. I'll try to manage the workboat so that we come just short of building it and leaving the overflow to go into a pile of rocks. Second workboat will go to crabs for the extra health, third workboat will actully go scouting (if I manage to build it).

While Izzy may very well found a religion, lets not forget the AIs are set to be more aggressive and thus we'll have to be on our toes to keep the nasty nashing teeth of the computer away from our cities.

I don't know that I'll explore the SE that much, depends on how quickly I can get the northern warrior back to homeland D.

I would use the next workboat to scout a bit... Atleast see past those 2 little islands... I think we want sailing ASAP so we can pull some settlers out off Kyoto and colonise those nice little islands....

Not a bad idea. Kyoto would be a pretty good settler factory. I might add that it would also be best to produce workers for those colonies from there instead of producing a worker in the colony itself. We do have to be careful about maintenance though.

Any ship can travel anywhere within your cultural boundries....

Well, now don't I feel stupid. :hammer2: I guess I should have known that since fish, whales, and oil are often in ocean tiles rather than coast. So, if Kyoto doesn't have something useful to build, then I would agree that we should pump out a workboat or two for scouting if we don't have galleys available. They will probably run into barb galleys but at least we might have gained some crucial intel in the process and if we have nothing better to do production wise, why not? Since we are looking to grab SH, we might not have a time to do that though before we get sailing.

Once we've got four cities we can build palace and move capital to main island so leave Kyoto in isolated splendour as our GP Factory.

I was thinking that too but now I'm not sure since we've discovered some land north of Kyoto. We may want to just build the FP or Versailles in Osaka, depending on how many, if any, colonies we start north of Kyoto. I suppose we could jump the Palace to Osaka and then build FP in a northern colony later after the prerequisite courthouses are completed.

Unless Gyanthaar put random personalities, Izzy would go after all the religious techs until she has a religion and tries to get the religious wonder right away.

I would assume they would have told us if Random Personalities were checked. Even if they didn't, we should be able to tell by looking at the settings screen. I'm guessing Izzy will be her usual self and if we get her state religion first, then we can convert and suck up until we are prepared to take her down. She tends to be a bit aggressive anyway so if we end up in a different religion, we'll definitely have to watch out for her.


I think I'll get started on our first spoiler soon so that when it comes time to post it, I won't be so rushed trying to come up with something. Anybody have any suggestions as to how they want to see our storyline develop? I'm thinking something along the lines of we are a band of Tokugawa's trusted guard and we have been sent to avenge the murders. If any of you have a particular Japanese name you might want to go by, I will use that, otherwise I will try to come up with something that seems to fit your playstyle. I can post parts of it here as we go along if you guys want to review it or I can wait and post it all here at once for review before posting in the spoiler thread. I don't want to spam the thread with too much stuff that doesn't directly affect the gameplay.

Horrible names, but just to make others think of better ones:

bobrath -- bobrathsan
namliaM -- namliamsan
eektor --> eektorsan
(seeing a trend here?)
Cosmichail --> cosmichailsan
Pigswill --> piswillsan
LuvtoBuild --> luvtobuildsan


:P

Oh, and I don't need to see the evolving story, in fact I think I might enjoy being suprised when you post up the spoiler!

I will be playing in about 8 hours. Lots of good thoughts so far.

(and yes them are some fuzzy pigs we've got there!)


MY plan at this time is to go for BW in the research, more for slavery then for copper discovery. I'll try to manage the workboat so that we come just short of building it and leaving the overflow to go into a pile of rocks. Second workboat will go to crabs for the extra health, third workboat will actully go scouting (if I manage to build it).

While Izzy may very well found a religion, lets not forget the AIs are set to be more aggressive and thus we'll have to be on our toes to keep the nasty nashing teeth of the computer away from our cities.

I don't know that I'll explore the SE that much, depends on how quickly I can get the northern warrior back to homeland D.
I am not completely sure ... but... I think a workboat on Epic is 45 hammers, if that is so, then we only need to have less than 15 hammers. This will take 2 pop, but still create the 30 hammer overflow.... and with the mongo food out there the 2 pop will grow back like there is no tomorrow.... ;)

Also I changed my mind on the workboat scouting thing... That second workboat is needed badly in for growing Kyoto to Whippable size (+3 food makes a big difference)... Make nets ASAP and dont scout ....

Is there a cap on overflow hammers?

and are you suggesting that I get the second workboat out (and on crabs) and then put work into the third for overflow whipping? Or build the second up til near completion (or when BW comes in) and switch to henge?

