Welcome to your C_IV SGOTM 3 Team Thread. Please use it for all internal team communication, turn logs and discussions. Subscribe to it to receive notifications, and do not visit the other team threads for this game until you have finished. Please also subscribe to the Maintenance Thread for this game, where teams and staff may post non-spoiler information of general interest.

The Game
As Peter The Great, Leader of All the Russias, you are charged with achieving a Diplomatic or Space Victory.

This Monarch difficulty game is on a Standard size, Gyathaar-special, crowded map, at Epic speed, against 17 rivals. All victory conditions are enabled, but the laurels for this contest will be awarded to the teams who achieve the fastest Diplomatic or Space victory.

Version
Your team will play this map in Civilization IV version 1.61, using the standard HoF Mod for Windows version 1.61. This is currently HOF_Mod-1.61.008 (http://hof.civfanatics.net/civ4/mods/HOF-1.61.008.exe), but we shall use the latest version of the mod as at the start date for the game.

Your start file will be available on the SGOTM Progress and Results Page (http://gotm.civfanatics.net/submit/civ4sgotm_submission_list.php) at midnight, server local time, at the start of December 1st.

Here's the starting position - click the image below to see a larger version.

http://gotm.civfanatics.net/civ4games/images/sgotm3_start_small.jpg (http://gotm.civfanatics.net/civ4games/images/sgotm3_start_large.jpg)

Map Parameters
Playable Leader/Civ - Peter of Russia
Rivals - all the other 17 civs in version 1.61
World size - Standard
Difficulty - Monarch
Landform - Archipelago, low sea level, tropical
Game Speed - Epic
AI Aggression - Aggressive
Barbarians - Standard
Permanent Alliances Enabled
No City Razing

Notes

Please visit the Civ4 SGOTM reference thread (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=168439) to check out the rules and procedures to ensure that you are adequately prepared for this game.

BOTH Civilization IV v1.61 and Warlords v.2.08 are supported for this SGOTM. No other versions can be used, and you will have to stick with your chosen version throughout the game.

Teams will compete for four awards for each version of the game - the Gold, Silver and Bronze Laurels for the fastest finishes, and the Wooden Spoons for the lowest scoring finisher.

All teams must play the sponsored variant - awards will be given to teams who achieve Diplomatic or Space victories in the least turns.

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


Remember, Rule Number 11: Have Fun. :)

Reporting for duty.

Me too. Thanks for joining us Lee :)

SUMMARY POST INDEX

Iainuki's Super Post (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=4859464&postcount=362)
Condensed Version (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=4870550&postcount=434)

#8 (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?p=4919232#post4919232) (T202)
#7 (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?p=4907498#post4907498) (T184)
#6 (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?p=4879466#post4879466) (T138)
#5 (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?p=4859340#post4859340) (T100)
#4 (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?p=4853117#post4853117) (T77)
#3 (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?p=4841128#post4841128) (T69)
#2 (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?p=4833117#post4833117) (T45)
#1.5 (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?p=4828327#post4828327) (T31)
#1 (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=4828286&postcount=94) (T31)

Well, since the thread is open, we might as well begin discussion.

Awards will go out to the fastest diplomatic/space victory. I think it is obvious we should go for diplomatic, since less techs are required. Furthermore, backdoor domination is probably the easiest way to go. A combination of militaristic power with good diplomatic relationships would probably give us a successful diplomatic win on the first try.

I think that No City Razing was a way to prevent teams from taking too advantage of backdoor domination, but I think we can overcome that. After all, some of us just played Epic Nine... ;)

I have more thoughts, but I'll save them for later. I need to finish SGOTM2 before seriously committing to SGOTM3.

Checking in. Haven't yet thought about this one much. (But I'm looking forward to doing so!) No city razing will certainly be less painful for the Warlords teams....

I think we've got a cool mix of newbies and vets on the team. It should be a fun ride.

Is it just me, or do you just want to move that scout E->NE/NW, then found a city and start whipping?

Hey all, checking in here.

I hope everyone will be patient with me, I don't get too much time to play, so I'm still relatively newb-ish :blush:

I'm looking forward to great discussion and learning lots.

--greggo

Checking in too...

My thoughts are the same as Kodii's: diplomacy via backdoor domination seems to be the quickest route to victory.

What does everyone think about settling/exploring in our first couple moves? If we settle in place, we have almost no production.

Well my first question is who sets the play order? Who is considered the team captain?

I would settler in place. This city after some fishing boats will be great for settlers, workers, and cracking the whip.


I agree with "diplomacy via backdoor domination seems to be the quickest route to victory". With the shear number of civs, I fully expect religions to break into seven factions. We need to be careful with taking religion align at first.

If we could get our own religion, then we have a lot more power in choosing the blocks. The question is would that plan be worth the shields?

:salute: Bugsy reporting for duty.

I am essentially a Civ IV newbie. I will not take offense to any :spank: that any of you feel I deserve.

I think alternating vet and rookie in the lineup has alway been a good team strategy. Perhaps one of the vets would like to set that one up.

Lee - did you move? I thought you lived near NYC.

one last question - do I need to have this HOF mod or is just having 1.61 good enough?

@Bugsy: Welcome! Yep, looks like we'll need the HoF mod to play this one.

I like the vet/newbie turnset alternation idea. And I do think backdoor diplomatic will be the fastest win here.

I nominate Kodii for team captain, given his dedication to getting the team off the ground (just in the nick of time too).

For religion, I vote for conquering the holy city of a nearby spiritual civ. It seems to me that going for a quick victory, it will be more useful to have no religion and let any religion a city happens to have expand our new cities' cultural borders for us.

Note that Peter's traits and that food-rich start just scream "early great people" to me. (Though I wouldn't be surprised if on this crowded map, that second food resource is in an AI capital's fat cross)

I'd like to propose the following general strategy for discussion:

1) Maximize early production (including the whip). We want metal-based troops fast. (See Kylearan's Epic 9 work!) EDIT: Note that I usually consider founding on a flood plain to be a hangable offense. Though this start may warrant doing just that.

Suggested rough tech path: Bronze (and Iron if no nearby copper), Code of Laws (for courthouses) and Currency (for markets). We'll want the courthouses and markets to make keep the cost of all those cities reasonable.

Subgoal: as we approach writing and so can sign open borders with other civs, send two workboats or galleys in opposite directions to grab the circumnavigation bonus as quickly as possible. We'll want good intelligence to know where/who to attack first.

2) Concentrate on taking nearby AI capitals. They will be the best city sites. Other, secondary cities will be far less productive since the best 17 spots on the map will be capitals. The happiness resources of AI capitals should help keep war weariness costs under control.

Unless the other cities are well-developed with cottages, mines, resources all set up, we'll only want them if we're a) suffering from too much war weariness and need to completely eliminate a civ or b) the site is nice and we can get a decent amount of nice tiles either without a border expansion or with a few quick artists or a missionary.

Not taking every city of a civ will also allow us to do some pointy-stick research!

3) When we get close to the domination limit, take the necessary remaining cities for pop, [Edit: Remove this dumb idea since we don't need land for a diplo victory: switch from slavery to caste system (or whip up a bunch of theaters), assign artists, and expand culture quickly.]

I expect this game to end in the middle ages.

As if it will be that easy!

Also, a quick thank-you to AlanH for letting us pull the Real Ms. Beyond team together at the last second. I hope we don't cause too much more grief for our fine organizers.

I wouldn't mind being the captain, but my experience is nothing compared to Lee or Compromise. Unless one of you two want to be captain, I'll take the responsibility. I'd like to bring back the summary post, and have it last throughout this game. As for the alternating vet-newb team order, that looks good. I will not jump to conclude whether someone is a newb or a vet, but judging from posts and what I know, this is my current standing:

Vet: LKendter, Compromise, Kodii
Newb: greggo, Sir Bugsy
Not Sure: grangerm, Iainuki

I think that it would probably be a good idea to start off with a vet, running 15-30 turns.

Just to get some discussion going:

If we move the scout 1 east initially, and there is some seafood off the east coast, how would settling 1E1NE of the current settler position work? We'd (hopefully) still have some seafood resources, and may be able to grab the clams from the island to the west of us. We'd also gain 2 hill sites, which would increase our production.

I haven't played very many archipelago maps - how big is our initial island likely to be? Will it support 2 cities? more? If it only supports a couple, then settling in place would be the best option, since we'd want our second city to have those hills..?

Just some thoughts,
--greggo

3) When we get close to the domination limit, take the necessary remaining cities, switch from slavery to caste system (or whip up a bunch of theaters), assign artists, and expand culture quickly.

Please read the game goal below!


All victory conditions are enabled, but the laurels for this contest will be awarded to the teams who achieve the fastest Diplomatic or Space victory.

@LK: My mistake, I meant close to the backdoor domination condition. But you bring up a good point: we don't want to be so militarily successful that we win by domination instead of diplomatic. I suppose we can always gift cities away after wiping out an AI if we're too close before we can get the UN built.

But, you're right: there's no land condition on the backdoor domination victory, is there? So the last thing we'd want to do is limit population by running artists.... Not a diplomatic expert, me.

Also, do you want to be captain, LK?

@greggo: With this map type, our start island won't be too big. I suspect it will either be quite small (with only a few land squares not yet revealed to us) or we'll have one or two AIs on it with us. We won't know until the first few turns are up.

Re: capital site:

I think moving the scout east first is the best first move of the game. A lot depends on what's over there off the eastern shore. If there are no food bonuses or AI units in sight even after he climbs a mountain, then I think there are two decent choices: 1) settle in place and 2) settle on the southeastern spices. Spices aren't that great of a tile to improve, the floodplain we're starting on would be better.

If there is food over there in the ocean, then (depending on exactly where the food is) our choices expand. I think that settling NE-NE of the starting location (east of where the scout starts) would be nice. That would bring the two hills into play and would leave the southern spice location available for a second city. This might also help us encroach on any AI that shares our island. A potential downside to that location is that it might have a resource under it. If we're willing to spend two early turns, we could go for the jungle north of that, but that requires even better (as-of-yet unknown) food placement

I'd volunteer to take the first couple moves of the game; I love that part.

Looks like an interesting game you have here, are there any rules in the SGOTM about lurkers and lurkers posting in a thread?

Hi Atlas, My understanding is that lurkers are free to post, but are not allowed to post any kind of spoiler whatsoever. I suspect the easiest way to be safe is: you're free to say anything if you follow the same proscription against reading other teams' threads as the actual game participants. If you read other teams' threads, you'd probably be pretty limited in what you could post. (Though you could read to your heart's content.)

Here (http://civilization4.net/3/175/327/)'s a quick link to Sirian's map info post over at apolyton where there's an example of an archipelago/archipelago map.

As you can see, there's no guarantee about how big our island will be. Also, with open borders, fishing boats should be able to circumnavigate.

