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The Game

Gyathaar is playing this one close to his chest. Here's all the intelligence I've been able to wring out of him:


Prince difficulty
Epic speed
You play as the Charismatic, Protective Churchill of the English Empire.
You start with Fishing and Mining.
Your unique unit is the Redcoat, replacing the Rifleman.
Your Unique building is the Stock Exchange, replacing the Bank.
The map is a highly modified Cylindrical Big And Small map, using the BtS map script. It is Standard, Temperate, Medium sea level.
Always war. All VCs are enabled. I think the barbs are at default setting.

Here's the start - click the picture for one a bit bigger.

http://gotm.civfanatics.net/civ4games/images/SGOTM06small.jpg (http://gotm.civfanatics.net/civ4games/images/SGOTM06.jpg)

Versions
This game will be played in Warlords Version 2.13, on Windows only, with the DLLs as installed with BtS.

It will be played using the current version of the HoF Mod. This is version 2.13.002 for Windows. You will need to ensure that you can run the Asset Checker v2 before you attempt to load this game. Typlically, players who have upgraded to Beyond the Sword will have the right assets. Alternatively, you should be able to make your installation compliant by installing the new .DLLs released for WOTM 15 (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=251044). If you have a Steam installation then you will need to look at this post by ArcadicGamer for inspiration.

If later versions of Warlords or the HoF Mod are released they cannot be used for this game, and you will need to maintain a copy of your installed software at these versions to complete the game.

Timetable
The game will start on December 14th. I recommend you plan for a 4 month deadline for completion.

You will be able to download your start save from the SGOTM Progress and Results Page (http://gotm.civfanatics.net/submit/civ4sgotm_submission_list.php) on December 14th, at midnight local server time.

Notes

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

Warlords v.2.13 is supported for this SGOTM. No other versions can be used, and you will have to stick with the same version throughout the game.

Teams will compete for up to four awards - the Gold, Silver and Bronze Laurels for the fastest finishes, and the Wooden Spoons for the lowest scoring finisher. The number of awards may be reduced, depending on the number of teams who sign up.

Awards will be given to teams who win in the least turns.

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


Enjoy your mystery tour of the World of Warlords.

First to Check in:goodjob:

Unfortunately, I will not be available to play the game until January the 18th at the earliest.

To try make up for it, here are my ideas for the beginning of the AW game.

Like the last game, WW will be crippling. Unlike the last game, we can prevent it by killing units in our own borders. We should try to minimize WW as best as we can this way. This is more of a long term game plan, only but this is just to my experience.

We can also cripple other civs by chocking them with an early archer. Make sure they have have no improvements built and they are no longer a threat.

I have no idea how kind Gyathaar is with nearby civs, so whether or not he put 2 right next to us, military is important from turn one. Build a warrior while researching Archery while using the starting warrior to scout out a bit. The AI also like to make stacks of units fairly early (1000BC-500BC) so make sure we are reasonable on defence.

I would suggest moving the warrior W or SW to start.

Well, let's not move anything for a bit...

Last time I played a *otm with AW on prince, I was slaughtered. They band together and come after you. We need lots of discussion, and if we don't have an elite player (don't be shy... really), we need to see if we can find someone to give us a hand. My first SGOTM was cool, but reading the other threads was eye-opening!

Reserved for links to sets discusion points and play sets

namliaM's opening turnset 4000 BC thru 2950 BC (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=6265396&postcount=44)
Research: Agriculture => Hunting => AH (find horses!)
Build: Worker => Warrior
Kill 2 scouts and a Lion, First blood :ninja:
2 Dotmaps without BW 2950 BC (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?p=6270282#post6270282)

ArcadicGamer (short) following set 2950BC thru 2470BC (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=6276144&postcount=71)
Research: BW => Wheel
Finds our copper,
Hannibal gets Buddism,
Find MM east of London and find hannibal South of MM.

Settled dotmap for initial cities (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=6282272&postcount=81)

ChrisFromLux' first 9 Starting 2470 up to 2170BC (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=6287569&postcount=103)
Research: Wheel (for the copper) => Mysticism (for Monument in new city)
- Scout Hannibal, has Bronze and Horses
- Kill another animal, a bear this time.
ChisFromLux' second 10 to lead up to 1900BC (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=6289155&postcount=110)
Research: Mysticism => Pottery
- Find Alex
- 2 Axemen on the march for a quick visit on MM
- Alex builds Sparta for us, on the Banana/Elepant/Horses spot SE of London.
- MM goes Hindu on us

Mastiff of Ar's turn log was rather dispersed, due to very unforseen circumstances.
Overall research: Writing => Mathmatics
First two turns (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=6291480&postcount=117) Due to a barb warrior showing up South of London.
Also killing a scout
After 10 turns (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=6293822&postcount=126) Because of 2 of Alex' Archers showing up south of London to give us a headache.
We lost 2 Axemen at 86% and 69% odds, but eventually killed the Archers.
And the last 5 turns (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=6293972&postcount=135)

Due to absence of two teammembers, I am up next (again).
namliaM's turnset 1450BC - 1000BC (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=6295438&postcount=146)
Research: Mathmatics still
- TAKE SPARTA! on the Banana/Horse/Elephant spot
- Build Worker
- Lose 1 Axe, 1 Warrior
- Kill 1 Archer, 2 Warriors of Alex' (in sparta obviously)
- Kill 1 Skirmisher (MM obviously)
- MM (probably) founds Judaism

AG was skipped for now, making ChrisFromLux up again, his turnset 1000BC - 850BC (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=6304561&postcount=177)
With autologs in the next post (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=6304604&postcount=178)
- Pillage Hannibals Copper and Horses
- Kill 1 barb Warrior
- Alexander converts to Buddism (brothers with Hannibal now)

Mastiff of Ar is up next, his report (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=6307132&postcount=189)
- Lose 2 axemen trying to raze Hadrumetum, one of Hannibal's cities. Losing one Axe at 59%
but this nets us an extra worker
- 2 skirmishers show up near sparta, but that is for next time.
- 2 barbarian cities spawn north of our lands

A short pauze till new years to wait for AG to be back. Otherwize it would go down to a 3 man rotation.
This gives us time for a bigger dotmap (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=6308246&postcount=200)

Arcadic Gamer returned in the new year, giving us this report (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=6315911&postcount=215)
Research: Construction
- Lose one spear to a skirmisher in/near sparta
- Alexander compleets the Stonehedge

That finalises again our 4 man rotation making namliaM up again. I played the set in 2 parts because we generated a GG, which I didnt know what to do with.
The report is here (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=6321211&postcount=224)
- Raze Alex' new city (Thebes), killing a C2 Axe.
- Spawn a GG, settle him in London

Chris did his bit leading our country from 400bc to 250bc (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=6332144&postcount=249)
Losing his first units :(
The beakers learned us the remainder of Construction and Sailing, now working on Calander
- 1 chariot vs Archer at 73%
- 1 Axe vs Archer at 95%
- 1 Axe vs Archer at 85%
RNG is NOT liking our team.
- Settled Nothingham near the 2 gold up north
- A GP was born in Athens which founded Theocracy in Corinth

I am a bit of a discussion freak on how the game should be run. But discussion is something the entire team must be willing to do...
So here are my thoughts for the game, hoping that everyone is into discussing things. If not... please let me know and I will shut the F... up.

I have even made a starting save with the opening screeny, made a little more civs on a pangea map. I also made sure that all the civs immediatly know us by worldbuildering in a scout per civ just north of our first city. I allready settled in place, I suggest everyone try it...

I offcourse have no clue, but us beeing protective I will hazard a guess that we whill have no Horses or Metals anywhere realisticaly grabable for our first 3 or 4 cities. Therefor I think priority techs are/should be (in no particular order)
- BW (Whipping => Everybody is familiar with whipping right?)
- Agriculture (Farm the Banana and Dye)
- AH (Cows)
- Construction (Catapults are important weapons)

All this is presuming we have neighbours and are not on an isolated island someplace. I think we need to scout a little bit to find out, but straying with the opening warrior to far is not a real option.

There are a couple of things we need to talk about I think.
1) Settling
Do we settle in place or do we want/need to settle on a hill for the added defensive bonus? If on a hill, which one?
Options:
a) 1 SE of the current position
Down sides
- waste 1 turn
- waste 1 forrest
- Pick up 4 jungle tiles in the BFC (2 of which are hills)
Up:
- On a hill
- 2 rivers for added protection on the east and west sides of the city
- Basicaly add 1 (jungle) hill to our production pool
b) 2 East
Down sides
- Wast 2 turns
- Get a semi bad tile (imho) with the resourceless Plains hill
Up side
- Blue circle (tho I dont put to much fath into it)
- Basicaly the same city we have now, but on a hill

2) Build order
a) Worker first (handbuild)
b) Something first, whip worker
Where/when do we insert the barracks? And/or a granary/library/etc?

3) Tech order
a) Agriculture, Hunting, AH, Archery, BW
To improve the resources ASAP this one goes kind of together with 2a
b) BW, Agri

Well those things are the things I am wondering about, so... if we are all up for discussion I hope to find many a reactions... If not, thats OK too...
I hope we have a fun game either way....

Greetings

The Mailman

Hi Guys, just checking in to my 1st SGOTM.

I'm Chris, from Luxembourg (Europe / GMT +01:00), but unfortunately, I'm definitely no elite player!

I'll be back later this evening, to give my opinions on namliaM's ideas. I've no problems with many discussions, but I'm not sure if I'll be of much help. We'll see ...


But in the mean-time: does anyone own BtS, to generate some maps with the "Cylindrical Big And Small map" option, even if it's 'highly modified'???

Another problem for me: I'll have to play some Test-games with an AW-setting, as I haven't played that option yet :eek: ...


Chris

I'm with you namlia, discussion is a very good thing, and we should do plenty of it before we even start!

Settling:

Aside from moving the warrior SW (That'd be my first move), and seeing something we can't live without, I'd probably vote to settle in place. By the time we're needing the extra 25% hills defense, we'd be already dead meat. Early on we'll see some barbs, but I don't see an AI rush before we found a city or two.

Tech:

Also, finding metal / horses seems like a must. We might want to BW first, then if we don't find copper, get to archery. That would require hunting, so we can get a scout looking around. So...

BW (no copper)--> Hunting --> Archery --> AH

BW (copper) --> Hunting --> Ag --> AH

Build:

How fast will we expand the capital on epic? I'd think we'd want to mine that gold early for the commerce. They will be trading like madmen since they'll have the "mutual struggle" against us, and we'll have no one. If we don't keep up with the military techs, we'll be in trouble.

I know we'll do some mapping once we have more info on what's around us, but I see a tight city spacing doing well for us.

More later!

MF

For our first moves, I'm with Mastiff_of_Ar: we should move our warrior on the hill SW, and if we don't see an interesting resource, we should settle in place.

If we go for BW first, to whip/chop, we have 3 options to work:

lake/dye: worker in 30T, BW in 19T


lake/dye, banana after 8T: worker in 25T, BW in 20T


cow, banana after 8T: worker in 23T, BW in 21T (my vote)


For our research:

BW (copper) --> Hunting --> AH for the cows (why do you want to go to Agr first?)



BW (no copper) --> Hunting -->

AH (horses) --> HR (for HA)


AH (no horses) --> Archers



This way, we'll have some kind of defenses, and can expand and develop our cities ...!?!

