ChienFou Prince Series 1

There are lots of us out here. We can manage noble, We get ok starts on prince (thanks Sisiutil) and somewhere along the line the sky falls on our heads. I'm starting this series since I've made no fewer than 7 starts with these parameters and every time something went 'orribly wrong. The idea of the series is to play an opening up to a specified point and micro-manage what we're doing, so each gameplay will be relatively short; maybe 10 turns or so. In this first series we're going to build a samurai and a cat, or there-abouts. After that anyone interested can have a go with the game from that point and compare notes, but the early game is what this series is about. We might try two or three games with these parameters.

4000BC
4000BC exposed
4000-3130BC
4000-3130, what I should have done
3130-2740
2740-2470

I chose Warlords 2.08; fractal, std settings, epic, Tokugawa. I chose Tokugawa because his UU kicks in after 15 or so tech advances and in general we'll know our Win strategy - domination rush round about when we get to rifling - so we can focus on the minutiae. We all know this is where we fail. Tokugawa kicks off with roads and fishes and we know that to bring in the samurai, we should tech to IW, Construction (for the cats) and CS, which suggests we should take the mathematics route to CoL. But which friggin' order? :)

The only "cheat" is that I set the warrior to auto-pilot, and waited till he found someone else and then abandoned, relatively unaware of what I'd found. It's not an isolated start - samurai AND Galleons seemed too far along the tech tree to play short series of moves.

4000BC I got a nice starting position, but on the coast, loadsa goodies and a hut in the FC:

http://www.asimere.com/Warlords/CFP1Start.JPG

and to save the inevitable 4 pages of discussion (peace, Sisiutil) I moved the warrior on top of the hill to see if the grass is greener over the other side.

http://www.asimere.com/Warlords/CFP10001.JPG

So, settle in place for rice, sugar and gold immediately with marble and bananas in the FC; or move two spaces inland and wait for the second border pop to get the marble?

If we settle in place we can let the 1st border pop claim the goody hut, otherwise we may need to claim it with the warrior.

Gamefile start (http://www.asimere.com/Warlords/AutoSave_Initial_BC-4000.CivWarlordsSave)

Gold , Marble , 2 food and Sugar ? Yes settle in place.
If it's fractal it could be a very watery map so being coastal will help with that.You have reasonable production, but really it's going to be a commerce giant.

With so many resources it's unlikely that you will get copper or horse in th BFC.

Second city can grab those.

Marble could mean Temple of Artemis in the capital, although it brings prophet points with it.

Certainly Oracle in your next city

Great thread idea. I am another who falls in the category of "Prince" wanna be.

Agree with Mice, settle in place. Damn strong capital.

If you settle in place you will get a commercial city, but if you settle 2E you will get a production power house. It seems to be at least five hills and enough food to work them all. Some tiles are covered by jungle, but you can easily get iron working before you run out of workable tiles. Combine this production with bureaucracy and you can get any wonder or built an army from scratch in no time.

Currently 2 in favour, 1 against; for settle in place. My thinking is that there's a river 4 to the East where we could potentially put our next city, with either no overlap or, say, 2 tiles overlap and this will pick up some of the hills mentioned by yena. That would give us a decent commerce city as capital and a production city a tad closer to any action. (Let's assume we're not bordering an inland lake or great bay and we're going to find action to the East.)

I'm inclined to settle in place but will give the thread another 24 hours to see if any of the "Gods" want to persuade me not to.

Assuming I do then we need to think about which 2 techs to research (we get about 2 techs normally before anything significant happens) and we need to think about whether we go warrior-worker or worker-warrior. It seems fairly obvious to tech Min and Ag. Since we have 6 forests in the FC, I fancy BW as well and we can chop out the first settler.

Finally where do we send the warrior - what's the best exploration strategy? I plan to play until we build our first unit (warrior or worker) and we can discuss what to do with him next. I'll play the next round in about 24 hours, based on any feedback.

I think settling 2E could be better long term wise since you get a lot more river side grassland tiles which you could farm/cottage later. If settle in place you have no seafood in BFC, so the water tiles will not be as useful.

Build: worker, worrior (grow to size 2), worrior (stop after grow to size 3), another worker, settler

Research: Agri (farm banana and suger first), mining (Gold hill), BW, AH, Pottery/Myst/Mason/Priesthood.

scout near the fish and marble for good 2nd and 3rd city sites. 2nd worrior explore East.

Try time to get Priesthood+hooking up marble at the same time. And go for Oracle. Take Monachy as free tech.

Make sure you have enough worriors to defend you cities. Until you reveal more map...

Also note that if you settle in place you will never be able to work the fish.
I vote for 2E or 2N.

OK, radical idea, why not settle on the sugar? It gives you everything you want from a riverside city, to lots of production/food/commerce. And you could even settel a fish village later on (you need to check what is up there though). I don't know if sugar is going to give you 1 extra food in your city square but since it is not the best special resource tile it won't be a big loss comparing to what this city will do with riverside gold, plains marble, bananas and rice.

OK, radical idea, why not settle on the sugar? It gives you everything you want from a riverside city, to lots of production/food/commerce. And you could even settel a fish village later on (you need to check what is up there though). I don't know if sugar is going to give you 1 extra food in your city square but since it is not the best special resource tile it won't be a big loss comparing to what this city will do with riverside gold, plains marble, bananas and rice.

actually I had thought about it too. It's just one "lost" tile, with the coastal tile, but you get a head start on settlers, workers and growth.
It may be the best option here (+sugar is a weak tile even after calendar).

Settle in place. This is a terrific start. A plains hill gold mine, rice, marble, and two food resources you can farm initially (giving you the equivalent of flood plains w/o the health penalties) and whip, whip, whip for early rushing/REXing.

From what I can see in the screenie, I wouldn't do 2N as it looks like you'd have a bunch of ocean squares. 2E would be a good city but I'd rather put a second city near there and get cottages or farms and specialists going ASAP.

Suggested initial paths:
Agri -> Mining -> BW -> Masonry ...
Worker -> Warrior -> Settler -> Worker ...

With all those food resources I have a hunch there's an ideal second city site nearby (don't be afraid of overlap). Get that second city up ASAP and don't be afraid to whip/chop to do it. If you run into other civs soon and there's bronze nearby, make your 2nd city production for an early axe rush. If not, make it a high food city, get a library up there ASAP and try for an early GS, then put up a 3rd production city and chop Oracle there or in your capitol (forget Stonehenge as you're going to want early Calendar).

4000BC exposed: Well, the wanna-be Princes vote for settle in place and the "Gods" want to move. I'm not convinced about the 2N play onto the goody hut; it looks a bit watery round there, and whilst the Japanese love raw fish I'm not going to pander to a war-monger that much. Since I would have settled in place and I suck at this game and since I respect cabert's opinions, I've moved the settler onto the sugar to give us an option on the sugar tile or the 2E tile and all we've got is Fuji-san to the South, no real help.

http://www.asimere.com/Warlords/CFP10002.JPG

Will play next round tomorrow; based on any more posts

Settle on Suger looks good as gets all the res into BFC. One more hill to the south is nice. Lots of forrests. It is better now another city can actually claim the fish with some workable land tiles.

This capital will have very nice production potential for wonders. I would try to build Oracle/TOA/GL/NE/Academy/Oxford in the capital and turn it into a GP farm/Super science city. Try find a nice production city as your second or 3rd city.

I would also suggest to save some forrest for future lumber mills and :health: bonus, I can see Kyoto growing into a monster city.

I'd have settled in place but who am I to argue with cabert, the Warmonger God :worship: :worship: :worship: :worship: (:p ).

More seriously, if you're kind of ok with the start and begin to notice you're running into problems around 1000-1500 ad do you need to play the first hundred turns in great detail?

I would go for settling in the sugar. ABigCivFan already stated the main reasons and there is another one: if you don't settle in the sugar, you'll lose one turn. Not much of a reason, but the first turns are critical.

I'd have settled in place, but it looks like Kyoto will be a monster city either way. It actually looks like one of those rare sites that could be good for any of production, commerce, or GPF. Which one it ends up as should depend on what other good city sites are available nearby.

So I'd say settle where you are now; with as good a site as you've got here there's no need to waste a turn.

The reason for this series is simply that when I compare with other games here, I'm just a few turns behind the expectation. I get to 500 AD much as expected, but I'm certain I should be there at 300 AD, so to speak. The micro-management is the skill I know I lack. The grand picture I handle ok. Not well, just ok. It's why Noble is easy and Prince is tough for us wannabes.

Right, it seems we should settle where we are; and save a turn - sugar doesn't come on-line that early that it's crucial in the early game. We're going to go worker-warrior and boil the rice followed by pocketing the gold and build the roads to bring them online and will research Ag then Min then BW

The warrior is going to claim the goody hut and spend 10 or so turns in the North (I suspect it's sea past the goody hut) then circle round to pick up what's in the South which should give us an idea where to plant city 2. I'll try to micro-manage the warrior build to give us Kyoto City size 2 as it completes. That looks like 20 or so turns. Just a thought, another warrior or a second worker then? Fancy the warrior to escort the settler who probably comes next.

As it's one of the two MLB baseball nights on uk tv; I shall watch the game, sleep, check this thread then play through till I've got to the point where the warrior's ready for his presumed march East, and I've got a better map.
Thanks for help so far and meantime we can bet on whether the Hanshin Tigers are likely to beat the Yankees. Any more thoughts from the hitting and pitching coaching teams are welcome of course.

I would say worker after warrior at pop size 2. Unless of course a need is seen to fogbust.

Coast + Marble screams Great Lighthouse + Temple of Artemis. You can expand very fast and still maintain reasonable research speed.

4000-3130BC Well, to summarise, the game starts late; I built on the sugar. we got Ag, Min and have started BW. The rice is perfectly sticky and I'm building the road to connect it (is this wrong, should I develop the gold immediately?) but the growth to 3 and the second warrior (if we go this route) are due in 8/9 turns and I'll be digging gold by then. The first goody hut gave us a map and the second one 52 gold. I beat a panther, beat a lion, took Woodsman 1 and finished the first circuit being attacked by a bear while in a wood and just survived (thank you Woodsman). We also met Napoleon and Kublai Khan to the East.

I've taken a few screenshots - micro-managing the co-incident worker build and growth of Kyoto to 2 was interesting - is it worthwhile? Anyway, here's the blow by blow account:

We got a map of some empty ocean from the 2N goody hut. and then we found a panther and a goody hut. I waited one turn for the panther to attack, then took the goody hut for 52 gold and healed for 3 turns.

http://www.asimere.com/Warlords/CFP10003.JPG

Then we found Napoleon. I suggested he should do something about his 5 o'clock shadow. He wasn't impressed. He found our cultural area rather than the warrior, ESE of our city

http://www.asimere.com/Warlords/CFP10004.JPG

Agriculture was researched. I'd jiggled with using the gold tile to speed Ag research (it reduces from 12 to 10 turns) but decided getting the worker out fast was more important (it would have delayed the worker about 4 turns)

http://www.asimere.com/Warlords/CFP10005.JPG

Next we bumped into Kublai Khan, East of Kyoto. The three of us stood around and had a little chat and I recommended a visit to the temple of Nara. "Bhuddism? waste of space!". Peasants!

http://www.asimere.com/Warlords/CFP10006.JPG

By now my worker was knee deep in the paddy and I was playing with building the warrior on the same turn Kyoto grows to 2. 3 turns of forested hill;

http://www.asimere.com/Warlords/CFP10007.JPG

several turns of forested grassland;

http://www.asimere.com/Warlords/CFP10008.JPG

and we noted Bhuddism was founded in 3340 (distant land); 2 turns later we got mining and started on BW

http://www.asimere.com/Warlords/CFP10009.JPG

We survived a bear thanks to Woodsman 1 and when the rice was ready we jiggled again, so the warrior would be born as Kyoto grew:

http://www.asimere.com/Warlords/CFP10010.JPG

so here we are, 2 units built, worker and warrior
http://www.asimere.com/Warlords/CFP10011.JPG

We now have a worker building a road from the rice to Kyoto; a very sick warrior healing South of the city, scheduled to go South; another warrior scheduled to go East; contact with Napoleon and Kublai Khan; Ag & Min with BW under way and a map of the known universe.

http://www.asimere.com/Warlords/CFP10012.JPG

worker or warrior? forget the road and develop the gold? It's bottom of 3rd; Cards 0, Mets 2 and I'm going to watch the game.