Well the way I see it:
1) Get the second workboat to either 13 or 14 (just over 30 to complete) or 43/44 just under completion
2) Whip the thing
3) Finish it and start work on the Hedge for 1 turn sending 29 + 2 hammers into the Hedge
4) Try and plan for the nets to be in place for the 2nd pop to work it... Not sure how that works out, but I think that is immediatly
5) after a turn maybe two on the hedge, start a 3rd workboat
6) Put some turns into that max to 14 or earlier and whip for 2 pop, preverably on > size 4. This is 2 pop, leaving 2 to allready work the still available nets.
7) You could scout with the third boat a bit, till you need the nets for the third pop to work.... the + food for faster growing. Now continue work on the hedge, grow like crazy and whip on size 6.. Back down to 3 to finish the Hedge...

It will cause -2 or even -3 happyness for a few turns, but the hedge is worth that I think...

So if I'm reading this right, actual hammer work done on stonehenge will be almost none, with all but say 4-6 hammers coming from whipping. This will be a fun cross turn project for us.

Course I don't want to be the person that misclicks on the queue and throws away our stonehenge hammers! :P

I am just hoping it will work... Actually I think a whip at epic is also 45 hammers not 30... So you should be able to:
Grow to 3, Work a boat for 1 turn, Whip it, down to 2
Grow to 3, Get the nets in place
Grow to 4, Rince and repeat till we have 4 nets in place and a scout enroute?

I just hope we end up claiming the Hedge.... would be something to end up 1 turn short?!!! :sad:

At the very least we'd be able run at a higher research rate with the gold we'd get from a miss!

I tried some test games... I was sleepless anyway...
It seems getting a max of 3 nets, while having the max pop (i.e. not using citizens, but rather growing a bit to max before using them => Set them back to work to grow to 5)
I would switch to Hedge ASAP, not risk the boat to be finished... We want to whip it to end....

Also keep the gold reserve as low as possible... And try and keep the Gem mines worked to max science...

To whip the Hedge at the finish we want 6 pop so once we have 3 nets in place... Grow like crazy... we need 6 pop of which atleast 2 will be mad eating 4 food... Growing 5=>6 will not go fast...

Henge is 180 hammers on epic. Each whip is 45 hammers/pop so need equivalent of 4 pop whipped. Practical limit is likely to be unhappiness.

Well, its certainly Raging Barbs! We've lost one gems mine, but that's ok short term since I had to whip out an archer (and overflow gave us the second archer the next turn).

At the start of my turns, Izzy founded and converted to Hinduism. So lets pray for some religious fervor boys.

Mysticism came in on my 3rd turn (2680BC) and we started on Bronze Working (15 turns @ 60%). Stonegehenge will take 180 hammers. I had 3 turns left on the current workboat, so I let it finish off - we need the growth and the slavery is still a ways off.

In 2590BC, our workboat finishes and I put him on crabs right away. Our next workboat is due in 12 turns and slavery is due in 10.

In 2560BC, our scout spots the first barb (and we run towards Izzy).
http://img214.imageshack.us/img214/4287/civ4screenshot0000yh5.jpg
Our northern warrior is just back to Osaka city limits (there are some token mining turns on the hill southwest of Osaka).

Little info during the Barb Wars:
http://img85.imageshack.us/img85/3875/civ4screenshot0001aa7.jpg

It got dicey and I ended up firing our CoPs to get BW in as fast as possible. I danced the worker (and had him build roads as pillage bait) to try and manage the barb flow. We're taking about 1 warrior attack per turn (ramping up now).

In 2320BC, our scout was heading back home and ended up in forest next to a barb warrior.
We had woodsman 1, but I resigned myself to the loss of our unit. Scout lives!!!! (promoted right away to woodsman 2). He should be a great fog buster for us and is ready to head out. Right now the barbs are streaming from the SW of our city, but that won't last as our scout spotted another to the east.

In 2260BC, I :whipped: our workboat and sent it exploring. All citizens are working the water, currently it would take 7 population to whip stonehenge.

Interesting stuff discovered (ignore the barb infestation):
http://img85.imageshack.us/img85/8471/civ4screenshot0005ja3.jpg
Yes, we do have copper to our east and if you look closely you can see its near a very nice city spot!
I left a sign on a forested hill that might make a good barb magnet for our two warriors to hang out on. We've got two archers (unpromoted) at home and the warriors are Shock and Shock + Combat 2.


We really need to think about sailing soon so we can use what looks to be some great surroundings:
http://img93.imageshack.us/img93/1449/civ4screenshot0006wm0.jpg


The Save (http://gotm.civfanatics.net/saves/civ4sgotm2/VQ_Black_SG002_BC2200_01.Civ4SavedGame)


Barbilicious Turn Log:

Turn 41, 2770 BC: Hinduism has been founded in a distant land!

Turn 42, 2740 BC: Isabella converts to Hinduism!

Turn 43, 2710 BC: You have discovered Mysticism!