Atlas, I also believe you can actually sign-up to be a lurker for us. I'm not sure how that works, as I would assume you cannot share information from other threads. I believe there may be something on the rules page, and I'll look it up.

Don't forget the description below. We may only get two cities on our initial land. If we move, then we could get just one on the map. I vote to settle in place due to the map type.

Landform - Archipelago, low sea level, tropical

Low sea level should increase the amount of land on the map, right?

Low sea level should increase the amount of land on the map, right?

Total land yes - I don't know about island size.

In my limited exerience with Civ IV, the AI seems to be much more diverse in their diplomatic ways. A personal game I'm playing at the moment, Tokugawa and Gengis will do absolutely no trading and I am held in very low esteem by them regardless of wtar I do. I will be going to school on how to do this diplomatic stuff.

Okay, Well I sent AlanH a message asking for a bit of a clarification on the rules regarding lurkers (could not find any thing in the info threads regarding lurkers, I could have missed it though). Anyway we should know soon where or not the Real Ms. Beyond team will be handicapped by my 2 cents and inane jabbering or not.

I think team lurkers basically work like this: You are part of the team. You help strategize and you help with the gameplay. As a lurker, you also learn in the process. The difference between someone on the roster and a lurker is that the lurker doesn't play any turns.

Atlas: If you want to join our team as a lurker, then I think we are all fine with that (and I can let AlanH know). Furthermore, if you actually want to join the team as a player, I think we're fine with that too. After all, we could use another player.

I think that I will have a pretty busy holiday season, so I am hesitant to take on another SG, however if you guys will have me, I would gladly take on the role of official lurker/non-playing team member (I would be subject to all the same restrictions as the other team members I just would not play). That way I could contribute as I travel, but would not have to constantly be asking for skips and swaps.

Some notes, in no particular order.

I was going to try to separate out my discussion of strategy into separate sections, but after trying to write it out, I discovered that it was too interrelated to work well in that format, so I'm going to continue in one long narrative.

For backdoor domination, we want to grow up rather than out, in general, but we're still going to need a large chunk of territory. That means we want to rush and take some AI capitals, since as Compromise notes, there won't be any good spots left on the map after 17 civs have taken all the best ones. The huge question marks are if there are any opponents on our island, or any strategic resources. The best rush is the axe rush with copper; the others are swords with iron or horse archers with horses. If we have no opponents on our island, Sailing is also a priority. I'll feel much better about our position if we've eaten two or three opponents by 1 AD.

This strategy puts some strict requirements on our starting position and tech path. I'll start by observing that this start lies somewhere between "awful" and "abysmal." If we found in place, not only do we waste a floodplain, but we get a city with 10 non-resource ocean tiles. That's a crippling disadvantage once we get Bureaucracy, because our capital won't generate significant amounts of commerce or production. Meanwhile, the only other visible resources are spices, and the only use of spices pre-Calendar is on grasslands forests, to get an unimproved 2F 1P 1C. The forests north of the river block a move inland, even provided there are resources to be had there, and there's more ocean to the west. There's no place for hidden resources to be: no unforested flatlands or hills for metals or horses. To add insult to injury, there are no hills anywhere, rendering our starting Mining tech useless, and the only food resources available require Fishing, which we don't have.

Honestly, I don't know what do with this start. If I didn't think it was unlikely we'd find anything worth having inland, I'd suggest something radical like a two-turn move. As it is, if there are any food resources near grasslands inland, it still might be worth it.

We can't expect to have any strategic resources at our starting position. Thus, we have to locate them ASAP so we can settle them before the neighboring AIs do. If there are no strategic resources, or we get locked out of them, I don't see any alternative to pretending it's an OCC until we can get a tech lead and use it to kill the AIs.

This leads into a discussion of our opening tech path. Early religions are out: with 17 civs exploring the tech tree and no Mysticism or good early commerce, we have no chance at all of founding anything earlier than Confucianism. That leaves worker techs and our strategic-resource finding techs. If we found on the coast, our first tech has to be Fishing, but workboat-first starts when you have to tech to Fishing are very slow, in my experience. (Worker-first is 15 turns at normal speed, plus the time to improve the food resource itself, plus the worker can add other improvements. Fishing tech to workboat is the time to Fishing, usually 9 turns, then the workboat time, which varies from 15 to 30 turns, and then it's consumed. Even with the extra growth, I think the latter is usually slower.) Presuming the coastal start, after Fishing I think we have to go to Bronze Working for Slavery if we want an early settler, or go to The Wheel/Pottery for cottages. After that, a lot will depend on the strategic situation: whether there are other AIs on our island and what resources we've discovered. Animal Husbandry/Horseback Riding, Iron Working, and Sailing are all possible early priorities.

The final big question about the opening I see is: do we try for the Pyramids? The Pyramids have two important functions we can exploit, early Representation for the free happiness and the bonus to running a specialist economy (something we want to do because we're Philosophical), and bugged 1-pop axe-whipping with Police State. If we do, we're going to have to bend our early settlement and tech plans to finding a site able to build the Pyramids fast enough to beat 17 AIs, and to get Masonry.

Atlas: I think that sounds good. After all, if your schedule lightens up, you can always join us in playing. Compromise mentioned that his schedule may be tight in around January, so having a lurker on board will only be a good thing. I'll let AlanH know.

Iainuki: Looks like some good analysis. I don't have much time to go through it now, but I'll comment in about an hour or so.

@ Iainuki - Very thorough analysis. I think whoever plays the opening, needs to move the scout to see if there is anything worth gambling a two-turn opening on. Moving directly north onto that hill will give an answer to that one.

Technical question - can a fishing boat sail on a ocean tile? I don't think so. I'd be happy if I'm wrong. If I am correct, fishing is not a good opening tech to go for.

No they cannot, but considering this is an archipelago, and we have fishing resources, Fishing is very important to head towards. Not only will it improve our seafood resources, but we can get a head start on getting the circumnavigation bonus. There should be enough islands to hop between them without any ocean tiles. The only problem I see with trying to circumnavigate is that there will be so many opponents that it might be hard to get through without open borders.

Tentative Roster:

Compromise
Sir Bugsy
LKendter
greggo
Kodii
grangerm
Iainuki

I tried to put this as alternating as possible. I put Compromise first because he wants to play the opening moves. Does anyone else want to be near the front? Iainuki perhaps? (judging from your interesting analysis)

Great thoughts, Iainuki. I'll sit down to analyze the start later, but I just wanted to throw out a couple quick thoughts. I completely agree with the low-probability of any hidden resources popping up near the starting position. We may actually have to try a (shudder) archer rush!

I was tentatively leaning toward researching Bronze first, Fishing second. And starting with a worker as the first build who can then chop out a fishing boat (or two or settler, etc.) Bronze allows chopping and slavery.

Also, for production, the starting location will be excellent if we build the Globe theater there. Yhen we can whip with impunity. Working both clams would be +6 food at size 2.

@Sir Bugsy: If you culturally control an ocean square, it counts as coasts for your workboats and galleys. So while the rules technically say you can't sail on the ocean, you can if a city of yours or a civ with whom you have open borders colors it.

About the Pyramids...I'm leaning against it, but it's something to consider. I'll have to think about it.

Sounds good Kodii

Okay, onto discussion :)


I'll start by observing that this start lies somewhere between "awful" and "abysmal." If we found in place, not only do we waste a floodplain, but we get a city with 10 non-resource ocean tiles. That's a crippling disadvantage once we get Bureaucracy, because our capital won't generate significant amounts of commerce or production. Meanwhile, the only other visible resources are spices, and the only use of spices pre-Calendar is on grasslands forests, to get an unimproved 2F 1P 1C. The forests north of the river block a move inland, even provided there are resources to be had there, and there's more ocean to the west. There's no place for hidden resources to be: no unforested flatlands or hills for metals or horses. To add insult to injury, there are no hills anywhere, rendering our starting Mining tech useless, and the only food resources available require Fishing, which we don't have.. The good thing is that everybody starts with these disadvantages. However the hidden tile and the tile that the scout is on could have resources in/on them, so it is not hopeless. Anyway we will, without a doubt, want to settle another city on this island. You know how on Pangea you beeline to settle floodplains, well on archi map you beeline to settle hills and there are 2 hills visible in the north. Hammer wise the capital will suck until lumbermills, but it will crank out Great People and commerce and be an excellent whipping boy.

Honestly, I don't know what do with this start. If I didn't think it was unlikely we'd find anything worth having inland, I'd suggest something radical like a two-turn move. As it is, if there are any food resources near grasslands inland, it still might be worth it.. No need to do anything radical, a capital works better as a commerce heavy site anyway. The thing is that hammers are short on Archi maps so do NOT chop forests.

We can't expect to have any strategic resources at our starting position. Thus, we have to locate them ASAP so we can settle them before the neighboring AIs do. If there are no strategic resources, or we get locked out of them, I don't see any alternative to pretending it's an OCC until we can get a tech lead and use it to kill the AIs.It would be a bummer to have no stategic resources, but not insurmountable. A beeline to catapults would remedy everything. Cats are the Uber unit anyway.


The final big question about the opening I see is: do we try for the Pyramids?
I would not, build units instead and take it from your neighbor (after he/she builds the Great Lighthouse too ;) )

Good comments, Atlas. And good to have you aboard. If this game lasts as long as SGOTM2, we may eventually get you in for a few turns if you're willing. But I always enjoy more discussion.

While I think you're absolutely right about archipelago being low production, I think any city settled in place on the starting spot (even if it were a later city and not the capital; say if we put the capital on the jungle NE of the scout) would be a commerce monster.

That starting site can, with a lighthouse and a cottage on the other floodplain, make +9 food per turn. Over the 15 turns it takes for whip anger to dissipate, that's 135 food or enough to grow at least 3 pop for reasonable city sizes. If that can get converted to hammers, it's 135 hammers (for non-wonders anyway). Compare that to working 3 grass forests for 15 turns or 45 hammers. My thinking is that any city that has a decent food surplus will get most if not all of its production from whipping.

(And we don't want any city without a good food surplus!)

As for the newb/vet question: I played SGOTM2 with Team One (they moved to Warlords, I haven't bought it yet), but I've never player Peter and I have never tried to win diplomatically (though if we're going for backdoor domination it's not exactly a peaceful, love everyone diplo game). So I'd say I'm half and half.

Just so I am clear, diplo victory requires researching to the UN tech, building it and having 51% of the vote for sec gen? Is that it? Is it more than 51%?

As Compromise said, fishing boats can move to ocean tiles as long as they are inside our borders or the borders of a civ that we have OB with.

I would agree with moving scout E and probably to a hill before deciding on the where to settle the capital.

If this is such a crowded map, we might just want to forget about a early settler and get some early units to go after the nearest AI. As people have noted, we're not likely to have a great place to put a 2nd city anyway. I think this should be determined by the lay of the land, how close the nearest civs are, if we can mount a good offense vs. them considering a early UU (skimishers = bad). I guess we'll find out how crowded it really is and decide accordingly.