Gamefile 3130BC (http://www.asimere.com/Warlords/ChienFou I BC-3130.CivWarlordsSave)

If I was playing at this stage I would chose worker. That however, is a wanna be option, so let's see what others chose.

The gold is so important that I would have mined it immediately after farming the rice, and left roading for later. I would let the city grow to size 3 and start a settler, but I think you could make a good argument for another worker as well. If you wait until size 3 you can work the gold mine while building the worker/settler which is good for your research speed.

I'd build something and let it grow too. Barracks or warrior.

About the next cities. This spot will be good production as well as the gems. It can have 4 farms after Bureacracy chain irrigation.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/82126/gemsrice.jpg

The Cow/wheat in the south is production sooner of course, with no jungle to chop.

Work the gold immediately. This one is so freaking important. It is a riverside gold, so extra commerce. Your city square has 1 extra food, rice gives you 2 extra food so you can already work the gold and rice at size 2. Good production, abundance of food and commerce. If you get masonry then farm the bananas and get a quary and you will have 8 hammers already at size 4, lots of commerce and still 2 food to spare.

First a few comments :
*) You had a 3F1C tile to work.
Why on earth did you work a 2F1H tile?
You should have grown to size 2 asap, then finished the warrior with the 3F1C +2H2C (unimproved gold) before switching.
*) Improving the rice is cool, but putting a farm on the bananas would have given you a better output
*) I would have researched mining before agri and mined the gold before farming anything. You have 3F from the city center + 3F from the bananas, you could have worked the gold at size 1 if needed!
So I guess you just didn't take into account the food boost you got from settling on the sugar.
I should have said all this before, sorry :(.
Next, I would mine the gold (road? you're not unhealthy yet it's not a big deal), and build a settler. There is a double gem city to found and maybe copper to grab...

There is a double gem city to found and maybe copper to grab...

Cabert, would you settle it before the Cow/Wheat in the south? I guess the capital has producton enough for now.

When the gems and gold are working , ChienFou you will outstrip the AI and have almost nothing to trade for.

Coast + Marble screams Great Lighthouse + Temple of Artemis. You can expand very fast and still maintain reasonable research speed.

Cabert, would you settle it before the Cow/Wheat in the south? I guess the capital has producton enough for now.

When the gems and gold are working , ChienFou you will outstrip the AI and have almost nothing to trade for.

depends on the jungle.
If there is jungle over both gems, it's useless to settle there now.
If even just one gem is forested insted of jungled, I'd rush there asap.

Hello all,

As you've research mining, I would be mining the gold as soon as possible instead of building a road you don't need for the moment. Your health is not a problem at alll at this moment ... Instead of exploiting the hill, I would select the banana : more food means faster growth and the additionnal commerce wille be great ... more over, you'll reach pop 3 sooner and have sufficient food to exploit the gold while still having extra food to grow fast ... And I'm not talking of the huge benefit of gold ...


Edit : to late!!! ;)

a few suggestions(some already mentioned by others):

1). In the beginning, city growth is #1. So first pop should always work the highest food tile (farmed river banana), follow by farmed rice, then mined gold. This will be the fastest way to get all 3 resource tiles worked.

2). I would use the worker to build a road on the 1N hill FIRST, that is the tile connecting all 3 resources tiles, it will save you several turns later moving from res to res. I would also build a road on each res After completing improving them. This way you can move to the next resource and start improve on the same turn.

Early on dont build roads unless you need them... Getting resources up when they are needed is mucho more important.
A road takes longer to make than the one turn lost....

Cabert allready said this, but I will say it again... The farmed Bananas > Farmed but Unirrigated Rice. Both are 4 food, but the bananas give you an extra commerce.

That suggested city spot has WAY to much jungle to settle now... I would settle a city on that southern river first...
Correction that is low on food... The cow-wheat city (1 NW of the wheat) looks prommising....

What I should have done

Wow! It is exactly this sort of input that us wannabes need!

I re-ran the game following the above advice. The warrior took the same moves as before, and is healing South of the city. I have a mindblock (perhaps I'm not alone?) on farming tiles that will later take a plantation, and now it's pointed out that farming the bananas gains a gold it's obvious.

I did put a road on the hill 1N of the city (cost 3 turns) and as a result the bananas came on stream this turn, rather than 3 turns earlier. I get this cost back by the time I've finished the rice and gold for a total of about 6 food and 3 gold with a free road thrown in - is that worth it? We get it back pretty quickly

Should I have micro-managed the warrior build so Kyoto grew and the warrior finished this turn, but used bananas and gold instead of the way i did it before??

However, what is the outcome of this different start?

1) Kyoto has 7 more food towards becoming size 3;
2) the warrior is 7/8 hammers from completion and will complete 3 turns later than before
3) we will recover the turns of the worker moving to the other two early improvement sites for a small fixed cost and will gain in the medium turn.
4) Our research is five turns advanced

Here's the screenshot of the city in the same year.

http://www.asimere.com/Warlords/CFP10013.JPG

I'm going to continue with the original game, since some evil person out here is bound to post next week "domination in 1600AD!", while we're still in the dark ages.

Anyway, let's move on: warrior/settler/worker? The gems are both in the jungle, so we don't need a settler there yet. We can send a settler South? Start a warrior - are we still going for growth or do we work the gold tile now? and shift to settler at Size 3? My inclination is to work the gold and switch at size 3 to a settler - it's what I'd normally do, so it MUST be wrong :)

Next tech? Does that depend on whether we find copper or not? I fancy AH to reveal horses, we can wait a bit for cottages and quarries as our worker has quite a long job-list as yet.

Is everyone content with the early warrior moves? I'm planning on sending Kyoto's warrior East, tracking the Northern sea border, and the Southern warrior (5 turns to heal) South or SE. We need escort duty and city and tile defence from Barbars from about 2000 BC IIRC. So does one of the warriors come back to do that? Again, I MUST be wrong since I typically build a couple more warriors then a second worker after the first settler to police the improved tiles and escort the settler, leaving the first two to go walkabout.

I'd say your intuition is correct. Depending on when BW comes in, I sometimes chop my first settler at size 2. But working that gold gives you a huge early advantage, so it's best to grow to 3 asap then switch to settler while working gold/rice/banana farm. It looks like BW will come in in time for you to chop one of the riverside grassland tiles to shave a few turns off your settler.

The location of your 2nd city of course depends on copper, but if none is nearby I'd go for the cow/wheat site as you can get two food resources in the first ring and plety of forest for production. Send the worker down there alongside your settler to get that food online asap, and have your capital immediately build another worker to replace him.

Given that you're looking for advice on micromanagement, I'd stop at that point and let us have a look (possibly earlier if copper pops nearby and you want input on city location). Tech-wise, if there's no nearby copper you want to go BW next for sure; if there is, maybe go masonry as a plains quarry gives you the same food and more hammers than a mined grassland hill.

Edit: This should read "AH next" (Animal Husbandry)

From my point of view :

Building the road could have been done later ...

Farming the banana
Farming the rice until mining
as soon as mining is discovered -> mine the gold
then finish farming the rice and the build road if nothing else to do

Even if the 2 commerces from the gold mine are great I may have choosen the rice for growing until the gold is fully mined ...

growth growth growth .. ;)

What I should have done

I did put a road on the hill 1N of the city (cost 3 turns) and as a result the bananas came on stream this turn, rather than 3 turns earlier.
However, what is the outcome of this different start?


It only costs 2 turns not 3 to build a road. since it is a grass hill seperating your 3 resources, it takes 2 turns each just getting from 1 resource to the other without that road. with that road, it only takes 1 turn to jump between resources. Also later when BW online, you can immedietly chop that tree 1N without pause. without that road everytime your worker goes by that hill(no possible short cut), he wastes a turn.

Alternatively, have the worker farm the banana before roading 1N hill (to get farm banana 2 turns earlier).

1.Farm banana (no need to road since it is on the same river)
2.Road 1N hill while city grow to size 2
3.farm rice while city grow to size 2 (try time growing to pop 2 as soon as rice farmed)
4. road rice
5. 1 turn to gold hill
6. mine gold hill.
7. road gold hill
8. road to marble (res Masonary)
9. build quarry


This should minimize the waste of worker turns, and you can bring rice and gold online slightly faster and all hooked up. Later while travesing to other tiles(to chop) via this tile is also faster. And there wont be any repeat work to hook up the res later. Your workers will be soon off to build improvement for the new cities.

I would suggest masonary after BW since quarry marble give 1:food:+4:hammers:+1:commerce: which is a huge boost for your later productions (much faster settler/worker/worrior builds).

Next try time the settler with discovery of AH for possible horse.

Just out of curiosity I played up to 3130BC

here is a screenie
http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/74263/Civ4ScreenShot0160.JPG

Not better all in all, but more like me.

Move to the Banana, farm it, move to the gold start mining it at 3130, meanwhile get food:

http://img508.imageshack.us/img508/1425/3130xp6.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

OK So I played just a little further to 2710 and this is where I am:

http://img339.imageshack.us/img339/7466/2710vy1.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
Just finished the farm on the rice paddy, while moving from the Gold to the rice I put 1 turn into a road on that grassland.

I finished BW & started masonry to hook up that Marble (Hammers + Commerce = allways good). I will actually stop that barracks which I started just to grow to 4 and start a settler.

P.S. Roading does take 3 turns!

P.P.S I forget to mention this earlier, but why did you pause a turn to get the panther to kill you? I allways run from animals if I can, keep moving instead of healing... this gets you more huts. Not that it did me a lot of good this game, but.... chances chances...

3130-2740BC I decided to build a warrior for a bit, work the gold and because I'd almost finished the road on the rice decided to let that finish. Working the gold reduced the research time for BW to 14 turns, so, in reality I'd only lost three turns on research because of my choice of rice over banana. (but I'm losing one commerce per turn even so). Here's the city screen:

http://www.asimere.com/Warlords/CFP10014.JPG

I went with ACivFanatic's idea of building the road on the 1N forested hill, even though it costs 3 gold (epic speed, so 3 turns) in terms of the goldmine. You can see the warrior setting off to take the second pass round the dity and expand our horizons.

http://www.asimere.com/Warlords/CFP10015.JPG

The rice hooked up; I appreciate there's no direct immediate benefit, but I'm planning to chop the forest on the hill once the mine's done, to speed up the settler.

http://www.asimere.com/Warlords/CFP10016.JPG

My Southern Woodsman 1 warrior was still healing in a wood and got eaten by a wolf. It had nowhere to run and then we also bumped into Rameses, East of Kyoto. The warrior there was planning on turning South shortly to start the 2nd circuit of Kyoto.

http://www.asimere.com/Warlords/CFP10017.JPG

The Goldmine came on stream one turn before BW finished, and Kyoto grew to size 3, with the next warrior 2 turns from completion. I decided to build the road as it really does cost 1 turn fewer. The warrior I'd sent South got an XP beating up the man-eating wolf I'd met before, and I switched to building the settler.

http://www.asimere.com/Warlords/CFP10018.JPG

Quite a lot happened this turn as I found Napoleon's land

http://www.asimere.com/Warlords/CFP10019.JPG

and next turn we got to BW

http://www.asimere.com/Warlords/CFP10020.JPG

and since there was no copper around I thought AH made sense. We're going to need to protect ourselves soon, and horses might help. It will complete about when the settler does assuming I chop the 1N forest

http://www.asimere.com/Warlords/CFP10021.JPG

My Southern Warrior looked a bit vulnerable and I retreated to the 1NE wood

http://www.asimere.com/Warlords/CFP10022.JPG

So, we haven't got copper; should we go AH or IW for protection or Masonry to quarry the marble and speed research? Given the worker has bananas to farm and a forest to chop I don't see the point of the quarry.