Turn 48, 2560 BC: Barbarian's Warrior (2.00) vs VQ Black's Warrior (2.80)
Turn 48, 2560 BC: Combat Odds: 12.0%
Turn 48, 2560 BC: (Extra Combat: +10%)
Turn 48, 2560 BC: (Plot Defense: +25%)
Turn 48, 2560 BC: (Fortify: +5%)
Turn 48, 2560 BC: Barbarian's Warrior is hit for 23 (77/100HP)
Turn 48, 2560 BC: Barbarian's Warrior is hit for 23 (54/100HP)
Turn 48, 2560 BC: Barbarian's Warrior is hit for 23 (31/100HP)
Turn 48, 2560 BC: Barbarian's Warrior is hit for 23 (8/100HP)
Turn 48, 2560 BC: VQ Black's Warrior is hit for 16 (84/100HP)
Turn 48, 2560 BC: Barbarian's Warrior is hit for 23 (0/100HP)
Turn 48, 2560 BC: VQ Black's Warrior has defeated Barbarian's Warrior!

Turn 49, 2530 BC: Barbarian's Warrior (2.00) vs VQ Black's Warrior (2.87)
Turn 49, 2530 BC: Combat Odds: 11.2%
Turn 49, 2530 BC: (Extra Combat: +10%)
Turn 49, 2530 BC: (Plot Defense: +25%)
Turn 49, 2530 BC: (Fortify: +10%)
Turn 49, 2530 BC: VQ Black's Warrior is hit for 16 (83/100HP)
Turn 49, 2530 BC: Barbarian's Warrior is hit for 24 (76/100HP)
Turn 49, 2530 BC: VQ Black's Warrior is hit for 16 (67/100HP)
Turn 49, 2530 BC: Barbarian's Warrior is hit for 24 (52/100HP)
Turn 49, 2530 BC: VQ Black's Warrior is hit for 16 (51/100HP)
Turn 49, 2530 BC: Barbarian's Warrior is hit for 24 (28/100HP)
Turn 49, 2530 BC: VQ Black's Warrior is hit for 16 (35/100HP)
Turn 49, 2530 BC: VQ Black's Warrior is hit for 16 (19/100HP)
Turn 49, 2530 BC: Barbarian's Warrior is hit for 24 (4/100HP)
Turn 49, 2530 BC: VQ Black's Warrior is hit for 16 (3/100HP)
Turn 49, 2530 BC: VQ Black's Warrior is hit for 16 (0/100HP)
Turn 49, 2530 BC: Barbarian's Warrior has defeated VQ Black's Warrior!

Turn 50, 2500 BC: Barbarian's Warrior (1.67) vs VQ Black's Warrior (3.70)
Turn 50, 2500 BC: Combat Odds: 0.2%
Turn 50, 2500 BC: (Extra Combat: -10%)
Turn 50, 2500 BC: (Extra Combat: +10%)
Turn 50, 2500 BC: (Fortify: +25%)
Turn 50, 2500 BC: (City Defense: +25%)
Turn 50, 2500 BC: (City Barbarian Defense: +25%)
Turn 50, 2500 BC: Barbarian's Warrior is hit for 27 (49/100HP)
Turn 50, 2500 BC: Barbarian's Warrior is hit for 27 (22/100HP)
Turn 50, 2500 BC: VQ Black's Warrior is hit for 14 (86/100HP)
Turn 50, 2500 BC: VQ Black's Warrior is hit for 14 (72/100HP)
Turn 50, 2500 BC: Barbarian's Warrior is hit for 27 (0/100HP)
Turn 50, 2500 BC: VQ Black's Warrior has defeated Barbarian's Warrior!

Turn 51, 2470 BC: Barbarian's Warrior (1.46) vs VQ Black's Warrior (3.03)
Turn 51, 2470 BC: Combat Odds: 0.7%
Turn 51, 2470 BC: (Extra Combat: +10%)
Turn 51, 2470 BC: (Fortify: +25%)
Turn 51, 2470 BC: (City Defense: +25%)
Turn 51, 2470 BC: (City Attack: -20%)
Turn 51, 2470 BC: (City Barbarian Defense: +25%)
Turn 51, 2470 BC: VQ Black's Warrior is hit for 14 (78/100HP)
Turn 51, 2470 BC: VQ Black's Warrior is hit for 14 (64/100HP)
Turn 51, 2470 BC: Barbarian's Warrior is hit for 26 (47/100HP)
Turn 51, 2470 BC: Barbarian's Warrior is hit for 26 (21/100HP)
Turn 51, 2470 BC: VQ Black's Warrior is hit for 14 (50/100HP)
Turn 51, 2470 BC: Barbarian's Warrior is hit for 26 (0/100HP)
Turn 51, 2470 BC: VQ Black's Warrior has defeated Barbarian's Warrior!