Now tell me where I'm wrong ;)

warrior on the hill SW
The blue circles seem to indicate resources to our east... which is why I would move my warrior Nort East, but that will expose 1 tile... not very helpfull. Moving SW will not reveal much intresting if you go by the circles.
Moving the settler 2 south is allmost a non option from the start, losing the Cows and picking up a bunch of Jungle. AND leaving the city without a 3 food tile in the initial 9.

I wouldnt go HBR so early, we atleast need pottery, Agri and writing prior to HBR.

The whole point of going BW first is to grow the city to Size 2, start the worker and whip the worker into completion, isnt it?

We want to have agriculture to farm the Banana for the extra food untill we get Calander. What is more getting both Agri and Hunting prior to AH will get us a discount on researching AH. Less beakers to spend.

On BW/Horses, I am betting on no early resources but for our protective Archers. Either no resources or plenty of them and no neighbours.

I havent a clue how effective such a late scout would be at AW settings, getting killed at the first sight of any warrior.

I am with MoA tho, we need the gold ASAP, but we also need the food to work that darned hill. So we need a 4 food tile (preferably 2) => Cows + Banana's are just that.

I by the way am from Amsterdam, so just a few hours away from Luxemburg

Just a quick check-in.

One comment comes to mind about AW. No tech trades. Period. We will have to do everything ourself.

The WW from AW will keep us from getting very large cities, so we might not want to bother with a lot of development unless we spam a few cities to take advantage of it.

I think we need to consider what our goals are going to be before we spend a lot of time developing.

We should seriously consider archery very early (before the barbs come a-calling). As protective, we get the free city defense promotion.

Before we lose the ability to build warriors (mining a metal), we might want to build a number of MPs for happiness.

Basically, though, I suspect we might want to see what's around us, find problematic nearby enemies, and prepare to wipe them off the planet. :)

For namliaM, we did a little discussion in our last game, but then often ignored it when we played. :( Some of us were good at talking, but thought we needed 100% agreement or would do their own thing.

I have BtS and will spend some time looking at typical maps this weekend. I won't have much time before Sunday to do so.

Big and Small is esssentialy Continents with sparatic islands around the coast. Depending on the Islands setting, they can be from 1-3 tiles to as much as 25 tiles. Resources are generaly on them, but with the map being modded, nothing is for sure. Continents can range from 2-8 per settings, with islands around each. I can dig through some of my old BTS mp games to provide some examples. We can assume that there will be 2-3 conts., and since there are 7 total civs, we can expect to meet 2-3 for sure. Land is usualy plenty for 6 good cities with backfill for later.

I would HIGHLY advise downloading the WOTM12 which was always war and playing it once. Read the corresponding spoiler threads also. Many players tried to scout and expand like a normal game, and ended up with a loss. Many got copper/iron and couldnt keep it connected to their cities due to the constant steam of attackers. Which brings me to a point, We need archery ASAP. While we may get copper in the first BFC, unless its next the the capitol it will be hard to defend if we get swarmed. With archery we can use that protective ASAP and have something to fall back on.

Summary: Scouting our lands can backfire, since the second we see anyone they DOW. If we can keep the farthest civs from seeing us, we can pick off the closest first, while building up infastructure. (infastructure=more military) If we see stone somewhere 2nd city usable, i'd highly suggest the great wall. The ability to keep barbs at bay is priceless when your going to have other wars to deal with.

I need to get back to work, but i got more thoughts on how to play our first turns after that.

As protective, we get the free city defense promotion. Who cares about the city promotion when your improved lands are beeing pillaged?? I love protective for the free -first strike thing- (I forget the name sorry)

warriors (mining a metal), we might want to build a number of MPs for happiness.
I agree, tho if we bypass Feudalism we can build cheap archers for a long time.... Getting to many units to early will cost our costly GPT => Beakers.

I have BtS and will spend some time looking at typical maps this weekend. I won't have much time before Sunday to do so.
Dont know how much good it will do us... but go ahead

Planning and discussing should be all about general concensus, in past SGOTM I played with VQ... where I have played sets (even complete parts of the game) completely contrary to how I wanted to play them, as that is what the team wanted to do. SGOTM is all about team, if not we might as well just play it as a GOTM or just SP.

This is a must, the good teams ALL are teams, no team = no chance.
No team = less fun
No team = less learning from eachother
We all lose out, so lets get this together ASAP.

Summary: Scouting our lands can backfire, since the second we see anyone they DOW. If we can keep the farthest civs from seeing us, we can pick off the closest first, while building up infastructure. (infastructure=more military) If we see stone somewhere 2nd city usable, i'd highly suggest the great wall. The ability to keep barbs at bay is priceless when your going to have other wars to deal with.
Scouting and getting contacts is ineffitable, tho if we scout I agree if we can avoid contact... do so... it would be great if we can determain the time of contact, when we are ready for it.

Infra tho is not about military, but rather about buildings and timing of them. The capitol is going to be in dire need of a library ASAP with that gold + Dye = good early commerce if we get it up ASAP.
Great wall was something I was thinking about actually, more GG points for when we are fighting in our own borders :) Tho can we spare the (early) hammers???

Starting off...

I was thinking moving the settler 1W would be a decent option for settling. Primary reason is that it frees up the 2nd gold and banana for use of a decent 2nd/3rd city, pending metals/resources. Also the circles seem to think there is something NW by showing us to settle on the gold. While we cant be for sure whats 1W 1 SW, it seems to be a hills/plain which would be decent, and free up the starting tile for a river cottage/farm. It also puts all 3 resources in the 9 starting tiles. 1SE is also attractive, but the jungle hinders it. The upside is while growing while researching BW, we'd have a 3 food 1 gold tile to work, both boosting research and growth and worker building. The defence bonus has already been mentioned also, but if that becomes a factor we are in worse trouble than we thought.

About the GW, If we can get an archer into a stone city by 2000BC and start it, it should only take ~30 turns. Mind you, that involves actualy getting masonry by that time, which will be a dilly of a pickle to do. I say if the land is favorable to attempt it, get it. I've built it with a pop 2 stone city, usualy my third, by 1500bc on prince. However, the scouting we do should reveal if barbs are going to be around past 1ad, due to lack of land or other scenarios. The worst thing that can happen is if a neighboor gets it and there is still a bunch of fog. Attempting it in a 3rd city and failing also gives ~150-200 gold to keep the silder @100 for a few more turns. In the end, we'll see if the land supports it.

I went and downloaded the save, foggazing learned me:
http://img262.imageshack.us/img262/6541/sgotm06pq6.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
PT = Plains tile (not a hill)
PH = Plains hill

@AG the tile W-SW of the setller is DEFININATLY not a hill, if it were we would be able to see it.
There are 3 plains hills, two of them are gold (no way I would like to settle on top of gold!) and the one 2 NE of the settler, leaving most the goodies behind.

There is more jungle to our south and east, this would guestimate us at the equatar. Jungle guarantees grass, farmed grass will give food to work that gold mine...

I could see a city on the question mark in the (near) future (once we have IW, probably)

If we trust the blue circles, then they tell us there are resources to the NW and to the SE, because the starting circle and the one 2W each have 4 resources (we see) in their FC, whereas the NW-Gold-circle has only 2 visible resources, and the SE-Gold-Circle has 3 resources in his BFC :undecide:

To settle 1W and liberate banana & gold for another city is a good idea, in my opinion. To be sure about what new tiles we'll get in the FC, we should still start by moving the Warrior 1SW!

But I've got another idea: what about settling 1SW. This would still free up the banana and gold for another city, we would get the health-bonus for being on fresh water, and maybe we could connect to a copper/iron city using the river, which can't be pillaged!?!
Of course, the cow and the gold wouldn't be in the 9 starting tiles, which makes it harder to defend them ...

1 west we lose the fresh water bonus and pick up useless water in our capitols BFC (just west of the western gold).

I would either settle in place or (losing 1 turn) go 1SE, opening the western gold to a coastal city there someplace (presuming there is sea + seafood there) and picking up the eastern gold in our BFC.

The rest of the land would be a good trade off too, basicaly trading 2 plains and a grassland hill for 1 grassland (jungle!) and 2 grass hill (Jungle too!) Also as an added bonus we have more river tiles = more commerce in the future in our burocratic capitol.

Downsides:
- Atleast 4 jungle tiles in the BFC (probably 5)
- Lose 1 turn for moving
- Lose 1 forrest for a chop (30 hammers pre-math)
Possible ups:
- The gold hill (which we will probably be working all game) gets +1 commerce
- More commerce, overall
- open up the west for coastal cities?
- Defence bonus (hopefully not need it tho)
- No need for a road to get the gold to the city (once mined)

With regards to scouting, I suggest we work the warrior in a fairly tight circle around the capitol. Even if a resource is way out there, we'd have trouble holding it if it's too distant. Might be smart to just settle on a metal, particularly if there's a water connection... just random thoughts.

EDIT: I'm going to fiddle around with the test map tonight. Also, if we can select a batting order, the first player can move the warrior and give us all a screenshot with the new info...

I don't see your problems with scouting :confused: .

For the 1st warrior, OK, he has to defend the capital; so he can only scout around a bit.

But we can scout wherever we want with a 2nd warrior/scout. No matter how many civs we find, it won't hurt our WW unless we fight.

I've started a test game on a continent-map with the same settings, and my 3 neighbors all found me in the first ~20 turns ...

The faster they find us or we find them, the faster we get "visits". Postponing the visits even 1 turn can be crutial...

I have done some math using a spreadsheet. Presuming we settle someplace (on the spot?) with a 3 food in the initial 9 and another in the BFC (Cows and Banana)....

1. Whipping worker
Research BW => Agriculture => Hunting => AH => Archery => The Wheel => Fishing => Pottery
Build something (barracks?) to grow to size 2 in 11 turns, start the worker, revolt to slavery, whip the worker for 1 pop.
Build 3 warriors for defence and scouting, while growing to size 4. When Archery is allmost done, restart the barracks and whip it for 2 pop.
Build 2 archers.
Meanwhile, assuming the worker keeps on working:
- Chop the forrest hill SE of the city
- Start a mine on the forrest hill, waiting for Agri to come in
- Stop the mine, Farm the banana
- Hop over to the Dye, farm that
- Cows Pasture it
- Gold hill mine it

Leaving us at turn 75 with
- 3 warriors
- Barracks in the city
- 2 (promoted) archers
- The techs
- Resources improved (time for a settler?)
A city at size 5, 20 food, 80 hammers and 108 commerce to spare.

2. Building worker
Skipping BW for now, researching Agriculture => Hunting => AH => BW => Archery => Wheel => Fishing => Pottery
- Build worker
- 4 Warriors
- Barracks (whipped for 2 pop)
- 2 archers

Meanwhile, assuming the worker keeps on working:
- Farm the Banana
- Pasture the Cows
- Mine the gold
- Farm the dye
- Mine the forrest hill
(for the added chop! or mine the hill south of london to stop the jungle from potentially spreading.)

Leaving us at turn 75 with
- 4 Warriors
- Barracks
- 2 Archers (promoted)
- The techs
- Resources improved
Size 4 city, 35 food, 90 hammers and 214 beakers.

Option 2 seems to be ahead by 106 beakers, 10 hammers and a Warrior.

A big difference tho is the finish times of the warriors
The first warrior in option 2 is done by turn 41, in Option 1 by turn 28,
and warrior 2, in turns 48 and 32.
Offcourse Option 1 is helped in this by the early(er) chop of the forrest and option 2 catches up real fast ending up ahead of option 1 considerably.

Both options, I think, are due for a settler build at this point.

Can someone please confirm or find errors in this?
What alternate scenario's are there? Besides taking the 4 last techs (Archery => The Wheel => Fishing => Pottery) and replacing them by other techs... I just used this tech route cause they contain the techs we are going to need soon....

