This Realms Beyond SG is brought to you by the number 5! :cool:

RB25 (Five 5s): The Golden Five
Civ: Frederick (Creative/Philosophical)
Map: Small Fractal, all other options default
Difficulty: Monarch
Variant Rules: 1) 5CC (Five City Challenge - no more cities, ever!)
2) All victory conditions are in play, but we must trigger five golden ages before winning - one for each of our five cities!

The Start:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/12069/RB25-1s.jpg

Roster: (Five Players!)

Sullla
mucco
T-Hawk
Gusto
Strauss

I started with 30 turns, and we'll see how things go from there. Wish us luck! :king:

(0) 4000BC I roll a game, take the first start and begin. The starting position already poses a tough choice - stay where we are, or move to get the corn in play. Well, we DIDN'T move to get corn in play in my last SG, and I thought that was a mistake, so there's no way I'm going to ignore that corn this time! (Not to mention, with our game and variant goals, more food = very good indeed!) I move one tile southwest and found the capital; this leaves three hill tiles intact for production, while giving us two major food resources and a floodplains, plus oodles of grassland tiles for potential cottages. Yay! :)

http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/12069/RB25-2s.jpg

The city is named Cornelia, after the family line of my namesake Lucius Cornelius Sulla. I was also considering Sulllavilllle, but even I don't want to type THAT many Ls. :lol: (Note to other players: don't go with the default names for this game. Come up with something interesting and unique! We only get five cities, so we can afford to have some fun with this.)

We started with Mining and Hunting, so I figure we may as well go Agriculture/Animal Husbandry to take advantage of the tech discount for know the prerequisites of AH. Worker out of the gate to start, and with Hunting tech, we can probably skip warriors and go right on to archers for real defense afterwards. I've enjoyed doing that in the past with civs who start with Hunting. Alright, let's get this started!

(1) 3960BC Pop a hut on turn one of the game - new tech!

http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/12069/RB25-3s.jpg

And it's BRONZE WORKING! [dance] Wow, what a lucky break. We have copper located just to the west of Cornelia. On second thought, we may not need to research Archery soon after all. :D I rename our scout "Bronze-Finder" in celebration of his mighty deed.

(2) 3920BC Bronze-Finder (hereafter B-F) spots fish AND clams off the coast to the south, right by the bronze.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/12069/RB25-4s.jpg

Perhaps this will be a good spot for one of the golden five (?) Lot of desert tiles though... :(

(3) 3880BC We meet Cyrus who is REALLY close to us:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/12069/RB25-5s.jpg

Interesting. Nothing says that we have to be peaceful in this game though! :mischief: (Keep that in the back of our minds.)

(8) 3680BC Agriculture -> Animal Husbandry. Buddhism FIDL (obviously not by Cyrus, unless he popped Mysticism from a hut).

(15) 3400BC Worker -> warrior in Cornelia. We ARE going to need at least one military unit here, and there's nothing else to build but barracks at the moment. Basically, running max food and we have to put shields into something. B-F also popped a hut in the tundra north last turn for 36g. The land up there does not look promising, we may have to get creative (ha, a Sirian-like pun!) in this game with the city locations (or be aggressive against Cyrus!)

(16) 3360BC There's another corn + cows location in the east, but there's a LOT of tundra around it. Another place we'll have to think about though!

(18) 3280BC AH -> Wheel. I'm heading to Wheel en route to Pottery, since we already have Bronze Working for Slavery. Can't see anything else out there at the moment that we should be pushing for... (maybe Mysticism for Stonehenge, but that's more of a long-term deal)

(22) 3120BC Cornelia to size 2, still pushing max growth. Cyrus has built a second scout, which is poking around our borders. What a waste of production!

(25) 3000BC Hindu FIDL - by CYRUS! OK, that settles it. He's gonna have to go down! :hammer: We can make Persepolis into one of our Five Golden Cities if desired (or raze if a potentially better spot is seen). Priority #1 is now beelining a settler to the copper before Cyrus can get there. Cornelia will grow to size 3 next turn, finish its warrior the turn after that, and then I'll start a settler.

(26) 2960BC Borders expand to size 3, we finish Wheel and start Pottery, warrior due in 1.

(27) 2920BC Cornelia on settler, due in 9 turns.

(30) 2800BC And that's where things stand after 30 turns.

I believe our next city should go here, on the red dot:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/12069/RB25-6s.jpg

It might look like a bad location, but there is only one tile of overlap with Cornelia, it claims COPPER, there are only four actual desert tiles (not great but it looks like more than that), and fish + clams = one awesome location for our variant! Down the road, we can almost certainly get the Colossus in this spot (ok, maybe that's being a little TOO forward-looking!) I envision our worker building roads towards that spot and then hooking up the copper, followed by some slaved axes from Cornelia (which has a ridiculous amount of food). This being Monarch, the AI won't have a chance of holding out.

To the team: what say ye? :)

The Map:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/12069/RB25-7s.jpg

Now you see why I'm pushing for the rather-lousy red dot location! :lol:
(Gonna have some fun picking the city sites in this game, that's for sure)

We're going to have some longer-than-average turnsets here, I want everyone to have the chance to found one of our five cities (and claim it as their own). mucco should play 20 turns, and we'll see where things stand after that. To all observers - we're off, wish us good luck! :cool:

Sullla
mucco <<< UP NOW
T-Hawk <<< on deck
Gusto
Strauss

(Lurking)

Wow! That's, um. That's an interesting start location... Initial location? Beautiful! Rest of it? Not so much... :p Subscribing to this one. Should be quite entertaining!

Checking in. :wavey:

Bronze Working from a hut -- how lucky is that?! :eek: I certainly agree with the red dot copper plan. And hey, popping the border for the fish and clams will make great use of our Creative trait that I was maligning over in the RB thread. :crazyeye:

I'm all for an axeman rush at Persepolis, at least if the city isn't on a hill. I won't get to found a city on this round, as mucco will get to build on red dot and I'll be whipping axemen. But I'd be happy to claim Persepolis as my city. :hammer:

How many axemen will it take? Since Persepolis is the Hindu holy city (+5 culture), it will reach 100 culture by the time we attack, meaning +40% defense. A fortified archer will be defending at 3 + 115% = 6.45 strength, against only 6 for a CR1 axeman. So this means at least two axemen per archer to be sure of winning...

And thinking further ahead, if Persepolis or a replacement is city #3, we'll want a fourth city northeast for the corn, silks, river, and either deer or cow. (One tile NE of the silk pulls in lots of hills -- possible Heroic Epic city?) I don't see any good spot for city five just yet...

Hmmm... some poor land surrounding us there. Red Dot certainly looks great compared to the rest. A city grabbing the Deers, Corn and Silk in the north will also be decent. I think the remaining two cities will probably require 'removing' Cyrus. Didn't Cyrus start so close to you in RB21 as well? Poor boy;)

Already up? I suppose the rule is 24/48 as usual, so I got it. Or is it 25/55? :lol:
I'll found the second city on my turn 9, it seems. The worst task will be finding a good name for it... Lousy, you say? There are many great cities in lousy places... I think I've got an idea. ;) Too bad you'll have to wait until tomorrow since here, in Italy, it's past midnight now, and tomorrow school :cry: so I'll play in the afternoon.

Oh, by the way: Cornelia is not only the name of Sulla's gens, look here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornelia_Sulla). This city is the beautiful daughter of our first Emperor Sulla!

Wow, I'm in a SG between the first winner and the first runner-up of a RB epic ever :cool:. Surely my mistakes will be fixed quickly!

Agree. Red dot looks fine to settle. Axeman rush against Cyrus will be fun. :hammer: Persepolis will make a good third city just in the fact it's a capital location and a holy city. His territory needs to be revealed to see if we can settle a fourth city around there. North of Cornelia is a decent location but we should keep it in reserve if nothing presents itself for the last two cities.

Lurker comment:

Small map/monarch is to easy, no any challenge or even potencial problems.
Just kill all rivals exept one and left one with one city and do what you like for the rest of the game. Boring.

The only thin needed is to buld Taj Maxal.

a lurker comment to a lurker :lol:

Small map/monarch is to easy, no any challenge or even potencial problems.
Just kill all rivals exept one and left one with one city and do what you like for the rest of the game. Boring.

The only thin needed is to buld Taj Maxal.

I don't see how you can criticize the variant in this game. I'd like to see you go out there and accumulate the GPs needed to run four golden ages. Plus, I don't believe this variant was meant to be "oh so challenging". It was meant to be a break from the past few grueling RB SGs.

To all observers - we're off, wish us good luck!

I'm tempted to wish you bad luck as I enjoy watching you overcome it, but...good luck :D

Darrell

Lurker in:
I wish you lucky GP hunting! Got to learn something more about GP farming and managing :lol:

little [offtopic] 2 mucco: I see you are fun of Juventus like me :) So I wish you to see Juve next year in Seria A :king:

Lurker comment:

Small map/monarch is to easy, no any challenge or even potencial problems.
Just kill all rivals exept one and left one with one city and do what you like for the rest of the game. Boring.


Why would we do that? Please wait until we finish the game before you say whether the game is boring or not.

Lurker's Comment:

Seeing as how they'll need to be building Wonders sooner rather than later in order to get teh GP they need to trigger 4 golden ages, AND they have to build the Taj Mahal, I'm going to go out on a limb and say rampant warfare is probably not the best idea in the world. It's not really easy to build a sustained army and get your key Wonders at the same time. Especially in the early game when you're not going to have a Tech advantage to cushion your building time. Even doubly especially since they are so limited in how many cities they can have.

Lurker comment:

Small map/monarch is to easy, no any challenge or even potencial problems.
Just kill all rivals exept one and left one with one city and do what you like for the rest of the game. Boring.

The only thin needed is to buld Taj Maxal.

Variants are all about finding new ways to play, elaborating different strategies, role-playing. Everybody knows about the "best" ways to play a small pangaea-like map, why keep repeating the same thing over and over? No point in it.

What's the point of a variant, if we just have to chop axes until we kill everyone? That's old stuff, everyone can do that, but, as you said, it gets boring. ;)

Btw, I'm about to play. Expect a report in, say, 5 hours :lol:. Wonders, huh? Stonehenge + early library could make a superfast GA, plus another almost sure prophet/scientist combo in the very early middle ages. It's also true that we'll need to start up GP production as soon as possible. But we're going to stock our GPs for later, I suppose, so maybe some military action is allowed in the beginning.

Oh, by the way: Cornelia is not only the name of Sulla's gens, look here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornelia_Sulla). This city is the beautiful daughter of our first Emperor Sulla!

Cool, we have another player with knowledge of Roman history! :goodjob: Sulla's daughter was indeed named Cornelia - but then again, so was every female born into the Cornelius family line. ;)


Small map/monarch is to easy, no any challenge or even potencial problems.
Just kill all rivals exept one and left one with one city and do what you like for the rest of the game. Boring.

The only thin needed is to buld Taj Maxal.

This being Monarch, I'm sure that we could do that if desired. But in the fine tradition of many past Realms Beyond games, this succession game is not really interested in pursuing the strongest power play options on the table. We're going to do some fun stuff with Great People and see how many golden ages we can hold before the game ends. Could we do the same thing on Emperor? Maybe, but we're not trying to kill ourselves here. In the spirit of the RB Hippies game - like, it's just for fun man. Chill out. :cool:

(By the way - attacking another SG team's idea is very impolite, to say the least. Even if you find it boring, not everyone else may think so. OK? :))

Btw, I'm about to play. Expect a report in, say, 5 hours :lol:. Wonders, huh? Stonehenge + early library could make a superfast GA, plus another almost sure prophet/scientist combo in the very early middle ages.