Turn 52, 2440 BC: Barbarian's Warrior (2.00) vs VQ Black's Warrior (3.57)
Turn 52, 2440 BC: Combat Odds: 3.0%
Turn 52, 2440 BC: (Extra Combat: +10%)
Turn 52, 2440 BC: (Fortify: +25%)
Turn 52, 2440 BC: (City Defense: +25%)
Turn 52, 2440 BC: (City Barbarian Defense: +25%)
Turn 52, 2440 BC: (Combat: +25%)
Turn 52, 2440 BC: Barbarian's Warrior is hit for 27 (73/100HP)
Turn 52, 2440 BC: Barbarian's Warrior is hit for 27 (46/100HP)
Turn 52, 2440 BC: VQ Black's Warrior is hit for 14 (71/100HP)
Turn 52, 2440 BC: Barbarian's Warrior is hit for 27 (19/100HP)
Turn 52, 2440 BC: VQ Black's Warrior is hit for 14 (57/100HP)
Turn 52, 2440 BC: Barbarian's Warrior is hit for 27 (0/100HP)
Turn 52, 2440 BC: VQ Black's Warrior has defeated Barbarian's Warrior!

Turn 53, 2410 BC: Barbarian's Warrior (2.00) vs VQ Black's Warrior (3.30)
Turn 53, 2410 BC: Combat Odds: 4.0%
Turn 53, 2410 BC: (Extra Combat: +10%)
Turn 53, 2410 BC: (Fortify: +5%)
Turn 53, 2410 BC: (City Defense: +25%)
Turn 53, 2410 BC: (City Barbarian Defense: +25%)
Turn 53, 2410 BC: VQ Black's Warrior is hit for 15 (85/100HP)
Turn 53, 2410 BC: VQ Black's Warrior is hit for 15 (70/100HP)
Turn 53, 2410 BC: Barbarian's Warrior is hit for 25 (75/100HP)
Turn 53, 2410 BC: Barbarian's Warrior is hit for 25 (50/100HP)
Turn 53, 2410 BC: Barbarian's Warrior is hit for 25 (25/100HP)
Turn 53, 2410 BC: Barbarian's Warrior is hit for 25 (0/100HP)
Turn 53, 2410 BC: VQ Black's Warrior has defeated Barbarian's Warrior!

Turn 54, 2380 BC: You have discovered Bronze Working!
Turn 54, 2380 BC: Barbarian's Warrior (2.00) vs VQ Black's Warrior (4.07)
Turn 54, 2380 BC: Combat Odds: 1.8%
Turn 54, 2380 BC: (Extra Combat: +10%)
Turn 54, 2380 BC: (Fortify: +25%)
Turn 54, 2380 BC: (City Defense: +25%)
Turn 54, 2380 BC: (City Barbarian Defense: +25%)
Turn 54, 2380 BC: (Combat: +25%)
Turn 54, 2380 BC: VQ Black's Warrior is hit for 14 (83/100HP)
Turn 54, 2380 BC: Barbarian's Warrior is hit for 28 (72/100HP)
Turn 54, 2380 BC: Barbarian's Warrior is hit for 28 (44/100HP)
Turn 54, 2380 BC: Barbarian's Warrior is hit for 28 (16/100HP)
Turn 54, 2380 BC: Barbarian's Warrior is hit for 28 (0/100HP)
Turn 54, 2380 BC: VQ Black's Warrior has defeated Barbarian's Warrior!

Turn 55, 2350 BC: The revolution has begun!!!
Turn 55, 2350 BC: VQ Black adopts Slavery!
Turn 55, 2350 BC: The anarchy is over! Your government is re-established.
Turn 55, 2350 BC: Barbarian's Warrior (2.00) vs VQ Black's Scout (1.70)
Turn 55, 2350 BC: Combat Odds: 71.7%
Turn 55, 2350 BC: (Plot Defense: +50%)
Turn 55, 2350 BC: (Feature: +20%)
Turn 55, 2350 BC: VQ Black's Scout is hit for 21 (79/100HP)
Turn 55, 2350 BC: Barbarian's Warrior is hit for 18 (82/100HP)
Turn 55, 2350 BC: Barbarian's Warrior is hit for 18 (64/100HP)
Turn 55, 2350 BC: Barbarian's Warrior is hit for 18 (46/100HP)
Turn 55, 2350 BC: VQ Black's Scout is hit for 21 (58/100HP)
Turn 55, 2350 BC: Barbarian's Warrior is hit for 18 (28/100HP)
Turn 55, 2350 BC: Barbarian's Warrior is hit for 18 (10/100HP)
Turn 55, 2350 BC: VQ Black's Scout is hit for 21 (37/100HP)
Turn 55, 2350 BC: VQ Black's Scout is hit for 21 (16/100HP)
Turn 55, 2350 BC: Barbarian's Warrior is hit for 18 (0/100HP)
Turn 55, 2350 BC: VQ Black's Scout has defeated Barbarian's Warrior!