Researching all optional techs before the target tech (like Agri => Hunting => AH or Wheel => Fishing => Pottery) is much cheaper...
For each additional tech you know over the techs you need to know (i.e. In order to research AH, you need to know Hunting OR Agriculture) you get a 20% bonus on research (accoording to the war academy).
Seeing as we are going to need all techs anyway, lets get them as cheap as possible??

Edit: The worker turns are about even and both options have 8 worker turns to spare to... for example start a road to the gold or the new city, chop a forrest, start cottages, etc...

Edit2: I would also like to do a quick calculation as to AH first... get the cows up ASAP and see what happens. Probably lose commerce gain hammers... but how much?

I don't see your problems with scouting :confused: .


In addition to what namlia said, the quicker they meet us and declare war, the faster they pile up the "mutual struggle" points. I wish I were one of those code monkeys who understands all the game mechanics, but don't those points just keep accumulating?

I've read the article about WW in the War Academy, and I've read the corresponding thread, but I still don't know why meeting them some turns earlier will raise WW.
As I understand the article and the formula, it's all about combat :confused:

In order to be a bit helpful, I've generated a map with our starting location, and I've played namlia's 1st option (whipping worker).
The tiles I've been working:
- banana on size 1 (cows for the 8 first turns, of course)
- cows on size 2
- dye on size 3
- lake on size 4

This gave me, up to T70:
- Worker on T24, 3x idle until T70
- Warriors on T30, T34 and T46
- Barracks for 1 pop only on T59
- promoted Archers on T64 and T70
- 5 turns to go for pottery

To sum it up, your calculations (for option 1) seem to be correct ;)

I'll also try out/verify option 2, and I've attached my starting save for those interested ...
By the way: we don't need 'Fishing', it's our starting tech

I've also played namlia's 2nd option (building worker).
The tiles I've been working:
- banana on size 1 (cows for the 8 first turns, of course)
- cows on size 2
- dye on size 3
- gold on size 4

This gave me, until T63:
- Worker on T23, 2x idle until T63
- Warriors on T41, T48, T54 and T58
- Barracks for 2 pop on T59
- promoted Archers on T61 and T63(getting the chopped hill :rolleyes:)
- 6 turns to go for pottery
- stopped playing 7 turns earlier than option 1!!!

So at what point are we going to get a settler out?

For the settler:
- if we just build it: T78 (London 1T from size4)
- build it, using 1 chop: T75 (London 1T from size4)
- grow to size 4 before building, whip for 2pop :eek: : T71 (London size 2!)

In addition to what namlia said, the quicker they meet us and declare war, the faster they pile up the "mutual struggle" points. I wish I were one of those code monkeys who understands all the game mechanics, but don't those points just keep accumulating?

Pretty sure the have a cap, for each leader its different, but it wont matter regardless since its enough points to get them pleased/friendly alone. Which brings me to a later game point, we don't ever want to build a caraval to scout the seas. They should have to come to us, imo. Thats for a much later discussion however. (this will also increase the possibility of a war between them, and keep their teching at a reasonable level.)

Before i input on which tree would do better, which produces a settler faster? I would assume the first with the larger pop, but it might be releativly close. The next in the que would have to be a settler. BW is almost nessisary as a 1st or 2nd tech so we can plan around bronze, and if its missing get IW for the jungle and to see if iron is around. 1 has to be there, or the GOTM staff is pretty evil SOB's.

In addition to what namlia said, the quicker they meet us and declare war, the faster they pile up the "mutual struggle" points. I wish I were one of those code monkeys who understands all the game mechanics, but don't those points just keep accumulating?

I dont think so, there is a cap someplace I think... but I am not sure. Also the mutual strungle only applies if they also know eachother... so if we meet someone from another continent that doesnt know anybody else we know... there is no harm really... Except maybe the visiting part....

WW only comes from combat IIRC...so meeting someone doesnt have any effect on that!

@Chris
Thanks for your play testing...
Sorry about the Fishing thing, I missed that :(
So it seems Chris you agree with me, that option 2 seems to be better than option 1?

I really hate to whip for 1 pop... Generaly it is better to whip for 2, but we would have to investigate that... we have to balance whip/grow/units/commerce I dont think we should start the Settler at the point that chris did (1 turn from growing?) Generaly IMHO not a good idea.

I will try to get out the magic spreadsheet and see what I can do about AH earlier (is that a real option at all? To skip Agriculture? The +1 food of the Banana with the farm IMHO is just to good to pass up)
I will also try and see what I can do with producing a settler.

One thing we do need to confirm ASAP is...
Are we alone on an island? Or do we have neighbours? And if we have neighbours, who are they, more importantly where are they at?
This will be very important for us to find out what way to expand and what number of units we want/need.

More later....

...
WW only comes from combat IIRC...so meeting someone doesnt have any effect on that!
...


Now I'm really confused ... first you tell me we should not scout in order to delay meeting the other civs; even delaying that 1 turn could be crucial ...

I say that in my opinion, WW only comes from combat, but all of you don't agree ...

and now namlia confirms that it only comes from combat ... :confused:

I am just presuming a granary to be our next build for the moment...

1a) Option one the early settler is at turn 71...
Finish the second Archer, immediatly start the settler (T64), whip for 2 at turn 70, Settler ready to go in 71. The following granary is done at T85
T90: City at size 4, 26 food, 31 hammers 550 Commerce after pottery

2a) A settler at the earliest in option 2 is at turn 75.
Finish the second archer I think just one turn before growing to size 4 (T67), wait one turn and start (T68) a settler, whip it for 2 pop at turn 74, done in 75. Presuming we want a granary next, this will be finished T88.
T90: City at size 4, 37 food, 16 hammers and 619 commerce after Pottery

Optimum for whipping tho is one turn before you grow to the next size.
So using "Proper" whipping
1b) option 1 will delay the settler to Turn 76
Granary started after the archer and continued after the Settler. Granary done in turn 83.
T90: City size 4, 22 food, 43 Hammers and 602 commerce after pottery

2b) Option 2 will delay the settler to turn 83!
Granary started after the archer and continued after the Settler. Granary done in turn 86.
T90: city size 3, 21 food, 26 hammers and 721 commerce

For the settler:
- if we just build it: T78 (London 1T from size4)
- build it, using 1 chop: T75 (London 1T from size4)
- grow to size 4 before building, whip for 2pop :eek: : T71 (London size 2!)

I shouldn't have done this testing at 01:30AM :D I didn't see that London was 1 turn from growing until I posted here ...

I've redone the Tests, letting London grow to size 4 first: the production speed of the settler doesn't change, but we have 2:commerce: more/turn and 1 turn to start something else ...

Another thing: I think we should get up our roster, so that the first player can move the warrior (SW?) to see more of our land.

This way, we can decide whether we settle in place (choosing one of namlia's options) or if there is another interesting spot we can make calculations for, thus being sure we have resources (banana/gold) for a close 2nd city, as ArcadicGamer proposed ...

Why dont we stick to the order that is on the roster AlanH made?
Roster:
ArcadicGamer
ChrisFromLux
CNWJR
MaroWaker
Mastiff_of_Ar
namliaM

Which would make AG our lead off man... (not that many woman around, so I hope I am right)

Moving the settler anything west, to me is not an option... Losing the banana is just to big a thing loss

1S and settle on top of the Dye? Dont think so...
2S and lose the cows? Would have to be pretty good.
Current location,
2 plains tiles (-2 food)
4 hills (-4 food)
Gold hill (-2 food)
Banana (+3 food)
Cows (+2 food)
CC (+2 food) => Overall -1 food
1SE, lose 1 turn and 1 forrest, as well as start with only 5 health untill we can chop them jungles??
Add the gold river hill too, for +1 GPT ALL GAME LONG as well as add 3 (jungle) grassland river tiles for +3GPT for a long time...
4 grass hills (-4 food)
1 Plains hill (-2 food)
Banana (+3 food)
Cows (+2 food)
CC (+2 food) => Overall -1 food
1E, lose 1 turn and 1 forrest, only 1 jungle but pick up the plains hill.
1 Plains tile (-1 food)
5 grass hills (-5 food)
2 Plains hills (-4 food)
Banana (+3 food)
Cows (+2 food)
CC (+2 food) => Overall -3 food
2E, lose 2 turn and pick up the gold tile for +1GPT ALL GAME LONG
4 grass hills (-4 food)
2 plains hills (-4 food)
Banana (+3 food)
Cows (+2 food)
CC (+2 food) => Overall -1 food

In the food department they are not all that different.

Moving 1SE to me certainly has its apeal... Getting +1GPT all game long (>300 turns?) and another +3GPT a little less long (250 turns?) + library bonus + Burocracy + Markets/University/etc.... That gets into 5 or 6GPT bonus most game long... tho we would probably pick that up in another city at some point if we dont take the capitol there.

We are moving to a hill, if the tile 2W of the warrior is indeed flat grassland (what it looks to be) it should also reveal the mistery tile W-SW of the settler. The tile w-w of the settler is forrest => No resource. The one W-SW could be a resource... and could be crutial to our desicion... so I think yes, we should move our warrior SW and do it ASAP to further our discusion(s).

Looking more closely at the save, the tile SW-SW of the settler I marked PT, could also be water, thereby making the location SW coastal, but coastal doesnt help much I think at AW, due to the trade routes beeing (much) less profitable due to the fact of ONLY local routes. Later on we may want to look at Mercantalism, maybe even prioritize banking for this reason?

IF those 2 tiles are water and the tiles to our NW are for certain water... We could be looking at the western edges of our continent/island there... Or atleast choke points which would be defendable... both are nice, if there is indeed coast there, that might favour us moving the settler east, depening on how much land there is left... which is going to be an educated gamble at best...?

Why dont we stick to the order that is on the roster AlanH made?


That's what we call "Alphabetical Order" where I come from :p

Start with anyone but me! namlia seems to have a good grip on the start, Chris is right up there, and AG seems to know quite a bit, too. The first two of you guys have been on discussing quite a bit, so I'd say let namlia start just so we can move that warrior!

LOL, I didnt notice that one AlanH...

Anyhow Option 3... research AH ASAP.
3a) Which means Hunting => AH => Agriculture => BW=> Archery => Wheel=> Pottery
Worker: Pasture => Mine gold => Farm Banana => Farm Dye => Mine Grass hill => More stuff
Buildorder city: Worker => 3 Warriors => 3 Archers (Stop third archer for settler) => Settler (just before growing to size 5 AND helped by chop), Whip for 2 at turn 67, out in turn 68 => Finish 3rd archer => Granary
NOTICE: No barracks (do we need one at all this early?)

T90: Size 5!, 28 Food, 60 hammers, 715 commerce after Granary/pottery

I did this a little quick and I think we need to look at the other options without barracks... as well as 3b

@Chris, The 1 turn delay will delay their visits and attempts to pillage our lands and potentially halt our Workers from working the lands. This can be crutial... WW Points IIRC from the war acadamy (I will look up the article tomorrow to make sure) only happens from battle...
Killing units (or ours dying) and taking cities (or razing them) or our cities beeing taken/razed. Also late in the game, Nukes drive WW crazy!

For now, you will have to count me out on the game. I am unable to load the save file (protected assets error). I have neither the time nor the inclination to tinker with it for the forseeable future. :(

I think AlanH posted a nice "how to" in the recruitment post...