That'd be a fast GA, but our goal isn't to have the GAs as soon as possible. Probably better to hold off on triggering the GA until all five cities are in place and have grown up to size.

I think our best long-term plan is to put most of the wonders in one city (probably the capital) along with the National Epic, and have it generate as many GPs as it can, of a variety of types. Then have each other city keep its GP pool pure for one type. Engineers in particular are the hardest to get; I'd suggest pushing for the Hanging Gardens in an off-capital city; the +health willl be quite helpful too in a limited city count game.

Ok, here's my turn.

(0) Really nothing to do here.

(3) No, look: Cyrus has his probably only worker farming a tile which isn't in his capital's radius! I could gain that worker... shall I do it? Yes! And then I'll park my warrior forever on a forested hill near Persepolis crippling him totally until we... Ok I think I'll shut up now. My warrior is on a most important scouting mission, we cannot afford to waste time killing foreign slaves :crazyeye:!

http://img82.imageshack.us/img82/1373/persianworkermh7.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

(5) B-F defends himself successfully from some wolves in the snow, and moves to a forest to heal.

(6) In this turn, I face a really tough choice. Where to found my second city?

http://img226.imageshack.us/img226/7977/toughchoicenc7.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

Red dot looked like obvious, but a source of wheat has appeared inside the borders of Persia. The green dot I've put there grabs the fish (6f), the sugar (4f with calendary), and the wheat (5f after civil service), for a grand total of 9 surplus food. It also has more hills for production (Colossus+GL?), 3 less desert tiles, and overall a better place to be. But it needs level 3 culture to grab copper, which we can achieve only with much efforts, and basically this choice denies the axe rush to cyrus. The wheat will also be hard to get without war, as a culture fight with Persia's capital looks... you get the idea. However, we're still getting that copper in little time (I hope), so maybe the attack is only delayed for a couple dozens turns. What to do, what to do???
In the end, I decide for the green dot. We're only getting five cities, they must be the absolute best ever! No great person has ever been born from copper :lol: - sugar is a much better idea to cultivate clever minds! Plus I'm sure Cyrus would found right west of the green dot if we settled the red one. So forgive me please :please:, but I'm not settling in the red.

(7) warrior produced in the capital, granary next. I had picked fishing as the next tech, because we want that fish soon, right?

(9)Cyrus adopts slavery... :shifty: I found the new city, which honours one of the most beautiful, powerful, and GP-producing :lol: cities of all times:
Venice.

http://img226.imageshack.us/img226/8351/venicexe8.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

Why the hell did we have to start on an island with our only opponent which is also creative? That trait could have helped us so much here...

(10) At this time, it's the moment to choose a research path: do we want sailing for additional food? Or maybe mysticism, to put shields into stonehenge? or IW, so we can hope to have iron in the capital? Or masonry, to take a shot at the pyramids? Mysticism can provide a stonehenge in 25 turns, letting cornelia pop borders again in another 20 turns or so, so I go that way.

(15) Complete the granary in the capital, and mysticism. Stonehenge starts right now. Iron Working too, we may be lucky.

(20) Nothing else happens. On my last turn, Venice reaches size 2 and can whip, and the worker can start building a cottage on the flood plains. However, I didn't do any of these two things, T-hawk will know better what to do. I've already made a big mess in my first turn!
Stonehenge due in 5 turns, so copper due in 29 turns.

A shot of our Empire in 2000 BC:

http://img84.imageshack.us/img84/1649/empire2000bcrn6.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

And the save.

How nice. Two of my favourite players in the same game.
Sullla the master journalist and T-Hawk the wizard of the numismatic Numidians.
Welcome back T-Hawk, long time no see.

I've already made a big mess in my first turn!

I don't think so, actually. You made the decision to go with the location that had greater long-term potential at the cost of temporary gain. Obviously that has its own advantages and tradeoffs, but I think the call was a sound one. Venice should be much more productive over the long haul than the proposed red dot. As Sirian would say,

I urge you to think long-term.

The other reason why it's not such a big deal is that we WILL have copper in our borders in about 30 turns, faster if Hinduism spreads to Venice on its own. T-Hawk said he wasn't impressed with Creative overall; well late-game it's not doing much, but right NOW, we're getting a heck of a big benefit from it. And isn't the early game the most important time of all? ;)

I'm also glad you didn't snipe the worker and choke Cyrus' capital. We don't need to go down that road in this game. :goodjob:

T-Hawk should play something like 20-30 turns. Ideally, we'd see another city founded (or captured and renamed) on T-Hawk's watch, but that may not happen. We can always switch up the roster later on though to make sure everyone gets to found one of our five.

Crazy thought: with this being a relatively small island, do we want to save one of our five cities to be founded later on another continent? That would be pretty far-out, but maybe it's something to keep in mind! :crazyeye:

Chiming in; I see it and can play tonight. I'm in US Eastern time, so if I'm following our Italian friend mucco, expect us to take advantage of that time difference by playing on the same day. :)

I think the best spot for Venice would've been one N of its current location, losing the fish but keeping the other two resources including faster access to the copper. But the current site is good too, better than the original red dot now that we discovered the additional resources.

However, I don't think it's a big loss to wait the ~30 extra turns for the copper. We'll be building barracks and workers during that time; the axemen can wait a bit. On Monarch difficulty, the AIs tend to pack three to four archers in their capital right away, then leave that garrison there. We'll face the same resistance whether we attack right away or 30 turns later, so waiting is OK. I may also use the time to train one more settler to go northeast.

Finally, I'm not sold on the wisdom of that Stonehenge. We're Creative so the obelisks hardly help us. And we do need a horde of Great People, but over a long period of time; there's no rush to get them right away. But it's far enough along now that there's no sense vetoing it.

Not that you guys need my advice, but I am always looking for a chance to put my foot in my mouth :lol:.

That'd be a fast GA, but our goal isn't to have the GAs as soon as possible. Probably better to hold off on triggering the GA until all five cities are in place and have grown up to size..
Sound advice, I would wait until you are working a total of at least 30 tiles.

I think our best long-term plan is to put most of the wonders in one city (probably the capital) along with the National Epic, and have it generate as many GPs as it can, of a variety of types. Then have each other city keep its GP pool pure for one type. Engineers in particular are the hardest to get; I'd suggest pushing for the Hanging Gardens in an off-capital city; the +health willl be quite helpful too in a limited city count game.
When I first read the variant I immediatly thought, engineers are going to be scarce (and probably the limiting factor). I might hold off on early wonders (except HG or Pyramids) and generate an Engineer with a forge or such and then just hold him until you need him for that last Golden Age. Or just grab the engineer at the end of the tech tree if you get in a jam ;).

Merchants, Artists, and Scientist are easily genreated with Caste System. Prophets slightly more probablamatic by skipping the early religious wonders, but Angkor Wat or muilitple temples will remedy this.

Stonehenge's cultural bonus will be useful to Cornelia far more than it will be for Venice, as it's our capital's culture which will gain us the copper. In other words, Venice would need 35 or so turns to get to level 3, while Cornelia will reach level 4 in less than 30 turns with Stonehenge.

The choice of that wonder, which was cheaper than the pyramids and with more culture, was based on that reason, too. Obelisks will have some influence since Cyrus is creative, too, so it's basically like two non-creative civs. Another thing is the GPP, as Atlas said, prophets aren't the easiest type of GP to get, and while not as hard as engineers, they're less likely to pop out than other specialists. Even more since we're quite cut off from the rest of the world, so there aren't many chances to get religions, unless we found them of course.

And finally... there wasn't much else to build :rolleyes:. The most advanced unit we can build is still a warrior, and I felt it was a bit early for another settler/worker, and the city hadn't reached the happy cap yet.

That'd be a fast GA, but our goal isn't to have the GAs as soon as possible. Probably better to hold off on triggering the GA until all five cities are in place and have grown up to size.

It would be better to postpone triggering a GA to suit our needs like completing production of an expensive wonder or building military units (combined it with Nationalism) for a quick stack to :ar15: than to trigger a GA for a notch. However in the spirit of the game, I was hoping to trigger all 4 GA at once or to trigger a GA to complete production of the Taj Mahal. It’s a hippy RB variant! http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/94231/hippy.gif Personally, it would be cool to trigger all 4 GA at once and in that time complete production of the Taj Mahal. It’s the holy grail of the game. :religion:

I think our best long-term plan is to put most of the wonders in one city (probably the capital) along with the National Epic, and have it generate as many GPs as it can, of a variety of types. Then have each other city keep its GP pool pure for one type. Engineers in particular are the hardest to get; I'd suggest pushing for the Hanging Gardens in an off-capital city; the +health willl be quite helpful too in a limited city count game.

I second the idea. IMO the capital would be a great city to build AMAP (as many as possible) wonders and hire AMAP specialists to tweak the probability of what GP we want. It will be a hybrid wonder city/GP farm. I like the idea of a pure GP pool. I question the potential of these cities to generate a GP compared to the capital. Will it be able to keep up with our capitol or always lag behind? Perhaps a single city, the capital, which builds AMAP wonders and hires AMAP specialists would be a simpler and more reliable strategy. I’ll throw out another suggestion in my mind of having hybrid GP pool. For example, the capital will have a GP and GE pool; and another city will have a GS, GM, and GA pool. Also I might be throwing salt on an open wound; the CSS would be a great strategy to enable Caste System for hiring lots of early specialists and Bureaucracy for the big production boost in the capital. Do we want to open discussions on how we want to generate our 5 GA or let’s have one (or two) team cycle of play before any discussion begins because it’s a hippy variant? http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/94231/hippy.gif

Stonehenge's cultural bonus will be useful to Cornelia far more than it will be for Venice, as it's our capital's culture which will gain us the copper.

And in that moment, T-hawk was enlightened.

(Really, Stonehenge will make Cornelia hit 500 before Venice hits 100?)


it would be cool to trigger all 4 GA at once and in that time complete production of the Taj Mahal. It’s the holy grail of the game.

True indeed, but we don't dare intentionally delay Taj, and I don't think we'll collect 14 Great People of compatible types before we get that wonder. Still, it might be possible.


I question the potential of these cities to generate a GP compared to the capital. Will it be able to keep up with our capitol or always lag behind?

With only the wonders, no. But by hiring specialists that match the GP type of those wonders, yes. The idea is that we'll push specialists in each city when we decide we need that type of GP, while being assured of having a pure GPP pool in each city -- especially for the tough Great Engineers.

Of course, I don't expect any such plan to actually survive contact with the enemy the tendencies and plans of five different SG players. :lol: I would say this, though -- please don't build any wonders (including national ones) anywhere besides the capital without team approval.


Also I might be throwing salt on an open wound; the CSS would be a great strategy to enable Caste System for hiring lots of early specialists and Bureaucracy for the big production boost in the capital.

I'd be all for it if it looks possible. Also, we haven't gotten Masonry, so (heresy alert) we could even use the first Stonehenge Prophet to slingshot CS if the Oracle plan looks too chancey. I'll investigate when I get to the game later.

The green dot I've put there grabs the fish (6f), the sugar (4f with calendary), and the wheat (5f after civil service), for a grand total of 9 surplus food.


Make that 11 surplus food, counting the 2 from the city centre. Or, in other words, at size 8 you could be working those three squares while hiring a whopping 5 specialists, even before civil service comes in. With biology, those three squares alone would support 6 specialists :cool:.