I'm wondering what to do with the Southern warrior, but the Eastern one seems to be doing a good job so far.

I hope you're not all getting bored with the slow pace of this, but the decisions are coming thick and fast. I did stress the thread's about micro-management, and I for one am gaining immensely from the comments. Please keep it up.

PS. I can't get anchor and set_anchor to work onto the second page. I really do suck at mark-up languages.:confused: Any thoughts?

Gamefile 2740BC (http://www.asimere.com/Warlords/ChienFou I BC-2740.CivWarlordsSave)

AH is good since we did not find copper. Hope we see horse in sight when the settler is built. Masonry, Pottery, Oracle techs next.

Fortify that south worrior on hill, and hope to gain some xp. Hill/Forrest + fortify bonus means he can easily kill even barb archers when defending. Besides most likely the settler will head his way to settle Cow+wheat production city, and he will defend that city. Try not to lose him.

ok, I was too used to normal speed....3 turns for a road?! that sucks!

Edit: In my normal speed games(2 turns to build a road), I often build 2 workers early. They improve all resources fast in capital, and by the time I have a settler, the workers should already built a road leading to the new city. And 2 workers can then bring the 2nd city productive instantly. So the extra turns I invest in a 2nd worker is almost always worth the doubled improvemnt/roading speed. But Epic speed is different now i realized.

Why are you building the settler at size 3 with a warrior half finished?? This makes no sence, finish the warrior first.

Roading the Hill and the gold is costing you a lot... Atleast the 1 commerce but also 1 food/turn => Early game food is king!

I think AH is the right choice at this point, also it will allow you to develop the Cow...

Edit: I shadow played your set.
Stopping and skipping the roading, mining the gold and starting the farm on the Bananananananas
Meanwhile while the worker was mining at size 2 working the Nanananas + rice while building the warrior. Course the warrior was delayed some....
MyKyoto & Civ @ 2740
http://img262.imageshack.us/img262/1204/2740ov5.jpg (http://imageshack.us)


I would also like to talk about your scouting, what were you hoping to find up north? To me I expect to find coast and Jungle....
If I do find anything else but Jungle I wouldnt expect to settle that before city #3 or #4 => Therefor I am not intrested....
I am more intrested in that corn/wine site due southeast, tho I stuck by your scouting ....

mm, two strong players recommending very different micro-strategies:

1) Food, Food, Food
2) Commerce, commerce, commerce.

no wonder we're still prince wannabes :)

It's a shame there's no copper nearby; good ole Napolean is ripe for an axe rush. Have your eastern warrior bust the rest of that fog to his SW, maybe you'll get lucky. Depending on where horses pop and where he builds his next cities you might end up going to war with chariots anyway (I have the funny feeling he'll grab that rice/gems site, which is actually just fine since the gems are unworkable until IW, so it basically saves you a settler).

Chop one of the riverside forests, then have your worker build a road toward the south (or maybe farm the tile you chopped) until the settler finishes. Then the worker and settler go south together while the capital builds a second worker. I'd put my second city 1W of the wheat to get both food resources in the first ring and get it growing ASAP. This could be a decent production site (more likely, since Nappy being close probably means a BC war), or the perfect place to whip/chop a library and run a couple of scientists for an early GS. Heck, it's got enough GL/plains tiles and excess food, you could cottage it if you wanted to. It is really nice that you have two flexible early cities, though of course you'll need to commit and specialize them both eventually.

Hopefully masonry is done by the time the second worker finishes in your capitol. You can then either build a warrior or two for fogbusting while growing to size 4 and building the quarry, or roll the dice and chop another settler right away to go out and grab horses. (I'd be tempted to do the second, but I'd feel bad if one barb archer ruined your game...)

EDIT: Wait, did I see that you haven't farmed that banana yet?? If so, have your worker do that NOW!! :)

I editted my above post some (a lot) I hope you caught that....

I am not a strong player but a confident prince / learning Monarch player. I allways learned/thought early game food = power. I may be wrong tho.... Learning allways :sad:

mm, two strong players recommending very different micro-strategies:

1) Food, Food, Food
2) Commerce, commerce, commerce.

no wonder we're still prince wannabes :)

Early times food leads to everything faster. working the Gold hill might get you BW, AH faster, but that does not help much since you do not have a settler waiting to settle. And it slows your pop grow.

If imporving and working the 2 food tiles first it allows your capital to get to pop 4 faster which means faster settler/worker/worrior builds.

I would recommend playing with different micro-build orders until 1500BC and compare results. that result should be more convincing than plain words and educational to us all.

ok, I'll play through from the beginning emphasising food (banananana, rice, gold, no road) till I get to BW and report back. I'll play the warriors the same way.

I take the point about exploring South; I had originally got a warrior down there but the wolves ate him, and the next one took one look at a lion and a bear, turned round and damp-eyed me with quivering lips. I hadn't the heart to hold an Animal games morning :)

I'm happy to put in the time to produce the report if you feel it's worthwhile.

I'll also push on with the formal game a bit further following AH, and bringing the bananas online

I wouldn't obsess too much about micro build orders--there are a lot of variables involved. There aren't many absolutes in this game. Yes, most times early food is king, but if you work that gold mine to get BW (or AH) faster and copper (or horses) pops right by the capital, you will be one happy little BC warmonger. Just try and pick up the little tips, like farming riverside bananas before non-irrigated rice; little things like that will add up and really help your game. Keep playing the main game!! :)

Keep it going Chien. I am playing a shadow game using mostly my own normal thoughts. Am very interested to see how different the results of your game and mine.

Also, you didn't say if the Mets won!

2740-2470BC I moved the settler behind the warrior in the build queue and carried on with AH. I continued my circling around with the Northern Warrior. The much despised road was completed and I moved the worker over to the bananas. I was able to start him right in on that, so we've gained a turn there I guess. The latest warrior set off South and my lily-livered friend of the rheumy eye and vibrating lip ducked and weaved around a bit trying to gain a South-facing forested hill to sit on with a general view to fogbusting and gaining experience from small felines rather than large ursines. He slowly drifted SE. Coward!

http://www.asimere.com/Warlords/CFP10023.JPG

This worked quite well as he got 2 XPs and I gave him arrows, with a view to him garrisonning the Southern City

http://www.asimere.com/Warlords/CFP10024.JPG

I kept pushing him forward SSE with a view to linking up with the Nothern Warrior who was making good progress and had got an XP too by now. He reluctantly climbed a hill and sneaked a peek over the top and what did he see? Copper! and a couple of turns later Stone! Whoopee!

http://www.asimere.com/Warlords/CFP10025.JPG

Eventually we got AH (I'll skip the screenshot) and started Masonry (8 turns). All three warriors were now South of Kyoto, spread out in a long EW line. What do we spot near the wheat? Horses!. More whoopee! You can see the warriors, the copper and the horses and an unwelcome bear nearby:

http://www.asimere.com/Warlords/CFP10026.JPG

... and this is the updated map of the universe as we know it.

http://www.asimere.com/Warlords/CFP10027.JPG

The settler is 65/150, 10 turns from finishing and the bananas have just finished. I fancy building a road on them too, then chopping the 1N forest to complete the settler and moving onto the marble to start the quarry which will be just about when Masonry completes. The Easternmost Warrior can go on exploring and the two closer ones can act as settler escorts and fogbusters. So the real question is:

Copper or horses? and which tile? It's about now people start drawing dotmaps and so on, but I don't propose to go that route (I'm I.T. illiterate) I fancy one of the tiles on the river (which connects Kyoto) and next to the copper so we can start that immediately. Perhaps I should send the worker with the settler, and build a new worker in Kyoto? By then the copper will be online and I can, at long last, build an axe to defend Kyoto?

The subsiduary question is Masonry? or something else?

... and the important news: Cards 0, Mets 2 called off for rain at bottom of the 5th, so final result.


Gamefile 2470BC (http://www.asimere.com/Warlords/ChienFou I BC-2470.CivWarlordsSave)

There is no good city location with the bronze in the inner ring, and a border pop may be dangerously late, so I would probably build a city on the hill NE of the horse. It is a great city location, and if you could start building chariots right away which is good enough for barb defence. Your worker should go with the settler, so you need to build a new worker in Kyoto to build the quarry and start a road network between your cities. Since you have lots of food you may want to whip the worker to save a few turns. You also need Mysticism for border pops. Perhaps before Masonry.

Yena's proposed horse site is a good move. BTW the gem site will not be so easy to irrigate as I thought now that all the hills are revealed.

NE of the horse gives you good production. Keep it comin'. The detailed discussion is great.

I would get Myst prior to Masonry, for one it gives you Obelisks (for culture & Border pop). For another it gives you a discount on Masonry (which IMHO is up after Myst) followed by Priesthood => Pottery => Writing

It is a little low on food but I like the spot just west of the mountain by the copper. Picks up the corn for food, hills and copper for production. I would start a Barracks and switch to the Obelisk ASAP for culture (whip it?)

I still like the wheat/cow city just west of the wheat, yes it misses the horses, but we can pick it up with another city down south.

I think you are really missing out on a lot by roading and not growing to size 4 prior to the settler.

You attached an old save to this set...

I played a bit more, to see where you get with more commerce and less (well just a bit less) food.
Unfortunately I got caught in the just one more turn trap, and I have no earlier save than 415BC.

some time frame : 2950 BC I discovered BW, switch to slavery in 2920 BC
I discovered masonry in 2680 BC, built the quarry really soon after that
I discovered pottery in 2500 BC
I founded Osaka in 2230 BC only, so after your save (I won't tell you where because it's a bit spoilerish).

I don't understand how you can say there is no way to have a good city with copper without at least exploring around :crazyeye:.

If you play this right, it should be easy.
The gold is really a godsend.

Given worker is travelling with Settler I won't rapidly get to the quarry, so I have a time slot to pop Myst in for the monuments, then can do Masonry. Good thinking guys; I'd not have got that right if I'd played on, because it's driven by the worker going for a walk, and not being able to build the quarry for that reason.

I take the point about building roads, it was a bit of an experiment - generally I don't but the 1N hill was a real barrier.

I'm still dithering over copper or horse city. East most warrior will have a look round the copper site and West warrior at the horses (I hate bears) before I finally decide. I'll play on a bit later on today after checking back here. Roughly, I'm building Settler-worker, using 2 warriors to get the settler to its as yet undecided destination and researching Myst and masonry. That looks about right for the next gameplay. I'm keeping it short as the Prince wannabes are providing solid feedback too.

It takes 2 hours to write up 1/2 an hour of game play, but it's fun interacting about what to do next. I can see why aelf and sisiutil get a buzz despite the extra work, and the encouragement is much appreciated

Copper or horse; horse or copper ? :)

and I fixed the save set - it's 2470 now.

My vote is copper
- It is on the river
a) Instant connection to the capitol = free commerce
b) Health bonus
C) Instant connection to the capitol = You can build units there the minute copper is hooked up, no need for an endless road back.
- Looks to have better food
=> Better overall potential
- Probably closer to the capitol
=> Lower cost

Just for the heck of it I took a stab at how I would settle
http://img299.imageshack.us/img299/2571/cfp10027ej0.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
1) Yellow (you need some barb protection!)
2) Green next or even go out for white if Napy hasnt grabbed it yet
3) Green if you took white at 2
4) brown depending on what more is south I might move it 1 south, more info is needed there

Fist build (or whip) at the yellow city should be the Obelisk, meanwhile farm up those wines for nice 2/1/2 tiles.
Next I would get a road going from the yellow city to the copper (copper first!) and eventually corn if the borders still havent expanded.
Next make sure to get an axe or 2 before anything else for barb protection (i.e. stop building allmost anything you are building ones copper is hooked up), I think it is gonna be close...