The roster is fine for me. I would suggest that if we discover some rich new land/resources with our scout that the first player stops and discusses with the team before we settler our city.

As for tech, I'm not sure whether we should go for BW or fishing first.

If we do fishing first, what do we build while we wait for it to come in? If it's a warrior, do we finish it before starting the workboat? If not, we'll lose the shields to decay. A worker first is the same thing and we wouldn't have anything great for the worker to do if we aren't chopping. Final result is that our city grows quicker, but produces less and is ready for more whipping when BW comes in.

If we do BW first then we can whip the WB the turn after getting fishing after building a couple warriors or a worker. The advantage here is that we know where bronze is.

I am going to keep thinking about BW vs fishing.

Sorry for the long post, just trying to catch up on everything and give my input

Just so I am clear, diplo victory requires researching to the UN tech, building it and having 51% of the vote for sec gen? Is that it? Is it more than 51%?


Not quite...

Firstly, once the UN is built, there is a vote for sec gen between the builders, and the nation with the highest population. This vote is a simple majority (51%). This also means we don't necessarily have to be the ones to build the UN, although I imagine we will anyway.

To win a diplomatic victory, we need to be the sec gen and ask for a vote to elect us the winners. This second vote requires a 60% majority (I think, could be 2/3 as well).

The roster is fine for me. I would suggest that if we discover some rich new land/resources with our scout that the first player stops and discusses with the team before we settler our city.

If I do run the first turnset (as seems likely), I'll certainly ask for advice before settling the capital. Unless it's quite obvious where it should go. (Right now, it's not clear to me what would make it obvious.) I'm mentally compiling a little list of possible city sites and the advantages or drawbacks of each.


If we do fishing first, what do we build while we wait for it to come in? If it's a warrior, do we finish it before starting the workboat? If not, we'll lose the shields to decay. A worker first is the same thing and we wouldn't have anything great for the worker to do if we aren't chopping. Final result is that our city grows quicker, but produces less and is ready for more whipping when BW comes in.

If we do BW first then we can whip the WB the turn after getting fishing after building a couple warriors or a worker. The advantage here is that we know where bronze is.


I'll be able to check these numbers on a sample game tomorrow, but I think it'll be roughly something like the following:

Going for fishing first should take some 8 or 9 turns of research. Assuming 9 turns of working the clams, that would be 27 hammers toward a worker. Then, we'd work the spiced forest for a total of 3H for 15 turns to get our workboat. That would give us 15 food toward the 33 we'd need to grow to size 2. During that time, we'd earn 11 beakers-per-turn for 165 beakers toward bronze. We'd also lose 5 hammers to decay on the worker (or settler)

If we then work the newly netted clams, we can finish the other (90-22=)68H on the worker in (68/5)=14 turns. During that time, we'd probably finish bronzeworking.

Another thought is to work on a warrior before the workboat. But we'd only be able to put in maybe 9H and lose 6 to decay. (We could work a forest instead of the clams, perhaps delaying fishing by a turn or so. That would get us twice the hammers into a warrior.) The nice thing is that the city would grow a little in the mean time: 9F or 18F in 9 turns, depending on whether we work the clam or the forest.

We could start a settler instead of a worker. (Or switch to one if our island turns out to be tiny.) Second cities are the best barb-reduction "units."

I think the only item that wouldn't decay (at least not quickly) would be a barracks. We'll want one eventually, but I'm not sure about starting with one.

I'm also thinking that unless it's a very very small island, our lone scout won't keep our fledgling empire safe. So much to consider....

Any ideas that people have are welcome. Not much else to discuss at this point in the game anyway.

Note: I don't mind being this micro-conscious in the first 50 turns or so. After that, I'm all for optimization, but I'd rather just get on with things than pay attention to every little detail.

Adding on the Compromise's last note, we don't want to dawdle in this game, like we did in SGOTM2. We have about three months to finish the game, and we can meet this if we have a continual pace. It is important to discuss in between, but we shouldn't leave more than the 24/48 hour rule.

I'm also considering the first moves of the scout. Going E seems the clear first move, since I'd like to know of any seafood on the east coast before making a decision about moving or settling the settler.

After that, my first thought was the plains hill forest NE, but I've started to lean toward the grass hill forest NW of that (net scout move=1N). This would probably reveal the most tiles and some from each coast.

From what I can discern from the screenshot, the next move north will necessarily be a one-step move to the north into forest or jungle.

The only other decent option would be to go NW then NE (net move = 2N). This gets us the furthest north and will better reveal the extent of our island, but doesn't shine any light on the seafood prospects off the east coast.

I think that the wisest thing is to move 1E, 1NW. It looks like the plains hill will only reveal a lot of coast. I don't think skipping out on seeing the eastern seafood resources is wise. Furthermore, if we decide to move our settler towards the north, we should move one space east first, that way we can see if there is anything on that grassland tile in the fog (I don't think the Scout move will reveal it).

Furthermore, if we decide to move our settler towards the north, we should move one space east first, that way we can see if there is anything on that grassland tile in the fog (I don't think the Scout move will reveal it).

Agreed. The scout won't reveal that square.

That brings up another possibility. Move the scout E, then S. Move the settler 1E. Don't settle.

On the next turn, move the scout 2S. That will fully reveal all possible food tiles for the two southern sites I consider reasonable: the starting location or the southeastern spices.

A bit of a problem with the starting position is that we won't be able to use any as-yet-unrevealed water resources off the south and southeast coasts. Knowing that information might be worth a turn at the start. It would be a crying shame to never be able to use some nice fishies just off the southeast coast.

And I very much agree with Kodii's point about the 24/48 post rule. That'll help keep things moving along.

Being Secretary General is a simple majority. To win a diplomatic victory requires 67%. Not exactly easy. Pick your friends early and smother with :love:

@Bugs: that's good info on the population requirements for a diplo victory. At some point, we'll want to discuss how to efficiently get there.

I rolled up a couple of archipelago maps loaded with civs as per the start conditions of the game. They weren't quite what I expected. Here are my general impressions:

Most civs (about 2/3rds) start on their own island. Some of these islands are big enough for 4 or 5 cities easily, while the smallest hold only one. Generally, the worst cities have tundra showing, whereas we have jungle showing, so that's good.

The map isn't quite as crowded as I'd expected, so even if we start with another civ on our island, we're very likely to be able to get 2 or 3 cities down before we'd need to attack.

While the majority of civs have reasonable access to copper, iron or horses, there are no guarantees. Our strategic resource situation will determine a lot about the early course of this game.


Some thoughts and questions about SGOTM3:

I'm now leaning toward settling in place. Being expansive and on the river with plenty of food, I'm thinking we aim to make the capital a commerce giant with many cottages. It would take a lot of seafood off the south and east coasts of this island for me to change that opinion. We could try to see if there's food enough for a good production capital near the hills, though. But maybe that would be better for a second city?

I'm also starting to ponder settler first, interrupted by a workboat upon its completion. My big worry is barbs before we can get some defense whipped up. But if our island is small, this might be the best move; second cities clear a lot of fog from barb spawning.

Third thought: on such a map with no city razing, the colossus could be very powerful. If our island is small and we have no immediate AI neighbors on our island, should we think about an Oracle->Metalcasting->Colossus gambit?

EDIT: One more question. I've never played with any HoF mod. It looks like they add some better advisor screens. And it looks like it fixes the whipping bug, is that right? Are there any other major gameplay changes it introduces?

EDIT: One more question. I've never played with any HoF mod. It looks like they add some better advisor screens. And it looks like it fixes the whipping bug, is that right? Are there any other major gameplay changes it introduces?

I would like to know the same thing. I need to get a hold of the newest version, but either way I want to know what game play is affected.

Last version of the HOF mod I played "fixed" the whipping bug, but had an unintended effect of shortchanging the player on what should be overflow hammers. That was in version 007, I am not sure if this is fixed in 009.

Otherwise though, I liked the HOF mod. The foreign adviser especially helps know who has what techs and who wants what tech. And with 18 civs, it'll help to get any simplification that we can.

As for our opening scout move, I think moving E is a no-brainer, but then I'm not sure. I am leaning towards NW, so that we get some info on both the eastern and the northern side of the continent.

The starting location isn't a bad city site, it's a bad capital site. Because of Bureaucracy, you want to have your capital making production or commerce. Whipping is all well and good, but Bureaucracy works against it. (Bureaucracy makes a population at the capital much more productive than anywhere else, and thus keeping the capital small a losing strategy; it also doesn't affect whipping unhappiness, which tends to be the real limiting factor on whipping production.) Generally, I favor making the capital into a commerce-farm, for several reasons: it's easier to concentrate commerce in a single city (there are more commerce-multiplying buildings than production-multiplying buildings, and they arrive earlier), production is more useful distributed than concentrated (the only mobile use of production is military units, but a Heroic Epic junk city can provide that more efficiently than the capital; about the only use of concentrated production is a wonder farm), and commerce is more important earlier in the game, to establish a tech lead. In terms of commerce output, coast just does not compare to cottaged grassland: even with the Colossus (which only lasts until Astronomy), you're talking about 4.5 commerce for coast versus 6 commerce for a town, or 7.5 commerce for a town with a river or Printing Press, or 9 commerce for a town with both. The other big advantage of a commerce farm capital is that because it's your first city, you have plenty of time to grow towns.

It's possible it may not be worth moving, and we'll have to try to create a Colossus/Great Lighthouse commerce farm. (Wouldn't be the first time. In that event, we'd want to plan to whip all our infrastructure, since we'd probably want to chop the forests for river towns: lumber mills arrive too late in the game to deserve consideration as capital tile improvements.) I think we should look carefully at the long-term potential of our capital site before we settle, though. Another unorthodox possibility is a planned capital move: settle in place, then build another city with better potential and move the palace.

On wonders, here are my feelings. I expect all wonders to fall early on this map because of 17 civs exploring the possibilities. Thinking more about the Pyramids, I think that the archipelago map makes them a stronger play than usual: we're going to have a lot of cities with seafood and lots of ocean without much else, and running specialists is a good way to get decent production out of them. The specialist economy is stronger on archipelago maps in general because of the absence of space for large cottage farms. Another big asset of the Pyramids that synergizes with Philosophical is the early great engineer, practically guaranteeing us our pick of a wonder available right after the ancient era. I don't want to say we should play the Pyramids no matter what, but if we have stone available, I'm not sure why we shouldn't, and even if we don't, I think there's a strong case to be made for them. A midgame wonder we should look at that combines with the Pyramids is Angkor Wat: +2 hammer +1 gold +3 research priests can make a big difference in production-starved seafood cities. The Great Lighthouse is a powerful wonder on archipelago maps, but I'm skeptical we'll get it: there's no production doubler, so Industrious civs have a big advantage, and most of the AI capitals will be on the coast, so they'll start construction early. The Colossus is one wonder I'm not worried about: like all the wonders with a prerequisite building, the AIs are slow to build it, so if we go for it in any timely fashion, we should get it. I'm wary of trying for the Oracle: I expect it to fall very early; it will require a significant up-front research investment (Mysticism, Meditation or Polytheism, and Priesthood) during the pre-2000 BC era, when we could be developing resource-finding or military techs; and it will generate lots of great prophets, which I find of questionable usefulness when I don't see it to our advantage to play the religion game much.