I have taken the liberty of moving the warrior to further our efforts, I think we all were agreeing on moving him SW anyways.

http://img145.imageshack.us/img145/2487/movedjd5.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
Is it even worth considering moving east now? Maybe it is... to open up the coastline to the west for antother city?
The tile inbetween the water bodies (just SW of the gold) is a jungle tile.

So what to do? Settle in place? Or go walkabout (meaning moving 2 east)?

1c) If we skip the barracks... untill we get the settler out
Build order: Warrior (11 turns, break for worker) => Worker => 4 Warriors => Start Archer (Stop short for the settler, which starts just before growing to 5) => Settler (whip for 2)
Settler out in turn 63!

Mind you we have 5 warriors at this point with 2 (unpromoted) archers following in T64 and T70.
We could then start a Granary, with an added whip of a barracks (again just before growing to 5) finishing at T83

T90: Size 4, 20 food, 51 hammers, 411 commerce

2c) No barracks either
Build order: Worker => 3 Warriors => Archer (T58) => Settler (just before growing to 5 and whip for 2 pop) => Archer (T69)
Settler out by turn 65!

barracks whipped during Granary build (T82), Granary done in T85
T90: Size 4, 10 food, 33 hammers, 689 commerce

I think I like 2c :) with the most commerce goings on... The 3 warriors and Archer can fogbust ahead of the settler allowing for free passage....
Also getting an archer before the settler will allow us to more effectively deal with any visitors while building the settler.

Settle in place or SE is my opinion. In place looks better, mainly because of the jungle to the se. 3w of the settler looks to be a good 2nd city if metal shows there, if not a good 3rd.

...
@Chris, The 1 turn delay will delay their visits and attempts to pillage ...


Ah, OK, now I finally got it! :goodjob:



...
3w of the settler looks to be a good 2nd city if metal shows there
...


Looks more like a coastal city to me; I don't think we'll find metal there.


As for where to settle London, I vote for settling in place, using namlia's option 2c! For a 2nd city to the east, we can still take eastern banana/gold into the FC ...
Another city on the western coast could be in the S of London, as the blue circle could indicate the presence of seafood, maybe ...

OK so with the added vote of Chris, AG's to settle in place and my own... with no objections in roughly 20 hours from now...

I will play option 2c, the first 30 tuns, which is
- Settle in place
- 23 turns building the worker
- Start the first warrior,
- researching Agriculture, Hunting and starting AH.

I will try to do a LITTLE scouting of the second gold as long as I dare to leave our city undefended, but I have a sneaking suspision we are alone on an island...

My idea would be 30 for me, 15 for each in the first round(s), down to 10 later on?

You have my OK to start, settling in place with option 2c, as well as playing 30 turns, then going down to 15 for each of us, and 10 on the 2nd rounds ...

About the little scouting: I've got your point about the visits, but in my test-games (I had 4 civs on my continent), they rarely even entered my territory, and they didn't even try to pillage in the first 50 turns, even if the improved tiles were unprotected. So I don't think security will be a problem for the first 2 players ... but of course, you never know ... :mischief:

Another thing about my test-games: when playing your 2c-option and working food-tiles (cows, then switch to banana on size 1; cows on size 2, 2nd banana on size 3, gold on size 4), I got out the whipped settler on turn 60, and before, I had build 4 warriors and the worker.
But I couldn't get out archers, because I only learned Archery on ~turn 60.
But afterwards, 2 archers were out in ~8 turns, due to the chop of SE-hill.

Not a bad option (2d? ;)), in my opinion?!? We could have 1 warrior in London, 1 on the gold, 1 on city2-spot, the last one on the way there. And 1 archer in both cities 8 turns later! And 2nd city would be off 5 turns earlier ...

Okay to go by me!

I played 35 to finish AH and picked BW as our next tech as per the techoutline we discussed.

The HOFMOD did not make a log, but here is my version of the log.
http://img215.imageshack.us/img215/5936/logkf3.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
Naritive:
Meet Alexander 3700 BC
Meet Hannibal 3610 BC
Kill a lion
Kill Hannibal's scout
Meet Mansa 3250
Kill his scout 3160

Killing the Lion and 2 scouts... first blood has been drawn and "Brave heart" has earned enough points for 2 promo's which I didnt give him. We may want to run north a bit along the coast (going North of that peak) and turn East and south again clockwize. We may want to give him Brave man *erm* Bush man 2 so he can move 2 spaces along forrests.

I stopped 2950, check out the map... Looks like I was wrong on all counts...
- We are NOT alone
- We do have resources (2 horses!)
http://img215.imageshack.us/img215/6776/mapsa9.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
Looks like the best city distribution would have been to move 2E... :(
I bodged a little on the tiles worked, and worked the Grass Forrest hill for 1 or 2 turns at size 2 :(
Maybe due to this fact, I dont know, for some reason AH came in 3 turns later than anticipated, so I stopped the worker over to farm the Dye for 1 or 2 turns before he could move to the Cows.

The red crosses make chocke points which will be crutial to hold if we can. But it leaves us pretty enclosed.

Looks like we may have more land to the west as well.

There are allready 3 out of 5 possible calander resources visible, if the banana was not cause enough ... Now I think Calander is pretty important!

About our second city... I dont see an Obvious spot right now... South and directly east is jungle dirt... North is dry Plains land... North east maybe all the way to the horses
Maybe west, but that looks like a lot of water... Tho it could pick up that cow island...

Gentle people (if you didnt notice yet) we need to chop a lot of jungle this means WORKERS. We can build them or steal them, stealing them means Chariots IMHO....

About our oponents
Mansa - The tech Ho - Munsa
Meet him on turn 25 with a scout at 2 moves/turn = roughly 40 tiles away?
Financial/Spirtual
Techs: Mining/Wheel (where did the scout come from? Hut?)
UU: Skirmisher (strength 4 archer)

Alex - mr. Aggresion - ander
On turn 10, with jungle to pass thru from our south... maybe 10-15 tiles that way?
Aggresive/Philosophical
Techs: Fishing/Hunting
UU: Phalanx (strength 5 spear)
IF we get copper, knowing he is close to the south... IF we get copper some place... Get some axes together and go smash some Alex face? Or we can try and bait him into generating some GPs for us? but that is unpredictable and the earlier we can take out 1 of these 3 guys... the better it is IMHO.

Hanni - Look at my horsies - bal
On turn 13, thats very little further than Alex is
Financial/Charistmatic
Techs: Fishing/Mining (again, normaly doesnt start with a scout!)
UU: Numidian Cavalry (Horse Archer, with only 5 strength but +50% vs Melee + 20% withdraw chance + Flanking 1 (adding another 10% withdraw) )

Of all our friends till now, I like Hannibal least of all... I hate those Nums! Even a spear has a touch time defending against them. PLUS if they do lose 30% of the time they lose, they retreat *grrrr*

Here is the save
Goal for the next set I think... Research BW (hold there if we find Bronze I think)
Pasture the Cows, Mine the gold, farm the Dye.
Build warriors all the way? And scout around a little more... I would love to know who our closest neighbour is (looks like Alex for now)
Knowing where the nieghbour is, knowing we have atleast 2 close neighbours to the south... maybe we can take out one early on?

Edit: So who is up next?


Turn 0, 4000 BC: Logging Game to File: autolog.txt
Turn 0, 4000 BC: London has been founded.

Turn 9, 3730 BC: You have declared war on Alexander!

Turn 12, 3640 BC: You have discovered Agriculture!
Turn 12, 3640 BC: You have declared war on Hannibal!

Turn 19, 3430 BC: You have discovered Hunting!
Turn 19, 3430 BC: Barbarian's Lion (2.00) vs Churchill's Warrior (3.70)
Turn 19, 3430 BC: Combat Odds: 1.2%
Turn 19, 3430 BC: (Animal Combat: +30%)
Turn 19, 3430 BC: (Barbarian Combat: +5%)
Turn 19, 3430 BC: (Plot Defense: +50%)
Turn 19, 3430 BC: Barbarian's Lion is hit for 27 (73/100HP)
Turn 19, 3430 BC: Barbarian's Lion is hit for 27 (46/100HP)
Turn 19, 3430 BC: Barbarian's Lion is hit for 27 (19/100HP)
Turn 19, 3430 BC: Barbarian's Lion is hit for 27 (0/100HP)
Turn 19, 3430 BC: Churchill's Warrior has defeated Barbarian's Lion!

Turn 22, 3340 BC: Churchill's Warrior (2.00) vs Hannibal's Scout (1.00)
Turn 22, 3340 BC: Combat Odds: 99.1%
Turn 22, 3340 BC: Hannibal's Scout is hit for 28 (72/100HP)
Turn 22, 3340 BC: Hannibal's Scout is hit for 28 (44/100HP)
Turn 22, 3340 BC: Hannibal's Scout is hit for 28 (16/100HP)
Turn 22, 3340 BC: Churchill's Warrior is hit for 14 (86/100HP)
Turn 22, 3340 BC: Hannibal's Scout is hit for 28 (0/100HP)
Turn 22, 3340 BC: Churchill's Warrior has defeated Hannibal's Scout!

Turn 24, 3280 BC: You have declared war on Mansa Musa!

Turn 28, 3160 BC: Churchill's Warrior (2.00) vs Mansa Musa's Scout (1.00)
Turn 28, 3160 BC: Combat Odds: 99.1%
Turn 28, 3160 BC: Mansa Musa's Scout is hit for 28 (72/100HP)
Turn 28, 3160 BC: Mansa Musa's Scout is hit for 28 (44/100HP)
Turn 28, 3160 BC: Churchill's Warrior is hit for 14 (86/100HP)
Turn 28, 3160 BC: Mansa Musa's Scout is hit for 28 (16/100HP)
Turn 28, 3160 BC: Churchill's Warrior is hit for 14 (72/100HP)
Turn 28, 3160 BC: Mansa Musa's Scout is hit for 28 (0/100HP)
Turn 28, 3160 BC: Churchill's Warrior has defeated Mansa Musa's Scout!

Turn 31, 3070 BC: Hannibal adopts Slavery!

Turn 34, 2980 BC: You have discovered Animal Husbandry!

Quick look at the save...
We have 1.64% of the world at our control.
At 21 tiles => The world consists of rougly 1280 land tiles.
At 64% for domination => 820 tiles for domination victory, which is 40! cities (I will be happy if we make it to 4!)

NO one we know has as much land, Mansa has 1.0% => 13 land tiles, this means the other AI we know have even less! This could work to our advantage as their production poor capitols have to pull them at the start. We on the other hand have a nice hammer start... Go get them I think?

On the other hand Hannibal allready has 19% of population => Sea food?!
Both Athens and Carthage are size 4 at the moment.

Just look at the mfg Goods and Food graphs... Alex got me worried!
http://img510.imageshack.us/img510/8372/graphsrq5.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

As for us... Well Charistmatic give us a happy face with the Obelisk, which obsoleets with Calander :( Worth building at all?
Protective + Stone = Walls and Castles like no tommorow...
UB: Stock Exchange (yet another reason for banking? besides mercantalism)
UU: Red Coat, Rifleman with +25% vs Gunpowder and offcourse the free gunpowder/archer bonus of protective. Drill 2 Red coats can be mean things...

Looking at the progress graphs:
- Culture
Not everyone settled in place... Or atleast not on turn 1...
- Power WOW!
The power graph just looks whacky for RB and CRC. They
jump from 5 to 16 from rougly turn 28 to turn 45.
Our starting tech Mining is 2 power + the warrior = 3. Add a Warrior and City at pop 2 or 3 = 5 This is Turn 28 or so... This means they have something total different from our approach.