I'd been leaning towards the copper city myself ('m gonna push Napoleon into the sea with an axe rush, since he's close to the gold tile.) as it pressures Napoleon, but had decided to finish looking around before finally committing. I'd have lazily put the city one south of where the dot map suggests, but I hadn't thought through the whole myst-cheap masonry thing - this is definitely one of the errors in my Prince games; I go for writing and use the Library to pop, but it's deadly slow so I have to settle next to any immediately required resource. Yay, thanks guys, this thread's really helping.

You'se'll all have to laugh, I'm also playing another different game offline with these parameters and am now leading in c. 1600 (despite my Library method) - which is way my best result for an attempt at a domination win. trebs, CR3 grens and knights mince longbowmen :)

if you want copper, you don't want it in the second ring do you?
Or do you have a special plan to get the culture in there fast?

still thinking about it cabert; assuming I decide copper city - and I'll know before the settler's built (10 turns) moved (6 turns) develop copper, (6 turns) - that's going to take me to later than 2000BC - it's running it fine if I also build an obelisk (say 10 turns) and wait for the pop (10 turns) - I think I'll be over-run by then. I think I need to settle next to the copper (or indeed the horse for the same reason). Settling next to horse looks bad (coast, yuk and plains hill yuk), there are clearly better tiles for that city.

So my strategic thinking is that the copper city is better as any of the tiles round there are similar. 1NW of copper lets me irrigate the wine but loses corn, and gives me direct connection to Kyoto. The short term implications are huge, and the long term downside is smallish. The dot map can be jiggled a bit to make it work too.

I think it'll be a close run thing vs the Barbars. I'm going to play it now.

In this case, I would build at least 2 workers before producing the 1st settler. Your capital still need improved marble, and your copper city will need 1 worker to chop the monument and improving tiles.

Without the support of a worker, a new city is typically useless for many turns until its 1st resource tile is improved.

2nd city 2N 1W of copper picking up 4 resources. Chop momument ASAP, then improve the corn, then copper.

dont worry about the barbs it is still early. having 2-3 aggressive worriors in copper city should be sufficient, fortify them in hill/forrest terrian around the city.

I would build the 3rd worker before 2nd settler. Settler 3rd city 1S of wheat to pick up Cow/Wheat/Horse. It will be a super unit production city after adding HE to it.

Right after 3rd settler, build some worriors/axe to protect all 3 cities, and should have priesthood by then. Build/Chop oracle and take Monachy. then you can improve the wines in 2nd city.

Build roads to the 2 new cities to have a 3 city network. And possibly consider an axe rush on Nappy.

2470-2080BC Oh dear, I founded it next to the copper, I'm paranoid about barbars. Anyways, this round is mostly about the 3 brave warriors, adventures with a bear and a couple of lions and some incredibly good (lucky?) timing. I'd worked out that the worker could build a road on the corn and chop the 1N forest to complete the settler with the overflow going to the 2nd worker. So I sent West warrior to look at the horses (goddarn bear again!), Eastern warrior to check out round the copper, and middle warrior to fogbust the route to whichever location I chose for Osaka.

http://www.asimere.com/Warlords/CFP10028.JPG

Mysticism arrived in 2290, I'll skip the screenshot. By 2230 I'd checked out round the copper and didn't find much but the fogbusters were getting into place

http://www.asimere.com/Warlords/CFP10029.JPG

and I finished checking the horses and ran into that darned bear. I semaphored the funeral parlour to run up a box and earmarked a site on top of the about-to-be deforested hill North of Kyoto and hit the enter button.

http://www.asimere.com/Warlords/CFP10030.JPG

The settler turned up and he made up a party with the worker and they set off across country. I assured them that they were as safe as houses travelling unprotected (I lie convincingly) and the 2 fogbusters were in place

http://www.asimere.com/Warlords/CFP10031.JPG

Then I arranged for the burial party, except there was no bear but rather a warrior in full health, so I promoted him with a melee promotion, in case he meets Barbar warriors. This caused serious embarrassment with the funeral parlour as they insisted on a deposit for the box. I guess I'll need it later so I told them to go ahead anyway.

http://www.asimere.com/Warlords/CFP10032.JPG

You can see the settler leaving Kyoto, the first warrior in the fogbusting line had encountered a lion a couple of turns before but was relatively healthy and I was shortly to send him back to Kyoto as a garrison (he has arrows promotion), just in case the Barbars turn up before copper comes on line.

http://www.asimere.com/Warlords/CFP10033.JPG

We got Masonry in 2110 as the travellers were being passed from warrior to warrior (again, I'll skip the shot), and so I took advantage of this by changing civics to slavery - I'd had long in mind to switch after the settler was born but before he founded Osaka, and it worked out perfectly. I started on writing, as I like to take the mathematics route to CoL playing Tokugawa, but we could change that.

http://www.asimere.com/Warlords/CFP10034.JPG

The fogbuster on the target square who had been fortified a few turns survived a lion so he got arrows too. I've concluded that we get Barbar warriors and archers first, so I like this promotion for garrison warriors. It seems better than City defence, and they can be moved to protect improved tiles too.

http://www.asimere.com/Warlords/CFP10035.JPG

We founded Osaka in 2080 and set it to building a monument and set the worker to mining the copper and all this on the turn we came out of Anarchy. It's connected to Kyoto by the river so we can get axes up pretty quick in out capital. Hirohito will be relieved to hear it.

http://www.asimere.com/Warlords/CFP10036.JPG

Meantime my bear-baiter had been pretty busy checking out the horses and was working his way along the coast SE towards where I guess we'll find the others. He's looking at a lion at the moment but he's in a wood and I have every confidence in him. I might even rename him Hiroshi as a mark of respect. Here's the known Universe.

http://www.asimere.com/Warlords/CFP10037.JPG

The worker is well under way in Kyoto thanks to the overflow, the 2 cities are garrisonned (or about to be) against early barbars, we're building a mine on the copper and a monument in Osaka.

... and it's Decision time. More infrastructure, or a bee-line to CoL via mathematics? What about Oracle? Long term Pyramids?


Gamefile 2080BC (http://www.asimere.com/Warlords/ChienFou I BC-2080.CivWarlordsSave)

EDIT: Ok, I had initially responded to your post ending in 2470 BC, lemme edit and add comments since then.

Major break there on the copper, looks like you'll have both early strategic resources.

You founded the copper city first as I would have suggested. However I would not have founded Osaka where you did. Having corn in the BFC is huge for an early city, and you now have three unworkable squares and a desert hill in the BFC. I know you're worried about barbs but well positioned, fortified warriors CAN be an adequate defense, and sometimes having great early cities is worth taking risks.

Anyway, what's done is done. Since you've got the copper, you might as well mine it asap.

After you get a that worker out in your capitol, hook up that marble, build an axeman while you grow to 4, then build a settler (I'd use one chop to speed up the settler). Send your worker south with the settler, immediately farm the wheat and then chop a monument.

Why are you going for writing now? I guess it's ok if you want to sign OB with Napolean to scout him out, but with both early resources this looks like an early warmonger game: build monuments and then axemen, not libraries! I would switch to polytheism -> priesthood; with marble you should at least give yourself the *option* of building the oracle. By then you'll hopefully have both cities online and can send a warrior over Napolean's way to see just how tough a nut he's going to be to crack. Meanwhile your second cities should be building barracks and axes.

It would be very useful to know how strong Napolean is... you should probably build the oracle, but the #1 priority here should be a BC rush against Nappy.

Like blue said YUK ! on the settling of Osaka, if you want to rush the copper you should have grown to size 4 and whipped the settler out faster now you have a (way) subobtimal city with no food and a desert copper (2 food) 3 Grass hills (3 food) Dessert hill (2 food) and 2 plains tiles (2 food) presuming you are going to put wineries on both Wines.... you need 9 food to work the hammers = 9 farms = no commerce at all. Which IMHO is bad!

IMHO you are not using the whip at all... starting the worker back to back with the settler while at size 3 :(
Your production you had put into the warrior (which was on que) is now totaly gone every hammer lost at this stage counts double time!
Growing the city to size 4 while producing the warrior (or warriors as the case may be) would have allowed you to effectively whip and produce everything faster. The warriors would have been good fog busters to ward off the barbs which you fear so much. No fog = No barbs. That is nearby atleast, buying you time to connect the copper while waiting for the border pop.

On Oracle, for a "demo" game where you try to get your feed wet on the next level... Stay of the crutches IMHO. NO wonders that you your self build, capturing them is OK offcourse....
I would say Math => Alphabet (to trade for IW hopefully + some religion and backfill techs, but IW is the biggy) => Construction => Currency => CoL (or CoL => Currency depending on the situation)

Bad timing on Myst/Masonary. You won't need monument until you settled the 2nd city, so getting Masonary before Myst is much better as your worker can immedietly bring 1:food:+4:hammers:+1:commerce: marble on line.

I would also let Kyoto growing to size 4 before starting settler since marble will speed up your settler by 5 production points per turn.

As pointed out by other players, Osaka is in a bad location, should have settled it to claim all 4 resources.

Also your capital has great production capacity AND it has marble in BFC. It is a sin if you do not at least try to get Oracle.

ok, I take the point about growing to size 4; basically I should have farmed bananas then rice then mined. ... and now I wouldn't be in the mess I'm in; but us Prince wannabees are making a smallish number of significant errors which when compounded lead to a lot of lost tempo. I know that because whenever i get to samurai, I'm up against longbowmen; and I know I shouldn't be.

Your comments are very helpful; really. I hope the other wannabees are finding the experience as interesting as I am, I hope they too are gaining from my painful humiliations :) cheers ChienFou

Well in my shadow game I am learning the mistake of not taking the best site first.

I am really liking this thread, good advice. Although I already knew the problems with your worker tile choices in the capital, I think that interchange was very helpful for newer players to understand the need for early growth/commerce.

The city micromanagement is something I don't see enough of on here. If you guys continue that kind of feedback for when the cities grow and more build choices come online, I think that will help me as well. I start to struggle when the cities get larger and I don't know when to build libraries or courthouses vs. more military, for example. Let's see how this game progresses and based on the objectives what our experts think should be done in the cities.

How I should have done it 4000- 1330BC

I said I'd replay the game, trying not to cheat and report back. This time I farmed the bananas then the rice then mined the gold. I didn't build the road. I got to BW in 2770 instead of 2710 (2 turns on Epic). This meant I could do Masonry before Mysticism. Because the city was growing quicker it got to size 4 before I started the settler. I had slightly worse luck with the warriors although I played them pretty much the same except I found copper this time using a slightly better route on the 2nd circuit and had to build a couple more than in my first effort.

I had to escort the settler as I was short of fogbusters at this point, so that cost about 4 turns I guess. Even so I managed to found Osaka in the same year on the approved tile without chopping the 1N hill and I got the marble up too. I've decided to chance the barbs :) That covers us up to where we are in the original game.

In the meantime research was going a lot quicker.I must have been about 6 or 8 turns ahead on that (bananas first and the marble). I was able to fit in Meditation and Priesthood while I was doing all this. I also must have gained about 15 production turns in all, some of which were lost on extra warrior production. I ended up with 4 warriors, one of which had the archery promotion in Osaka.

Osaka's worker chopped the monument and started a barracks, farmed a river wine square and built a road to the copper. The border popped two turns before the road finished and I started the mine.