Turn 57, 2290 BC: The enemy has been spotted near Osaka!
Turn 57, 2290 BC: VQ Black's Warrior (2.20) vs Barbarian's Warrior (1.60)
Turn 57, 2290 BC: Combat Odds: 79.5%
Turn 57, 2290 BC: (Extra Combat: -10%)
Turn 57, 2290 BC: (Combat: -25%)
Turn 57, 2290 BC: Barbarian's Warrior is hit for 23 (77/100HP)
Turn 57, 2290 BC: Barbarian's Warrior is hit for 23 (54/100HP)
Turn 57, 2290 BC: Barbarian's Warrior is hit for 23 (31/100HP)
Turn 57, 2290 BC: VQ Black's Warrior is hit for 17 (83/100HP)
Turn 57, 2290 BC: VQ Black's Warrior is hit for 17 (66/100HP)
Turn 57, 2290 BC: Barbarian's Warrior is hit for 23 (8/100HP)
Turn 57, 2290 BC: Barbarian's Warrior is hit for 23 (0/100HP)
Turn 57, 2290 BC: VQ Black's Warrior has defeated Barbarian's Warrior!

Turn 58, 2260 BC: The enemy has been spotted near Osaka!
Turn 58, 2260 BC: The enemy has been spotted near Osaka!
Turn 58, 2260 BC: VQ Black's Warrior (2.20) vs Barbarian's Warrior (1.60)
Turn 58, 2260 BC: Combat Odds: 79.5%
Turn 58, 2260 BC: (Extra Combat: -10%)
Turn 58, 2260 BC: (Combat: -25%)
Turn 58, 2260 BC: Barbarian's Warrior is hit for 23 (77/100HP)
Turn 58, 2260 BC: Barbarian's Warrior is hit for 23 (54/100HP)
Turn 58, 2260 BC: Barbarian's Warrior is hit for 23 (31/100HP)
Turn 58, 2260 BC: Barbarian's Warrior is hit for 23 (8/100HP)
Turn 58, 2260 BC: Barbarian's Warrior is hit for 23 (0/100HP)
Turn 58, 2260 BC: VQ Black's Warrior has defeated Barbarian's Warrior!
Turn 58, 2260 BC: Your Warrior has destroyed a Warrior!

Turn 59, 2230 BC: The enemy has been spotted near Osaka!
Turn 59, 2230 BC: The enemy has been spotted near Osaka!

Turn 60, 2200 BC: The enemy has been spotted near Osaka!
Turn 60, 2200 BC: The enemy has been spotted near Osaka!

Well Isa is keeping true to her name, with any luck she will found Judaism as well :) Mysticism came in on my 3rd turn (2680BC) and we started on Bronze Working (15 turns @ 60%). Stonegehenge will take 180 hammers. I had 3 turns left on the current workboat, so I let it finish off - we need the growth and the slavery is still a ways off.
No...... :cry: Why? we were allready at size 4, with a happy cap at 5.... Why need another boat right now? We need hammers not boats...
I hope this works out tho :), but 40 some hammers we are now putting into a boat is about 1/4 of Stonehedge :( and about 1/2 of the hammers we need to whip for 3 pop...

It got dicey and I ended up firing our CoPs to get BW in as fast as possible. I danced the worker (and had him build roads as pillage bait) to try and manage the barb flow. We're taking about 1 warrior attack per turn (ramping up now). Good thinking about those roads... We need to get some folks out there to keep our city from beeing on the front line....

Wow thats some barb killing :) I count atleast 10 dead barb Warriors... We need to get some Shock Archers for them Axe' which will be comming, how likely will we get that Bronze? Lizzy is expanding .... and she will be intrested in that Bronze as well... Should we aim for Iron Working, to see what Iron deposits we have? I dont see us building that Bronze city anytime soon :(

I had a closer look at the save... and confirmed that these two blobs of land are just that, Now that I saw it in game I can see it on the screeny too... There is water on the other side too... Offcourse this could be that there is more land... but....
I think I would prefer to get Stonehedge above any intell (if at all, it is also possible that there is nothing but Ocean out there...)
1) Create Nets with the boat
2) Wait for the whip to ware off
3) Put 1 turn into a warrior (22 hammers - 2 production) and whip (45) for 23 overflow into Hedge
4) Grow to size 6 and whip the damn thing into Kyoto....