Add BW for 8 more power = 13
Another warrior for 2 and a city at 4 pop for 1, my guess they went BW first.

Fifth element research BW, while building a Warrior + Worker (whipped, I think), Same as XTeam did I think. But look at Fifth go with their power man...

First of all, nice write-up and good analysis!

So you played up to turn 35 ... no problem for me ;)
But who's up next: Mastiff, Arcadic_Gamer or me? Playing the next 20 turns to get BW (we should need 18 turns)
That way, after the 2nd set, we could really discuss where to build a second city ...

... because until now, I don't see a nice spot either:
1) NE of London, N of the horses:
- far away from London
- need culture to get rice and cows (monument 1st build, after mysticism :()
- we'll need a long road to connect the horses
+ Horses!
+ NE-chokepoints protected?!?

2) S of London, on this little tip of land to get cow-island and fish:
- 4x jungle
- culture again
- we'll need boats to start that city
- 3x ocean & 9x coast
- no military resource yet
+ close to capital
+ cows and fish to grow fast
+ only 1 road needed to connect to London (?) using the river

3) SE of London, S of the rice:
- 10x jungle :eek:
- culture again, to get resources
- no military resources yet
+ 2nd Gold
+ quite close to capital
+ only 1 road needed, again
+ SE-chokepoints protected?!?

But, I don't like any of these spots for the 2nd city!!!

We should maybe scout to the W, and hope we really find some (suitable) land ...
Finding Copper could improve one of these 3 spots (copper and horses in NE-city would be nice :lol:)

I have a question regarding our 3 rivals: where did they come from???
Mansa from the N, Alex and Hanni from the SE?

And a last question for tonight: we could consider Arcadic_Gamer's proposal about the Great Wall, as we found Stone and 3 rivals on our ?big_continent?, leaving much space for barbs to spawn :confused:

...
Of all our friends till now, I like Hannibal least of all... I hate those Nums!
...



...
Protective + Stone = Walls and Castles like no tommorow...
...


So now, you already consider hiding behind our castle-walls while Hannibal's Numidian Cavalry pilllages our lands :D

Hmmm, I've yet another question :blush:, about the power-graph:

Does the AI get a free technology on Prince-level in Warlords?

Because if Hannibal researched BW (which he did), how could he get out Archers? Getting Hunting and Archery from Huts?

I suspect our first challenge will be from Hanny. Horses? Copper? Hope?

Because if Hannibal researched BW (which he did), how could he get out Archers? Getting Hunting and Archery from Huts?
I am just guessing at the graph... in my normal SP games I dont bother (that much)


I dont suggest hiding anywhere, but the cheapness of both ... getting the extra trade route MIGHT be worth it.

I comprised allready yesterday this:
http://img178.imageshack.us/img178/9348/mapdottedvs3.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

For any city to our south or east, we are going to need IW as #1 priority and something like City count + 1 workers, to chop that stuff away...

I rather like E, partly due to the horses... but also because we NEED them hammers. Plains cow 3/3, Plains Horses 1/4, Farmed rice 4/0, Mined plains hill 0/4 + City Central = Size 4 city 10 food/9 hammers. It is a nice productive city :) and well I think we need them horses HA's are much better vs Nums as Nums get no bonus vs them :) but that requires HBR....

D can be pretty productive too. Put a farm on the rice 4/0 and a farm on that grass 3/0, CC 2/1 and mine the 2 grass hills 2/6 as well as the Plains hill 0/4 => Size 5 with 11/11 food/production.


I have a question regarding our 3 rivals: where did they come from???
Mansa from the N, Alex and Hanni from the SE?
All the scouts are where we met them... So yes Alex and Hanni from the SE right on our borders (nothing to do with me scouting). Maybe we could have delayed meeting MM for a turn or 2 had the warrior not been there!

About the GW... That would require getting F up ASAP, or even move F more to the East outside of the mountains.... Dont think that the GW is a reall option at the moment.

As to who is up? How about sticking to the batting order?
Roster:
ArcadicGamer => UP to research BW
ChrisFromLux => Waiting
CNWJR => Out of this for a while, please let us know if you are up and running
MaroWaker
Mastiff_of_Ar
namliaM (Opened)

Now that we do have Horses near by, do we need to go BW => Archery?
We can build chariots for initial defense, I think we need BW => Wheel => Pottery much more now than we need Archers?

Archery is needed for HA if we wish to rid of Hanibal first. HA also would work well against skirmishers, but obviously not alaxander's phalanx. Whichever is closer is the best bet so we can possibly keep the capital and any other good cities.

That stone is in such a horrible place for the GW, and for keeping it connected to our cities. Pass on it.

We should definaly look at keeping 1-2 units with "bush man 2" and not chopping the forest/jungle for the added defense. Our focus should be on keeping all our resources connected within that peaked area, so keeping units there instead of in the city is a viable option, as is forting some of the open ones. (in particuar, the one directly south on the coast, could be forted for extra defense there, instead of behind the peak where a tile could be worked)

Whats the build que for the 20 turns of BW research? Worker? or do we have one? Settler after a few warriors?

Woker que is pasture, mine, farmdye which should last 20 turns.

City Cites, i prefer E first for chariot steals, then B for those workers to junglechop. C could be put 2N of the letter, with a fort later on the farthest E choke point.

With our actual situation, I would also build E first, then B as 3rd city ...

But maybe, scouting W and the appearance of copper could change our plans; copper will be there before our 1st settler, anyway ...

So, Arcadic_Gamer up next: OK for me, if you find some copper ;)

I did just notice now, that we have :
- 6 turns to grow to size 3
- 6 turns left on the warrior
- 6 turns for the Worker to Pasture the cows

:satan:

So ArcadicGamer you got this game? Or should Chris get it? Or is someone else still out there simply dying to get at this?

Some questions/descisions to make...
Our warrior (Brave heart?)
Do we want to go Bushman 2 with him and explore around a little? OR Get him to Combat/Medic and bring him home? We are going to do a lot of battling and can use a Medic...
We can probably get a medic (chariot? or some other unit) someplace else later on easy enough... And we cannot scout around freely for long, soon-ish units will start roling in to attack our *Ahem* empire. I think we can really use the scouting.
Build que
Warriors all the way untill we can start the settler at size 4 I think. In total we want/need (I think) atleast 3 warriors "at home" and 1 out exploring a little (where is our closest enemy and where are the others?) Now that the cat is out of the box... no harm in finding it. Or cats as the case may be.
3 warriors "at home" to me means 1 in the Capitol and 2 to escort and/or pre-fogbust for the settler to go to his new home. What do you all think?
Scouting
We can scout a little Westward, with one of the upcomming warriors I think

E for the first city sounds good to me... for now, but we should get BW well before the settler so lets not get to set on it.

As for all the other leters I was exploring possible 2nd city sites not dotmapping our entire civ (yet). C can be moved all over the place.
The downside of B offcourse is that A is blocked and just building the fishing city south of our capitol just for some Measly beakers and a GP or 2... may not be worth it...
Building A tho... goes together with C because I just cannot bring myself to not get that gold worked somehow...

So I make a little more maps...

Dotmap 1
http://img131.imageshack.us/img131/705/dotmap1mb6.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

Dotmap 2
http://img71.imageshack.us/img71/2157/dotmap2aj2.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

PRIOR to settling A, B, C or F we NEED to have (or nearly have) IW... all that jungle :cry: :yuck:
AND a surplus (stolen?) worker to help with removing that GARBAGE.

A has Fish (+4) Cows (+1) and CC (+2) for 5 grass hills (-5) making it to +2 food but 19 hammers and at size 7 instead of 8.
Plus add a workshop/farm here and there if we can grow bigger.
Can this fish be pillaged before Astronomy? I know in BTS it cannot, but in Warlords?
This could turn into our HE city?

B has + 9 food (Jungled for now Banana +3 food eventually, Rice +3 food, cows + 1 food and CC +2) to feed the Goldmine (-2 food) 3 grass hills (-3 food) and another plains hill (-2 food) for overall +2 food and 20 hammers for those tiles at size 8 thats decent!
This could turn into our HE city? But we waste the gold commerce :(

C What happens to the CC if you settle on Spices? Anyone know? Anyone can test? I can test maybe tomorrow. Edit: Tested, it does NOTHING.
Rice (+3) and CC (+2) to feed Gold mine (-2 food) and 4 hills (-4 food)
So overall it is at -1 food, requires atleast 1 farm/Windmill or something.
But we can cottage it up otherwize and makes nice commerce city with gold and Dye and cottages all over the place, most of which would be hidden behind the peaks.

D Forget about D for now... I think, it is going to be a while IF at all that we are going to settle that crappy city...
Edit:
With the Farm on the grassland 3/0 and the rice 4/0, CC 2/1 . We can work the Grass hill and Steal/Borrow the hill from london, 2/6
At size 4: 10/7 (+2 food)
At size 5: 10/11, adding the Plains hill (Stagnate!) but a 2 Chariots/Archers every 7 turns, not bad for a crappy city
Add a (chain) farm on the plains to the rice and we are back at +1 adding a 2/1 plains tile as it slowly grows in size.
/Edit

E Rice (+2 unirrigated for now!) Cows +1 and CC (+2) to feed 2 plains hills (-4) Horses (-1) and 3 plains tiles (-3) for overall -3 food but those are the plains mines & tiles talking... we can cottage the place up I think except for the special tiles. And in particular we can do this a little later as we will need the production for now.

F Plains hill (-2), 4 hills (-4) and 2 plains (1 of them stone) (-2) CC only thing giving food (+2) makes -6

I dont know about the X cities they be watery graves I think... -for now- Tho both would be cheap to maintain and a GS soon could REALLY help in research :)

Looking at the dotmaps and cities on them... well lets let me keep my oppinion to myself for now...

One more post before going to bed myself... We are going to want to insert Mysticism someplace for the :) and the cheap early culture in any city...

Does the happy face disappear with obsoleet of the Obelisk? Anyone know? Or test someone?

Roster (update) :
ArcadicGamer => UP to research BW
ChrisFromLux => Waiting
Mastiff_of_Ar
namliaM (Opened)

CNWJR => Out of this for a while, Unable to load the save (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=6258447&postcount=35)
MaroWaker => Out of this till Januari 18th (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=6247621&postcount=2)

So it seems for now we are only 4 of us... But I am hoping everyone can still contribute from posting on the forum.

I'm here. I read much more than I post, but if I have an idea or a comment, I'm not shy about it...

I like E as well, for the horses, but I have a suspicion that our game hosts placed the bronze juuuuuuuuust out of reach of the nice central spot. So we'll get to have a choice. Just my guess.

I'm here. .... I like E as well, for the horses, but I have a suspicion that our game hosts placed the bronze juuuuuuuuust out of reach of the nice central spot. So we'll get to have a choice. Just my guess.

I was thinking we would not get any resource to be forced to use protective to its fullest, but... there you go... nothings is as it seems lets wait and see.

Even tho I am quite focal in posting, please add comments if only short stuff like you did now. Just to let me/us know we are not alone and we are moving in the right direction accoording to our team.

I have updated my first "short cut" post on the first page to my TS and the Dotmap. So hopefully if you ever get lost, just go to the first page and you should find the most important info.

Capitol EARLY (Pre Calander)
Banana (+2), Cows (+2), CC (+2), Farmed Dye (+1), Gold mine (-2) 4 Grass hills (-4) for a total of +1 food... not to great in the food dept, but this is allready size 8. We are currently capped at 6.
We will be working the Banana (+2), Cows (+2), CC (+2) and the Gold hill (-2) for +4 food at size 3 ALLWAYS I think.
Then comes the question what to do with the other 3, 4 or 5 pop extra. Beeing capped at 7 (once the gold is roaded)... or capped at 8 if we build an Obelisk or even greater hights should happiness allow it.
How should the city be improved?