I built the second worker while I was founding Osaka and then started a settler, which I chopped the 1N hill for then started chopping the plains forest South of Kyoto and I whipped the settler for 1 pop to finish it. I started Oracle for a few turns while Kyoto regrew to 4, except for one turn when I switched to worker as I finished chopping the plains forest. You can see Oracle in the build queue, the half completed worker, the two deforested tiles and a bit of road. I fitted Pottery in around here.

http://www.asimere.com/Warlords/CFP10038.JPG

Then I sent the 2nd worker after the third settler with a view to chopping the monument in Tokyo which was founded in 1450 1 South of the wheat. The worker arrived about 3 turns behind the settler, and I could release the fogbusters for garrison duty, although the 4th one is starting South.

http://www.asimere.com/Warlords/CFP10039.JPG

In 1420 I got writing and I signed open borders with KK - he's a city behind us :) I chose mathematics as I'd already researched Meditation, Priesthood and Pottery. Perhaps I should have chosen IW or CoL?

http://www.asimere.com/Warlords/CFP10040.JPG

Here's a general view of the map for 1330 when I stopped; you can see a worker building the copper mine in Osaka, another about to start chopping the forest for Tokyo's monument, and the third is scheduled to build the road from Kyoto to Tokyo. I didn't think that bit through; he should build a road shaped like a ">" to get as close to Osaka as possible before cutting back to Tokyo. Finally the research slider dropped to 80% on this turn, after I'd used up the goody hut money.

http://www.asimere.com/Warlords/CFP10041.JPG

I was not as successful at exploring, because I needed to keep fogbusting for the settler's trip to Tokyo which he did unescorted, and I had a severe Warrior shortage for a while. Here's the map of the known universe.

http://www.asimere.com/Warlords/CFP10042.JPG

So that's my report, I hope it's useful. With all your permissions I'd like to take the game forward from this point. In essence "having taken your advice" .... There's little point in us trying to play my original crappy start much further I think, and we'll learn more from here with a decent start. What was interesting was how much better everything fell into place and I sincerely thank everyone for their time and patience. If that's not satisfactory I'll continue with the original game. ChienFou

Gamefile 1330BC (http://www.asimere.com/Warlords/ChienFou I BC-1330.CivWarlordsSave)

I hope they too are gaining from my painful humiliations :)

There's no reason to be embarrassed by your decisions. One thing that you'll notice with this sort of online game is that you'll get conflicting advice from good players. There really isn't one right way to play Civ4, so you just need to find a strategy that works for you. (And wasn't it cabert who suggested the site you chose for Osaka so you can always blame him ;) ).

With that being said, I also think you should have gone with namliaM's yellow dot for Osaka. From experience I know that at Prince you can get away with a border expansion in your second city to acquire copper in time to deal with barbs. This is something you'll learn as you play more games. In general terms, one of the more significant things you'll need to learn is what you can get away with at each difficulty level.

... and it's Decision time. More infrastructure, or a bee-line to CoL via mathematics? What about Oracle? Long term Pyramids?


One thing that's not clear to me from reading your posts is whether you are planning ahead and making a series of decisions to reach your goal or just making each decision independently. Early on in the game focusing on micromanagement to get optimal city performance is nice, but it's not how you win games. This is the time of the game when you need to adopt some sort of plan as to how you're going to gain the advantage you need over the AIs to win. You may need to adapt your plan to events as they unfold, but you should always have a plan.

With that in mind:
When do you plan to fight your first war? (axe rush, beeline to Construction for catapults, beeline to CS and Engineering for samurai and trebuchets)
Related to that, how much peaceful expansion do you plan to do?
What do you plan to do about developing an economy?

These are all decisions you need to make now (or should have already made) as they affect city placement choices, tech choices and city build choices.

Getting back to your questions, how does a CoL beeline fit into your long-term plans? Same for Oracle and Pyramids.

As to what I would do:
I'm not a super-aggressive player, so I only axe rush when I'm boxed in and need to do it to expand. In this case it looks like you can peacefully expand to at least 6 cities unless Nappy expands aggressively towards you. I'd advise going that route with the thought of beelining Construction to take out one neighbor with a cat based army and then using a Samurai/Trebuchet army to finish off the others.

I would build a settler after the worker finishes and look to settle to the ESE of Kyoto. The tile SW of the cow would be my choice. It doesn't look like much at first glance, but the cow and corn provide enough food to cottage all the flatlands, so it would be able to work 15 cottages at size 17 :eek:. Given the limited commerce potential of Osaka and the cities near the cow/wheat/horses a strong commerce site should be your next priority.

After that I would be looking to settle the gems/rice site next. You'll need IW by then, so you need to decide how to pursue it. You can either research it yourself or you could aim for Alpha with the thought of trading for IW. The only thing is I don't know if Prince level AIs will research it in time. (This is one case where you have to be careful about taking advice from higher level players. They've adapted their strategies to the performance of the AIs at their levels, and lower level AIs may not offer the same opportunities.)

You'll want to get Pottery and start building cottages in Kyoto and your third city. Once you've started to get your economy under control I would settle two sites along the coast. The first 1 W of the wheat and the second 2S or 2S1E of the horses depending on whether additional seafood turns up of the coast. It doesn't look like you'll face any competition for those sites any time soon, so you don't want to overexpand and kill your tech rate.

Additional city sites to the E or SE may be possible once you do some more scouting and see how the AIs expand. So you may need to adjust the plan.

With these 6 cities you should have the strong base you need (both in terms of production and commerce) to wage very successful mid game wars to gain control of the continent.

Edit:
Of course this advice was meant to be read before you played the next round. Oh well.

After reading the post for this round:

I think everything was going well up until the point of the third city choice. There was no competition for that city site so you would have been better off expanding toward your nearest enemy. You didn't need horses ASAP now that you have copper. Also by placing the city there you've marginalized the site down the coast that works the clams.

Of course this assumes your going for a relatively peaceful opening and aren't planning on rushing anyone. My point about the lack of a plan (or apparent lack) still holds. I think it would be a good idea to discuss that before playing too much further.

Validator, I really do appreciate the effort you've put in here. As you'll see I replayed the game, based on the advice generally given and it's so obvious how much better it's going. I wasn't being obstinate about my decisions, what I wanted to do was demonstrate to myself how badly I play this game. I had felt the need for an early game micro-management thread for a while, and I knew I was losing tempi everywhere. Already I can see major errors in even the Prince games I've won. Much as I drool over the ALC games I had no real idea how Sisiutil was generating so much so fast - and he'll forgive me for saying he's not even the best player on this forum, even though he's one of the most educational. I look out for your comments in other threads, thanks for bothering with mine. ChienFou

This time it looks much better. I also think that you should focus on peaceful expansion for the time being, and possibly plan a war with catapults in the medieval era. The important thing is to actually make this decision, and then base your research and production decisions on it. So what's the plan?

Edit: by now you should be able to consider your most likely victory condition as well. Domination, cultural (less likely, I guess), space or diplomacy? The earlier you set a goal, the easier it is to reach it.

Good job focusing on the micro. It's what's missing from most online games.
It could be hard work to keep it up, but would make for a very interesting thread.
I agree with Yena about sorting out a victory condition, and also it's getting time to start thinking about National Wonders.

I know that because whenever i get to samurai, I'm up against longbowmen; and I know I shouldn't be.
There is no problem with beeing up against LBs when you have samurai....
Samurai require much more beakers than LBs do and AI do tend to beeline Feudalism.

In your replay why did you put Tokyo there??? 1 tile from the coast is mostly a bad/less obtimal/wrong choice. 1 W or 1 NW would have been superior IMHO, less of a food shortage and Coastal => Harbor => More commerce eventho missing the horses.

Also on your replay... You researched BW but still havent used the whip I dont think...

All in all a better job tho... I will try and do a shadow to 1330 as well....

Edit:
Replaying the same game with the advice allready given doesnt learn you anthing, some of the advice is specific to this game.
If you really want to see if you are going forward, start a new game... (IMHO)

Also on your replay... You researched BW but still havent used the whip I dont think...

I whipped the 3rd settler in Kyoto for 1 pop and then let Kyoto grow back to 4 before starting the 3rd worker. I have noted that some players suggest you should take slavery after your first settler is complete, while it's travelling as you get the settler a turn earlier, that makes sense to me and i usually do that. Whipping the first settler seems to screw up my games even more than usual :)

In your replay why did you put Tokyo there??? 1 tile from the coast is mostly a bad/less obtimal/wrong choice. 1 W or 1 NW would have been superior IMHO, less of a food shortage and Coastal => Harbor => More commerce eventho missing the horses.
I plonked Tokyo down on a square with only one water tile; this is worth discussion as I know the Gods hate putting a settler 1 tile from the coast, but I was treating it as an inland city which i want to grow very big. This is a point worth discussing.

Edit: by now you should be able to consider your most likely victory condition as well. Domination, cultural (less likely, I guess), space or diplomacy? The earlier you set a goal, the easier it is to reach it.

Having got this far it's likely we're on an island with 4 civilisations including ourselves, unless there's a choke point somewhere. In terms of land area that's likely to get us over 50% but not up to 64%. So domination will require a navy. We can do that presuming we've taken out Nappy and one of the other two by the time we get to Astronomy, as hopefully we'll have a SoD with loads of experience and while we're taking the 4th civ we can build our fleet then put the SoD on it. I am inclined to domination, though space race is a possibility. Diplomacy and Tukogawa? "Your excellency, may I present you with a ceremonial dis-emboweling dagger?" doesn't quite have a consistent ring to it :)

In terms of domination, I fancy an axe rush on Nappy and a treb and samurai war on one of the others.

Whilst i agree that one should have a plan, the very early game seems to be about getting the first 3 cities up to minimum size 4, securing an income stream so that the research slider doesn't bottom out and having a poke round to see what's where. The Victory Conditions of necessity are dictated by the map and the AIs though one starts Tokugawa with a pre-concept of domination, I think.

To be fair I've never gotten a space race victory, so that'd be part of our learning curve if we went that way.

Anyway, I'm planning on leaving Kyoto on the Oracle, except I will have to whip an axe, which should happen as Kyoto reaches its happiness cap, building Monument, Barracks and Granary in the other two and pumping as many axes as I can. I can use Kyoto to build axes to control its size and use them for garrison duty - they're good enough to hold off the barbs. The micromanagement of that is, in itself, interesting - How does Sisiutil produce SoD's the height of the Eiffel tower so quickly?

So, that's my plan; domination; axe rush Nappy; poke around in the South to see where the others are and settle, maybe 3 more cities. Do we need another city for axe production now, however?

Tokyo
Well look at the food situation there... I think you have to many hills and Plains for a really big city, but thats what I think...

To produce a SoD quickly, simply skip everything else.... Get 3 cities, put a barracks in them and start getting units....

I have never played Epic speed b4, so I played it until 1300BC. I figure the best micro-build order can only come from actually playing in the game.

here is the result at 1300BC. Just researched writing, built Oracle and taking COL as the free tech.

http://img31.picoodle.com/img/img31/8/6/30/yy18836/f_1300BCOraclm_699a77b.jpg (http://www.picoodle.com/view.php?srv=img31&img=/8/6/30/yy18836/f_1300BCOraclm_699a77b.jpg)

Here was my built order:

Worker-Barracks(grow to 2, 3)-worker(chop 1 tree)-worrior(grow to 4,5)-worker-settler(chop 1)-settler (chop 1)

Research: Agri-Mining-BW-AH-Pottery-Myst-Meditation-Priesthood-writing-Alpha

Worker actions:

farm banana
farm rice
mine gold
chop 1N hill tree
road 1N hill
2 workers quarry Marble
2 workers chop settlers
1 build a cottage
1 worker to Osaka to chop monument
1 worker to Tokyo to chop monument
1(3rd worker) worker stays in Kyoto chopping 1 tree for Oracle

Net difference:

3 workers - faster growth for every city.

I only have 1 worrior(well promoted) per city now, but have a barracks in Kyoto to pump out quick Combat 2/cover worriors, a few turns from Axeman

1 worrior had jungle 2 from attacking animals which allowed him explore the jungle forrest tiles 2 times faster.