The warrior we can later use for MP on one of those Islands...
Techs: AH=>Sailing=>Writing or AH=>Writing=>Sailing?

Edit: Take a look at the graphs pholks... look at the score of VQ red, I hope they didnt lose their second city to barbs :cry:

Edit2: Some teams havent even started yet?

Edit3: Save our warroirs ;) Promote our Archers ;) and DONT LET ANY OF THEM DIE ! ! ! We need each and every abled body to defend our property ;)

Edit4: We need that Gem mine back ASAP, another whip possibly for 2 archers?

I reckon we need copper city asap;maybe go for the build/whip-archer-put- overflow-into- settler trick in Osaka.
If we can pull off Stonehenge in Kyoto it may be worth trying the same trick with Oracle (would need writing and priesthood of course).
Longer term we should be looking at Samurai asap; Oracle CoL slingshot and burn Prophet on CS would be half way there. CoL is again useful for half price and easily whipped courthouses.
I'm not convinced by researching ironworking early; unless we have iron in Fat Cross it doesn't achieve anything to counter them nasty barbies.

No...... :cry: Why? we were allready at size 4, with a happy cap at 5.... Why need another boat right now? We need hammers not boats...
I hope this works out tho :), but 40 some hammers we are now putting into a boat is about 1/4 of Stonehedge :( and about 1/2 of the hammers we need to whip for 3 pop...


My thinking was that we needed the second developed resource sooner rather then later to get the growth as high and as fast as possible. I will admit I agonized over this decision for the 3 turns.

Note due to the growth, we can put down 4 CoPs and reach stagnancy as opposed to the 2 CoPs at stagnant now. I know its only 2 hammers difference - silver lining and all dont ya know.


Founding a third city without making some good progress on fogbusting and barb intercepting is going to be very tough. There was unlucky on only one roll (losing at 11.2%!!!), but it put our land empire in jeopardy. I do wish we could get that copper city up and running, but its gonna be rough. I would make sure to use the scout as the ultra fog buster. Woodsman 2 is nice, but I don't think the odds favor him against a barb warrior even so.

I think I would prefer to get Stonehenge above any intell (if at all, it is also possible that there is nothing but Ocean out there...)
1) Create Nets with the boat
2) Wait for the whip to ware off
3) Put 1 turn into a warrior (22 hammers - 2 production) and whip (45) for 23 overflow into Hedge
4) Grow to size 6 and whip the damn thing into Kyoto....

I like namliaM's plan. Makes sense to me after looking at the save and seeing where we are now. How long before the whipping unhappiness clears? I was thinking it told you somewhere how many more turns. Anyway, I think we should use the fishing boat on the fish for an extra :food: vs the second clam. If we take the citizen working the second clam and set him back up as a citizen specialist, we'll get an extra :hammers: and can prebuild the warrior faster, as well as put another :hammers: into SH each turn. Having the citizen specialist would also slow growth a bit and give a little more time for the whipping unhappiness to clear.

I say we go: Sailing=>Meditation=>Priesthood=>Writing

We need sailing more than AH right now. AH won't do us much good until the barb situation is under control and I'm sure that's a little ways off. After Sailing, I think Meditation=>Priesthood=>Writing might be better. We will need Priesthood for the Oracle and CoL anyway and we could research Writing while working on it. AH is something we need for the sheep but until we can actually use the sheep in peace, I'm not sure it's worth the effort. Worker techs just aren't going to be very useful right now. IW might be a good option but only if it showed up in the starting square of Osaka. Even then we would have to protect the mine and its road. Keep in mind that barb galleys may start showing up soon and we will want to protect our food in Kyoto. It's crucial for whipping in SH and maybe Oracle.

BTW, if we fail to get SH or the Oracle or even both, we should save some of the cash for upgrading warriors to axemen once we secure a metal resource. If a metal is not in our immediate future, then it makes sense to just go ahead and use it for research.

You can hover over the whipping button and subtract 15 (for epic) from the number of turns of unhappy the whip would bring to give you how long for the whip to expire.

I hooked the clam up for the extra healthy resource as that gives us one food extra (not lost to waste). We can indeed work the two fishes for faster growth.