For the early military game, an archer rush isn't viable against monarch AIs, AFAIK: I've done it sometimes against barbs, but monarch AIs start with archers. Even with 4 XP archers and outnumbering the AI two-to-one, it would require a lot of luck to win. Catapults can win, but I suspect that fighting against someone with a strategic resource using only archers and catapults would be an uphill fight. I don't even know if it would be possible without good defensive tiles (hills or forests) near their cities.

I did some calculations for a comparison of different paths for founding in place.

Assuming we're working the floodplains, the city will produce 3 F, 1 P, and 10 C (counting the palace) every turn. The Monarch/Epic/Standard map research modifier works out to about 2.25 if I did the math right. Fishing thus requires 90 research, or 9 turns, and Bronze Working 270, so 27 turns. A worker will finish in 23 turns. Growing to size 2 on epic takes 33 food, or 11 turns.

With Bronze Working first, the worker will end up idling for 4 turns since there are no other improvable tiles in range, and then chop a forest which takes 4 turns (5? I can never remember how the worker turns get rounded on Epic speed.) to chop. However, we won't be able to start the workboat until turn 36. If we pre-chop one forest and arrange to chop another, that will be 60/45 hammers for the workboat, so we should be able to get it out on turn 38.

(Does anyone know how decay works exactly? I've never found out anything about the specifics of when it starts and how much you lose how fast.)

If we go Fishing first, I think we start a warrior: we then a face a choice whether to slow our first population increase and finish the warrior using the spice/plains/forest tile (Alternating between the floodplains and the spice plains forest will finish the warrior in 11 turns, so delaying the workboat a turn, but we wouldn't waste any hammers to decay; the real cost is the population growth.) After that, we start a workboat, and have a choice of which tiles to work to do it. Let's look at four scenarios:

Working the floodplains until the city grows to size two, then working the floodplains and the spice forest, means the city takes 11 turns to grow. The workboat gets two hammers before the city grows, and then takes 15 turns afterward, so finishes on turn 26. The first 9 hammers are wasted.

Working the floodplains until Fishing, then switching to the spice forest, then adding the floodplains again when the city grows, means the city takes 14 turns to grow. The workboat gets 12 hammers before growth, then takes another 11 turns, so finishes on the same turn. This is all but strictly inferior to the preceding option.

Alternating the floodplains and spice forest gets the warrior out on turn 11. If we then switch to the floodplains until it grows, it will grow on turn 15. Meanwhile, it will put 4 hammers into the workboat, and finish it on turn 29.

The Bronze Working-first option looks awfully slow to me. I don't know which of the others would be best.

The settler-first possibility is interesting, though it's definitely a gamble that there's another city site good enough to make up for having to build a settler with unimproved tiles and no growth for the first 38 turns.

Scout E-NW seems like the best option to me. That should let us see the rest of the east coast, and then give us an idea of what's north.

I've never found that getting to the population necessary for backdoor domination is difficult on Monarch. As long as we have a large enough territory and make sure to emphasize food (archipelagos tend to force that anyways), I don't think we'll have any problems.

I'm fine with the roster Kodii came up with. It's probably just as well that I don't play the early turns, because I'm prone to misclicks and slips of attention.

Wow, that was a long post. I don't think I'll ever be capable to write a post that long. I personally like to discuss in little chunks, but discussing all at once is also a good idea.

The wonder situation is going to be tricky to predict. At the moment, I'm leaning towards settling around the initial area, and pump out a settler as soon as possible. The second city will go around the hills and act as the producer. No Stone = No Pyramids. Go for the GLighthouse instead. The Oracle will probably fall to those who start with Mysticism.

As for tech order... Oh what the heck, I'm gonna do a summary post :lol:

Stay tuned!

I agree to much in the post. I am not sure even where to begin to respond.

While I personally like the Oracle, I agree that trying for wonders on this map is a waste. I am leary of getting any wonders unless we capture them, or get a tech lead.

Growing to size 2 on epic takes 33 turns.
I think you meant 33 food, so at +3 food/turn that's 11 turns.

As for epic details, it will be 45 hammers per chop, so just one chop will finish the WB. Also I'm pretty sure it's 5 turns for a chop.

I think decay for buildings starts after 50 turns and after 10 for units. Though those might be adjusted up 50% for epic, I'm not sure. And you lose hammers whenever you are in decay and not actively trying to produce the item. So you can't try to put some hammers into a unit and string it along w/o decay by putting 1 turn worth of hammers into it every 10 turns.

I agree that population shouldn't be a problem. Whenever I'm going for domination, I always hit the pop limit way before I get the land area limit.

I am not in favor of settler first until we find that ridiculous city spot like in SGOTM2. I just don't think it'll pay off.

The starting location isn't a bad city site, it's a bad capital site....

This analysis was just plain excellent! I had two thoughts. First, the starting location is still pretty good for a commerce capital. There are 9 tiles, 8 of which are cottageable if we only put a plantation on one of the spices. Second, moving the settler one north would be a good spot. We lose 1 coastal clam, 1 grass spice, 2 coasts, and one ocean and get 2 coasts, 2 plains and a grassland hill. There's still plenty of food at that site to run all 11 land tiles, all of which are cottageable. It also gives us the choice of working floodplains or the spicy forest from the start. The downside is a loss of one turn in founding the city and 45H from settling over a forest. I really like the idea of making the capital a commerce workhorse.

On a sidenote, Alan has updated the starting picture. There are blue circles (not that that means much in Vanilla :) ) both where our settler starts and 1E of the scout. Does that mean the site 1E of the scout has a food bonus or does the one floodplain in range count for that?

Thinking more about the Pyramids, I think that the archipelago map makes them a stronger play than usual....

You make some good points. Without stone, my gut reaction is that it's too expensive. Unless we have no strategic resources. But by the time we know whether or not we have metal, it may be too late to decide to do the pyramids. And if we're not alone on our island, I suspect we're better off consolidating the Russian motherland.

Your point about the benefits of a specialist economy on this map need to be in our heads. I don't have much experience with running specialist economies. On this map, my guess is that we'll want to be slavers so we can use food for production. We're not spiritual, so we wouldn't be able to switch back and forth between caste and slavery without significant penalty. Does that limit our specialist economy prospects to later in the game when we have buildings from which to run the specialists? I guess you'd need the buildings (temples) for Angkor Wat priests anyway.

For the early military game, an archer rush isn't viable against monarch AIs....

You're right. We really do want a strategic resource. It will be an interesting challenge if we lack that.

I did some calculations for a comparison of different paths for founding in place.

Assuming we're working the floodplains, the city will produce 3 F, 1 P, and 10 C (counting the palace) every turn. The Monarch/Epic/Standard map research modifier works out to about 2.25 if I did the math right. Fishing thus requires 90 research, or 9 turns, and Bronze Working 270, so 27 turns. A worker will finish in 23 turns. Growing to size 2 on epic takes 33 [food].

A couple of minor corrections: When I rolled up a sample start, there is a 2B (2 beaker) refund for each tech, so fishing requires 88B and BronzeWorking 268B. I don't know why. And you get one free beaker of research just for being a civ, so you actually get 11bpt (8 palace, 1 city center, 1 flood plains, 1 bonus) once you settle your capital.

Also, there is a discount for knowing prerequisites, so while Fishing takes the full 88 beakers (or 8 turns at 11bpt), we actually research Bronze at a rate of 13bpt so it comes in after 21 turns.

Working the floodplains until Fishing [while building a warrior], then switching to the spice forest, then adding the floodplains again when the city grows, means the city takes 14 turns to grow. The workboat gets 12 hammers before growth, then takes another 11 turns, so finishes on the same turn. This is all but strictly inferior [superior, right?] to the preceding option.

Of the starting courses you work through (nice work on those btw!), I think this is the best option. It's our fastest way to get an improved resource into play.

The Bronze Working-first option looks awfully slow to me.

I think the biggest benefit to Bronze first in this situation is that it gets us slavery quickly. This basically lets us think of those floodplains as being 3H1C each (instead of 3F1C each).

For the record: Bronze first, warrior first, work floodplains. Grow to size 2 after 11 turns. First warrior completes on turn 17. Either continue to grow (6 more turns). Or start worker. Bronze is due in 4 turns. After that, we'd be deciding what to build second, and it would depend on what our scout reveals. 8 turns after bronze, we can have fishing. After putting a turn's production into the boat, we can whip one out on turn 30.

The above actually becomes more appealing if we settle one square north of the settler start location because we can work 2 floodplains at size 2 and grow even faster. We be at size 3 just before bronze came in.

The settler-first possibility is interesting, though it's definitely a gamble that there's another city site good enough to make up for having to build a settler with unimproved tiles and no growth for the first 38 turns.

The only reason I can come up with for settler-first is if there is only one other great site for a city on the island and we want to get it into play asap. Even so, I'm not sure this is better than worker first, chop settler. Or grow first, poprush settler. With seafood and floodplains to poprush and forests to chop, I really can't think of any reason to go settler first.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

So let's see. Here's an annotated picture of the start:

http://img296.imageshack.us/img296/5500/sgotm3startsm3.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

I've marked the places I think might be reasonable capital locations. The number is the max number of cottages the site can support. Green indicates we can settle in 4000BC, purple means a one turn delay, red is a two turn delay. Asterisk(s) mean that we'd have to discover something in the fog to make them real choices. Here are some thoughts on each:

9: Our starting location.
Advantages: Excellent food, decent forests, no hills. No start delay. Leaves *** as a possible second city location.
Disadvantages: Settles on a floodplain. Eliminates lots of fogged coast (possible seafood sources).

11: A stong choice.
Advantages: Great food, decent forests, one hill. Two floodplains (for early growth and good cottages).
Disadvantages: One turn settling delay. Loses a seafood. Removes *** as a possible second city site. Burns a forest.

11*: A conditional choice: Requires east coast seafood to be considered.
Advantages: (Presumed) great food, decent forests, two hills. 11 cottageable squares plus a plains hill, 2 floodplains
Disadvantages: One turn settling delay. Loses known seafood. Burns a forest.

12**: A conditional choice: May require fogged seafood to be considered.
Advantages: Okay (plus fog) food, decent forests, two hills. 12 cottageable squares plus a plains hill.
Disadvantages: One turn settling delay. Wastes one floodplain and known seafood. Might be settling on a resource. (But then, the blue circle wouldn't recommend it, would it?)