I definitely agree with your choice here, and I think you deserve credit for having confidence to adapt to the new information and deviate from the pre-approved plan. I'll be lurking this one for sure; great variant idea, and what looks like a great team as well :goodjob:

Congrats on settling Venice on the green dot. I thought its settlement was a great move for a few reasons IMO.

Venice is an excellent location for a wealth/naval unit city. To focus on the wealth city aspect, Venice has potential to finance most (if not all) of our expenses. Building The Great Lighthouse and Colossus is only the start because I say let’s build the Grocer, Market, Bank, Wall Street, and any other gold/GM wonder that I’m forgetting. We’ll hire oodles of merchants with our huge food surplus. Sullla suggested the idea of settling our last city on another continent and why not? The gold contribution from Venice will be insane as the game progresses.

First I want to recant a reply I made about pure GP pools not being sufficient to pop GP because I see now that Venice will make a good pure GM pool. Even if we lose out on building one or two GM wonders we’ll still hire oodles of merchants to pop a few GM. Venice is a good candidate for a pure GM pool.

I saw the settlement of Venice as a good strategic move in utilizing the creative trait. It’s more important to have food resources in the BFC for a GP farm than strategic or luxury resources. Stonehenge will pop our borders quicker and will start the accumulation of GPP.

With only the wonders, no. But by hiring specialists that match the GP type of those wonders, yes. The idea is that we'll push specialists in each city when we decide we need that type of GP, while being assured of having a pure GPP pool in each city -- especially for the tough Great Engineers.

I see it now by hiring oodles of the same specialists. Venice will be a good pure GP city.

I would say this, though -- please don't build any wonders (including national ones) anywhere besides the capital without team approval.

I would prefer this plan. My idea, and it’s only my suggestion, is to build as many wonders in capital as we can and use specialists to increase the probability of popping the GP we want. We’re assuming risk with this strategy. I think it’ll be simpler strategy to play and manage in the game than to build a certain type of wonder in each city. I appreciate this strategy because it completely eliminates the risk of not getting the GP we want. How feasible is it that we can setup all five cities this way? We could be setting ourselves up for failure because we’re assuming other risks. Not all cities will have the good production to build wonders and chop-rushing is a limited strategy. There’s a good chance we’ll lose out on building the wonder we want and find ourselves having to chase another wonder of its type to build in the city. When will the next one be available in the tech tree? If we’re making a beeline to a particular tech we desire than do we stop the beeline pursuit to beeline to another tech that will make another wonder available. Losing out on a wonder build is out of our control. In the one city builds as many wonders as possible, if you miss out in building one than so what. We’ll simply build another wonder in the city. We want to add the wonder GPP to the city mixed pool and hire oodles of same specialists to increase our chances of popping the dude we want. Anyway I’ll be happy with any strategy we choice. I’m not playing to force my will on the team.

Of course, I don't expect any such plan to actually survive contact with the enemy the tendencies and plans of five different SG players.

:lol: Oh man, I almost slip out of my sit laughing when I read this. Just thinking about “your worst enemy” is your follow teammate. However I understand you’re point. It’s the fabric of SG. It’s a team effort of individuals where there will be agreements and disapprovals. It’s a fine line to differentiate between the team and the individual. Do we always follow what the team agrees upon all the time? What does that mean to my turn set if I learn new information that will alter the team plan? Am I entrusted to decide what is best for the team or present the information to the team for discussion to formulate a new plan? Oh well, I’m getting too deep and will stop.

So here we go, my very first Civ 4 SG turn. :)

Yes, Stonehenge will make our capital reach the copper tile before Venice does. However, Venice is not going to take control of the wheat away from Persepolis -- we won't have that until we conquer Cyrus.

My biggest immediate question is whether to divert research for the Oracle-CS slingshot. The beeline of Writing-Meditation-Priesthood-Code of Laws would take 54 turns right now.. we might be able to lower that to around 40 by doing Writing first and building a library to hire scientists. 40 turns from now would be 600 BC, which I think is a bit too chancy on Monarch. So we'll forego the Oracle, and I'll finish research on Iron Working now.

I MM Cornelia from the floodplain to the wheat. Two food is more valuable than one commerce for the moment; I'll switch it back once the cottage completes on the floodplains.

2000BC - inherited turn -- mucco has left the units unmoved. I think a cottage is the obvious choice for the flood plain, so the worker does that. The scout will sneak around the west side of Persia, just to see what he can see.

1920 BC (2) - Judaism has been FIDL.

1840 BC (4) - Venice finishes the work boat which nets up the fish.

Stonehenge completes. Cornelia orders up a worker -- Venice will need one (we can chop the spices jungle when Iron Working finishes) but doesn't have the wherewithal to do one itself soon.

1800 BC (5) - First worker starts cottaging a river grassland at the capital. Scout spies a barbarian warrior wandering around north of Persepolis.

1680 BC (8) - Worker produced in Cornelia, which moves to one of Venice's hills to mine it. Cornelia starts a barracks, though I may pause that for a settler when Iron Working comes in depending on the iron.

1560 BC (11) - Iron Working has come in, and JACKPOT!

http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/12437/rb25-iron.jpg

Right there at Coneria! Forget that lousy copper!

Cornelia now shelves its barracks for one more worker. We want to get that iron hooked up ASAP, and we're not going to want to spend time on workers anytime after the iron hookup.

Venice shelves its granary for a barracks. We want veteran swords very soon, out of both cities.

However, I notice that Cyrus has iron too, inside Persepolis' fat cross actually. :eek:

Research set to Writing.

By the way, my first micromanagement SG note -- I had the first worker road up the iron tile before mining it. The reason is that the iron tile is 3 squares away from Cornelia, so if there's road all the way, the new worker can move all the way to the iron tile and start mining it right away on its first turn. :D

1400 BC (15) - Third worker produced, who assists in mining the iron. Cyrus adopts Organized Religion.

1320 BC (17) - Iron is hooked up, and with perfect timing, Cornelia completes its barracks and starts a swordsman. Now one of the workers starts building a road towards the gems south of Cornelia; it'll finish that road and clearing the jungle just about when Cornelia's border expands again.

1240 BC (19) - Writing has come in. What to research now? Well, we want Code of Laws and Civil Service sooner rather than later, so I start research on Meditation - Polytheism.

1160 BC (21) - Our first veteran swordsman has rolled off the line, and Cornelia orders up another.

1120 BC (22) - Venice completes barracks, orders up swordsman.

1040 BC (24) - Cornelia completes swordsman #2, orders up #3. It's running -1 food deficit in order to work the three mined plains hills.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/12437/rb25-hinduism.png

And Hinduism spreads to both Cornelia and Venice on the same turn! I think that's a no-brainer to revolt, so we do.

1000 BC (25) - Sulla said to play 20-30 turns until I acquired another city. Well, I've already gone 25, and the Persian war is going to require about 15 more turns to build about seven swords to make sure of taking Persepolis. I'll pass off here and let Gusto go for the gusto.

Some highly detailed wrath for the next player:

Cornelia is going to grow to size 6 (its new happy cap with Hinduism) in two turns; after that, have it work max shields for military. Cornelia's culture is due to expand in four turns, at which time the worker in the south will have cleared that jungle and can start mining the gems.

Moses is due in five turns. Despite the variant Golden Age theme, I think the best use of him would actually be to lightbulb Civil Service after we research Code of Laws. Consider the early Bureaucracy to be our zeroth Golden Age, consuming one Great Person. :lol:

And a nice big screenshot:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/12437/rb25-1000bc.jpg

One more thing -- I think we need about eight swords to be sure of taking Persepolis. It's over 500 culture for +60% defense, meaning the archers will be at 3 + 50% + 25% + 60% = 7.05 strength. A CR1 swordsman at 6 + 10% + 20% = 7.8 only barely has advantage over that because of the first strike. So if there's four archers on defense, we'll want eight swords to be sure of killing them all.

Looks like good stuff T-Hawk, and a good place to stop too. :goodjob:

I think we SHOULD build the Oracle, however, for three reasons:

1) It's a cheap wonder at 150 shields, and we can build it easily (Cornelia can get 16 shields/turn!)
2) Anything that provides more Great Person points in the capital is a Very Good Thing.
3) Forget Civil Service and the Oracle - we want to take Metal Casting with it! We're already in the process of hooking up gems, Cyrus has GOLD in one of his cities, and early forges + Copper will guarantee us Colossus in Venice if we want it (and we do).

So... I see us building Oracle in Cornelia as soon as Priesthood comes in, with a forest chop or two to speed it along, then grabbing Metal Casting. If we want to use the first Great Person for a Civil Service grab, that's ok with me - BUT we might also want to build the Hindu shrine in Persepolis. Remember, we're not going to get that many opportunities to use Great People on anything other than golden ages, and that could mean a boatload of money down the road... :mischief:

I wouldn't worry too much either about "pure" versus "corrupted" Great Person point pools. I think it's more important to focus on generating as many as possible, and we'll more or less end up with a motley mixture anyway. The only one that is problematic is the Great Engineer, and even if we are SO unlucky as to NEVER pop one naturally, we can claim the free one from researching Fusion first if nothing else. We only need a single Great Engineer to trip our final golden age, so don't sweat it! Just get the wonders and specialists going, and we'll be ok. :cool:

Hopefully we'll see Persepolis fall and be rechristened on Gusto's turnset. Two quick notes before those turns pass... 1) let's get Open Borders and scout out Cyrus' land before declaring! (There is no Civ3-like ROP reputation hit for declaring war while having Open Borders with a civ.) 2) We don't need 8 swords to take Cyrus' capital unless it's on a hill. 5-6 should be plenty, barring REALLY bad luck. And don't be afraid to whip :whipped: some swords where appropriate, Venice could afford to lash out a sword when it hits its happy limit.

Sullla
mucco
T-Hawk
Gusto <<< UP NOW
Strauss <<< on deck

20ish turns from Gusto, try to have another one of our Golden Five before you pass off to Strauss! :king:

EDIT: Whoops, Venice doesn't have a granary. On second thought, only whip the very last sword - it ain't gonna grow that fast after all!

Great turn set T-Hawk. Close iron and Hinduism in both cities is sweet. You really did setup my first SG turn set ever so nicely. :hammer: :goodjob:

I have the saved and check it out. We’re off to a great start. :goodjob:

Cornelia is going to grow to size 6 (its new happy cap with Hinduism) in two turns; after that, have it work max shields for military.

My view too.

Forget Civil Service and the Oracle - we want to take Metal Casting with it! We're already in the process of hooking up gems, Cyrus has GOLD in one of his cities, and early forges + Copper will guarantee us Colossus in Venice if we want it (and we do).

It’ll be Oracle -> Metal Casting

If we want to use the first Great Person for a Civil Service grab, that's ok with me - BUT we might also want to build the Hindu shrine in Persepolis. Remember, we're not going to get that many opportunities to use Great People on anything other than golden ages, and that could mean a boatload of money down the road...

You point is well taken.

1) let's get Open Borders and scout out Cyrus' land before declaring! (There is no Civ3-like ROP reputation hit for declaring war while having Open Borders with a civ.) 2) We don't need 8 swords to take Cyrus' capital unless it's on a hill. 5-6 should be plenty, barring REALLY bad luck.

Will do.

don't be afraid to whip :whipped: some swords where appropriate

I’ll make sure our population is adequately working. :whipped: :)

Venice doesn't have a granary.

I will try to remedy this.

:cooool: stuff.