We could make a cottage on the second Banana for an added commerce, but we are (I think) going to replace that by a plantation later on, so is that usefull?
Do we want to put a cottage on the Dye or farm it? Once the cottage is a town it will be the same as having a planation on it, we have Dye else where as well for happyness we only need one... And a town gets better with PP or Free speech (should we ever get there)
A relative beeline to Calander requires the following techs (in order of beaker cost):
127 Wheel
171 Pottery
214 Sailing
256 BW
256 Writing
429 Iron Working (need this soon-ish for jungle clearing)
535 Mathmatics
750 Calander
===
2311 beakers
Soon we should be making 9 (default) + CC (1) + Banana (1) + Goldmine (7) + Trade route to new city (1) + Riverside Dye (2) + Riverside mine (1) = 22 (at size 5) Or something like that. Which makes Calander something of a 100 turns away, maybe a little less cause we add a library, but we also have to drop science from 100% once we settle the new city... and we are not there yet... so 100 turns from now is not that bad a guestimate I think?
Cottage (15) => Hamlett (30) => Village (45) => Town
Overall a cottage takes 90 turns to grow to a Town -if we work it all the time-, which is right around the time we get Calander.
In the meantime to calander we either get:
Cottage it:
15 turns +1 commerce +15
30 turns +2 commerce +60
15 turns +3 commerce +45
30 turns -1 commerce -30 (just guessing it wont make it to town before calander)
for a total of 90 extra commerce (not counting slider or library).

Or Farm it
For an extra food per turn

It all comes down to this question: To what end should we focus our (early) captitol for the time beeing and to what in the future? Toward production ... Or Finance? So lets see the options...

We currently have 3 happiness resources visible, meaning we have a hard cap of 7 pre-calander and 9 post-calander. (not counting an obelisk for now)
Once we get Monarchy offcourse all bets are off... because happiness is determined at that point by military.

The basic "must work tiles" for our capitol CC 2/1/1, Banana 4/0/1, Cows 4/2/0, Gold Mine 0/3/7, at size 3 for 10/6/9 food/hammers/commerce at +4 food (growing nicely)
(offcourse dont forget the 9 default beakers/commerce you get for your capitol)

Finance: We need cottages on those riverbanks and work them
basicaly add as much commerce/cottages with (probably) no hammers but stay at +4 so we can occationaly hit the whip for some units
Something like cottage the Dye and the 3 other riveside flat grasslands, which adds 2/0/2.5 (on average) to the (early) city.
At size 4: 12/6/11.5
At size 5: 12/6/14
At size 6: 12/6/16.5
At size 7: 12/6/19
All the commerce is excluding the default 9 and offcourse grows into the future.
Production: We need mines on them hills and work them
For hammers you need hills 2 Grass hill 1/3/1 (riverside), 2 more grass hills 1/3/0 (no river)
At size 4: 11/09/10 (+3 food)
At size 5: 12/12/11 (+2 food)
At size 6: 13/15/11 (+1 food)
At size 7: 14/18/11 (Stagnate!)

Capitol Later (Post calander)
Must work tiles: 2 Banana (+6) Cows (+2) CC (+2) Gold mine (-2) 4 Grass Hills (-4), city still producing +6 food.
Add the 2 plains tiles (-2) and we are still +4. If we can ever work all the tiles. Which looks like it means that one of the nieghbouring cities can borrow the banana's from time to time to grow/support specialists.
But we can do this a bit later I think.

I'll pick it up.

Woodsman 2 is better for scouting, and it'll help keep him alive when you land on the proper tile.

Settler as soon as we hit size 4? or one warrior after?

Scout in a clockwise circle from north east to south, and scout the water W with one warrior.

Will pick it up now, and play later today.

I was actually hoping to find some sort of response to all that stuff I put out there.... :(

I think if we can find one or more AI (semi-) close by we need to get some (serious) military into their lands ASAP to prevent them from hooking up metals/horses. Serious military would be Archer/Chariot combo or something.

But lets wait and see what AG bring home in way of BW.

Edit:
I wonder if any of you have MSN or Skype...

Edit2:
AG, make sure to work the Dye at size 3 while the GoldMine is not ready yet! And make use of the mine as soon as done.

...
I was actually hoping to find some sort of response to all that stuff I put out there.... :(
...


My response will come ... I was busy all day long ...


P.S.: I have a Skype-Account!

What's Skype? I have Yahoo Messenger... and MSN at home.

I'll be replying as well, it's just been a busy morning!

Cool, messages :) Looking forward to your feedback....

Uhm, my nick on both is namliam_eht if you care to contact me :)

Feel free to do so about the game or just for random chatter... I allways like to chat to fellow civ-ers

Our warrior (Brave heart?)
Do we want to go Bushman 2 with him and explore around a little? OR Get him to Combat/Medic and bring him home? We are going to do a lot of battling and can use a Medic...
We can probably get a medic (chariot? or some other unit) someplace else later on easy enough... And we cannot scout around freely for long, soon-ish units will start roling in to attack our *Ahem* empire. I think we can really use the scouting.


I would go to Bushman2 to turn him into a faster scout, well protected in the woods ...



Build que
Warriors all the way untill we can start the settler at size 4 I think. In total we want/need (I think) atleast 3 warriors "at home" and 1 out exploring a little (where is our closest enemy and where are the others?) Now that the cat is out of the box... no harm in finding it. Or cats as the case may be.
3 warriors "at home" to me means 1 in the Capitol and 2 to escort and/or pre-fogbust for the settler to go to his new home. What do you all think?


I would build Warriors, until we build the settler or get Bronze/Horses/Archery ... 3 warriors "at home" is what I usually try to have ...



So I make a little more maps...


pre-bronze/iron: I cleary prefer N°1, because there's the possibility to build a nice city in the SE, giving access to banana, horses and maybe another resource, as well as a better city giving access to the stone.
In dot-map2, I don't like city blue_X and I don't like city F, which has lost the banana, just to get stone. Do we really want to build early Stone-Wonders, or conquer them from our 'friends'? :mischief:



Can this fish be pillaged before Astronomy? I know in BTS it cannot, but in Warlords?


In my opinion (but I haven't tested), this fish can't be pillaged, because it's in the ocean, so out of reach for galleons/triremes, and caravels can't pillage. So, yes, AI should need Astronomy ...



Does the happy face disappear with obsoleet of the Obelisk? Anyone know? Or test someone?


About the happy face for the obelisk/monument: I'm not 100% sure, but I think we'll lose it as soon as the monument gets obsolete. In the game I checked, I had built Stonehenge, and now (much later), no city has a monument anymore. And no happy-face, by the way ...

I don't like city F, which has lost the banana,
That banana is the rightfull property of LONDON :eek: So F vs C doesnt lose the Banana so much as it does the Rice which goes to B in No 2.
F can also be jumped back over the mountains (2 west of its current location)


build early Stone-Wonders, or conquer them from our 'friends'? :mischief: I know what I am looking for.... and you dont need the stone to get it/speed it up => Units!

I am not even sure we need many barracks not right away anyway 4 unpromoted Chariots to harras the AI (stop them from connecting resources) are much better than having only 2 Chariots but promoted (i.e. build a barracks first)

In my opinion (but I haven't tested), this fish can't be pillaged, because it's in the ocean, so out of reach for galleons/triremes, and caravels can't pillage. So, yes, AI should need Astronomy ...
Hmz, I tried in world builder... and I can pillage fish on Ocean, but this is without HOFMOD offcourse. I know for sure in BTS Ocean is of limits for any foreign culture.... but Warlords HOF MOD, I am not so sure anymore :(
Losing the fish in city A would be "killing" but maybe we can be sure by planting a Trireme on our borders or something?

About the happy face for the obelisk/monument: I'm not 100% sure, but I think we'll lose it as soon as the monument gets obsolete. In the game I checked, I had built Stonehenge, and now (much later), no city has a monument anymore. And no happy-face, by the way ...
Stonehedge obsoleets too with calander, and the Obelisks disappear.. that I get...

I can now confirm (tested) the happy face disappears with Calander, so we might as well not build the Obelisk and save us the 45 hammers for a Chariot or some unit/Barracks or... I think Calander is just about the #1 target we are aiming for in techs...

I forgot to mention, we probalby dont want to settle on the dye, since every happy we can get combats WW.

As for the monuments, Stonehenge built monuments disapear with the obsoleting of SH. However, built monuments still give their culture, i think. I beleive there is an article in the war room about it.

Havent had a chance to play the save, and i think i'm working over till 4am tonight so it'll be about 6am (American Central Standard) before i post the log and new save.

Hmz, I tried in world builder... and I can pillage fish on Ocean, but this is without HOFMOD offcourse. I know for sure in BTS Ocean is of limits for any foreign culture.... but Warlords HOF MOD, I am not so sure anymore :(
Losing the fish in city A would be "killing" but maybe we can be sure by planting a Trireme on our borders or something?


I didn't believe you :p
But I have tested it as well, with HOF-Mod 2.13.001, and you can really pillage in the ocean, even with a galley/trireme ...
I knew they could enter ocean inside your cultural border, or inside a friend's border you had OB with, but I didn't know you could do that inside the cultural border of a war-enemy :blush:



I forgot to mention, we probalby dont want to settle on the dye, since every happy we can get combats WW.


Settling on the dye won't make us lose it. We still get the resource, if we know the tech (Calender). Of course, the tile is better if have a plantation on it ...
Or am I wrong again? :(

Capitol EARLY (Pre Calander)
Banana (+2), Cows (+2), CC (+2), Farmed Dye (+1), Gold mine (-2) 4 Grass hills (-4) for a total of +1 food... not to great in the food dept, but this is allready size 8. We are currently capped at 6.
We will be working the Banana (+2), Cows (+2), CC (+2) and the Gold hill (-2) for +4 food at size 3 ALLWAYS I think.
Then comes the question what to do with the other 3, 4 or 5 pop extra. Beeing capped at 7 (once the gold is roaded)... or capped at 8 if we build an Obelisk or even greater hights should happiness allow it.
How should the city be improved?

We could make a cottage on the second Banana for an added commerce, but we are (I think) going to replace that by a plantation later on, so is that usefull?


I think yes on the banana cottage. We can always decide later if the +2 food and +1 health is more useful than the commerce.

Perhaps the build after the settler should be a granary, especially if we intend to whip hard. We definitely want barracks soon, too, but we can't have everything. I really don't want Hannibal on our butt before we have troops ready. In fact, I'd like to take the fight to him.


Do we want to put a cottage on the Dye or farm it? Once the cottage is a town it will be the same as having a planation on it, we have Dye else where as well for happyness we only need one... And a town gets better with PP or Free speech (should we ever get there)
A relative beeline to Calander requires the following techs (in order of beaker cost):
127 Wheel
171 Pottery
214 Sailing
256 BW
256 Writing
429 Iron Working (need this soon-ish for jungle clearing)
535 Mathmatics
750 Calander
===
2311 beakers
Soon we should be making 9 (default) + CC (1) + Banana (1) + Goldmine (7) + Trade route to new city (1) + Riverside Dye (2) + Riverside mine (1) = 22 (at size 5) Or something like that. Which makes Calander something of a 100 turns away, maybe a little less cause we add a library, but we also have to drop science from 100% once we settle the new city... and we are not there yet... so 100 turns from now is not that bad a guestimate I think?
Cottage (15) => Hamlett (30) => Village (45) => Town
Overall a cottage takes 90 turns to grow to a Town -if we work it all the time-, which is right around the time we get Calander.