Tokyo started settlers after reaching size 5, with chopping it built 2 settlers back to back. and each settler had 1 worker to support its growth/border pop.

Oracle built timed well with discovery of writing allowing access to free COL

COL researched enabling much easier peaceful expansions.

Got Confusion religion which allows more happiness and religious bonuses

The possible GP from Oracle allows shrine for more gold income

now you can get Alphabet then IW to settle the Gem city.

here are some other pics during the game

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

2230BC capital, have all the possilbe high food/hammer tiles worked to build settlers.

http://img39.picoodle.com/img/img39/8/6/30/yy18836/f_2230BCcapitm_798479d.jpg (http://www.picoodle.com/view.php?srv=img39&img=/8/6/30/yy18836/f_2230BCcapitm_798479d.jpg)


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

1990BC: Unit positions. You dont have to escort your settler 1 tile at a time, use worrior's sight of view.

http://img34.picoodle.com/img/img34/8/6/30/yy18836/f_1990BCunitpm_4ddbe90.jpg (http://www.picoodle.com/view.php?srv=img34&img=/8/6/30/yy18836/f_1990BCunitpm_4ddbe90.jpg)


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

1575BC: 3 cities view, each city has 1 worker to improve/chop

http://img33.picoodle.com/img/img33/8/6/30/yy18836/f_1570BCchoppm_9d0471a.jpg (http://www.picoodle.com/view.php?srv=img33&img=/8/6/30/yy18836/f_1570BCchoppm_9d0471a.jpg)




again, smart use of scouting worriors is very important. only now I start to see barb worriors who are no match of our worriors, soon build some axe for full protection and expand...

I have never played Epic speed b4, so I played it until 1300BC. I figure the best micro-build order can only come from actually playing in the game.

here is the result at 1300BC. Just researched writing, built Oracle and taking COL as the free tech.

Edit: I removed the duplicated image here

Here was my built order:

Worker-Barracks(grow to 2, 3)-worker(chop 1 tree)-worrior(grow to 4,5)-worker-settler(chop 1)-settler (chop 1)

Research: Agri-Mining-BW-AH-Pottery-Myst-Meditation-Priesthood-writing-Alpha

Worker actions:

farm banana
farm rice
mine gold
chop 1N hill tree
road 1N hill
2 workers quarry Marble
2 workers chop settlers
1 build a cottage
1 worker to Osaka to chop monument
1 worker to Tokyo to chop monument
1(3rd worker) worker stays in Kyoto chopping 1 tree for Oracle

Net difference:

3 workers - faster growth for every city.



You definitely got oracle before I did, but I did less chopping than you. Maybe I shouldn't whip, but rather chop. I think 2nd and even 3rd worker before 2nd settler does make sense. Another lesson learned. I'd guess I got Osaka more developed than you; the copper was nearly on-stream by now, whereas Tokyo was a bit behind. The idea of getting settlers back to back had not occurred to me previously, but it does make a lot of sense.

again, smart use of scouting worriors is very important. only now I start to see barb worriors who are no match of our worriors, soon build some axe for full protection and expand...

I do try to send unescorted settlers using fogbusting warriors, but at the dritical point when my 2nd settler was ready I'd had some serious problems with bears and had only a single warrior, so he had to do escort duty. Tokyo settler just went straight there, as I had fogbusters again by then, although because they were fogbusting, I didn't get so much exploring done.

Thanks for your input, this thread really is turning out as I'd hoped.

1330-820BC

Plan :) axes and cats for Nappy; he's going to build my cities for me.

I decided to play on from the 1330 save. I figured that Tokyo could be left undefended and sent its warrior off on a recce to the SE, along with th 4th warrior who'd already started; they were scheduled to do the 3rd and 4th circuit.

1150 saw the Monument chopped in Tokyo, and we switched to a Barracks. In hindsight I think it should be a Granary. You're going to be whipping units, so growth is necessary; the Barracks should come next, then you can start on military production; whipping axes and using overflow to create a build queue of oven ready axes.

http://www.asimere.com/Warlords/CFP10043.JPG

Next turn in 1120 we signed open borders with Napoleon; he's got 3 cities too, more of that anon.

http://www.asimere.com/Warlords/CFP10044.JPG

... and the turn after that we had another visit from Rameses; also 3 cities

http://www.asimere.com/Warlords/CFP10045.JPG

Since the copper was on-stream, I'd put one turn into axes in Kyoto and Osaka, just in case I needed to whip up some defence. I had the workers connecting up my 3 city network to gain any bonuses, and for more speedy moving of troops. I was monitoring the pop cost of whipping the Oracle but was confident no-one else was close - 3 pop looked way too expensive at this point. You can see the axe in the Build queue

http://www.asimere.com/Warlords/CFP10046.JPG

In 955 I whipped the Oracle (it had 3 turns to go) but Kyoto was size 5 and the 6th tile wasn't doing a lot for me. On completing the road network I was to send a worker back to put a cottage on the plains 1S of Kyoto, and that's still in progress, but until Kyoto has another gooed tile I'm happy to whip from size 5 to size 4. Annoying thing here, i wanted to save and discuss which tech to take, but you can't do it. So I agonised for tem minutes, made a coffee and juggled CoL, Metal Casting and Monarchy. Metal casting (c. 900 beakers) is forges and faster military production but the lead time is too long for an axe rush I thought. Monarchy (c. 430) would help a bit in Osaka with the wine and CoL (c. 750) seemed to have the most advantage

1) If I got it first I'd get a religion (I know we're going to be first here) and I wouldn't need monuments
2) I'd get a free missionary who might cause sedition in another civilisation.
3) I'd be in line for some free income a bit later on, when my research will be really suffering
4) I can whip courthouses in the cities Nappy's building for me.

Now this is probably completely stupid thinking more humiliation? :) but that's what I did.

http://www.asimere.com/Warlords/CFP10047.JPG

and we got Confucianism in Tokyo. That's good, we'll get a quicker border pop and I can go milk cows once the corn's finished. I figured cows not horses as I'm not planning on mounted units. Again I should know, but don't, which tile develops better. I'm not going for the popularity stakes here so I converted to Confucianism; a good choice for Tokugagwa, I reflected. Animism and lots of Gods; let's hope Mars is one of them.

http://www.asimere.com/Warlords/CFP10048.JPG

When Osaka was a couple of turns from growing I whipped the granary for 1 pop. The 4th tile is not yet developed, so it wasn't doing a lot, but I need growth here to size 4 or 5 so I can churn axes.

http://www.asimere.com/Warlords/CFP10049.JPG

By 1000 BC the 2 warriors had found KK; he's South of Nappy, and I'd sent the missionary off to subvert him. Might as well keep him onside for a bit; I thought. Rameses has Buddhism, so I didn't see any reason to look further. I used the exploring warriors as fogbusters to get him safely over to KK's manor, it's 880 in this shot.

http://www.asimere.com/Warlords/CFP10050.JPG

... and he got to Karakorum in 820. Since it was the capital I subverted it. Would you have explored a bit further guys? Here's karakorum; 2 archers and a spear.

http://www.asimere.com/Warlords/CFP10051.JPG

Here's the map. Look what that evil Frenchie has done. He's planted a city on MY cow city. He's just gotta go. I've built a road towards him, to speed things up a bit.

http://www.asimere.com/Warlords/CFP10052.JPG

In all my travels so far i've seen just one barb warrior, and avoided him. They don't seem to be anywhere in view even yet. Clearly my paranoia was overstated. Osaka is now on axe production, slow at the moment, but I'm working on it; Tokyo's about to get free milk, and the first cottage is being built in Kyoto; I'll let Kyoto grow to 6 (cap) and chop it back to 5 in due course, once its got a Granary. I'm wondering where Rameses is hiding; I can't see him at all. We're still a few turns from Construction and axe building is slow at the moment, but be warned Nappy; I've got you in my sights.

Gamefile 820BC (http://www.asimere.com/Warlords/ChienFou I BC-0820.CivWarlordsSave)

I have decided to play until 1AD. Warning, please do not look if you are playing a shadow game this might spoil your game.



achievements:

AIs were weak, so aiming for building up some quality cities:

Kyoto: Science, mix purpose
Osaka: commerce
Tokyo: Production

These cities have so much potential, I only whipped granaries first thing and let them grow quickly so they can actually PRODUCE everything quickly while providing more commerce to the empire, whipping is not that cost efficient in this case. Especially after getting early Heri. Rule, You want them to grow grow and grow to reach maximum potential the fastest way.

Reserched:
sucks that no AI trades, they are so behind.

Monochy, IW, Math, Literature, CS next

865BC: see the power of extra workers, all resources are improved giving great boosts to growth/production in all 3 cities. I realized on slower speeds more workers are needed.

http://img36.picoodle.com/img/img36/8/6/30/yy18836/f_865BCviewm_8736532.jpg (http://www.picoodle.com/view.php?srv=img36&img=/8/6/30/yy18836/f_865BCviewm_8736532.jpg)

ran 2 scientists in capital

http://img26.picoodle.com/img/img26/8/6/30/yy18836/f_865BCCapitam_a2d9f99.jpg (http://www.picoodle.com/view.php?srv=img26&img=/8/6/30/yy18836/f_865BCCapitam_a2d9f99.jpg)


805BC: researched Alphabet


645BC: GP born, 595BC used him to build Conf. Shrine. This shrine converted MAny Many cities from all 4 civs later, giving great gold income.

http://img28.picoodle.com/img/img28/8/6/30/yy18836/f_595BCbuildim_198abad.jpg (http://www.picoodle.com/view.php?srv=img28&img=/8/6/30/yy18836/f_595BCbuildim_198abad.jpg)

490BC: switched civics to HR + OR to help building GL soon to come.

490BC: start a war with Ramasis to steal a worker. My woodsman2 worrior walks his woody terriains with inpunity, he is untouchable by Egypt archers.

http://img35.picoodle.com/img/img35/8/6/30/yy18836/f_490BCworkerm_1f9df69.jpg (http://www.picoodle.com/view.php?srv=img35&img=/8/6/30/yy18836/f_490BCworkerm_1f9df69.jpg)

310BC: this worrior picked up more xp in Egypt territory, enough to open up HE.

http://img34.picoodle.com/img/img34/8/6/30/yy18836/f_310BClvl4wom_5e51790.jpg (http://www.picoodle.com/view.php?srv=img34&img=/8/6/30/yy18836/f_310BClvl4wom_5e51790.jpg)

295BC: 3 quality cities with high pop and high output. A few turns away from both GL and HE. That is why i stress that each new city should get 2 workers to get it to grow extremely fast.

http://img30.picoodle.com/img/img30/8/6/30/yy18836/f_295BCqualitm_69c4941.jpg (http://www.picoodle.com/view.php?srv=img30&img=/8/6/30/yy18836/f_295BCqualitm_69c4941.jpg)


200BC ca: Built HE in Tokyo. later it is the back bone of military, pumping out lots of chariots for happy factors for all cities and Axe for war. It also produced 2 settlers 1 worker. The production cities are the most important as your 2nd or 3rd city, they relieves your capital from worker/settlers so the capital can focus on more important science/wonder buildings.


160BC: Ramasis settled on horse, has War chariot, i better stop this war for now ...
Peace reached next turn.

http://img40.picoodle.com/img/img40/8/6/30/yy18836/f_160BCRamasim_14bb5ae.jpg (http://www.picoodle.com/view.php?srv=img40&img=/8/6/30/yy18836/f_160BCRamasim_14bb5ae.jpg)


1 gold popped in Tokyo at 385BC, check it out at 85BC. Look at all the improvements in all 3 cities at 85BC. Peaceful for now.