My turn set is complete. I played 25 turns. Give me some time to produce a report and post it. It should be up later in the morning. :crazyeye: I have a few things to report. :)

Don't worry. Nothing disastrous happen. ;)

Wow, nice variant. Going crazy with the Great Persons, are we? I have a question though: in the event where you get a fourth Golden Age with Great Persons only (GE+GM+GS+GA+GP), what happens next? Can you still get another Golden Age without the Taj-Mahal? If yes, how exactly? Can you use two Great Persons of the same type then? (GE+GM+GS+GA+GP+GP)

Some info about GP mechanisms, taken from this thread (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=142704). It says that one powerful GP farm is far better than spreading the GPP between two or more cities; we'll have to gain 11,500 GPP, and a 15th one will cost 2,000 more, if we spend one for a shrine/tech. The question is: are we gaining from lightbulbing a tech, knowing we're going to get 2,000 more GPP before the end (not counting gifted GPs)? I don't have an idea of how much a late game city can produce.

The shrine is a weak option, IMO. We'll have a whole lot of merchant specialists, the money we get will be more than a single shrine, I think. The 1 GPP is nice, but probably useless, since we're placing it in a city that won't have the same specialist power than our first two. And we're doing a 5CC, costs will be few and I bet that with all the specialists we'll be able to make profits @ 100% late iin the game.

Here goes my first SG turn set.

1000 BC
http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/94231/RB25-BC-1000.JPG
I'm checking things out with the save and everything looks great. What can I mess up? Seriously, I changed my mind on letting Cornelia grow to pop 6. Instead I configured the tiles for production and commerce to drop 1 turn from both building the Swordsman and researching Priesthood. This action causes Cornelia to slightly starve. I dialed up Cyrus and requested Open Borders. Copper Claimer (a cool name and C-C for now) is off on some recon. B-F is doing god knows what with himself in tundra forest so I ordered him to go recon Cyrus territory with C-C.

975 BC
http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/94231/RB25-BC-975.JPG
I meet Mansa and noticed he was Buddhist however he didn’t own the holy city. Very interesting. I dialed up Mansa and requested Open Borders. C-C recons Persepolis and it looks good to conquest with three archers.

925 BC
Cornelia and Venice completed their builds and I queued a Swordsman in both cities. The borders expanded for both Venice and Cornelia so it’s a tie. Anyway we have our copper. Venice worker completed mine and heads to Cornelia to start chopping a grassland forest for Oracle. C-C recons Parsagadae and it’s lightly defended with two archers.

900 BC
http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/94231/RB25-BC-900.JPG
Priesthood completed and I set research to Sailing. I meet Izzy and she’s already Annoyed with us. Yup, she’s the Buddha and owns the Buddhist holy city. I would really enjoy fighting a religious war with her; however warring is not the objective in this game. Cornelia worker completed cottage and heads for a grassland forest to chop for Oracle.

875 BC
Moses is born in Cornelia and heads to Venice. He'll wait there for the eventual capture of Persepolis where he'll build the Hindu shrine.

850 BC
Cornelia and Venice completed their builds. I queued the Oracle in Cornelia and queued another Swordsman in Venice. The Oracle will take 9 turns to build but Cornelia is close to starving down to pop 4. I configured the city for max food for one turn. C-C recons Susa and it’s lightly defended with two archers.

825 BC
40 Hammers arrive in Cornelia from the two chopped forest. It lowers the Oracle build to 6 turn at max production. Cornelia has just enough food stored to complete the Oracle without starving down to pop 4.

800 BC
Mansa adopts Organized Religion.

775 BC
Cornelia worker starts mining copper and Venice worker starts building a cottage for Venice.

750 BC
http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/94231/RB25-BC-750.JPG
Gems are hook up and Persepolis worker heads to his city. Mansa converts to Judaism. Venice completed Swordsman and I queued the Library. I feel sorry for Cyrus. He’s Pleased with us and we’re religious brothers. He would have been a good diplomatic partner. Unfortunately his territory is needed by us and I declared war on him. The Swordsman Brigade chants "Persepolis or bust!" and entered Cyrus territory.

725 BC
C-C meets Merlin the Wizard and reappears next to Venice. He garrisoned the city. B-F gets caught beyond the enemy borders and finds himself a long way from home. He takes cover in forest behind a short mountain range and prays for the Swordsman Brigade to save him.

700 BC
http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/94231/RB25-BC-700.JPG
I have terrible odds to attack Persepolis and than I realized I’m attacking across a river. Weedy move.

675BC
http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/94231/RB25-BC-675.JPG
Cornelia completed the Oracle and I picked Metal Casting as the free tech. I queued a Swordsman in Cornelia and configure it for max growth. I want the city to grow to pop 7 (max size). Combat odds are still terrible (no picture) so I decided to pillaged a village to nothing for 48 gold. It allows me to raise research to 100% from 60%. I split off a smaller group from the Swordsman Brigade and move them across the river to intercept any Archers leaving Persepolis on an invasion mission to our territory. Copper is hooked up.

650BC and 625BC
http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/94231/RB25-BC-650.JPG
I definitely need a more Swordsman to take Persepolis with 5 Archers in the city. One Archer leaves and says hello to the Swordsman Mini-Brigade. I ordered B-F to recon Parsagadae and he's greeted with a dozen arrows in the chest. The citizens impaled him on a stick as a warning to us. Parsagadae must pay! Sailing completed and I set research to Masonry. It's fun time now because there's combat action happening at Persepolis. First I moved two Swordsman to the forest tiles to force the Archer to either attack one or move around the blockade. The next turn he attacks the Swordsman S of him and losses. Next I don't know what came over me - perhaps it was getting too late, the Archer fight awoke my need for action, or I was in a blissful weedy state. I decided to attack Persepolis with two Swordsman and you can see what the combat odds and results were from each skirmish.

625 BC
Venice will grow to pop 6 in 1 turn and become unhealthy. I whipped the queued Swordsman and configure it for max growth.

600 BC
Venice grew to pop 5 and I configured it back to its original setup. I queued another Swordsman. The completed Swordsman will take a defensive fortification in the forest NW of Venice. I’m hoping to lure Archers out of Persepolis to whack and thin city defensives. The Swordsman Brigade regroup and heads for Parsagadae. B-F will be avenged, and I was hoping for lighter defensives in Parsagadae.

550 BC
http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/94231/RB25-BC-550.JPG
Masonry completed and I set research to Polytheism. Another archer popped out of Persepolis and gets properly whacked. It's Whack-An-Arch!

525 BC
Venice completed Swordsman and it reinforced Healer in the defensive fortification. Healer is our Medic Swordsman. An Archer popped out of the darkness, says hello to the Swordsman Brigade, and gets whack.

475 BC
http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/94231/RB25-BC-475.JPG
Another Whack-An-Arch by Persepolis.

450 BC
Polytheism completed and I set research to Alphabet.

425 BC
http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/94231/RB25-BC-425.JPG
Another Whack-An-Arch.

400 BC
http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/94231/RB25-BC-400_Healer-Killed.JPG
Healer gets killed by a one-two Archer combo. First Archer suicide himself against Healer and the second Archer killed him. Now I need a new Healer.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/94231/RB25-BC-400_Last-Battle.JPG
It's 400BC however I want to step back two turns. In 450BC, the Swordsman Brigade arrived at Parsagadae. There are 4 Archers in the city and I don't have enough Swordsman to take the city. In 425BC, the Swordsman Brigade pillaged a village to nothing for 19 gold. I raised gold to keep our research at 100% research. The treasury was near 0. I moved one Swordsman E of Parsagadae in hoping to lure an archer to suicide itself against it and thin city defensives. It's the current turn, two archers suicide themselves against the lone Swordsman and failed to kill him. There's only two archers in the city and I attack. The picture is the last Archer getting killed.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/94231/RB25-BC-400_Pasargadae-Captured.JPG
Parsagadae is ours. We have our third city. I whipped the queued Library in Cornelia and configured it to max growth.

375 BC
http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/94231/RB25-BC-375.JPG
This is another weedy moment. I meant to attack the Archer on the hill with the new Healer. He's SE of Persepolis. I accidentally clicked on the tile he's currently on than on the Archer. It was a slip of my clipping finger. Now I had to attack with the wounded Swordsman at bad odds. I figured C-C could mop up the Archer if the Swordsman dies. As you can see in the picture, he won. I named him Archer Bane for beating the combat odds. Maybe the RNG gods are smoking some weedy stuff too. I whipped the queued Library in Venice and configured it for max growth. I configured Cornelia for No Growth since it’s at max pop.

Tuscany
http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/94231/RB25-BC-375_Tuscany.JPG
Here's our third city. I named it Tuscany after the lovely ivory in the BFC. There's a third ivory a few tiles away.

This report took way longer than I figured being my first CFC report and having a few technical problems. Anyway I post another reply with my closing comments and the saved file.

OK, I'll hold off on any comments until you get the report finished. :) Looks like some good moves :goodjob: but possibly some weedy ones :smoke: as well. Everyone can discuss it once we have a save file up.

Conclusion

Here's our world.
http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/94231/RB25-BC-375_Map.JPG

We can build the following wonders.
:hammers: Colossus
:hammers: Great Lighthouse
:hammers: Partheneon
:hammers: Pyramids

Does anyone know when these wonders fall to the AI civs? What should we ignore? What should we pursue?

I’m researching Alphabet to enable Literature as the next tech to research. This can be changed. Here's a list of the techs I think we should pursue.
:science: Civil Service - Bureaucracy
:science: Code of Laws - Cast System
:science: Literature - Great Library and National Epic
:science: Mathematics - Hanging Gardens
:science: Monarchy - Hereditary Rule
:science: Monotheism - Organized Religion

Moses lightbults Monotheism. The next GP is due in 9 turns. How do we want to use Moses - build shrine, lightbulb tech, or save for GA?

Cornelia and Venice have a Library. Let's try to hire scientists. Venice still needs a Lighthouse and a Granary.

What to do with Persepolis and Susa? I think we should keep Persepolis and I don't know if we want Susa as the fifth city. Good coastal city however it doesn't add any new resources for us.

Strauss I set Cornelia to no growth and Venice to max growth. You may want to alter these setups. I don't know what to do with Tuscany? It's a good commerce and production location with clams, sugar, gold, 2 ivory, 2 grassland hills, and a few grasslands. Science City or forget about building wonders here?

Strauss it's up to you. We need a few more Swordsman to take Persepolis. Bring back the Swordman Brigade from Tuscany to group up with the new builds and attack Persepolis. That was my plan. Leave two Swordsman in Tuscany for garrison. There's always 4-5 archers in the city. I've notice a 6th archer usually pops out to cause trouble. Healer needs to whack one archer to get the Medic promotion. Have fun! :)

Here's the save: 138231

You've already mentioned the Free Great Engineer from Fusion, are you aiming to pick up the other free GPs along the way. Probably a good idea seeing as they won't increase the amount of GPPs needed for the generation next GP from cities.

for once I see the AI offering some resistance early on when the human wants to take their capital...how many archers were there initially?
I am sure you will eventually take it though, good luck

Researching Masonry killed the option to use Moses to lightbulb Civil Service, so we'll have to get there the slow way now. I'm not in favor of either a shrine or lightbulbing a religious tech. If we're going to spend any one GP towards economic production, an Academy in our best science city will pay off more economy than a shrine will.

I'd vote to make Venice our science city -- there's actually nothing about the city that would favor either merchants over science; and scientists are more useful because they can generate an Academy and multiply with it.

Persepolis is most certainly a keeper, with two food bonuses, iron, silks, and a river. Susa is not -- it has no food bonuses and we already have ivory and gems elsewhere.