Two things... Do the techs get cheaper when the other civs know them even when we're at war? If so, some of the early ones should cost a little less.

Second, are we going after sailing to get calender? We might want to consider calender vs. construction (with masonry the pre-requisite). Sadly we have no ivory, but someone else will... we might want to have cats ready when they come calling. I can deal with unhappiness much easier than death! :eek:


It all comes down to this question: To what end should we focus our (early) captitol for the time beeing and to what in the future? Toward production ... Or Finance? So lets see the options...


It's sooooo tempting for me to chose production because of the peaceful builder in me, but I think it would be a mistake. They are going to trade, and we are not. If a couple of them get ahead of us, we're doomed. This also means we need a nice GP farm so we can lightbulb some techs.

Oh, since we're working on a tech path, we might also discuss what we can live without for now. I think the religious block (med/poly/priest/mono) can sit and wait. We might by some miracle get the oracle, but at what cost? I'd say there are better wonders, even.

We can also ponder what wonders we might want should we get a city freed up to construct one.

I think the Great Wall would be perfect for a AW game, but can we get it? (That also makes a case for masonry first). Anyway, those are my thoughts.. :p

I think the religious block (med/poly/priest/mono) can sit and wait.


That means we'll need a library in every city for our cultural borders to expand. The library costs 135:hammers:, compared to 45:hammers: for the monument.

Of course, the library gives us 2:culture: instead of 1, and +25%:science:, but still ...

That means we'll need a library in every city for our cultural borders to expand. The library costs 135:hammers:, compared to 45:hammers: for the monument.

Of course, the library gives us 2:culture: instead of 1, and +25%:science:, but still ...

Don't monuments come with mysticism? :confused:

Settling on the dye won't make us lose it. We still get the resource, if we know the tech (Calender). Of course, the tile is better if have a plantation on it ...
Or am I wrong again? :(
No you are right... but we need calander offcourse before it becomes available.... but what dye?? I presume you mean C, which is settling on Spice not Dye. Futhermore we do have another dye Source up north in E (which we all seem to like)

If only we can reach some kind of plan on the rest. :)

I really don't want Hannibal on our butt before we have troops ready. In fact, I'd like to take the fight to him.
This is why I might opt to build units ASAP prior to a barracks. A barracks is 75 hammers, which is the price of 2 Chariots. Having the 2 Chariots earlier, hopefully before the AI pick up resource... they should be pretty hard to get ride of for the AI... ONLY Mansa with his strength 4 skirmishers could be a pain vs Chariots.


Two things... Do the techs get cheaper when the other civs know them even when we're at war? If so, some of the early ones should cost a little less. Not quite... the beaker count stays the same, but we get a small bonus for researching it.
This bonus is about 3% per civ we know that knows this tech ... IIRC ... There is an article on this in the war acadamy. Seeing as we are very low in beakers at the moment, we might get 1 beaker/turn for free... if we are lucky, not really something to count on, is it?

There is an article in the War acadamy about this, find it here (http://www.civfanatics.com/civ4/strategy/tech_research.php)
8) If you have a neighbor who you're thinking of killing off who has techs which you have not researched yet, it might not be worth it to kill them off UNTIL you've researched the tech (1 neighbor who knows the tech in a 7 player game will provide a 1.04 boost).

So we get a 4% boost in beaker generation per civ, 3 civs = 12% (if they all know it). 12% out of 20 Beakers = 2 beakers/turn bonus. Not a lot but still nice I think... Still not something to count on, as we cannot know what path the AI is taking on tech.

I propose we find the Copper first (if its there at all) and plan from there. The game will develop quite differently if we can grab Bronze...
First question would be: Archery, do we need Archery and if we do when?
For now, it is scheduled (for me) right after BW, presuming we cannot get at the Copper soon. If we do find copper someplace near London or E, I suggest you grab up Wheel ASAP to get both the Horses and Copper up and running.

Second, are we going after sailing to get calender?

Yes, Sailing is a prereq to Calander. The listed techs ARE NOT a suggested route, but are the quickest way we could go for Calander to guestimate how good the cottage on the Dye in London would become... I think it is pretty strong to cottage it. Cottaging the extra banana now I dont know about that, I think (but I need to think more, maybe even do some math) I would rather have a Riverside cottage we are going to keep vs a banana cottage we might destroy. Tho the +1 food offcourse is tempting.

It's sooooo tempting for me to chose production because of the peaceful builder in me, but I think it would be a mistake. They are going to trade, and we are not. If a couple of them get ahead of us, we're doomed. This also means we need a nice GP farm so we can lightbulb some techs.
I think it is quite the reason why we should orient it on production early on, with them trading unless we remove atleast 1 civ and are 2 or 3 times the average AI size, we cannot hope to keep up in tech. We need to limit their tech and power as much as possible as early as possible IMHO. This means Units => Hammers ASAP. Possibly even prior to a barracks.

Oh, since we're working on a tech path, we might also discuss what we can live without for now. I think the religious block (med/poly/priest/mono) can sit and wait. We might by some miracle get the oracle, but at what cost? I'd say there are better wonders, even.
I would opt for now to not even look at wonders.
On the other hand we DO need the religios block (or part of it) to get to Monarchy! No way we can play a decent AW game without HR.

Monuments come indeed with myst, and we need those for our city E I think... But grabbing a religion would be much easier (CoL or Philo?)

Does anyone have any techs in mind we could bulb that are important?

Bronze was easier than we thought. 2S in capitol's FC! Wooooo.

[img=http://img170.imageshack.us/img170/4577/sgotm2470bc0000va4.th.jpg] (http://img170.imageshack.us/my.php?image=sgotm2470bc0000va4.jpg)

The Map so far. Two border discoveries. Mansa is our closest, as far as to the east goes. Hanni is to the SE, with bronze that we can see.

[img=http://img212.imageshack.us/img212/4429/north0000oc5.th.jpg] (http://img212.imageshack.us/my.php?image=north0000oc5.jpg)

Northern scouting

[img=http://img266.imageshack.us/img266/1496/southeast0000at9.th.jpg] (http://img266.imageshack.us/my.php?image=southeast0000at9.jpg)

SouthEastern Scouting.

Turnset log.
Pasture Cows. Warrior NE
Warrior NE.
Warrior N-NE.
Warrior E-SE.
Warrior S-SE.
BW extra turn, someone researched it? Buddism Founded in distand land Warrior E-S
Alexander got BW. Slavery. Hannibal got Buddism. Alex's scout spotted NE. 4 turns till warrior 3.
---WAr2 W Warrior SE Worker to gold
Warrior S-S Mani's borders spotted! War2 W. Mining gold.
Warrior SW-SE. War2 W, Spices spotted.
War2 back to capitol. Warrior SE, Timbuktu spotted on plains hill with warrior. SE.
Mani got BW. Slavery.Warrior SE-S Spot lion and Alex scout.
Warrior SE, kill Lion.
War3 Built. Started War4. Moved to dye. Warrior S-SE, spot BEAR. And Hanny's borders.
Warrior SE. Farming dye now.
Warrior SE SE Alex Scout.
Started researching wheel. Copper POPS 2S of london, and in hanny's borders, Healed the warrior 1 turn, SAVED.

As you can see, both Alex and Mani have BW, and have revolted to slavery. I did not revolt right away, since it wasnt talked about. Wheel was started the turn of the save, which the turn has techincly ended, but i didnt want to force a turn onto the wheel, since we gained a turn researching in the turnset.

The farm on the dye will be done in 5 turns from the save. Warrior4, home warrior 3, will be done at the turn. Settler would be decent to start then, while finishing the farm and mining the bronze for axemen from there out. We MAY be able to axe rush mansa successfuly if that is deemed pheasable. *feasable? Killing a good techer and trader will likely kill some of the trading they will undoubtfully be doing.

Next? Wheel>Pottery>? Barracks at some point if we wish to axe rush? Need a 2nd worker to work the settler's city plus some more D for the city.

Don't monuments come with mysticism? :confused:

Oh, of course they do. I thought you wanted to ignore the entire religious block ...
I have to stop posting that late :crazyeye:

Bronze was easier than we thought. 2S in capitol's FC! Wooooo.


Hmmm, they give us easy access to horses and to bronze. So what surprise is waiting for us???



We MAY be able to axe rush mansa successfuly if that is deemed pheasable. *feasable? Killing a good techer and trader will likely kill some of the trading they will undoubtfully be doing.


I like that, but we should also keep Hannibal and Alex busy with some chariots to prevent them from hooking up Horses and Bronze. We have to find out what resources they have access to.

In my opinion, as we have easy access to them, our 3 'friends' will have them as well :confused:

I agree with CfL, we need to get after them before they form a nasty gang...

Harrassing both of them while killing another is something that we can do, especialy with the capitol we got right now. Settler ASAP to get horses, and we'll be in good shape to start warring.

Hmz, you didnt upload the save to the progress page? Next time please do upload even if your set is not up yet... it helps with details (see below!)

With Copper inside our BFC (who knows what whill happen next??? Like... Uranium visible with IW?) I think we do need the Wheel. We are NOT connected to the river, should anyone doubt that... This means the Copper (once mined) will flow into the river, but NOT into the city. So we need atleast the road on the Dye to get it.
It is hard to tell how improved london is at the moment, without the save or a good closup screeny. I think we need to Mine the Copper and road the dye ASAP to start Axemen, Dont know about the extra worker either... if london is going to be stuck at size 5 or 6 it doesnt need much improving... and with Chariots we can probably snatch a worker or 2 later on... As long as London is improved we will be OK I think.

Is there more land due West of London? Looks like it... Wowsers... (can probably tell in game tho...)

Timbuktu looks like 13 tiles east of London... I am surprised he is that close... MM was the last of the AI to find us. Anybody have any idea how much the upkeep would be if we conquer it? MM is a bad target tho with his Strength 4 Skirmishers on a hill behind 40% culture defense and 25% fortification.
Considering all AI are coastal, I am guessing Alex will be south of us West of Hannibal. They would make better targets, but we need to cripple MM in the progress...

It would have been nice to see more of the Banana/Horse city site due east of the southern mountain range. It is a potential good city site.
But finding Hannibal is nice too :) now lets find Alex too...

There looks to be space for another city between "C" and Timbuktu. Also a nice fish and wine city up north... IF that is just about the most northern tip of our continent/pangea? maybe we can fogbust it too prevent barbs from backsiding us ?

I think we should definatly research The Wheel now... AND revolt ASAP to slavery.
We have one more turn on the Warrior, how many more for the next warrior? If 5 or less AND we only have 2 warriors "at home" we build another warrior first, then start the settler.

Revolt (1 turn) + 6 for the wheel... I know it is an odd number we are ending up on, but can you bring us that far along? Than we can try and figure out what to do next Pottery or Myst seems the two techs we need to choose from depending on the situation of development of London/progress of the settler etc.

Question at the team:
What is more pressing?
Get Axemen out (short term win by getting to our friends faster)
Get a settler to settle Rihoco (the E city, with RIce HOrses and COws)

Why not start the settler while mining the bronze and building the road, then swap-chop the settler and axemen? Once the chops are done, we'll need to get a road to Rihoco... Horico? :)

I think we'll have that many turns before anyone shows up...

My point of settler vs Axemen is that one settler = 3 axemen and it is going to take quite a while to get them earned back by the new city.