AH was worked because it would reveal horses. Partial mindslip into Warlords mode since Chariots have a bonus against axe. They are Str 4 (one less then axe, one more then archer) and they have the chance to withdraw along with better range. Makes them nice fog busting units. That does assume Horses show up in our cross! :P

bobrath -- Black Leader -- just played
namliaM -- started us nicely
eektor --> UP --> you get to fight the barbies
Cosmichail --> on deck --> Let's play kill the barbies
Pigswill --> --> Will he have set up the third city or start war??
LuvtoBuild --> --> A complete warmonger at heart so must love the barbs

I reckon we need copper city asap;maybe go for the build/whip-archer-put- overflow-into- settler trick in Osaka.
If we can pull off Stonehenge in Kyoto it may be worth trying the same trick with Oracle (would need writing and priesthood of course).
Longer term we should be looking at Samurai asap; Oracle CoL slingshot and burn Prophet on CS would be half way there. CoL is again useful for half price and easily whipped courthouses.
I'm not convinced by researching ironworking early; unless we have iron in Fat Cross it doesn't achieve anything to counter them nasty barbies.
The way I see it, we have Archers... which are not going to be good enough longer term... Unless they upgrade to Samurai which I dont think they do :D

Ironworking would give us the full lay of the land in resources (other than AH) and I fear if we dont make a settler #1 priority that Isa is going to take it... If she takes the bronze we had best know where the Iron is?!

Note due to the growth, we can put down 4 CoPs and reach stagnancy as opposed to the 2 CoPs at stagnant now. I know its only 2 hammers difference - silver lining and all dont ya know.4 CoPs? How do we support 6 pop? IIRC Kyoto is capped at 5? :confused:
I do agree that
1) BW was a ways away
2) Things are as they are and we WILL make the best of it...

Founding a third city without making some good progress on fogbusting and barb intercepting is going to be very tough. There was unlucky on only one roll (losing at 11.2%!!!), but it put our land empire in jeopardy. I do wish we could get that copper city up and running, but its gonna be rough. I would make sure to use the scout as the ultra fog buster. Woodsman 2 is nice, but I don't think the odds favor him against a barb warrior even so.Scout vs anything (but wolves maybe) never is a sure thing... Wishing dont make it so... Hammers do ;)

I think we should use the fishing boat on the fish for an extra :food: vs the second clam. :agree:

The Fish or the Clams for the second boat was an even trade.... Third boat should go on the Fish tho...

If we take the citizen working the second clam and set him back up as a citizen specialist, we'll get an extra :hammers: and can prebuild the warrior faster, as well as put another :hammers: into SH each turn. Having the citizen specialist would also slow growth a bit and give a little more time for the whipping unhappiness to clear.From what I have seen in trying this in test game(s) getting the hammers (after whipping) is not going to be the (real) problem. Getting to size 6 with -1 or even -2 from the whip is....

I say we go: Sailing=>Meditation=>Priesthood=>Writing

We need sailing more than AH right now. AH won't do us much good until the barb situation is under control and I'm sure that's a little ways off. After Sailing, I think Meditation=>Priesthood=>Writing might be better. We will need Priesthood for the Oracle and CoL anyway and we could research Writing while working on it. AH is something we need for the sheep but until we can actually use the sheep in peace, I'm not sure it's worth the effort. Worker techs just aren't going to be very useful right now. IW might be a good option but only if it showed up in the starting square of Osaka. Even then we would have to protect the mine and its road. Keep in mind that barb galleys may start showing up soon and we will want to protect our food in Kyoto. It's crucial for whipping in SH and maybe Oracle.I dont know about the Oracle... Its a happy hunt for AIs to get I think we leave that to late allready :(
AH IMHO is a good tech to go for... we can pasture the Furry Pigs which IIRC give +:food: for more :whipped: and more :hammers: both for building us some more archers for :hammer: barbs

I won't be able to play til Saturday night so I'll need a skip or a swap.

OK..

bobrath -- Black Leader -- just played
namliaM -- started us nicely
Cosmichail --> UP --> Let's play kill the barbies
Pigswill --> On Deck --> Will he have set up the third city or start war??
LuvtoBuild --> --> A complete warmonger at heart so must love the barbs
eektor --> --> you get to fight the barbies

Our capital will pop its borders again in 15/16 turns, so that will more fully explore our surroundings.

I think that copper is a decent walk for Izzy to attempt. We (imo) have a small grace period in getting there. Upside to founding east of the stone is that we get a quickly defendable site. Or we found SE of the stone and get bronze right away. Together with Osaka, we'd pretty much eliminate the chance of barbs spawning to our north - good for us, but bad for us since that would take some pressure off Izzy.

I'd agree that Sailing should be our next tech, but stopping research on AH is a double edged sword. If we can be sure that we've got 20ish turns until Barb Galleys, then I'd say finish off AH, otherwise we need to protect those nets as they're the only thing that makes our capital productive.

Ok this is "I Got it". Looked at the save and yep lots of barbies but for now mostly warriors. Why are we worried about galley barbs for Kyoto unless they are coming from those islands otherwise how will they get there. Is the WB there to explore. Shouldn't he now add to the food bank as such. We would then grow real quick to 6 as outlined by NamliaM. Yes it would cause unhappiness but then the whip for SH. The faster growth the better under these circumstances. Although having the WB fogbust those islands might keep barbs away.

Also about those islands. The stone is nice but won't we have to settle on it to get use of it. We could settle eventually on the stone but of course much later.

As to the mainland I feel after the archer we should attempt to get a settler out. Maybe one with two archers go the long way around avoiding barbs and settle. If we want axes quick we can settle on top of the copper but will look for the most optimal spot.

As to research I am inclined to get to IW just in case. We should finish AH for now (or maybe switch will look at the beaker loss) to sailing followed by IW.

If we can get a couple archers with melee/combat we might be able to hold off axes on hills which has worked for me in other games. I think keeping them at a distance expanding our perimeter will give us room to grow. Bob mentions Southwest direction spawning so I will focus on moving the perimeter out to there and trying to avoid extra cost.


EDIT: I have to read back again but at what point will SH be whippable. How many hammers do we need to invest. I like Luvtobuild's idea on putting up a citizen for the hammer. So the third boat won't help as such as growth won't do any good until 3-4 citizens can whip SH. What we need is the hammers to get moving and I don't think you can part whip something???

Looked at the Kyoto again.

7 pop to whip stonehenge.
Here's what I think we could do to speed it up.
1. Move wb to work fish and grow to 5 fast
2. take a citizen off for one hammer and SH due in 45 turns
3. Once grown to 5 add another citizen to reduce to 30 turns
at this point still three resources will be worked and a 6th citizen will arrive soon.
Hopefully by then it will be whippable. It might cost big in citizen count but well worth getting the culture for both cities and GP for theology.

I think after IW we should then get those techs out of the way that will open up theology.

You might want to try this in a test game to get the clicks right (use worldbuilder to get the same island setup), but you can switch from stonehenge to another unit (find the cheapest hammer one) and work a turn on it. Then whip that unit - overflow into Stonehenge. Hard part is getting the cheap unit to have enough overflow to make it worth it.

I'm not sure I understand the drive to IW. Swords won't help us against barbs in the short term (as the don't have cities yet). Yes we need iron for Samurai, but that's more then a few years off.

In our island nation, until we know there aren't coastal waters just out of sight, we can't be sure that Barb Galleys won't pop up. The border expansion will clear this up quite a bit tho.

Re barb galleys:we can cross ocean tiles in our culture borders but can barb galleys repeat this trick? If not then our nets are pretty safe.
Agree re IW/Swords; not a priority imho.

Good catch pigswill! I have no way of being certain since barbarians don't have cultural borders (afaik), but other civs can't cross ocean tiles without cultural border. So my money would be on our nets being safe.

So the research for Sailing isn't essential anymore...

Meditation=>Priesthood=>Writing ???

T1

Lots of barb activity which is in the turnlog in the spoiler so I won't repeat it all. Decide to continue with AH because of beakers invested since sailing is 13 turns. Move wkr to mine gems.
Move workboat to Kyoto.

T2

Upgrade city archer to CD1.
Wb works fish at Kyoto growth in 3 turns
SH due in 45 turns with one citizen

T3

We loose the scout. (surprise attack)

T4

Move archer to protect gems
Judaism is founded

T5

Archer stops warrior from getting to gems

T6

Cap is 5 at Kyoto but we have one unhappy from whipping. Growth now in 8 turns.

T7

zzzzzzzzz

T8

Archer promoted with combat. (on gems)

T9

AH discovered start Sailing
archer attacks warrior before pillaging gems

T10

Finish second gem mine

T11

Osaka finishes archer
Start settler but will queue if we are in trouble. Hooking up sheep now for growth.

T12

Two archers approaching
Warrior on FH takes out archer

T13

Archers protecting both gems now.

T14

A major barbarian offensive arrives.... 3 archers and 1 warrior. We will loose one gem mine. Change build to archer again queue settler.
Kyoto one unhappy 2 citizens for hammers lots of food.

Here we loose a warrior and one archer due to onslaught.

Strange how it is as soon as we have two gems hooked up they show up in droves.

T15

Archer attacks looses and we loose one gem mine.

T16

Barbs are really hurting us and axes sooner than later would be nice. Also loose warrior on hill but odds were good in our favor.
SH due in 23 turns 5 pop needed to whip 3 avail.

T17

Osaka now will grow in 2 turns with sheep farm.

T18

Move wkr to mine gems again.

T19

Two barb warriors approach

T20

Archer on gems combat2 now.
Archer in city CD2 now.
Only one barb archer approaching from Southeast.
We need 4 pop to whip SH but have 3 avail so in a few turns should be whippable. I thought about building something whipping it but didn't want to loose the time invested to build it. It shouldn't be long we have enough hammers to whip SH. It was