***: A very conditional choice: Requires fogged seafood.
Advantages: (TBD) food, decent forests, at least 2 hills. 10?+ cottageable squares. Serves as a canal city? (I can't quite tell.) Allows the spice locations to be settled. (Depending on undiscovered seafood, the southern spice might be a nice GP farm.) Burns a jungle!
Disadvantages: Unlikely conditions! Two turn settling delay.

I must say that after reading Iainuki's post, I'm surprised to find myself leaning toward 11. Trading the extra seafood (usable on the other landmass) for 2 extra cottageable tiles, a cottageable floodplain instead of a grass river and a burned forest seems like a fair investment in long-term capital return. I'm open to other opinions.

Does the reduced cost (will verify in-game, of course) of bronzeworking make that a more compelling first tech choice to anyone?

The amount of analysis going on is beyond my ability to handle. We need to greatly simplify the details.
I propose we move the scout NE of 12 in the above picture, save the game, and we can have more focused discussion.
Trying to guess the best location without this information is just too much.


I am starting to wonder if I am not the right person for this team. With this overload of detail, and to many paths at once I don't even know how to help.

I am starting to wonder if I am not the right person for this team. With this overload of detail, and to many paths at once I don't even know how to help.

I think you're exactly the right kind of person for this team: one who brings it down to earth.

There's no way I'm doing this level of detail for anything beyond the first turnset especially when there's a game in hand to be played. I'm just bored right now.

I'll plan to move the scout a little bit, post, wait a few hours (or go to sleep) and then move on based on what I see and any posted feedback

I think you meant 33 food, so at +3 food/turn that's 11 turns.

Yes, I did; edited to reflect that. I think I did the rest of the (non-Bronze Working) math right, though.

As for epic details, it will be 45 hammers per chop, so just one chop will finish the WB. Also I'm pretty sure it's 5 turns for a chop.

An epic chop gives 45 hammers post-Mathematics. We won't have that tech, so it will only give 30.

I am not in favor of settler first until we find that ridiculous city spot like in SGOTM2. I just don't think it'll pay off.

I'm curious: what city spot did you find?

First, the starting location is still pretty good for a commerce capital. There are 9 tiles, 8 of which are cottageable if we only put a plantation on one of the spices.

Generally, I'll take the 3F 3C tile over even a grasslands town: food is priceless in Civ4 and you can usually turn it into anything else you want, whether it's production via the whip or commerce via earlier and more consistent cottage growth or specialists. (1 food is 3 science under Representation.) Building many farms usually isn't worth it, but the extra 2C and resource tilts me towards the plantation here.

On a sidenote, Alan has updated the starting picture. There are blue circles (not that that means much in Vanilla :) ) both where our settler starts and 1E of the scout. Does that mean the site 1E of the scout has a food bonus or does the one floodplain in range count for that?

Generally, the blue circles in vanilla are only useful for one things: telling you where fog-covered and hidden resources might be. The game avoids founding on a resource like the plague, so if there's a natural location for a city and the blue dot isn't there, there's a good chance there's a hidden resource there. It doesn't seem to take account of the differences between resources when placing the blue circles, so the blue circle northeast is a strong indication there's some resource there, it may not be food. However, it's definitely worth checking out. One other note is that due to some questionable code in the city-placement algorithm, it likes founding on floodplains, so the blue dot beneath the settler is probably highly bogus.

You make some good points. Without stone, my gut reaction is that it's too expensive. Unless we have no strategic resources. But by the time we know whether or not we have metal, it may be too late to decide to do the pyramids. And if we're not alone on our island, I suspect we're better off consolidating the Russian motherland.

This is only Monarch, so even without stone, if we get right on it, we can get the Pyramids if we want them, especially since we start with Mining.

This brings up the possibility of something I refer to as the "iron question:" if you've discovered Bronze Working and Animal Husbandry and you don't have either copper or horses, do you go to Iron Working ASAP? The problem is that while Animal Husbandry and Bronze Working both offer other benefits, Iron Working is expensive (~450 beakers in this game!) and useless if you don't have iron, unless for some reason you have an urgent need to chop jungles. (Unusual in general, and very unlikly in this game.) My usual answer is that I don't: it's a big gamble, and there's not much change in the window of opportunity between going for Iron Working ASAP and going for it later. The early UUs, horse archers, or axes you don't want to see will be there, or not, based on the resources situation, not on how fast you rush: there just isn't enough time to finish research on Iron Working and build axes/swords before Monarch AIs get their resources hooked up and build axes/horse archers/early UUs. There are some unusual situations in which I would go to Iron Working, but let's hope we're not in any of them.

My personal feeling is that, given what we know about the start, we're going to want to develop Bronze Working as our first military tech. (Note these are not beelines--we'll pick up worker techs in between the military techs as the situation warrants.) If we have copper, we're fine and build some axes. If not, we hit Animal Husbandry and look for horses. If we have those and we want to attack someone, we develop Horseback Riding while looking for copper resources and prevent AIs from mining them, if possible, with chariots, then take cities with horse archers. If there's someone on our island and we have copper or horses, we rush. If we spot someone right off our island and we think it's advantageous, we develop Sailing, build a galley, ferry troops over, and rush. If we meet someone but we don't know where they are, we don't rush. If we don't have copper or horses and there's someone off our island, even if we know where they are, we don't rush. If we don't have copper or horses and there's someone on our island--things get rough, and we'll have to reevaluate.

(Note that I'm referring to attacks starting before 1000 BC here: I often do a lot of my fighting in the 500 BC-1 AD window, after building a wonder or two and some cities.)

Your point about the benefits of a specialist economy on this map need to be in our heads. I don't have much experience with running specialist economies. On this map, my guess is that we'll want to be slavers so we can use food for production. We're not spiritual, so we wouldn't be able to switch back and forth between caste and slavery without significant penalty. Does that limit our specialist economy prospects to later in the game when we have buildings from which to run the specialists? I guess you'd need the buildings (temples) for Angkor Wat priests anyway.

I'm not exactly an expert, but I have a little bit of practice. Some general principles:

1) The capital emphasizes cottages and commerce, because of Bureaucracy. You only assign specialists there if you want great people.

2) You do build some cottages. Cottages are generally more efficient than farms pre-Biology even with Representation. Here's an outline of why. A farm gives you one-half a specialist, or three science and some GPP points; a town gives you four commerce, and a village three. You get less commerce during the 30 (45 on epic, I guess) turn cottage/hamlet start-up period, but your total population counts are lower so you need less health/happiness, Printing Press arrives earlier than Biology, and you'll have the mature towns if you want to switch to Free Speech or Universal Suffrage. (I often don't, when running a specialist economy, but sometimes you want to.)

3) You build some extra farms. The exact details depend on how your GPP are distributed and what a city's terrain looks like, but the idea is that you'd rather run specialists than work marginal terrain (coast/ocean, forests, irrigated plains). Generally, you want to build farms instead of cottages in locations where GPP matter, because there your specialists enjoy a clear and significant advantage over cottages.

4) National wonder choices are more complicated. Normally, I try to build a GP factory when I'm running a specialist economy, since because of the National Epic, it's more efficient to bunch all your GPP in one place as much as possible. (In practice, I usually end up having two or three cities that produce the lion's share of my great persons, with one being a food-heavy National Epic city, and the others being wonder-heavy cities.) Without Caste System, that means you have to have wonders in place to support mass specialists of your preferred type in the GP factory. This can mean putting Oxford, Wall Street, or the Iron Works in an unusual city; world wonders (particularly Angkor Wat) and shrines also factor in. You also have to consider what specialists you want, and how you intend to use them.

5) Caste System is not needed. A city with a library and a forge can run three specialists, an engineer and two scientists, which is more than enough for all but the most food-rich cities. I always whip a forge as my second to fourth building in a city, and both libraries and temples are cheap. Before those buildings come up, the city is usually growing at maximum speed for whipping, working high-food tiles.

A couple of minor corrections: When I rolled up a sample start, there is a 2B (2 beaker) refund for each tech, so fishing requires 88B and BronzeWorking 268B. I don't know why. And you get one free beaker of research just for being a civ, so you actually get 11bpt (8 palace, 1 city center, 1 flood plains, 1 bonus) once you settle your capital.

Ah. I didn't take into account how the game rounds the research cost multipliers, so my estimate was a little high. I forgot about the free beaker, also.

Also, there is a discount for knowing prerequisites, so while Fishing takes the full 88 beakers (or 8 turns at 11bpt), we actually research Bronze at a rate of 13bpt so it comes in after 21 turns.

And yes, you're correct about this: techs with prerequisites give you a 1.2 bonus to research. (Of course, this gets into nasty rounding issues because Civ4 uses integer math--argh!)

Of the starting courses you work through (nice work on those btw!), I think this is the best option. It's our fastest way to get an improved resource into play.

The option I noted as strictly inferior gets three less commerce because it grows more slowly, and has two fewer hammers of overflow.

I think the biggest benefit to Bronze first in this situation is that it gets us slavery quickly. This basically lets us think of those floodplains as being 3H1C each (instead of 3F1C each).

For the record: Bronze first, warrior first, work floodplains. Grow to size 2 after 11 turns. First warrior completes on turn 17. Either continue to grow (6 more turns). Or start worker. Bronze is due in 4 turns. After that, we'd be deciding what to build second, and it would depend on what our scout reveals. 8 turns after bronze, we can have fishing. After putting a turn's production into the boat, we can whip one out on turn 30.

Yeah, this is a posssibility. Whipping conversion of food to hammers is actually better than 1:1, of course.

Does the reduced cost (will verify in-game, of course) of bronzeworking make that a more compelling first tech choice to anyone?

It does for me. I think too much more discussion of the capital site is premature now: we need to know what the scout sees to decide. I'd really like a chance to look at that before you found, so if you wouldn't mind delaying, I'd appreciate it. I think the scout should move E first and then NW, N, or E, depending on what you see.

Lee, you being here just makes two of us :)

If I have the time, I'll skim through the notes and make any rough comments. I personally do not have the time and patience to go through such micromicromanaging. That is why I like to make myself responsible for the summary post. That way I can summarize things down for people who don't want to, or would not prefer to read such long posts. This is how I stand right now:

Move scout 1E, then 1NW
Move settler 1E

This should reveal most of the southern and eastern fog so we can further discuss settling. I'm leaning towards BW first.

EDIT: Just crossposted with Iainuki. After finishing Compromise's long post, I have to read another one? :lol:

Ah more to digest during the wait for the release; thank you Iainuki!

I ran a few simulations by giving myself a start on the same size and type of map with the same number of civs. I also made sure none of the other civs would find me before turn 30 or so.

I was trying to answer a few questions: worker vs. warrior/workboat, fishing vs. bronzeworking, and settling in place vs. settling one north.

My rough conclusions (details available upon request) are:

1) Warrior/workboat first. Worker first is best if there's something for the worker to do. Here, the only thing he could do at the beginning is chop. And we might want those forests later (for pyramids or rushing or something).

2) Fishing first. Bronze first only really makes sense with a worker first, but worker first doesn't look so hot here. Better to get the clams online more quickly.

3) settling in place vs. settling one north. We are pretty much just one turn behind by settling north. I think its worth it, but in light of Iainiku's recent comments preferring food to commerce, maybe it's not worth two extra cottages in exchange for a grass->floodplain upgrade and loss of a grass spice and coastal clam.

By turn 30, we should be in slavery, at size 3, with netted clams, and have a warrior about halfway finished. That's probably my goal for the first turnset.

As seems generally agreed, I'll make at least the one move east with the scout, then post. In fact, I should be able to get that up not long after it's posted, if the game is made available right at midnight EST (US eastern standard time). It would then be 9 hours or so before I'd even consider playing more (except maybe to move the scout more (NW or NE probably) or the settler E if that becomes the consensus). Then, I'll probably play in the EST afternoon.

The amount of analysis going on is beyond my ability to handle. We need to greatly simplify the details.

I am starting to wonder if I am not the right person for this team. With this overload of detail, and to many paths at once I don't even know how to help.That makes two of us. (Edit: three of us) :crazyeye: Right now, I know I'm not the right person to play second. :confused:

I'm considering changing the roster so that at the beginning, we begin with "vets", then once the game gets started, we revert to the alternating roster. Does that sound good?

That makes two of us. (Edit: three of us) :crazyeye:

Four of us...

Hopefully we can all become a bit more active once the game gets going and we can find more things to discuss.

I'm considering changing the roster so that at the beginning, we begin with "vets", then once the game gets started, we revert to the alternating roster. Does that sound good?

My suspicion is that it's only the very first turnset (if any) that calls for any of this extreme micro-tactic analysis. After that, we get to have more interesting discussions involving strategy.

My suggestion about the roster order is to leave it the same or adjust based on individual situations. If anyone feels like they don't know what's going on or what they should do, he (do we have any "she"'s here?) can either solicit opinions from the group, ask for a skip, or just play a few turns before stopping. The best way to learn and to have fun is to participate.

What I don't want to see is this become a game where anyone is afraid to play because they're afraid to make a "bad" move.

Everybody who's played an SG (or any game for that matter) has "botched" moves. Among other things, I feel responsible for pressing to build the Forbidden Palace instead of moving the palace in SGOTM2. I now think that was serious :smoke: and probably moved us from the top third to the bottom quarter of finish dates (assuming we eventually finish). But oh well. Now I get to learn something about late-game warfare.

Here in SGOTM3, we'll soon have something real to discuss and maybe Compromise will stop making these overly long posts.

My rough conclusions (details available upon request) are:

Can I request the details? If you want to avoid spamming the thread, you can PM me or some such.

I'll post a summary of my city investigations here for anyone interested. (Feel free to ignore this post if you like.)

I started a custom archipelago/archipelago game with 17 AI opponents plus me as Peter. I used worldbuilder to isolate myself so that I wouldn't have any wandering AI units finding me and messing up the tech path (in case they start with fishing or research BW right away and give us a "civ knows the tech" bonus).

I also edited it so that I started on one of 2 floodplains, had a grass forest across the river, had a spicy forest in the second city ring, and had 2 clam resources (the nearest would be one distant from the initial site, 2 distant from the across-the-river site). I figured that would be enough to simulate the first 30 turns.

As a sidenote before everyone loses interest, I also tried this start by going Mysticism->Polytheism and I *was* able to get Hinduism. (Though I still think it will be best to get a religion from a neighbor.)

I ran the following cases (I tried to have roughly the same worked-tile assignments, but there is some room for variation in these results):

1) Settle start spot, start with fishing, start a warrior, pause warrior & switch to workboat (3760BC), grow asap to size 2 (3250BC). When the boat finishes, the warrior is at 2/22H. Get to size 3 in 3190BC. Get BW in 3160BC. Revolt to slavery.

On turn 30 (3100BC), this case finds us in slavery, with netted clams, at size 3 (10/39F), warrior at 10/22 and 22B into next tech (I chose The Wheel in all cases; it has no prereq.).

2) Same as (1) exceptafter growing, I worked the spicy forest instead of maximizing growth. This had us at size 2 in 3400BC, a workboat in 3340BC (w/warrior down to 5/22H). Grew to size 3 and got BW in same turn: 3160BC.

On turn 30 (3100BC), we are in slavery, have netted clams, are at size 3 (6/39F), have warrior at 13/22) and have 19B toward The Wheel

3) Again with Fishing->BW, start warrior, interrupt for boat, except this time, move across the river to settle on the grass forest (one-turn capital founding delay). Grow to size 2 in 3460 (and then work both floodplains). Boat in 3310, warrior lost 3H and is at 5/22H. BW and size 3 both in 3130BC. Warrior to 11/22

On turn 30 (3100BC), we're in slavery, have netted clams, are at size 3 (0/39F), have 11/22H into warrior and have 5B into The Wheel

4) Settle across the river, bronzeworking first: Size 2 in 3640BC, BW & size 3 in 3370BC. Finish warrior 3340BC. Fishing comes in in 3130 when 2nd warrior is at 14/22H. Revolt in 3100 (turn 30!) to slavery (could have done it 1 turn earlier, but we need a turn into the boat before whipping it). 3070 whip boat.

On turn 30 (3100BC) , we're 3 turns from whipped boat, have 1 warrior complete, have 2nd warrior at 14/22H and are at size 3 (32/39F) (but we need to whip a pop to get the boat).


5) Settle across the river, BW first, worker first: BW in 3340, worker in 3280, forest couple be chopped in 3130 (then halted for fishing to finish). But the chop in 3100BC yields only 30H.

On turn 30: At size 1 (18/33F), Boat still 5 turns away, first warrior at 8/22, have worker (he's either bored or chopping).

Bottom line: Settling across the river is, as expected, about a 1 turn delay in city productivity. (This was before Iainuki's post about preferring to plantation rather than cottage the spices.) Starting with a worker and bronzeworking would be nice, except that other than chopping, there's nothing for this worker to do.

So, my conclusion was: start with fishing, then bronzeworking. Get the boat out quickly while concentrating on growing the city, and feel free to cross the river if we think that's a better spot to settle.

Also, I tried to clarify the gamechanges that the HoF patch introduces by posting what I think they are in the maintenance thread. But I guess I've offended at least one player who thinks that such a question belongs to the HoF forum.

I'm not going to spam a thread with large viewership by trying to defend myself. Instead, I'll do it here! :p I thought it was a reasonable question considering that two of us asked the question here and none of us was sure we knew the answer. It seemed to me like it would be a question of interest to everyone playing the vanilla version of the game. Oh well. [/whine]

EDIT: Okay, I lied. I decided I could whine in that thread by hiding my justification inside a spoiler tag in the original post. Sorry to subject any/all of you to this here.

So, my conclusion was: start with fishing, then bronzeworking. Get the boat out quickly while concentrating on growing the city, and feel free to cross the river if we think that's a better spot to settle.
Yes! Fishing->BW with an intial warrior build would be my play.

As for wonders (pyramids, colossus, and g. lighthouse) this should merely determine who the first victims are. With a special focus on the colossus and gl. The pyramids (and specialist economy) are strong, but on an archi map there just won't be any shortage of commerce, however a specialist economy is esspecially viable on a Archi map b/c of the abundance of food. So in short the Ancient->Medieval startegy would (IMHO) most benefit by building settlers, galleys, workboats/workers/ and soldeirs and just take the wonders we would like. Then turn on the financial civs since they have such a huge advantage on Archi maps.

The team should deciede as a team about chopping those forests-production is so limited that forests should be saved.

My suspicion is that it's only the very first turnset (if any) that calls for any of this extreme micro-tactic analysis. After that, we get to have more interesting discussions involving strategy.

My suggestion about the roster order is to leave it the same or adjust based on individual situations. If anyone feels like they don't know what's going on or what they should do, he (do we have any "she"'s here?) can either solicit opinions from the group, ask for a skip, or just play a few turns before stopping. The best way to learn and to have fun is to participate.

What I don't want to see is this become a game where anyone is afraid to play because they're afraid to make a "bad" move.

Everybody who's played an SG (or any game for that matter) has "botched" moves. Among other things, I feel responsible for pressing to build the Forbidden Palace instead of moving the palace in SGOTM2. I now think that was serious :smoke: and probably moved us from the top third to the bottom quarter of finish dates (assuming we eventually finish). But oh well. Now I get to learn something about late-game warfare.

Here in SGOTM3, we'll soon have something real to discuss and maybe Compromise will stop making these overly long posts.
This sounds reasonable. If you guys can distill the strategy discussions down to some directions for us new guys I think we'll be in good shape.

If I'm not mistaken, the save comes in just over half an hour.

EDIT: Don't forget to download the HOF mod

START SAVE (http://gotm.civfanatics.net/saves/civ4sgotm3//The_Real_Ms_Beyond_SG003_BC4000_01.Civ4SavedGame)

I'm getting tired, so I'm ready to go to bed. I'll wait a bit to see if Compromise can quickly move the scout so we can further discuss the settling position.

Well, it looks like we need to have some discussion. I've only moved the scout 1E (so it can still make another move) and haven't touched the settler:

http://img209.imageshack.us/img209/4154/civ4screenshot0000od8.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

And a zoom near the scout:

http://img135.imageshack.us/img135/9513/civ4screenshot0001am1.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

Any thoughts? I won't make any more moves for about 11 hours to allow for comments and maybe discussion (though I'm off to bed soon).

11*: A conditional choice: Requires east coast seafood to be considered.
Advantages: (Presumed) great food, decent forests, two hills. 11 cottageable squares plus a plains hill, 2 floodplains
Disadvantages: One turn settling delay. Loses known seafood. Burns a forest.

12**: A conditional choice: May require fogged seafood to be considered.
Advantages: Okay (plus fog) food, decent forests, two hills. 12 cottageable squares plus a plains hill.
Disadvantages: One turn settling delay. Wastes one floodplain and known seafood. Might be settling on a resource. (But then, the blue circle wouldn't recommend it, would it?)

To revise this, 11* now loses two clams, and gains one fish. 12** gets the fish and clams. We also lose the spices and a floodplain, but we gain those important hills. I would say, move the scout NW as planned, and the settler E, to reveal more fog, and get a general outline of our island (to see whether we can fit another city).

I forgot to add that at the moment, I'm favoring 12**. At least one of the clams that we lose from moving can be used on the other island. Spice tiles aren't very powerful (towns are better). We are now also sure that 12** has 14 land tiles (looking into the fog). The three tiles we can't see are a grassland hill, grassland and a plains. I'm not sure whether they have forests. That also means we have six tiles of water, in comparison to 8 water tiles at 11* and 11 water tiles at 9.

EDIT: Can there be resources on hills that have forests? If not, I don't think we have a metal nearby, unless it is one on the plains tile W of 12**

Like Kodii, I'm leaning toward putting the capital on the spot the scout now stands. It has just as much food as the starting spot and 13 cottageable squares. (But I'm guessing we'll want to put mines instead of cottages on the two grassland hills.) At least one of the far north squares looks to be on a river too: bonus commerce!

That spot also permits a GP farm on the southern spice if we want it. Even with nothing else revealed in the south fog, that site could have a surplus of +7F (+3Clams, +2FarmedFP, +2CityCenter) and we could up that by farming another floodplain and/or grassland or two, though those tiles would be taken from our capital's fat cross. (Of course, we can always convert the farms to cottages after the first few great people when the capital is getting large.)

I also think Kodii's right about the completion of this first move: Settler E (then NE from there to reveal the two water tiles east of the grass spice). And NW with the scout's last move. I don't think there's forest north of either hill, so the scout should be able to make another two-move next turn (before the actual founding of the capital even).

Barring objections, I'll make those moves when I wake up and post. After that, enough of this micro-discussion and on with the game!

My initial thoughts (for what they're worth):

As far as I've seen, no resources pop on forested hills; however, mining creates a chance for a resource to appear, although not very often (and most of the time, in my games, it's gold or silver and only rarely copper or iron.)

Also, IIRC, fish provide one more food when hooked up than clams, so despite the one turn delay, if we settle on 12** (where the scout currently stands) we may have a slightly faster growing city than otherwise. I couldn't exactly figure out from Compromise's post what dates the clams were hooked up :crazyeye:, but it seems like shortly after getting to size 2. If this is correct, then by 3100 it seems that we'd be about equal in size/food production, and by the time we grew to size 4 (perhaps a turn earlier than settling in place?) we'd quickly make up the one turn delay in founding.

Of course, if our island is too small to support a second city up north of 12**, we may want to save some land up there. Hopefully, this will be easy to tell by the scout's next move.

For tech, fishing -->BW seems to be the general consensus, but I'll add my vote to it anyways.

Going to try a test run of moving to 12** and founding to compare to Compromise's initial results, given our new knowledge, and post shortly. If I get too tired/:mad: with the set up, then I'll wait till the morning.

Edit:
Played a couple test games. Hopefully my newbness didn't completely corrupt the results.

One thing I didn't initially realize was that moving to 12** means we can't work the flood plain until border pop. This slowed down growing to size 2 and research (lost the point of commerce as well) more than just the 1 turn from moving.

Once border popped, changed to working the flood plain and, like Compromise, switched to WB as soon as fishing came in.

From there, I tried two scenarios:
The first, I worked a 2F/1H tile as the second tile. At 3100, it looked like this:
Size 3 10/39 food
38/45 production towards a workboat.
263/268 BW

In the second, working the 3H forested plains hill. At 3100:
Fish Netted
Size 3 2/39 food
19/22 production towards a warrior
267/268 BW.

Once the fish were netted, it becomes a 5/0/1 tile. Combined with the 3/0/1 FP, at size 3, this gives us a base +4 surplus, even without working any other food.

Conclusions:
Moving to 12** slows down research more than anything else. Note that we are still a turn away from slavery, but growing quickly, and with slightly more production towards the warrior. Another option would be to work the clams as soon as fishing comes on (since it's a coast, there's an extra point of commerce, so it would speed up bronze working) and whip the WB with slavery. Gut instinct is that this will be slower than just working the 3H and getting that WB out asap! The +3 food from fish seems to outweigh growing slightly slower and getting bronze a turn later. Also, reconsidering, don't take my numbers above too seriously. They are about right, but I may have done some silly things that could be avoided in a real game. :sleep:

Greater minds than mine should prevail however. Thanks for reading.

Ok, it's late, so I'm going to make this short. ::sounds of cheers from the audience::

1) Send the scout NW as agreed, I think. I'm curious to know what's off that delta. N will get land but no more water, NE will get only more water on the same side of the continent.

2) We should move the capital.

3) Forested hills can't have resources AFAIK.

4) I suspect there's forest north of those hills, but I could be wrong.

5) City site evaluations using Compromise's convenient labeling:

9: 2 coastal clams, 1 floodplain, grassland spices, plains spices, fresh water
11: 1 coastal clam, plains spice, 2 floodplains
11*: 1 ocean fish, 2 floodplains, grassland spices
12**: 1 ocean fish, 1 coastal clams, 1 floodplain

Net bonus food w/ cottaged floodplains: (first, w/o Calendar, then w/ Calendar)

9: 7, 8
11: 5
11*: 6,7
12**: 8

Net commerce w/ floodplain villages (but not Printing Press):

9: 6, 12
11: 10, 13
11*: 9, 12
12**: 7

I think 11* and 12** are clearly the best options given what we know so far. 12** get more food, 11* more commerce early on. My major objections to 12** is that it would waste a floodplain and the grasslands spice unless we found on the latter; but once we do, the city will steal the other floodplains and whatever's on the hidden tile from the capital. That would incline me to 11*. However, 12** will be stronger in the early going because it requires less tech and gets more food. I'm not sure which is better.

I'm probably leaning to 12* and just wasting the floodplains and spice, but I don't know.

I've completed the move at 4000BC:

http://img134.imageshack.us/img134/7416/civ4screenshot0002ai7.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

I'm going to grab a little more shut-eye and leave this open for comment (after making a few comments of my own, of course!)

1) Plan is to move the scout N, then NE. Unless anyone has a strong desire to go atop the NE hill.

2) I did a similar calculation to greggo's on paper and I think I was able to grow to size 3 and get BW on turn 31 while having already finished the warrior. I did this by working the plains hill as soon as we got the boat. I'll probably run a couple simulations before actually trying in the game, just because we've spent so much time on the details already.

3) I strongly favor "12**" (N of the settler's present location). Such a capital can steal back one of the floodplains from a southern-spice city.

4) Looks like plenty of room to found a post-Ironworking city up north!

(Also, I've meant to say that I agreed with Atlas's post up there.)

1) Plan is to move the scout N, then NE. Unless anyone has a strong desire to go atop the NE hill.


Is that hill by the NE clams a plains hill? I can't tell from the picture. The original capitol spot will be nice post calendar, and I am debating if we don't want to choke that area to much.

Is that Jungle the gems are on? The terrian looks odd...

An epic chop gives 45 hammers post-Mathematics. We won't have that tech, so it will only give 30.
Duh. :blush:

I'm curious: what city spot did you find?
Oh, just a plains hill city with 2 gems, gold, sheep, 2 flood plains and eventually iron. Nothing special.

What about founding the capital on the plains hill NE of 12**? We'll still get the 2 seafood and would be able to put a city back in our original start spot to get its 2 seafood and all 3 spices. The downside would be that we'd probably be trading 3 land tiles for 1 hammer in the city and 3 water tiles. Maybe that's not worth it.

I agree with fishing/warrior first and moving the scout N, NE.

3) I strongly favor "12**" (N of the settler's present location). Such a capital can steal back one of the floodplains from a southern-spice city.Yes, settle on that plains tile one north of where the settler now stands. A quick count of food there tells us that we can cottage every tile in the radius (even the other plains tile) and work all the hills (as mines). This capital will be a much stronger capital than settling on the starting spot. We can recoup all the tiles to the south with a nice fishing village.

@LK- yep that gems tile is covered in jungle and that is a forested plains hill. I agree with you the area will be bit crowded. Ideally there would have been one more tile of distance between the starting tile and the tile we plan to settle b/c as you say the starting tile will be a very strong site post-calendar.

However with the new capital location when can still claim all those tiles we will just have to settle ontop of the southern most spice and then settle on that off island to claim that last clams. I got a feeling we are going to want to settle to the North. Here is a quick rundown of a proposed tech order: fishing->BW->Wheel->Pottery->Iron Working->Sailing and this is why Fishing (this is a no brainer)-BW (knowing where copper is is important but slavery is more important- we want to start whipping everything in this food rich environment)->Wheel (pottery prequiste)->Pottery (granaries for better whipping and cottages really help when researching the expensive tech IW)->Iron Working (b/c we want those gems online soon to help our GNP and raise the happiness cap)->Sailing (by the time we get here we want to be settling a metal resource and whipping lighthouses in our cities).

If we are alone on this island I say to just spam settlers at size 2 from the capital (raging barbs won't mean anything on a archi map on monarch, our scout and a single warrior will probably be enough to fog bust). If we are not alone I would advocate a detour to archery and start choking our neighbor with archers in forests.

What about founding the capital on the plains hill NE of 12**? We'll still get the 2 seafood and would be able to put a city back in our original start spot to get its 2 seafood and all 3 spices. The downside would be that we'd probably be trading 3 land tiles for 1 hammer in the city and 3 water tiles. Maybe that's not worth it..this is tempting, but I don't think there is any imperitive to grab all those southern tiles with 2 cities, we can do it with 3 with only the a bit of a time delay (in fact we can reclaim all the tiles except the 1 clam and the plains spice) with a second city

I agree with fishing/warrior first and moving the scout N, NE.[/QUOTE]

What about founding the capital on the plains hill NE of 12**? We'll still get the 2 seafood and would be able to put a city back in our original start spot to get its 2 seafood and all 3 spices. The downside would be that we'd probably be trading 3 land tiles for 1 hammer in the city and 3 water tiles. Maybe that's not worth it.

This is my preferred spot. The capitol had better immeidate production. We can still build a good commerce city in the original spot, and probably a city in the north.

@Atlas: "It's like you're reading my mind, man" (As a Simpsons fan, I suspect you'll recognize this very early Bart quote.)

I'll wait a few more hours for anyone else to respond. Unless I hear contrary (with good argument), I plan to explore the island with the scout, found the capital north of where the settler now stands (at 12**--who on earth came up with that label?! :mischief: ), and implement the workboat asap project. I'll stop when we grab Bronzeworking so we can assess our copper situation.

My initial analysis of the 12** site is essentially identical to greggo's, but I show the warrior finishing on turn 29 or so. I don't trust my late-night attention enough, though, so we'll see how it comes out in the game.

2nd EDIT: I read through greggo's post again and it looks like he actually ran a test game whereas I used paper, so his numbers are better than mine. Note that with an extra 3F from the fish, 1F from the floodplain and 2F from the city center, our has a +6F at size 2. That's just fantastic for growing to full size (and beyond if we want/need to for whipping) quickly.

After workboat and warrior, the next build will probably depend on how big our island is. The three most likely choices are another warrior, another boat, or a settler. I think the choice will largely depend on how much more land the scout discovers. If anyone has insight on how to make that choice, please post.

Otherwise, I'll use my best judgment. In any case, it won't be too many (if any) hammers invested before the end of turnset #1.

EDIT: Crossposted with LK. It looks like we should discuss whether to put the capital on the plains hill (NE of 12**) or on 12**

I'm hesitant to found on a forested plains hill. There will be 10 water tiles, 10 land tiles. I think before deciding between 12** or the plains hill (it needs a name!), we should move that scout N, NE, to see what is north of the hill.

EDIT: We should call it LK :lol:

Let's use this post as a place to list the relative merits of founding either at 12** or on the plains hill NE of that location. I'll update the post with comments from later posts.

Found at 12**:
Advantages: 2 more feedable, cottageable land tiles; can mine the plains hill for production on low-production map; more land tiles worked by Capital Bureaucrats (with Civil Service); can still found a city on southern spice which can support 3 specialists (city center, clams, 1 flood plain w/town not used by capital) + 3 towns (flood plain, newly discovered spice, town on island off to SE); completely eliminates barb fog on start peninsula with first border pop (the other site needs another to elimate all fog); can work plains hill to get workboat out asap.

Found on plains hill ("LK Hill"): extra turn of delay in settling; extra hammer of production in city center; can found a city at the starting location (though that burns a floodplain); uses three as-yet-unknown tiles; founds capital slightly further into our starting island.

Right now, I still judge 12** to be superior to the plains hill. Let me know if there is something I'm not considering.

Note: Founding a city on spice adds 2 commerce to the city. So, founding on the southern spice should be a 2F1H3C city center! (From post #5 in this thread (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=144029).) I haven't verified this for v1.61 but don't see why it shouldn't be true.

EDIT: Updated info based on scout's second move.

EDIT2: Current voting (asterisk indicates no comment since latest screenshot)
12**: Compromise, greggo, Iainuki*, (Atlas)*
Hill: LK*
Neutral: Kodii
?: Bugsy, grangerm

Another installment in this glacial first turnset. I moved the scout:

http://img441.imageshack.us/img441/4076/civ4screenshot0003lq3.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

We can have stone in our capital!

I'm still leaning toward 12**, though in fairness it should be noted that "LK/grangerm Hill" has enough food to run three grass hills. With a single border expansion (8 turns), the fog is busted up to the rice. We can plant a city that would capture most (undiscovered) seafood lost to the plains hill site.

We can probably start to think about strategy. Obviously the pyramids come to mind. With that, I'm also thinking that a GP farm on that southern spot is appealing. We'll still have to see just how big the island is, of course. These archipelago islands can go on for long distances at just 3-4 tiles wide. Long term, jungle sites make for good commerce cities.

I'll play this turnset to completion in a few hours, barring any major dissent.

I'm still liking 12** over LK hill. In the long term, I think the chop + mining of that hill is worth more than the initial production boost it would give us.

In terms of the next build, I think a second warrior would not be very useful at this point: there's very little fog to bust or land to explore.

My preference would be for a scouting workboat - Find as many of our neighbors ASAP so we can pick our friends and enemies, as well as getting the tech discount (minor with 18 civs, but every little bit helps).

Getting a settler out is a close second, but with our ability to whip, should be possible very shortly after the second workboat in any case.

Well I did a quick dotmap for each situation. Either way, we can make full use of the spices and clams that we lose. With 12**, it is very cramped. With LK hill, it spreads things out a bit. While losing the plains hill, we do gain a grassland hill, though it cannot be worked until Iron Working. I am still unsure at this point, so I'll leave myself as neutral. Either way is fine for me.

12**
http://i16.photobucket.com/albums/b29/Kodi_87/Settle12.jpg

LK/Grangerm Hill
http://i16.photobucket.com/albums/b29/Kodi_87/grangermLKhill.jpg

12**: Compromise, greggo, (Atlas*), Iainuki
LK/Grangerm Hill: LKendter
Either: Kodii
Unknown: Sir Bugsy, grangerm

Nice dotmaps. Note that if we found directly on the rice (no, I don't usually favor founding on resources!), we'll get an extra food so the city center will be 3F1H1C. This compares to 4F0H0C for farming it (pre-irrigation, if ever). It depends on what else is up there, of course.

Who is Duh? And I got the impression that grangerm was bringing up a possibility rather than giving an opinion preferring the Hill.

I really wish our scout could move 2E to see if there is any further seafood, but I think its probably best to keep it safe and settle at 12**.

EDIT: If we do decide to found on 12**, then settling the rice might be an idea. That way we don't waste tiles.

The plains hill has way too much water, in my opinion. Remember, cottages are hugely more productive than ocean tiles!

I still like 12**. The waste of resources is annoying, but in the early game, efficient land use is much less important than building strong cities: in the opening, your productivity is limited by how many cities you have, not how well you've covered the land available to you. This is particularly true for the capital, since it will probably produce one-half or more your commerce well into the midgame. We can found a city on the SE island to get the grassland spices, or a city on the grassland spices like Compromise says (I'm very wary of stealing tiles from the capital, though), and another on the SW island to get the clams. That would waste a clams, a floodplains, and a plains spice; I don't care about plains spice, since they're not important tiles anyways (2F 1P 3C doesn't excite me), and I think the other two are an acceptable sacrifice to get a capital with as much land and food as we can manage.

Okay, it is done.

Quick synopsis: We are alone on our island. We have copper, but it is very far away in a not-great city site. I have revealed all city-workable tiles on our island. Lots of jungle.

Full report:
3970BC: I settled at 12**, now officially named Moscow.

http://img361.imageshack.us/img361/9978/ss1fz0.jpg (http://imageshack.us)


I started building a warrior and began researching fishing per the plan. The city worked a grass forest. When the first border pop occured, I worked the floodplain for one turn.

http://img236.imageshack.us/img236/2822/ss2km0.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

3790BC: Very quickly (as the scout was rounding the northernmost point on our island, a lion appeared outside the city borders. That seemed early, but oh well. This is raging barbs.

Time passed. We got fishing and I started a workboat, switching the city's tile assignment back to the floodplain for a turn while continuing with the starting warrior. I think the warrior only lost a hammer or two to decay.

3610BC: Somebody somewhere founds Buddhism. (Hinduism was not founded on my turnset.)

http://img368.imageshack.us/img368/3941/ss3co8.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

3340BC: The workboat finished and went to the fish (netting them the next turn).

3250BC: The warrior finishes. I send him toward the jungle grass hill to reveal a few of our as-yet unknown hidden tiles. I start a workboat figuring that it might be more useful than a warrior here. Feel free to debate this.

http://img102.imageshack.us/img102/9058/ss4rj8.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

Also in 3250, our lion appears near our scout who has finished revealing every workable tile to the west and the north of our upside-down-U-shaped island. I decide to fortify him north of some cows to maximally reveal tiles while on +50% space.

I decide to flee this encounter, however, because my scouts always seem to die to animals, especially when they're lightly fortified (here only 5%). By going due west, I can keep an eye on the shore. By moving NE then S next turn, I can make sure I can go back to this position without fear of ending up near the lion.

All of this microtacticking has a price, however. I think I forgot to manually assign the city tile when the city grew to size 2. (Maybe not, I didn't note carefully how much food was in the food bar.) Regardless, on the first or second turn after we grew to two, I switched the auto-assignment from the plains hill forest to the floodplain to maximize growth

http://img103.imageshack.us/img103/5746/ss5ve4.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

3160BC: We spy a Chinese (Mao) archer on the island off to our southeast! He is alone and heavily promoted already.

3070BC: My last turn is eventful. A Greek (Alexander) scout appears near the same spot as Mao's archer. Now we know both the Greeks and the Chinese. Naturally--for the aggressive AI setting--they are pleased with each other and annoyed with us. (At least Mao is. Maybe next turn Alex will flip to annoyed.)

http://img103.imageshack.us/img103/9602/ss6ia3.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

Also, the lion has moved in between our warrior (sent that way to engage the lion!) and our scout (who should probably try to avoid this battle too).

The following two overviews can guide our dotmap planning:
http://img360.imageshack.us/img360/8518/ss7mj8.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

http://img487.imageshack.us/img487/5913/ss8kl0.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

The last screenshot has all resources on it, but the southwesternmost gems and copper don't have the little circles near them.

Bottom line: We're alone on the island. What do we want to do. We grow to size 3 next turn. We can flip to slavery right now. Our island is dispersed and jungle-filled. We're certainly on the good end of it. We know about every workable tile (except 3 water tiles south of the southern spices) on the island.

Advice for next player:
Inherited turn (before hitting end-turn when you get it): Move the scout 1W to avoid the lion. Fortify the warrior and let him bear the attack from the lion. Revolt to slavery (if we lose the warrior, we don't want to waste a turn in anarchy rebuilding him).
First non-inherited turn: move the warrior south to bust fog. Or switch locations (even better!) with the scout by moving the scout to NW of the rice (W of where warrior is now) and the warrior to where the scout is right now. That way, fog will be busted on the entire east side of the island and our stronger warrior will be there to take the brunt of any wandering animals.

I've uploaded the save (http://gotm.civfanatics.net/saves/civ4sgotm3/The_Real_Ms_Beyond_SG003_BC3070_01.Civ4SavedGame) to the proper place.

EDIT: By playing quickly, we are winning!:
http://img54.imageshack.us/img54/1411/winninghx4.th.jpg (http://img54.imageshack.us/my.php?image=winninghx4.jpg)

@Iainuki: regarding the southern city, I'd probably plan to not steal any tiles away from the capital! Just have it work the clams and the cottaged floodplain that the capital can't reach. It will have +6F from just the clams and the floodplains and can support 3 specialists. That should be plenty with a library and a forge. At least for a while. If/when we conquer the southeast island, we could add the other grassland town from there too.

But we may have other priorities. That site will probably always be there for us.

Great job! I'm glad to see that we're the top line of the graph temporarily :lol:

We should work on putting together our first summary post. As for the roster, Sir Bugsy is a bit tentative in going second, so I have changed it up a bit, switching Sir Bugsy and grangerm. Therefore, grangerm is up next. Does that work out alright?

Compromise (just played)
grangerm (UP)
LKendter (on deck)
greggo
Kodii
Sir Bugsy
Iainuki

@Compromise - can you please crop your screen shots? I had to constantly scroll left to right to read them.

I played about 30 turns (got to the 31st to see if we had copper, but didn't play at all ). I think the usual procedure is for the next player to take 15 or 20 turns depending on what happens. Then 10 turns each usually works. Again, feel free to adjust that a bit if the situation warrants.

Kodii: Add to your summary list (and the list for the next player!) that we need to pick a tech. I started The Wheel, but a strong case could be made for mining (prereq for masonry/pyramids) too.

EDIT: I am a moron. I should have slept instead of lying awake, pondering this start. Of *course* we have mining already. (Thanks Kodii. Does it make you fe