Maybe we are better off building a few axemen and growing the city to say size 6, only then to get the Settler out. This is offcourse assuming the worker can keep up with the city growth...

Appologies, i had it all que'd up to upload and never hit ok. Save file is linked here http://gotm.civfanatics.net/saves/civ4sgotm6/Misfits_SG006_BC2470_01.CivWarlordsSave

We know right now mani has BW, but not copper that we know of. Maybe Build Axe's while chopping a settler and switching it on and off would be the best solution to get one out? It's not something i have a alot of knowledge about. Its the best of both worlds, gets a couple ax's in to pillage and maybe get a lucky worker steal, while getting a settler for horses asap to do the exact same. Possibly revolt to slavery during that time also, and once pop hits a new # whipping the settler also?

I debated to myself for about 20 minutes wheather to go N or E when i hit that juncture. Glad i went e personaly.

My point of settler vs Axemen is that one settler = 3 axemen and it is going to take quite a while to get them earned back by the new city.

Maybe we are better off building a few axemen and growing the city to say size 6, only then to get the Settler out. This is offcourse assuming the worker can keep up with the city growth...


I guess I was looking at it this way.

We can't start an axeman for 10 turns, right? (Revolt [1] / Wheel [6] / Build Road [3]) So, start the settler now, assuming we have the number of warriors to protect the city, or the time to produce an axeman before they arrive, which is 10 turns plus the time to make the axeman. (I'm not sure how many hammers we're producing right now.)

Switch to axeman while the worker moves to chop forests to the west. When the forest is almost chopped, back to settler for a turn to take the chop hammers, then back to axeman. I think in two chops we'll have a settler, an axeman, and a second axeman almost done. (If he isn't completed by the leftover hammers from the chop.

So, we have the settler and 2 axes, we grow the city while chopping, and get the horses hooked up quicker to go harass the enemy with chariots.

Appologies,
No need... Looking at the save... Looks like the land West of london is a dead end. But also looks like it could fit a nice city will fit 2 west of the banana grabbing the cows... and can work 2 cottages... No hammers tho :( aside from the cows offcourse.

Axemen are 7 turns (Stop farming the Dye and get to the hill, mine it) + 3 turns for the road away = 10 turns total.
London is producing 6 hammers 4 food. Which makes a total of 10 production for the Settler.
For 2 pop whip it needs 60 production into the settler which is 6 turns.
This warrior we are producing (overflow of 3) + the following one will take a total of 4 turns (22 - 3 = 19 / 3 = 3+ => 1! Hammer short!)

I propose the following:
- Finish this warrior (we then have 3 at home) (This turn)
- Revolt (turn 1)
- Start the settler and get it to <90 hammers left (> 60 hammers invested) turns 3,4,5,6,7 (Wheel finished), 8 and 9
- Switch to a warrior, at which time we should be producing more hammers due to the Coppermine (+5 Hammers) At 11 hammers/turn it should take only 2 turns. Turn 10 and 11, while making SURE not to finish the road before the warrior finishes. If need be continue the farm on the dye for 1 turn, but make sure!
- Copper online. Start AXEMEN and start harrasing the AI. If copper is not online, get 1 more turn of production into the settler.
- Build axemen to 1 turn before growing to size 5 (Maximize hammers and commerce, while delaying the settler 1 or 2 turns), whip the city for 2 pop

With axes only, unfortunatly no Worker steal :( Best we can hope for right now is a pillage or two. If I am right about the techs the AI researched we should find Skirmishers and Achers in the cities. BUt hopefully prevent them from getting cottages/resources.

I think we need to delay infra for now, unless maybe a Monument in the new city. To get the border pop.
About the new city I would REALLY like to see what that Banana/Horse city looks like to our south east, maybe we want that over Horico up north? The southern city is on the river, no need to worry about many roads. Plus it is closer to the AI, meaning less movement time to get to them. Moreso if we (finaly) do get a road thru that jungle to it... getting the road south instead of north + the horses = Win win :)

With Infra delayed and no Granary, while our city is going to be stagnate at size 7 (and the happy cap for the time beeing), No more whipping I dont think after the settler. Unless we limit the city to size 5.
Must work tiles I think are now changed to add the copperhill:
02/01/01 CC
04/00/01 Banana
04/02/00 Cows
00/03/07 Gold
01/05/01 Copper
11/11/10 total city size 4 for +3 food.
At 3 food surplus it will take the city 42/3 = 14 turns to grow (without the granary) to size 5.
At size 5 adding a grassland would still be +3 food, but 45/3 = 15 turns to grow.
Adding the farmed Dye, make it +4 food = 45 / 4 = 12 turns to grow. With only 15 turns for a whip to disappear, whipping does not seem the way to go.

Whipping mostly is a good idea if the city can grow (atleast) the 2 pop it loses within the 15 turns of the whip disappearing.
So for maximum hammerage from London we want it Stagnate at size 7 working the 3 other (mined) grass hills. Ergo NO farm on the dye needed :( Bad call on my part to suggest the farm in the first place... We could have allready mined the Copper even before we knew it was there :( saving us some turns to get to Axemen. As well as some hammers...

Our exploring warrior needs healing... for 6 turns, if it doesnt heal a wolve will kill it, let alone the warriors/archers/lions and more evil things that are wondering around out there. Still I would like to see the Banana/Horse city surroundings, so I suggest using one of the (soon to be) 3 warriors to head on southeast and scout around there a bit before (potentially) heading back. Before producing the settling we will insert (see plan layout above) another warrior to defend London, while the other 2 still in London can scout ahead of the Settler (either Horico or due Southeast) to get it to its spot.

Every 5 turns after the settler there should be an Axe roling down the London production line (5 turns at size 4, 4 turns at size 5, 3 turns at size 7). So any "barbs" (no matter what flag they bare) we should be able to handle.
I think we shouldnt bother with a barracks before we have 3 maybe even more axemen.

Only Chris really spoke out about his oppion about cities. I like Dotmap 1 the best too.
http://img144.imageshack.us/img144/8110/dotmap1od6.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
So unless someone has strong concerns against this, lets stick to this -for now-
Cities G, H and K is the location I was talking about. We need IW to get at that banana.
H is the weakest city short term (untill the border pop) but is also the strongest city of the three in the medium term.

E or (G,H,K) is the first target for the settler I think, maybe we can make due with only London churning out Axemen? If we can keep the AI pinned down a little while. This would allow us to get A, C and the western city up ASAP and start serious research (requires IW tho!)
The Gold X west of our city could be used to run atleast 1 scientist to start generating a GS. Hopefully we find some seafood too for another scientist. Which is why I would have like to have seen that entire strip of land scouted. Right now we cannot do it anymore I dont think because in 10 turns we need the warriors in another place to go escort the settler.

At this point I am hoping a bit that we meet other AI soon, or we may be stuck on this peace of nice land with these 3 AI. With another 3 AI (free to tech away and trade :( ) stached away on another continent someplace.

Regarding the border pops, getting a religion would be great for border pops. Any religion is going to be to far away to help with either city #2 or #3 I think. Atleast if we assume Buddism/Hinduism/Judaism to be gone allready/soon.

It seems like you'd rather whip than chop. Are you pondering the trees for something later? I'm fine either way, as long as we head for the horses!

I still think E is the way to go for the next city. It gets us the resource we MUST have, and it's farther away from the AI who want to kill us.

Chopping takes 5 precious worker turns (+1 to move into the forrest)

I guess we could chop out the settler, 3 forrests = 90 hammers, except it takes somewhere close to 10 turns extra vs the whip.

The horses/chariots are only important if we want to try worker steels, if we are going to stall them in their respective capitols (maybe added their first city allready? and we pin them in those 2 cities) Chariots lose all their appeal, because the workers hide in their cities.
I would like MOST urgently to found A, because this will in the future be the Production capitol of the world. For units or Wonders, should we want to build one.
London, C and E. Possibly GHK as well, should be cottaged, presuming we are on this land with 3 AI only and we have to get to higher tech (Astro and up) to get at the other AI. This would be logical with the ANY victory condition. Space should be possible as fast as conquest/domination.

Actually I dont mind the AI on our content developing a little bit, founding cities for us to raze/capture => MONEY for us :) Just as long as they do not get Copper/Iron or Horses :)

Roster (update) :
ArcadicGamer => Still UP to Finish the wheel?
ChrisFromLux => Waiting / Or grab it if AG doesnt?
Mastiff_of_Ar
namliaM (Opened)

CNWJR => Out of this for a while, Unable to load the save (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=6258447&postcount=35)
MaroWaker => Out of this till Januari 18th (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=6247621&postcount=2)

I am probalby gone till the 26th as an fyi, so happy playing if we do move forward.

Dotmap1 looks optimal.

Go ahead with the next and dont count the 1st turn towards the set.

I am probalby gone till the 26th as an fyi

Go ahead with the next

A lot of people will probably be out over Xmass.

ChrisFromLux, makes you up. you can play 20 turns I think or get to a nice cut off point (full tech researched/Settler done/etc)
The plan as I see it:
- Finish this warrior (we then have 3 at home) (This turn)
- Revolt (turn 1)
- Start the settler turns 3,4,5,6,7 (Wheel finished), 8
- Switch to a warrior, at which time we should be producing more hammers due to the Coppermine (+5 Hammers) At 11 hammers/turn it should take only 2 turns. Turn 9 and 10, while making SURE not to finish the road before the warrior finishes. If need be continue the farm on the dye for 1 turn, but make sure!
- Copper online. Start AXEMEN and start harrasing the AI. If copper is not online, get 1 more turn of production into the settler.
- Build axemen while adding chops to the settler

Meanwhile I think we can chop us that settler to the finish but start it while waiting for bronze to get online. I would add in the warrior for added security and a happy face once we reach HR.

Tech plan (40+ turns worth of research but still) : Wheel => Myst => Pottery => Meditation => Priesthood => Writing?

We will not add the library for a while and we need to get thru Priesthood anyway to get to Monarchy/CoL. Priesthood is a pre-req to Writing, so writing will get a 20% bonus on researching it with Priesthood.

...
ChrisFromLux, makes you up. you can play 20 turns I think or get to a nice cut off point (full tech researched/Settler done/etc)
The plan as I see it:
- Finish this warrior (we then have 3 at home) (This turn)
- Revolt (turn 1)
- Start the settler turns 3,4,5,6,7 (Wheel finished), 8
- Switch to a warrior, at which time we should be producing more hammers due to the Coppermine (+5 Hammers) At 11 hammers/turn it should take only 2 turns. Turn 9 and 10, while making SURE not to finish the road before the warrior finishes. If need be continue the farm on the dye for 1 turn, but make sure!
- Copper online. Start AXEMEN and start harrasing the AI. If copper is not online, get 1 more turn of production into the settler.
- Build axemen while adding chops to the settler
...


OK, I'm ready for it, and I also like this plan.
What I would do concerning our warriors:
- Woodman-Scout: heal (6 turns), then continue scouting AIs
- 1st warrior at home: scout W and come back (10 turns) before the settler is out. W is definitely a dead-end, but I would still like to have it fully scouted. Of course, there would be only 1 warrior in London for 10 turns :undecide:
- 2nd warrior (new one): scout SE-city-spot (6 turns to get there)



...
About the new city I would REALLY like to see what that Banana/Horse city looks like to our south east, maybe we want that over Horico up north? The southern city is on the river, no need to worry about many roads. Plus it is closer to the AI, meaning less movement time to get to them. Moreso if we (finaly) do get a road thru that jungle to it... getti