Where does the Heroic Epic go? Cities 2-4 are not hammer-rich enough for it. It's either in Cornelia or in city #5 somewhere.

Venice needs to workboat up those clams sometime.

As I said before, looks like a mixture of some good and bad moves. I don't want to do TOO much nitpicking, but one or two things probably should be mentioned here. For example:

Seriously, I changed my mind on letting Cornelia grow to pop 6. Instead I configured the tiles for production and commerce to drop 1 turn from both building the Swordsman and researching Priesthood. This action causes Cornelia to slightly starve.

Umm... this was not the best move. :smoke: Driving the capital into starvation in order to pull a very minor increase in commerce and production doesn't make a whole lot of sense. It most certainly would have been better to get Cornelia to size 6 and park it there rather than starve it down close to size 4! (Remember, we don't have a granary there...) Anyway, that didn't make a whole lot of sense.

Kudos on finding Mansa and Isabella. We're NOT alone on a small island, wow! :eek: I thought for sure that we were going to be alone with Cyrus here. Why our previous leaders didn't find anyone else with the starting scout is an interesting question... :mischief:

Researching Masonry cut off the ability for our Prophet to grab Civil Service. Now, that's an obscure and gamey bit of Civ4 trivia, and I'm sure Gusto didn't know about it, but the deed was done all the same. Now what are we going to do with this Prophet? (We're going to have Prophet #2 in just a couple more turns!) I know the Hindu shrine didn't sound like the most appealing option, but we might not have anything better to do with this guy!

I'm not going to lie, there were some strange decisions made in the fighting of this war. Pillaging cottages down to nothing brings in gold - but if we're going to capture the city in question, that doesn't make a ton of sense, does it? :) (This is one of the silly things the AI does, scouring the land clear of tile improvements. Even if the AI does successfully take a city, it then takes ages to stand it back up again.)

Next I don't know what came over me - perhaps it was getting too late, the Archer fight awoke my need for action, or I was in a blissful weedy state. I decided to attack Persepolis with two Swordsman and you can see what the combat odds and results were from each skirmish.

That was just silly. Those attacks were at longshot odds, and served little purpose. There's a reason why one of the archers in Persepolis is now City Garrison II!

I moved one Swordsman E of Parsagadae in hoping to lure an archer to suicide itself against it and thin city defensives. It's the current turn, two archers suicide themselves against the lone Swordsman and failed to kill him. There's only two archers in the city and I attack. The picture is the last Archer getting killed. Parsagadae is ours. We have our third city.

Yay! You show Cyrus who's boss! :hammer: (AND it's the Jewish holy city too!)

I whipped the queued Library in Cornelia and configured it to max growth.

That, on the other hand, was silly. Cornelia can pull 15 shields/turn, for a library in just 6 turns. The whipping has resulted in an unhappy face which will stick around for another 9 turns. Whipping is a major asset, but you have to be careful not to overuse it!

Starvation diets, whipping libraries - what have you been doing to my poor city! :lol:

There's a nice stack of City Raider II swords that will probably be able to take Persepolis with help from another new sword or two out of Cornelia/Venice. The only problem? No Medic unit over there with them!

http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/12069/RB25-8s.jpg

I'm not quite sure what happened with Healer, but we sure could use a Medic unit over there.

Still, all in all a good turnset (and VERY well illustrated! :goodjob: ) We obtained another one of our Golden Five, and are in good position to take Persepolis for city #4 in the near future. Strauss should aim to play 20ish turns too, which hopefully will see us grab the Persian capital. I expect us to go back to 10 turns each after that, but we'll play it by ear. :)

Got it, will play tonight

There is actually still a backdoor way to lightbulb Civil Service. If we research Monotheism (we want Org Rel soon anyway), we can use two prophets to lightbulb Theology and then Civil Service. Need to avoid Monarchy to block off Divine Right after Theology.

I think that is still worth spending the two Prophets, because consider this -- we can only ever spend four Prophets towards golden ages, and with two early Prophet wonders in our capital, we're likely to generate more than that over the entire game. As a side benefit, we'll likely found Christianity, which if nothing else, gives the AIs fewer religions to quarrel over. Sistine Chapel might even be a nice wonder to have with our focus on specialists.

Sorry, but I feel I'm missing something: either I don't know something basilar, or am I doing wrong math, because the discussion over great persons that you, Sullla and T-hawk, are having, is scaring me VERY much, so I'm posting to understand this. Am I getting the mechanism of GP production wrong, or I'm undervaluing our future GP power?

Anyway, here's my math:

We're going to have Prophet #2 in just a couple more turns

That's not a couple more turns: it's 2000 GPP more if we use a GP outside golden ages! Think about it: we need 14 GPs in total for GAs, if we burn one on a shrine we'll need 15 overall. How much does the 15th GP cost? 2000 points.

There is actually still a backdoor way to lightbulb Civil Service. If we research Monotheism (we want Org Rel soon anyway), we can use two prophets to lightbulb Theology and then Civil Service. Need to avoid Monarchy to block off Divine Right after Theology.

I think that is still worth spending the two Prophets, because consider this -- we can only ever spend four Prophets towards golden ages, and with two early Prophet wonders in our capital, we're likely to generate more than that over the entire game. As a side benefit, we'll likely found Christianity, which if nothing else, gives the AIs fewer religions to quarrel over.


Aaaagh! 2000+2200=4200 GPP!

Are we really going to generate so many GPP in our game? The two prophets we'll be using to lightbulb CS will make the total GPP amount increase by about 36% :eek:.

Please explain me! Thx!

I appreciate the feedback and looking forward to read comments from mucco and Strauss.

Researching Masonry killed the option to use Moses to lightbulb Civil Service, so we'll have to get there the slow way now.
:lol: I’m laughing at myself because it was my good intension to make available in Strauss turn set a few wonders he could choice to start building. Play and learn.

I'd vote to make Venice our science city
Venice will make a great pure GP farm. I’ll flow any way on this.

Venice needs to workboat up those clams sometime.
I already did it and forgot to mention it in my original posting. I later added a comment at the bottom.

Umm... this was not the best move. Driving the capital into starvation in order to pull a very minor increase in commerce and production doesn't make a whole lot of sense. It most certainly would have been better to get Cornelia to size 6 and park it there rather than starve it down close to size 4! (Remember, we don't have a granary there...) Anyway, that didn't make a whole lot of sense.
When my turn set was completed and I was looking through my notes and screenshots, I realized I made one pure blissful weedy move in attacking Persepolis. I was going to use a weedy smiley theme for my report, to give readers a good chuckle by my own self-mocking. I didn’t because I max the image inclusion total with my screenshots. No theme report. Anyway, for a little taste, it would have started “I called http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/94231/hippy.gif and asked him to come over for an all night turn set. He said sure and would bring :smoke: from [pimp]. http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/94231/hippy.gif arrived and [pimp] hooked him up. We’re staying up all night and here goes my first SG turn set.”

Anyway I wanted to build two Swordsmen in Cornelia (and two in Venice) to complete the Swordsman Brigade and attack Persepolis. However I wanted to start building the Oracle in Cornelia so it wouldn’t fall to the AI. The AI builds the Oracle in-between 1000BC and 0AD which was the time frame I was playing. My action was a decision in how can I build two Swordsmen faster to get started on the Oracle sooner. I figured out how to squeeze more production out of Cornelia at the cost of starving it. I never intended to starve down Cornelia to pop 4 and was watching it like a hawk. Cornelia does have a Granary. The action reduced the Swordsman build to 3 turns from 4 turns. The research reduction was an added benefit. I really didn’t intend to reduce research. Now Cornelia could build two Swordsmen in six turns and start the Oracle sooner. The Oracle start perfectly timed with the delivery of the 40 hammers from tree chopping. The workers never had to idly wait for the city to start chopping. On the turn Cornelia received the chops, I maxed growth the city to increase the food reserves enough to put Cornelia back in a starving max production state to complete the Oracle in 6 turns and not starved down to pop 4. After the Oracle build, I maxed food the city and it grew to pop 7 in 6 turns. I saw the series of events as a perfectly timed domino effect. I will inform the team if I want to use a starving max production tactic again.

That was just silly. Those attacks were at longshot odds, and served little purpose. There's a reason why one of the archers in Persepolis is now City Garrison II!
The City Garrison II Archer was already in the city before I attacked. I fortunately have it displayed in the :crazyeye: screenshot with all the colorful circles and lines. The city garrison picture was captured before I attacked. As I said, I don’t know what got over me. It was very silly and I deserve to be roasted. :hammer2:

(AND it's the Jewish holy city too!)
I didn’t notice it was the Jewish holy city when I captured it and why I never said a word about it in my report. On the diplomatic side, Mansa is Jewish if we want to play this angle in diplomacy.

Aaaagh! 2000+2200=4200 GPP!

It's not quite so much if we get a few of the free GPs available on the tech tree. But yeah, you're probably right, spending two prophets for CS probably isn't a good idea.

It can still be done with one prophet, if we avoid Monarchy until somebody else researches Theology (the AIs prioritize it because it founds a religion) and trades it to us (CoL or Metal Casting as the trade bait.) If we can somehow work it out to spend one prophet on CS, I think that's still worth it. Remember any prophets beyond four are useless for GAs and I think it's likely we'll get more than four, so we can spend one.

(Also consider that slingshotting CS is a good way to boost our economy so that we're competitive in actually getting those free GPs. If we spend one to make one, we come out purely ahead.)

for once I see the AI offering some resistance early on when the human wants to take their capital...how many archers were there initially?


There were initially three archers and I completed the attacking stack with seven swords - two per archer and one for good measure. Figured if the city had four archers than the remaining three/four swords should take it out. There was five archers when I arrived and the archer that popped out was the sixth. Persepolis was well prepared. It sucks when a plan doesn't come together however it was a fun challenge to handle.

There is actually still a backdoor way to lightbulb Civil Service.

Good point, although Mucco certainly has a point as well about the escalating costs in terms of GPPs. However, if you end up getting more than 4 great prophets the extra ones will essentially go to waste unless you use them early on shrines/ligthbulbing. On the other hand, if you spend a couple of prophets early you don't have to get 4 additional ones; you might for instance get 4 merchants instead.

Early Bureaucracy would obviously help get more wonders into play (and earlier) so some of the "wasted" GPPs would be recouped, if not all. If you want to be more conservative you could also consider self-researching Theology as well and use a prophet for Civil Service only. That would still be a relatively fast way of getting there.

There was five archers when I arrived and the archer that popped out was the sixth. Persepolis was well prepared.

ahem...

2) We don't need 8 swords to take Cyrus' capital unless it's on a hill. 5-6 should be plenty

:p :p :p :lol:

Monarch AIs aren't quite the pushovers you seem to think they are...

It can still be done with one prophet, if we avoid Monarchy until somebody else researches Theology (the AIs prioritize it because it founds a religion) and trades it to us (CoL or Metal Casting as the trade bait.)