Capital:

http://img32.picoodle.com/img/img32/8/6/30/yy18836/f_85BCcapitalm_a1c8fdc.jpg (http://www.picoodle.com/view.php?srv=img32&img=/8/6/30/yy18836/f_85BCcapitalm_a1c8fdc.jpg)


Osaka: Note Conf. spread to 9 cities already actively and passively. Got great intel from these cities. KK and Nappy were influenced so much they converted to my religion.

http://img31.picoodle.com/img/img31/8/6/30/yy18836/f_85BCOsakam_98aa95f.jpg (http://www.picoodle.com/view.php?srv=img31&img=/8/6/30/yy18836/f_85BCOsakam_98aa95f.jpg)

Tokyo:

http://img39.picoodle.com/img/img39/8/6/30/yy18836/f_85BCTokyovim_d177e61.jpg (http://www.picoodle.com/view.php?srv=img39&img=/8/6/30/yy18836/f_85BCTokyovim_d177e61.jpg)



5AD settled stone and fur cities, here are the view

http://img30.picoodle.com/img/img30/8/6/30/yy18836/f_5ADviewm_7e5e4ea.jpg (http://www.picoodle.com/view.php?srv=img30&img=/8/6/30/yy18836/f_5ADviewm_7e5e4ea.jpg)

5AD scores:

http://img28.picoodle.com/img/img28/8/6/30/yy18836/f_5ADscoresm_b42a0e9.jpg (http://www.picoodle.com/view.php?srv=img28&img=/8/6/30/yy18836/f_5ADscoresm_b42a0e9.jpg)

5AD Dem Chart:

http://img40.picoodle.com/img/img40/8/6/30/yy18836/f_5ADDemchartm_9ae7af0.jpg (http://www.picoodle.com/view.php?srv=img40&img=/8/6/30/yy18836/f_5ADDemchartm_9ae7af0.jpg)


4 turns until Civ Service, then Kyoto will be a powerhouse. See all the resources hook up.

You definitely got oracle before I did, but I did less chopping than you. Maybe I shouldn't whip, but rather chop. I think 2nd and even 3rd worker before 2nd settler does make sense. Another lesson learned. I'd guess I got Osaka more developed than you; the copper was nearly on-stream by now, whereas Tokyo was a bit behind. The idea of getting settlers back to back had not occurred to me previously, but it does make a lot of sense.

Actually you were already much behind my game at 1300BC for the following reasons:

1. My capital was size 6, yours was size 4. This means my capital was woking 1 more mine and 1 more cottage than yours. My capital was at size 5 at 2300BC. working one more mine than yours. That was a huge difference since the capital early is EVERYTHING. You should not whip anything from it unless you have a granary. In my game, i did not whip from Capital.

2. I had an extra worker than you which is around 10-15 turns of hammers from your capital. I had 1 worker/city which means much faster city growth than yours.

3. I just built Oracle, got Conf. several hundreds years before you did. This means more GP pts, and more culture.

If you keep playing until 1AD then compare our result, these 3 subtle leads could translate to a much bigger lead over your game.



I do try to send unescorted settlers using fogbusting warriors, but at the dritical point when my 2nd settler was ready I'd had some serious problems with bears and had only a single warrior, so he had to do escort duty. Tokyo settler just went straight there, as I had fogbusters again by then, although because they were fogbusting, I didn't get so much exploring done.

Thanks for your input, this thread really is turning out as I'd hoped.



You are welcome, you are very patient running this thread, it is turning into a very interesting thread.

given the situation of this game, you dont need to rush anyone unless you see they settle the Gem or some other good res. You have plenty of good land to settle yourself for a while(just make sure you have plenty of chariots to defend everything), that was what i did in my game. So an early rush is not for every game. In my game i set up a very strong infrustructure before 85BC by carefully micro build/research/religion/explore, had a huge score lead over AIs, at that point, it is pretty much cruising to any victory.

I've largely gone off Oracle because of GP contamination which lasts throughout the game; its a real pain in the neck to have glib, run a couple of scientists on top and still pop a prophet because of Oracle.

I've been running a quick shadow. I actually defied convention and settled on the spot; coastal capital is ok, harbour gives you extra health and a major trade route boost, lighthouse helps making water tiles at least marginally useful,.
I went warrior first while growing to size 2 then a worker then another warrior up to size 3 then a settler. Techwise I went agric, mining, bw, AH, pottery, myst, masonry. Not optimal but ok so far. I founded Osaka to nab the corn and copper and chopped a monument.

Edit: I'm not totally convinced by the placement of Tokyo. I think that either you should have gone 1S for plains hill hammer bonus or 1sw for coastal location (particularly as Kyoto is non-coastal in your game).

Edit: I'm not totally convinced by the placement of Tokyo. I think that either you should have gone 1S for plains hill hammer bonus or 1sw for coastal location (particularly as Kyoto is non-coastal in your game).

That's interesting comment.

[as an aside I'd bought my son-in-law and my daughter a Civ 1V as a Christmas present (My daughter and I played Civ together in the late 80's when she was a kid, we were pretty good at it, railroading oceans etc) and I thought they'd like it. For birthday I upgraded them to Warlords. Inevitably, since son-in law is 30 years younger than I am, he picked the micro-game up far more quickly than I did, and is a tolerable Monarch player. He introduced me to the ALC series about 3 months ago with the comment it had helped him a lot and I quickly realised just how badly I suck at Civ IV. Hence my frustration and desire to see how I could improve.]

Son-in-law comments that to win, all one needs to do is march your initial settler close to an AI, settle on a plains hill and take him out with warriors. "You now have two capitals" Well, that's not exactly the case but he experiments a lot, and he did comment that almost regardless, he goes to find a plains hill before he settles, since the extra hammers early on make a huge difference. I was thinking this when I did found Tokyo, but the dot map suggested the square I did choose as did some of the posters, and I guess one water tile only hardly counts as the obvious disadvantage of "1 from the ocean". I'd been thinking "plains hill or coastal, minimum ocean" but I was very happy to listen to comments and get the feedback.

2nd aside, I'm playing a Toku game on the side at the moment. Leading the field in 1600, have vassalised Mehmet and about to take on Montezuma (running 3rd), in about 10 turns when I get Cavalry. About level in the tech race. I'm good friends with the Korean (lying 2nd) who's at the other end of the 5 Civ island and have high hopes for a domination win. By the end of the opening I realised just how much better I'd played it than usual, simply based on this thread.

... so it's not all wasted :) and I'm hoping the Prince wannabees are finding it useful too. ChienFou

PS. Real life will interfere for a couple of days; I'll be lurking, but won't play again till Tuesday evening earliest. I'm looking forward to running through to 1 AD and I'd been thinking I'm a bit late to axe rush Nappy, so should go grab some of the land to the South of Tokyo and Osaka first.

Son-in-law comments that to win, all one needs to do is march your initial settler close to an AI, settle on a plains hill and take him out with warriors. "You now have two capitals"

Your Son-in-law must play on chieftain or warlord. Don't try this on the higher levels where the AIs start with free archers (or even better defenders) :lol:

Well, I've played through to 5-AD and have 6 cities and a research slider at 60-70%. I've got an axe in each city, a couple of cats in Osaka. I'm going to read the spoiler now, and will then write up what I've done and compare it. I should get this done in the next 18 hours.

i am sorry but i read somewhere down the first page and saw your capital at size 1 working a forested grassland when it was a 3 food title avialiable at size 1. This just feels sooo wrong to me it is not funny so i cant not comment on it. Sorry i cant comment on the current gamestate, maybe i can do later though you seem to get some great help from others as always maximize at the start and know what you are gonna maximize(which most of the time is food).

yes Oyzar. It's horrible :)

820-BC - 5-AD Confucianism spread to Osaka in 715, which will help the city growth, and raher than chase down nappy I figured I needed to build 3 more cities. A gem city, a stone city and a city on the coast SE of Tokyo or an iron city if I found it. Since nappy was expanding West quite quickly, I figured I should get the gem city first, even though I'd need IW to do anything with it. This was a clear error. It sat there with a green face for 500 years, until I'd linked up all the the health squares, and even then I could do little to get the monument out. Huge loss of tempo.

By 610 Kyoto was stuck into a settler and I chopped a forest for it, having built a cottage and a mine. Kyoto was still size 5. This sucks compared to what ABigCivFan was up to by now.

... and in 520 I founded the gem city, Satsuma. It's awful play; don't tell me :)

http://www.asimere.com/Warlords/CFP10053.JPG

In 505 I got Construction and switched to alphabet. I was building a settler in Osaka for the stone city when KK went and pinched the site in 490. So it's obvious I should have grabbed that first and left the gems till I'd got IW. more humiliation :) The barbs were beginning to swarm now, but I kept the pillaging to a minimum and my axes were up to that.

http://www.asimere.com/Warlords/CFP10054.JPG

In the meantime I went on exploring and eventually found Rameses in 475, penned in by KK and nappy in the far West, and possibly on a choke point to more land NE of him. So in 325, I founded a coastal city, Kagoshima to work the fur and wheat South of Osaka.

http://www.asimere.com/Warlords/CFP10055.JPG

Tokyo produced a cat in 295, Ok, don't ask me why I bothered, I should have concentrated on turning the first 3 cities into production sites; I wasn't planning a war yet. I tech'd alphabet in 205 and had a look at the foreign advisor. KK was pleased, nappy cautious and Rameses annoyed. nappy was prepared to trade Sailing and Hunting for Writing and Meditation. I didn't want to trade with KK as it'll encourage his growth, so I took the trade

http://www.asimere.com/Warlords/CFP10056.JPG

In 100BC KK demanded CoL. I'm a softy and gave it to him, he rapidly overtook me in the powergraph after that though he did give me Iron Working when I asked him nicely (I'd already half researched it, so even that was a phyrric victory. I spotted some iron and had almost finished my 6th settler so in 55 I settled Nara, to the East of Kyoto. [If you ever get the chance to visit the temple there, take it. There's a bronze Bhudda about 15 metres tall, about a 1000 years old. - utterly amazing.]

You can see Satsuma, North of Nara, still constructing the monument, though I did get a worker onto the rice about now. Horrible; Horrible; horrible

http://www.asimere.com/Warlords/CFP10057.JPG

In 25BC I founded the Kong Miao in Tokyo (I had at least stuck a couple of scientists in Kyoto (though again, I should perhaps let it grow to its cap first). By 5-AD Kyoto was size 7, on its cap, running 2 scientists and building a temple so it could expand. Napolean was prepared to trade Polytheism and Archery and cease trading with Rameses for CoL. KK wanted Math for Poly and Arch.

here's the map:

http://www.asimere.com/Warlords/CFP10058.JPG

Well; there we are; probably 30-40 turns behind ABigCivFan. No more wonders built. Us Prince wannabees really do need help :)

Gamefile 5 AD (http://www.asimere.com/Warlords/ChienFou I AD-0005.CivWarlordsSave)

I did play up to 5ad as well, but .... I will post details later...

I have sined for I have overexpanded a little -6 gpt at 60%, but there is hope yet... I havent got a single Courthouse or market yet... so that should really help if I get them Up...

I am roughly 27 turns (at 60% which I cannot hold at present) from Samurai and at war with Napy at the request of Ramesses. Nappy was on my hitlist anyway, got the cheap +1 diplo with Ram and will pick up some much needed gold from captured cities to keep my science going to Samurai

@CF
Yep settling in the wrong order really bites... But if you start spotting your own mistakes... you are really picking up...
Now only to spot the mistakes before they happen...
Like Nara, WHY in heaven did you deside to build a courthouse there? Granary, Obelisk or even Library is much more usefull.

It occurs to me that CF doesn't appear to have dotmapped very carefully. There's a few cities with several resources but there are wide open spaces between the cities too. I've whizzed through a bit of a shadow. Not brilliant but not a disaster either (I hope). Here's my stab at a dotmap:

http://i56.photobucket.com/albums/g166/pigswill-2006/cf1a0000.jpg

You've got space for 6-8 cities depending on how quickly you expand vis a vis the AI.

CF, you dug a hole for yourself by spreading your cities too far apart from Capital. They drain your gold severely and will not pay for themselves for a long time.