Let me add to this that Mansa is Jewish and we own the Jewish holy city. :) Anyway we have a jewish city and could switch to Judaism to start improving relations with Mansa. Monotheism, for Organized Religion, will allow us to build a few missionaries to send to Mansa to further influence him. ;) We know how much Mansa loves to trade techs. :mischief: The only problem is Izzy border is blocking land access to Mansa. I know how to resolve this. :devil: We could build a galley to ship them if her borders don't expand in to the water tiles - east coast yes, west coast unknown. If there is no water route, we'll have an attacking stack already built. :devil:

2) We don't need 8 swords to take Cyrus' capital unless it's on a hill. 5-6 should be plenty...2) We don't need 8 swords to take Cyrus' capital unless it's on a hill. 5-6 should be plenty

:p :p :p :lol:

:lol: Persepolis has 4-5 archers defended at all times and is obviously building archers all the time with all the Whack-An-Arch I encountered. So figure 6 archers when Strauss attacks the city, he'll need 13-14 swords to take the city figuring two per archer and 1-2 for good measure. At least it's being constantly reconned so if the city has 3-4 archers from attrition than Strauss won't have to build so many.

lurker's comment: I'm sure there's someone out there can speak to the actual mechanics behind this, but I've noticed the AI tends to go with roughly one defender per every two pop points (except at the founding of a city, when it'll sometimes have two defenders from the get-go). Persepolis was size 8 with 3 archers when the open borders spy was before the city, at which time it was probably working on its 4th. By the time the army arrived, it was size 10, so 5 archers was maybe to be expected. The 6th and future archers would be the proverbial "gravy" archers, with your pillageable improvements or vulnerable units being the mashed potatoes. :)

You might want to also try and get Philosphy for Pacificism early. Pacificism gives a +100% for GPP in state religion city. Couple that with Fredrick's leader trait, you could easily get a lot of GP.

Lurker's Comments/Questions:

Nice idea for a game, I've subscribed to the thread, but I have a few questions.

I've found tha reading these sort of threads makes me a better Civ player, and indeed I have moved from a Noble player to a Monarch player in a month and a half, mostly in thanks to things I've read here. So I'd like to say reading things so far has helped me learn even more about the game, but sadly that isn't the case.

First of all, this is the first RB Succession game where I don't really get the premise. Considering the skill of the players involved here, where is the real challange? Does aggressive AI make things much harder? Or maybe that fractal map, whatever that is? Seems like the main twist is having to generate 12 GPs, but even in my games I generate AT LEAST 1 engineer, 2 scientists, 1 merchant, 2 artists, and 2 prophets. That's 8 right there, including the difficult to get engineer. You guys can get at least 2 free GPs through Music and Fusion, plus maybe other techs I'm forgetting. Seems like with all the wonder production this would be an easy culture win, much easier than Sulla's true culture challange.

Maybe these ideas were discussed in a thread on RD's own forums? If you guys did talk more about leader and map selection over there, or about choosing the difficulty level or the agressive AI settings, does anyone care to provide the link?

Also - why are you even considering lightbulbing techs with those prophets? Is that really a viable idea at all? At this level, I expect players of your caliber to have a large tech lead, but the possible academies the Great Scientists could produce later seem like a far more beneficial option than taking Theology with a Prophet.

Finally - why Venice for the city name? I got the original idea - calling it Venice since it was going to be a bad location, but the location changed. (Yes, I know this is a very minor point).

Discussions at the RB forums (http://realmsbeyond.net/forums/showthread.php?t=1416&page=1&pp=10)

The biggest challenge is the 5CC (5 City Challenge). The 'problems' we'll see with this variant:
- less cities, so less research. This means it will be harder to get to Music, Fusion and Economics first, and to get later Wonders like the Taj Mahal. We won't be able to get all of them at this level!
- more difficult to wage war on other civs, since we won't be able to obtain any outposts
- more space for the AI to settle, making them more powerful

Also, getting the GP's you want at the right time is more difficult than it sounds. I have often seen Great Prophets pop up when the chance for the required Great Engineer was over 75%:lol:

Lurker's Comments/Questions:

Nice idea for a game, I've subscribed to the thread, but I have a few questions.

I've found tha reading these sort of threads makes me a better Civ player, and indeed I have moved from a Noble player to a Monarch player in a month and a half, mostly in thanks to things I've read here. So I'd like to say reading things so far has helped me learn even more about the game, but sadly that isn't the case.

First of all, this is the first RB Succession game where I don't really get the premise. Considering the skill of the players involved here, where is the real challange? Does aggressive AI make things much harder? Or maybe that fractal map, whatever that is? Seems like the main twist is having to generate 12 GPs, but even in my games I generate AT LEAST 1 engineer, 2 scientists, 1 merchant, 2 artists, and 2 prophets. That's 8 right there, including the difficult to get engineer. You guys can get at least 2 free GPs through Music and Fusion, plus maybe other techs I'm forgetting. Seems like with all the wonder production this would be an easy culture win, much easier than Sulla's true culture challange.

Maybe these ideas were discussed in a thread on RD's own forums? If you guys did talk more about leader and map selection over there, or about choosing the difficulty level or the agressive AI settings, does anyone care to provide the link?

Also - why are you even considering lightbulbing techs with those prophets? Is that really a viable idea at all? At this level, I expect players of your caliber to have a large tech lead, but the possible academies the Great Scientists could produce later seem like a far more beneficial option than taking Theology with a Prophet.

Finally - why Venice for the city name? I got the original idea - calling it Venice since it was going to be a bad location, but the location changed. (Yes, I know this is a very minor point).

About GPs: first of all, we'll need 14 of them, and although there are four available in the tech tree (if I'm not mistaken), it's unlikely that we'll get all of them. As T-hawk said, monarch AI is no pushover, and we'll have to compete with only five cities. The disadvantages of this have been explained but Strauss already.

Also consider that spawning the first great persons is quite simple, and things get increasingly difficult as we proceed past the '10' mark. Making 8 GPs will need 3,600 points, adding two more (that will be the best case, with four "tech GPs") means 1,900 GPP more. It's more than half the amount for the first eight! Another one (in case we miss, say, music) will need additional 1,200 GPP, and so on.

The wonder production could decrease, as we get less competitive in science. I don't know if this will ever happen, as we have great players here, but I'd have many many problems keeping up in such a SP game.

And when we'll have produced all the GP we need, we won't have won the game at all! In fact, bending our economy towards great person production could damage us or at least slow us down. If civs like Mali manage to get away in tech, it could get rough. For that matter, I'm also a bit against the religion run, as some variety between AIs could spice up things between them.

About Venice: the origianl idea was indeed "the great city in the bad place", but there are some other reasons for my choice. First of all, it was on the sea, and as our second city, it was likely that it would become our strongest sea city (Venice dominated the Mediterranean for centuries). It had fish, which was the base of the first economy of that city, and it had a good chance to build those sea wonders that provide merchant points, and you know how Venice has been known in the middle ages as a city of merchants. About the lousy place... if now it's a good one, I can always say I have founded it on a jungle tile! :lol: And finally, since Sullla chose a name which described part of himself (a tribute to his name, in the case), I decided to pick something that could represent me as well (one city for each player, right Sullla?). I live about 300 km (200 miles) away from Venice, and that city has had a big influence in the area I live, so I felt it was the right choice.

Thank you both for the informative responses.

Okay, I've played my turns. The report will be up soon. It's been an interesting turnset, so it deserves an interesting report.

IT (375 BC): Preflight check:

The Golden Three situation:

Cornelia is currently at +2 unhappy faces. One of those will go away in 9 turns when the whipping penalty ends, the other one is from war weariness.

http://i115.photobucket.com/albums/n287/Strauss1/Civ4ScreenShot0002-3.jpg

Venice will grow next turn and then reach its happiness limit for 10 turns, after which the angry faces from whipping will go away and the city can grow further.

http://i115.photobucket.com/albums/n287/Strauss1/Civ4ScreenShot0001-4.jpg

Tuscany will remain in revolt for 3 turns.


Military situation:

Persepolis is garrisoned by five(!) archers. One of them has the City Garrison II promotion, two others have CG I, the remaining two have no promotions.

http://i115.photobucket.com/albums/n287/Strauss1/Civ4ScreenShot0004-3.jpg

Our strike force currently consists of eight Swordsmen. However, only two of them are at full strength. As Sullla stated, we lack a medic. If we are lucky, the Swordsman near Persepolis will be attacked by an Archer, allowing us to promote him to a Medic.
We will gain another Swordsmen in 4 turns from Cornelia.

Political situation:

We currently have contact with Cyrus, Mansa Musa, and Isabella. Only one rival remains unknown.

Religious situation:

We are currently Hindu. We should probably wait to convert until we spread Judaism a bit.

IBT 1: As hoped, Healer is attacked, and wins! Gibbon ranks us the 4th wealthiest civ. We wanted to be 5th!:lol: The unknown civ is #1.

http://i115.photobucket.com/albums/n287/Strauss1/Civ4ScreenShot0005-4.jpg

Turn 1 (350 BC): I promote Healer to Medic I.

http://i115.photobucket.com/albums/n287/Strauss1/medicpromotion.jpg

I move him forward across the river, hopefully he won’t get attacked this time, though he still has a big chance of winning. Library finishes in Venice and I start on a Swordsman, due in 8 turns.

Turn 2 (325 BC): Healer is attacked, but survives and reaches the safety of the forest.

Turn 3 (300 BC): Tuscany comes out of revolt. I pondered about building either a Jewish Monastery or a Work Boat. I went with the Work Boat (30 turns) to allow the city to grow faster. Hinduism serves us well for now.

Turn 4 (275 BC): Cornelia finishes a Swordsman. It starts on a Forge as it is a high-shields city.
I hire two scientist specialists in Venice, since it’s at its happiness limit anyway. This gives Venice 12 GPP per turn, and also speeds up Alphabet by 1 turn to 5 turns (it had already sped up by 1 turn earlier).

http://i115.photobucket.com/albums/n287/Strauss1/venicescientists-1.jpg

Our Healer comes too late, 5 of the 6 Swordsmen in Tuscany have been healed to full strength, and I move them back into Persia. Healer continues to Tuscany to heal himself and the remaining Swordsman.

Turn 5 (250 BC): Cyrus has sent two Archers towards Venice. He seems to have a Barracks, as both Archers are Strength I. Ah well, I’d rather meet them in the open field than behind city walls.

Turn 6 (225 BC): An archer pillages a mine, the other moves into the open besides Venice. Archer Bane kills him, and is wounded but gets 11 XP, allowing CR 3 promotion!

Turn 7 (200 BC): Persepolis seems to be churning out Archers for sport, so I spread out our striking force to occupy some tiles.

http://i115.photobucket.com/albums/n287/Strauss1/Civ4ScreenShot0011-4.jpg

IBT 8: As expected, the Swordsman out in the open gets attacked by an Archer. He’s badly wounded, but gets a promotion and will have time to heal before the attack on Persepolis commences.

Turn 8 (175 BC): Nothing happens:eek:

Turn 9 (150 BC): Alphabet comes in, start on Literature.

http://i115.photobucket.com/albums/n287/Strauss1/Civ4ScreenShot0012-5.jpg

Swordsman is finished in Venice and it starts on another one for good measure. Mahavira is born in Cornelia. I’m sending nine Swordsmen out to Persepolis, with two of them wounded.

Turn 10 (100 BC): Nothing happens:eek:

Turn 11 (100 BC): I kill two Archers south of Persepolis, badly wounding two Swords.

Turn 12 (75 BC): I can make some trades with the AI, but I don’t want to give up our Alphabet and Metal Casting monopoly.
Thanks to promotions, our wounded Swordsmen are still in some sort of fighting shape. I move our CR3 into position for attack, and he actually has positive odds against the CG2 Archer! The great attack will commence next turn.

Turn 13 (50 BC): I forgot to put out a decoy onto the Corn to lure an Archer out of the city. The AI’s foolishness makes up for this, as it moves one Archer out of the city. CHARGE!

Our CR3 Swordsman defeats the CG 2 Archer at 57.7% odds!
http://i115.photobucket.com/albums/n287/Strauss1/Civ4ScreenShot0016-5.jpg

Our CR2 Swordsman defeats a CG 1Archer!

http://i115.photobucket.com/albums/n287/Strauss1/Civ4ScreenShot0019-4.jpg

Our CR2 Swordsman defeats a CG1 Archer!

http://i115.photobucket.com/albums/n287/Strauss1/Civ4ScreenShot0022-1.jpg

Our CR2 Swordsman is defeated by the Strength I Archer

http://i115.photobucket.com/albums/n287/Strauss1/Civ4ScreenShot0024.jpg

Our CR2 Swordsman is defeated by an Archer…
Our CR 2 Swordsman defeats the Archer.

http://i115.photobucket.com/albums/n287/Strauss1/Civ4ScreenShot0028.jpg

Our CR 2 Swordsman defeats the Str1 Archer!

http://i115.photobucket.com/albums/n287/Strauss1/Civ4ScreenShot0031.jpg



http://i115.photobucket.com/albums/n287/Strauss1/Civ4ScreenShot0032-1.jpg

I think this battle was a clear proof of the 'fairness' of the RNG-God. We won 2 battles at 43% odds, and consquently lost 2 at 57% odds


Persepolis, the Holy City of Hinduism, is ours and we loot 190 gold.
We also get a view of Arbela, it is walled and has a Settler ready. It also has an impressive cultural presence. I move Moses to Persepolis for the shrine.
I make peace with Cyrus for all his techs and forcing him into Paganism.

http://i115.photobucket.com/albums/n287/Strauss1/Civ4ScreenShot0034-1.jpg

I revolt to Organized Religion, I think it’s useful for building those wonders and we can take the upkeep with just 5 cities. Start on the Parthenon in Cornelia, due in 19 turns, but I plan to chop a bit. +50% GP birth rate in all cities is a very nice bonus, and we need to get it now if at all.

Turn 14 (25 BC): Nothing happens, but it’s clear OR is speeding up some building projects. I think building a Shrine in Persepolis would be agood move, since Arbela’s culture is currently covering the Iron!

Turn 15 (1 AD): Confucianism FIDAL.

Turn 16 (25 AD): Nothing happens:eek:

Turn 17 (50 AD): Nothing happens:eek:

Turn 18 (75 AD): Literature comes in, and I go straight for Music.

http://i115.photobucket.com/albums/n287/Strauss1/Civ4ScreenShot0039-1.jpg

CoL was an option considering no-one we know has Alpha yet, but we don’t know about the unknown civ, and researching CoL first will deplete our cash and force us to research Music at 50%, costing 10 turns more than it takes now (25 to 15). And a Great Artist in the bag is always nice.

Turn 19 (100 AD): I decide to end here as 100 AD is a nice round number.

An overview of the Golden Four:

http://i115.photobucket.com/albums/n287/Strauss1/Civ4ScreenShot0040-2.jpg

We will get our next Great Person (a GS) in 12 turns from Venice. The lighthouse there will finish in 2 turns, and we should probably head for the Great Lighthouse after that.

The Parthenon will finish in 9 turns if we don’t get beaten, and will give us a nice boost.

Music will almost certainly give us a Great Artist.

Persepolis will come out of revolt next turn. I think we should build the Shrine there, in order to counter the culture from Arbela. Another solution is declaring on Cyrus again when the peace treaty expires. I don’t think Arbela will put up that much of a fight against our elite troops. There are only two Archers garrisoned there at the moment.

We also still need a 5th city. Arbela is an okay site, but founded 1 tile off the coast. The resources are very nice though, 4 Furs and a Cow. My personal preference goes to the site north of Cornelia, 1 N of the Corn.

EDIT: save is a few posts below

Don't you want to rename Persepolis? :)

I really don't know about the wisdom of using a GP on the shrine, especially after you guys told me how difficult the GP generation will be. Do you think the $$$ will be that helpful? It will be less than people might be used to if I understand correctly, since the small map will limit how many cities you can spread Hinduism to.

How did you guys get Cyrus to give you so many techs for peace? Is there some sort of medium ammount of punishment that makes the AI very generous? Normally I don't end up with very good peace options even when I could easily eliminate the AI.

Don't you want to rename Persepolis? :)

I do want to, but I forgot. I'll rename it, hopefully before Sullla gets to it:eek:

Behold:

http://i115.photobucket.com/albums/n287/Strauss1/Civ4ScreenShot0041-2.jpg

You were all doomed when I was put on the roster:lol:


http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/78327/RB25_-_The_Golden_Five_AD-0100.Civ4SavedGame

How did you guys get Cyrus to give you so many techs for peace? Is there some sort of medium ammount of punishment that makes the AI very generous? Normally I don't end up with very good peace options even when I could easily eliminate the AI.

Well, Monotheism and Archery are not the most expensive techs around at 100 AD. And even Mathematics only costs us about 8 turns at the moment.

Great turn, great city name! The RNG God surely has not been harsh to us. Arbela looks nice, but maybe the location north of Cornelia is better. It's true that there are more resources in Arbela, though. We probably don't want to take Susa, as it provides a "buffer" zone between us and Spain.

Founding a city in the south looks like a hard task, as I see that Izzy's already there, so it's either of the two locations (Susa doesn't look so good).

Tuscany is at the border with Spain and Persia, so it will need a lot of culture and much protection to prosper.

Might I suggest letting T-hawk play now his turn, so he can take Arbela/found a new city? This seems the right moment.

I would put T-Hawk up again in the roster, except that I think we are NOT quite ready to found city location #5. At a minimum, Arbela is going to have to be razed, and we don't have a settler in position to found at another location. I'll take the save and even out the turn numbers, while setting up T-Hawk to build our final city sometime in the very near future.

And, as far as Straussburg goes... :goodjob:

Good turn set Strauss.

Behold: ... You were all doomed when I was put on the roster.
Congrats on capturing Persepolis and renaming it to Straussburg - City of Doom. :lol: I was :lol: at your combat screenshots of Persepolis. I see you like to capture images of flying bodies. :cool: I'm unsure why you garrisoned Healer in Tuscany? :dunno: I was hoping he got group with the Swordsman Brigade in attacking Persepolis. Anyway I suggest we group Healer with the Swordsman Brigade and fortify Tuscany with Archers.

Awesome peace treaty with Cyrus. :goodjob: You took :hammer: to him in war and diplomacy. I see you experienced a few Whack-An-Arch yourself. :D From your report, I couldn't figure out what happened to the Swordsman I positioned NW of Venice guarding the border between Venice and Persepolis. I was surprised the Archers were able to pillage a mine. Anyway the pillaged mine still needs to be built.

I liked your decision to research Music for the free GA because I know Gandhi likes to research Music early; and we don't know who the last civ is.

:eek: I was saying to myself "Don't built the shrine!" when I was reading your report about using Moses to build the Hindu shrine. I know it was discussed and my inclination was to use Moses to build the Hindu shrine. After reading T-hawk posts, I agree with him.
I'm not in favor of either a shrine or lightbulbing a religious tech. If we're going to spend any one GP towards economic production, an Academy in our best science city will pay off more economy than a shrine will.
It can still be done with one prophet, if we avoid Monarchy until somebody else researches Theology (the AIs prioritize it because it founds a religion) and trades it to us (CoL or Metal Casting as the trade bait.) If we can somehow work it out to spend one prophet on CS, I think that's still worth it. Remember any prophets beyond four are useless for GAs and I think it's likely we'll get more than four, so we can spend one.

We should either trade or research Theology; and use a GP to lightbuld Civil Service. Of course, we'll need to trade or research CoL before lightbulbing Civil Service. If we use one Great Person for something other than a GA than I would like to lightbulb Civil Service because I'm speculating we'll pop more than four GP in the game and early Bureaucracy is a good investment. I'm not speculating we'll pop more than four GS so we shouldn't use one to build an Academy. We always have Cottage Spam and Sullla, the tech broker. :D

http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/94231/RB25-AD100-ForeignAdvisor.JPG
We should stay Hindu, and not convert to Judaism. I'm recanting my suggestion because if Mansa founded Confucianism than he'll convert to it sooner or later. Personally, I could never keep an AI converted to my religion if the AI founded another. It always converted back to the founded religion at some point. We would have wasted much production time building Jewish missionaries to spread the word to our cities and Mansa cities. Actually we could be wasting valuable, limited production time if we focus on building missionaries to spread the word. Our production is limited by the fact we only own 5 cities. We should focus on building infrastructure, military units, and wonders (lots of wonders). Anyway one Hindu missionary needs to built for Tuscany, and we shouldn't build Jewish missionaries to spread Judaism unless a situation in the game calls for it. This point also emphasizes why we shouldn't build a shrine because a Hindu shrine will only collect 5 gold.

Concerning the last city location, I like Susa's location the best for all the grassland and water tiles. I just see lots of poor tiles located around Arebela and N of Cornelia. N of Cornelia has fresh water tiles; however so does Susa. Susa fresh water tiles are better quality - there all freshwater grasslands. All three sites have poor production so all three cities are candidates for a commerce city. Susa is the best choice for a commerce city with all the fresh water grassland and water tiles. Susa doesn't provide any new resources; however what does the other two sites provide: Arebela has Fur and Deer and N of Cornelia has Deer. Personally, I prefer four fresh water grassland cottages over four Fur tiles; and I don't consider Deer in the BFC as a good reason to settle a city. The capture of Susa will help Tuscany push back Izzy borders. The two cities culture will overlap and eventually overtake Izzy's culture. In any land war with Izzy or Mansa, Tuscany and Susa will act as target cities for counter-attacks; thus leaving Straussburg, Venice, and Cornelia undisturbed behind in our territory.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/94231/RB25-AD100-Straussburg.JPG
It looks Cyrus has another city where I signed Cyrus City in a red circle. I'm for declaring war on Cyrus to raze Arebela and the new city - giving us control of all the northern territory - and capturing Susa for the fifth city as stated above. Cyrus has Construction so we can expect War Elephants and Catapults for him soon. The sooner we finish him off the better. I circled the Iron in red because I would first pillage the mine in the next declaration of war, and would suggest pillaging the Ivory too. We can always improve the tiles later.

:goodjob: I would like to send my congrats to all the team members for completing a good team cycle of play and settling the golden four. :)

lurker's comment: I'm sure there's someone out there can speak to the actual mechanics behind this, but I've noticed the AI tends to go with roughly one defender per every two pop points (except at the founding of a city, when it'll sometimes have two defenders from the get-go). Persepolis was size 8 with 3 archers when the open borders spy was before the city, at which time it was probably working on its 4th. By the time the army arrived, it was size 10, so 5 archers was maybe to be expected. The 6th and future archers would be the proverbial "gravy" archers, with your pillageable improvements or vulnerable units being the mashed potatoes. :)
Good comment and I would say fairly accurate from what Strauss and I experienced in our turn set around Persepolis. I'll have to keep your comment in mind in future warring situations.

(0) 100AD OK, things are looking better than when I last had the game and we had but one small city! Straussburg comes out of resistance next turn, and although it will be unhappy, the location will be a strong one down the road. Arbela is pressuring it, so I'll see if I can raze that city before this turnset is done... two Persian archers won't put up much of a fight for our swords. Peace treaty expires in four more turns.

Cornelia is building the Parthenon, ok with me. However, it's WAY under the happy cap, so let's do something to fix that! I change a plains forest tile to one of our grassland cottages, Parthenon build time drops by one turn but we pick up 2 more food and growth increases dramatically (9 turns to 5 turns). I'm not sure whether I see Great Lighthouse in Venice's future, but I'll tweak things there and see if the wonder's still available after we get lighthouse and granary there. For now, I drop one scientist to work a grassland cottage (after we grow to size 7, we can pick up the extra scientist again). Trying to sacrifice Great Person production a little here for the longer-term advantage of making the city stronger. Culture borders squeezing Tuscany a little, something will have to be done there as well...

Music is a great tech to research for now; I also see Calendar in our future soon, but we can definitely trade for that (Mansa and Cyrus both already have the tech).

(1) 125AD Straussburg out of resistance, and it's not too happy...

http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/12069/RB25-9s.jpg

See that "motherland" unhappiness? That's not ever going to go away, at least not until we go through the agonizingly slow process of overcoming Cyrus' culture with our own. We're not going to wait that long. In short, that "motherland" unhappiness has doomed Cyrus. The best way to get rid of it will be to eliminate him... so that's what I plan to do. :satan:

Pyramids built in a faraway land, Mahabodi (Buddhist shrine) built. Izzy's got her shrine up, it seems...

Now I know there was some skepticism as to whether we should build the Hindu shrine or not, but I still think that it will be a strong enough move to warrant the use of a Great Prophet. Our 5 cities will all be Hindu, we can convert all of Mansa's cities, and we should be able to convert the cities of whatever civ is out in the fog too. Even if we can't get more than 15-20 gold each turn from the shrine, that amount of gold, every turn for the rest of the game, with building multipliers factored in - I think that's still worth doing.

The alternative proposal, using the Prophet to highlight Civil Service, just seems silly at this point in the game. We're going to research Theology and then burn a Prophet on Civil Service?! Why not trade for Code of Laws and just research Civil Service itself! The tech's not THAT expensive! Using a Prophet to grab Civil Service in like 1000BC is a very strong play, probably TOO powerful. At this stage of the game - not nearly as good. As Sirian would say,

I urge you to think long term.

Having the Hindu shrine in play for the rest of the game seems like a much stronger play to me than getting Civil Service some 20 turns faster than we would have it otherwise. If we come up short of Prophets at the end of the game, I'll accept responsibility. :)

http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/12069/RB25-10s.jpg

Currently 4 cities have Hinduism in them, but that will go down when we raze Arbela. :crazyeye:

(2) 150AD Mansa demands corn. Wow. Mansa usually doesn't demand stuff... I go ahead and give it to him. It's just a corn we don't need, and no point in pissing him off unnecessarily. Remember to cancel this deal on the next turnset.

Venice finishes its lighthouse and starts a granary, Tuscany finishes workboat and starts a granary. Straussburg is also working on a granary. Granaries all around! :D

We have a new Pasargadae:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/12069/RB25-11s.jpg

Another city to burn down! :hammer:

(3) 175AD Popped Another One (TM) at Venice!

http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/12069/RB25-12s.jpg

Another source of iron, ooh. More shields, very nice.

(4) 200AD Cancel peace treaty with Cyrus - whack a mole time!

http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/12069/RB25-13s.jpg

Worker on the border captured, Straussburg becomes extremely unhappy, but that's what the whip is for (granary whipped for 2 pop). Now the city is stable at size 5. All the other cities look OK, so let's do this thing!

(5) 225AD Cyrus moving archers towards Tuscany - I am less than scared.

(6) 250AD Our City Raider III swords get 70% odds to attack Arbela, even though the defenders are City Garrison I and behind walls. We win the first battle without a scratch, second sword is also successful, and:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/12069/RB25-14s.jpg

Scratch the cultural pressure on Straussburg. ;)

(7) 275AD Mansa asks us to convert to Judaism. Urp. If we were Spiritual I would convert in a heartbeat, but we're really involved in some important stuff here. Think for a minute, but we just CANNOT convert to Judaism right now. I have to take the relations hit. Sorry about that, everyone. I still think we can get Mansa on our side with Hindu missionaries down the road, so don't give up on him!

Venice begins its play for the Great Lighthouse, due in 12 turns. No clue if we'll get it or not, but we may as well try! (We WILL get the Colossus there, we should go forge/Colossus next in Venice regardless of what happens.) Kill an archer who tries to pillage our gold mine with Healer (85% odds, not much of a fight).

(8) 300AD Parthenon finishes in Cornelia, yay! [dance] I start a Hindu missionary for Tuscany.

(9) 325AD Straussburg hits 100 culture, wow! That was fast. Paragadae #2 has two archers, one with Combat I and the other with nothing, along with only 20% cultural defenses. That's not much of a match for our vet swords. I give Archer's Bane the honors:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/12069/RB25-15s.jpg

Goodbye. :hammer: Our swords will heal and head for Susa to finish the job, after which we can FINALLY get around to peacefully developing our civ. Whew. (I did not envision this early warfare, but sometimes the map forces your hand!)

(11) 375AD And a quiet last turn. Cornelia finishes a Hindu missionary, who heads for Tuscany, goes onto settler (5 turns) for our final city. I'll discuss placement in a little bit.

As far as the war goes, Susa has three archers behind walls (50% defenses), none of them with any promotions:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/12069/RB25-16s.jpg

We have several swords moving in that direction and others healing; we should be able to take and raze the city in about 5-6 turns. I didn't lose a single unit on my turn, but that was just luck. We had good odds everywhere, but still lucky. The units we do have should be more than enough to finish Cyrus. :)

Hopefully Venice will get Great Lighthouse; regardless of what happens, I'd whip out a forge next and then build Colossus. Once we get started on Colossus, we can trade Metal Casting away without fear of losing the wonder. Cornelia should probably do Great Library after it finishes its settler, after which can can trade Alphabet and Literature away safely. We DID get Parthenon, which should be a big help.

So - where to put city #5? Here's a map:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/12069/RB25-17s.jpg

I think the best spots are either northeast or Cornelia or north of Straussburg, since that's where the clusters of resources are. In the Cornelia area, I like the spot one tile southeast of the corn resource; grabs corn, cows, silks, one tile of overlap with the capital, but lots of hills for potential production. (Some of the proposed spots north of there have a little too much tundra.) In the Straussburg area, one north of the ruins looks pretty decent; it has cows and deer plus four furs, but also a lot of ice and tundra...

Option #3 is keeping Susa as city #5. I'm not enormously impressed with the terrain; mostly jungle tiles (grassland). It would make a good spot for cottage cheese, so the question is really do we want more of a production city (such as north of Cornelia) or a commerce one? Since most of our cities are already low-production, I'd lean towards founding one geared for shields, but that's just me. If we go with the Susa option, Cornelia can be swapped to another build with no production invested in the settler.

TEN turns each from here on out! Back to a more normal SG turnover. :)

We're swapping T-Hawk in next so that he can found our final city. If we chose a location for the settler that takes additional turns to reach, T-Hawk can play a couple extra ones. Otherwise though - 10 turns each from here on out.

Sullla
mucco <<< on deck
T-Hawk <<< UP NOW
Gusto
Strauss

Once we have all five cities, we should be able to trigger our first Golden Age with the free Artist from Music. Hooray! :D

Behold ... StraussburgYou are lucky that Cathy isn't in the game and I am not playing a round or two ... naming that city is just asking for it to be given away by the pushover for peace!

Wow that was fast turn around for a turn set. I responded to Strauss turn set and than I see your report is available least than an hour later. :eek:

Great turn set but should we expect any less. :)

Popping iron in Venice is sweet. It makes Venice a decent production city to build a few wonders in conjunction to hiring oodles of specialists. Venice is a decent hybrid city - more commerce oriented.

Concerning fifth city location, I like the resources in the area N/NW of Straussburg however I’m not impressed with the terrain. The location N of Cornelia that’s SE of corn and Susa are much better locations to settle our fifth city. IMO this is how I see the development of the current cities: Cornelia and Tuscany are production cities, Venice is a hybrid city - more commerce oriented, and Straussburg is a commerce city. So I’m leaning towards another pure commerce city in the capturing of Susa. I’m even open-minded to invading Izzy territory, :devil:, to raze the city that’s putting cultural pressure on Tuscany and exploring the area for potentially settling the fifth city. Let me add that I see Cornelia as our wonders production city and Tuscany as our units production city (Heroic Epic). What would be the role of a third production city? I’m just having a difficulty visualizing the role of a third production city in the overall scheme of things, and see a stronger need for a second pure commerce city. We can always use two workers to chop the jungle tiles around Susa and improve the tiles. Anyway I’m leaning towards another commerce city because I simply don’t see the role of a third production city in the overall scheme of things. It’s just the way I’m seeing the development of the cities and will follow any decision on any location. :)

:eek: I didn't think this conquest could be so fast! Now the northern part of the continent is clear for centuries - watch out for barbs!

I've tried to make a dotmap of the zone; the original size is in the thumbnail, I'm posting here the resized one.

http://img456.imageshack.us/img456/4525/dotmap375adkq2.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

Sullla's suggestion is the red dot; an alternative place up there is marked blue, instead of the cattle it grabs deer, has more overlap, less production and probably less food, so it's probably weaker, but I had already put it there and I was too bored to delete it :p.

In the west, the yellow dot is the other suggestion of Sullla, and grabs two food resources and all the furs; the former Arbela (yellow circle) has overall better terrain, but fails to grab deer. The green dot has bad terrain, but keeps two food sources, gains horses, and could be our only chance to get that marble (very useful for our variant).

I could see other two places, respectively north of the red/blue corn, and S/SW of the red cattle, but they seemed too weak to deserve a dot for me ;).

And then, there's Susa. The lack of a food resource is compensated by the great amount of commerce available.

http://img53.imageshack.us/img53/5515/dotmap375adtg9.th.jpg (http://img53.imageshack.us/my.php?image=dotmap375adtg9.jpg)

EDIT: I obviously can't write :rolleyes:

I think red dot might actually be better off one tile south. I know, the overlap with the capital looks horrible, but it's "only" four tiles, and the move would trade crappy tundra terrain for more grass and iron. However, green dot is probably a better site, even with its four ice tiles, as the remaining tiles are good and it will grab marble with its second border expansion, probably in time to do you some good.

Still watching, with great interest!

Lurker's comment: Why not found one tile north of the above red dot? You would keep corn, silk, and cows, while gaining copper to work, and also loosing the tile of overlap.

Got it, but I've only got time right now for a brief preflight check. Will probably play Monday night.

Great job with the wars, everybody. :goodjob: Looks like I get sloppy seconds (or fifths) on picking my city spot, though. :P

I don't like green or yellow dots. Unforested tundra is junk, and forested tundra is still weak. Green dot has only seven non-tundra tiles to work (plus two tundra resources), and both yellow dots have eight. Blue dot has seven, plus the deer.

Red dot is probably the best choice, though I like the idea of moving it one south as well. The move south loses four tundra (junk anyway) and one grassland in favor of the iron (very powerful tile) and a plains. Both locations have three non-tundra hills. The south location will still pick up both the deer and copper at the 500 culture level. Both locations have 11 non-tundra non-shared tiles available, which isn't great but is the best we can do.

Regarding Great People, I agree that researching Theology to open up lightbulbing Civil Service is silly. That's why I phrased my earlier suggestion as lightbulbing Civil Service only if a good trade for Theology became available. We've spent our one Prophet now, so now I'll save all the GPs for GAs. Yes, we'll be Hindu for the duration, and now we should look to spread the religion too.

What's our next research target after Music? Mansa has Code of Laws and will trade it to us. He won't accept Metal Casting for it, but should accept Music, plus he can give us cash or another tech to even the deal. I'd suggest m