They are too far apart to be safe from unexpected invasions.

Your early goal in terms of city placement should be: Use the miminum number of cities to claim maximum number of resources.

They should be placed tightly around your capital unless for blocking purpose.

This will result in much better quality cities instead of bunch of size 1 cities that will not grow.

Quality cities give you GPs, Productions, and commerce. Remember each additional city increases maint. for ALL your cities, so you have to emphasize quality over quantity.

Again, you could just try this to remedy your over expension habbit: when ever you settle a new city, try to have at least 1 worker to improve its tiles. If you do not have that extra worker, do not settle that city, wait until you have a worker.

Otherwise you seem have a lot of trouble setting your priorities for your empire both short term and long term. You need to think at the end of each turn what is the best Research/Build/Trade actions next that would benefit your empire the most.

Did you build the Great Liberary? should not be hard since your have marble.

Did you swith to Heri. Rule? you need it for large and more power cities.

After you switch to Heri Rule, you should build multiple Chariots/worriors to keep your cities grow, Axe and Cats are too expensive serving happy policing roles.

Try start a war with someone, get a level 4 unit and build Heroric Epic in Tokyo, that will benefit your empire immensely for the long term.

Try spend a little more time between turn planning and thinking, dont click that "end Turn" button too quickly...

Well guys, I must thank you all a great deal. There are lots of general lessons to be learned here, and some very helpful specific advice. I'm thinking that I've got enough input to try another start and see whether I can put some of this in to practice.

To summarise; 3, possibly four cities founded and grown as rapidly as possible. A worker for each city and build the workers first. Don't spread them too widely. Chop settlers (and workers) as the city's not growing while they're being built. Grab the resources by all means but also think about the dotmap. Tend to build wonders in the capital once it's spawned the first bunch of settlers, but Oracle is worth grabbing early if feasible (marble). One micro-management point. If chopping, do you swap a worker/settler and a warrior in the build queue so that the move the chop happens, the settler grows, but the rest of the time the worker is growing along with the city?

Have we gotten enough from this project to make it worth trying the next; and shall I stick with Toku or try a different Leader?

Why not try play the same game from 4000BC to 5AD again.

You know what you did, so try it again with new things you just learned. It wont take too long and you will know how much better you do comparitively. You also have my game at 5AD to compare.

I think that is the most effective way to learn is to repeat something that you did wrong and see how much better you do with a different approach. This will reinforce the knowledge that you just gained.

There are too many factors in early period that there is very few "rule of thumb" in this game. So if you start another game, you might need to do a lot of things differently.

Its a good learning strategy to replay the same map; yes its spoiled but you'll still learn about balancing growth/expansion/production/research.

I'd still say forget the Oracle; don't build any wonders before Glib.

Oracle is a crutch but if you use it wisely it is allmost overpowered...

I suggested earlier in this thread to forget about wonders all together and go for a victory (any) without building a single wonder (yourself)

I find when you are stepping up (or having truble) focus on core business, without the huge distractions that Wonders make and huge investments they take too.

Some people say, why build the Great lib when you can give the tech + marble to your neighbour, while building Cats and Axemen. You can capture the TGL city + 2 more with those units you build instead of TGL.

edit: if you dont want to know dont look
I used Oracle to net me Civil Service, which is quite doable with a start like this where you have early gold to speed research along

OK, I'm going to play this through one more time to 5AD, fairly quickly and trying not to cheat. I'll post a short final report. I have already tried a new start and will start a new thread for it. Thanks all for your encouragement and support.

I think I played this pretty much like I would have this game if I had played it without pre/knowledge of the map.


http://img356.imageshack.us/img356/3744/civ4screenshot0002ih3.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
Even so I played the start like CF did, the opening moves make sence to me, except for waiting on that panther to strike... but what the Heck.
Research in this case is an easy choice, agr, Mining, BW for now.

This is however where all "replay" ends...
http://img360.imageshack.us/img360/6707/civ4screenshot0005dc1.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
I started with worker first (offfcourse) once the worker finished I set the governer to maximize food and started a warrior. This warrior once done can continue the sweep of Kyoto while my first warrior heads off south to that hill and onward to the southeast. The second warrior will probably be heading south/southwest.


http://img373.imageshack.us/img373/213/civ4screenshot0006qs1.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
A few turns later I find a village, but they are hostile. I quickly promote to the forrest 1 promo but non the less I say goodby to my warrior, much to my surprise he survives... Probably due to combat 1 + Forrest and the forrest hill he is on. It really is a pain if you lose your early warrior.
I love it tho to not upgrade to fast, it takes a few more turns to heal.... but it really helps when you are in a yam like this.

http://img373.imageshack.us/img373/711/civ4screenshot0009us2.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
After healing up the warrior heads off to the southeast as I was planning to earlier. But he spots a hill to the south-west, offcourse this kinds off things I take advantage off. More tiles to be seen, tho it is against my plans. I spot the Village to the east and pick up some gold. One can never have to much gold :)

Meanwhile this is what Kyoto looks like.
http://img356.imageshack.us/img356/723/civ4screenshot0011ix4.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
Raking in the food while the worker is currently mining (or about to start) the gold.

A couple of turns later BW comes in and I revolt IMEDIATLY.
This is what my knowledge of the world looks like at this time.
http://img360.imageshack.us/img360/5112/civ4screenshot0014mo2.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
Soon I will start a settler and settle the Bronze, if there would not have been BW I would probably select AH or Hunting for research. But as it is, I start Pottery so Kyoto can start building the Granary.
My second warrior is heading southwest to explore tho will return east in order to escort the settler.

Comming out of anarchy the worker has finished the Mine of the gold. This is a big power tile, to good to not work eventho it is low on food. Time to interupt the governer, I leave the food marker on but MM 1 citizen from the forrest to the gold, this leaves 2 turns on the warrior.

2 turns later warrior finished and settler starts.
http://img360.imageshack.us/img360/1345/civ4screenshot0016gs1.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
The worker moved from the gold to the forrest to chop it for faster settler production.

A few quick turns later, the settler is ready to .... be .... :whipped: for 2 pop.
The city is at just about full food bar so it will grow back to size 3 the next turn.
http://img373.imageshack.us/img373/9687/civ4screenshot0017bo4.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
Meanwhile I moved my 2 new warriors to fogbust the route to the new city.
http://img360.imageshack.us/img360/9756/civ4screenshot0018sq3.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

The worker goes to chop the Plains forrest south of Kyoto as the settler finishes up and heads off. Kyoto starts a Granary, while growing again to size 4.
Meanwhile my Original warrior has completed his trip back north can discovered the French capitol as well as the norther coastline with loaded of jungle.
It is not worth settling there for a long while....

-- To be continued --

CivFanatics appearently went down, so I couldnt continue last time :(


I left you with a settler on the lose, well it settles in 2410 the city of Osaka.
http://img356.imageshack.us/img356/1079/civ4screenshot0022kr4.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
It starts a granary for now, while I have some turns left on Myst.
The warrior will head west/south-west to scout that area.

A few turns later Kyoto finishes the granary, helped by the chopped forrest at size 4 with just a few turns of whip unhappyness left.
With 7 turns to grow to 5 and 5 turns for the warrior to build, this is perfect.
Warrior => Worker build is lined up...
http://img373.imageshack.us/img373/5198/civ4screenshot0024gw4.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
After researching Myst=> Masonry it is time to start worrying about other stuff.
Meditation => Priesthood => Writing is selected, so we can start both the Oracle and the Library.

This is where I remeber, darn that obelisk.... so I finaly start that obelisk in Osaka.
http://img356.imageshack.us/img356/3818/civ4screenshot0026xh5.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
Quite some turns lost here in the culture, this may come back to hount me...
Up north the warrior has finished and the worker has some production in it, time to get out the :whipped:
http://img373.imageshack.us/img373/5262/civ4screenshot0027rg4.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
The first worker followed the settler to Osaka to start farming the Wine, so that Osaka can start adding to the commercial empire as well as getting us some copper soon....

This worker will stay wity Kyoto....

I forget exactly how many but... I build some warriors untill I start the barracks to wait for Kyoto to grow back again to size 4
http://img360.imageshack.us/img360/711/civ4screenshot0029ti3.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
Finaly again at the max of the foodbar and the quary is just finished. The marble is clearly better than the forrest tile... MM it and I start another settler.

http://img373.imageshack.us/img373/1220/civ4screenshot0030zx1.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
Writing is just about finished, next up are Mathmatics and CoL. 17 and 23 turns each... wow...

http://img373.imageshack.us/img373/2513/civ4screenshot0032oa8.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
The settler is ready to be whipped and the whip angre is gone, so Kyoto goes down to pop 2 again.... and will next turn grow to size 3 to work the Gold again.
http://img373.imageshack.us/img373/4773/civ4screenshot0035kd7.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
This settler goes south of Kyoto to start Tokyo just west of the wheat. The warrior together with the culture from Kyoto busted the fog so the settler can run there.
It starts a .... no not an obelisk, there is nothing much out in the second ring of this city... It starts a library

My fog busting warriors encounter the first human barbarian in the form of a warrior.
http://img373.imageshack.us/img373/2741/civ4screenshot0037ti6.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
I have no clue as to why I gave this warrior Combat 2 instead of Woodsman... but hey...
You can see Osaka finished the Obelisk and returned to the granary it allready started. The worker has farmed both the wines and roaded all the tiles.
Tokyo tho... will take "for ever" to finish that library....

http://img360.imageshack.us/img360/4715/civ4screenshot0040co3.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
With the whip angre allmost gone Kyoto can (and will) finish the library with a whip of 2 pop, yes possibly it would have been better to wait a little but .... yeah I wanted that library. Also I turned down science to 0 just for this turn so I can run 100% a couple of turns with the boon of the library.
It saves a few beakers... but I forget the slider and run up a bankaccount, a few turns later I realize my mistake.... and turn the slider back to 100%.

The overflow of the Library was applied to the Oracle. and mostly (IIRC) continued building the Oracle.

Some turns later Kyoto is at size 5 + 1 unhappy from the whip. So I need to limit the growth a little...
http://img356.imageshack.us/img356/5386/civ4screenshot0046ku9.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
The worker we whipped up farmed and build that cottage, then it moved on to Tokyo to improve the wheat and chop some forrests to speed up that library there.

http://img360.imageshack.us/img360/7996/civ4screenshot0047zr4.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
Meanwhile in Osaka the city has finished both the granary and a barracks. The copper is hooked up and it is time to start some Axemen.

A few turns later the Oracle is down to 1 turn, but CoL still has 9 turns on the counter. Because one can never have enough busters out there, I insert some warriors to delay oracle just enough for CoL to come in.
http://img356.imageshack.us/img356/3225/civ4screenshot0048ba9.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

After finishing one warrior I change my mind and insert the barracks which allready has some hammers in it from earlier in the game. A few quick turns... and...
http://img373.imageshack.us/img373/1192/civ4screenshot0053ou6.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

And offcourse I pick CS, start currency for more money!!!! And offcourse revolt...
http://img356.imageshack.us/img356/5779/civ4screenshot0054wt8.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
This all seems like a good idea, but a turn later I change my mind and insert Alphabet before Currency so I can backfill my techs (like AH, which I want most of all so I can put a pasture on Tokyo's Cow)
Offcourse one could go the warmongers route here and beeline Machinery for samurais and loads of fun fighting archers with samurais...

Meanwhile Kyoto has gotten a bit to big... So lets get another settler....
http://img373.imageshack.us/img373/5296/civ4screenshot0056ng9.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

Offcourse I founded Confu in Tokyo where I was hoping for Osaka, the free Missionary goes to spread Confu to Kyoto and I revolt to confu for the happy face....

Whatever you do, once you get the start you like, please play this one as far as you can.
I'm playing a shadow as well and all I can say is that this is a great game!!!
Thanks for starting the thread and posting the save. :goodjob: