With a 2-0 SG record with the completion of ER1 & EM6, I've decided to start my own.

However I was a little put off by how easily we rolled over everyone at the end of ER1 & even EM6 was a guaranteed space victory after we decided to go for that. So I’m looking for a challenge! I want to suffer a humiliating defeat at the hands of the AI for once. With that in mind I’ve selected a variant that should put us at a severe disadvantage.

Monarch 5CC NOW!!

Difficulty: Monarch
Size: Standard
Landmass & Shape: Random
Temp & Age: Random
Barbs: Raging
Opponents: 7 Random (as much as I’d love to make sure Persia/Rome/Greece weren’t involved that adds to the challenge.
Civ: Up for debate ??
Victory Conditions: All enabled
Goal: Can I be so bold to suggest Conquest, although we’ll take any W we can get!

No exploits!!
24 hour “got it”, 48 to play. Although I’m not going to be too strict with these, if you need an extra day or so just ask & you shall receive.

The variant goes as follows:
*5 City-Challenge -- pretty self explanatory, if you don’t know what that means please don’t sign up.
*Non-Oscillating AW --We have to declare war on the first Civ we meet on the turn we meet them, we continue this war until they are wiped off the planet. On the turn we wipe them out, we have to declare war on the 2nd Civ we met. Rinse & repeat as necessary.

This will allow us to trade, but we’ll need to because with us being at war the entire game and the other Civs not at war for the most part, they tech speed will quickly outdistance us.

I’ve heard that a Monarch AW is a little harder then Diety, while this isn’t a true AW the 5CC part will push it well over the top.

I’m looking for 3-4 other brave/suicidal players to join me in this quest for greatness.

Gengis Khan
Our Resident Flyboy
An Irish Monk
A past & future HOFer
A man inlove with his car

Order we met the Civs:
England- Dead!
France- Dead!
India- 1 city
Russia- 3 cities
Zulu- our only remaining threat.
Babylon
Persia

A chance to play in the great Khan's first SG? Must....join.......but I don't I can. I am comfortable at Monarch level, but with the varianst, I don't think I can play this, and I'll bow out to let room for other people. :) I just don't probably have the skills.

You know I'm in there!!

**looks around for gorm**

Might I be so bold as to suggestion Persia as our civ. I'm playing the X-man in the 6-2 tourney game. Immortals rock, and the industrious/scientific combination is very powerful. Plus then we wouldn't have to fight them. :D

Just an FYI, I believe you've described what others call NOW -- non-oscillating war, which is distinctly different from oscillating war (as others have defined it), where you're always changing opponents.

From my experience, AW adds about 1.5 difficulty levels, while NOW adds about .5.
I've not played enough 5CC to know how much harder it is. But this does look to be an interesting and exciting game. I wish you lots of luck!

This is not a sign-up. I don't have time, what with starting two new games when C3C comes out.

Arathorn

O Mighty Khan,

The humble Irish monk would like to help you chronicle your conquest. May I join?

Bede

Bede,
Welcome to Civfanatics!!

:lol: I was thinking about putting you & gorm’s name in the mix already without even talking to you guys.;)

Persia is defiantly worth considering, after all they are my favorite Civ. With us only having 5 cities only needing half the workers will be a definite benefit to our gpt once we hit the limit.

Science is almost a must, free techs will help us out immensely.

IMHO Militaristic would be a bigger advantage then industrial though, unfortunately the Scientific/Military Civ is German, who’s UU blows the big one.

I think Persia will most likely be the Civ for us, but I'd like to weigh every possibility. We'll need some serious strategy & planning from day 1 to pull this one off.

Other possibilities:
Rome- Military/commercial(more gold for trading)
China- Military/industrial
I think trading off scientific for commercial or industrial wouldn't probably be a step backwards, however they have the military trait. Plus both have a great UU(although not quite the Immortal IMHO)..

Arathorm- thanks for the info. I was thinking Oscillating since it would be changing, but you're probably right. Also since there have been other NOW variants, I'll edit it to help clarify. Thanks!

Bebe- Welcome to CFC!(however I have the feeling that we just brought a lurker out of his shell;)). How comfortable with Emporer/Diety are you? Any AW experience? I’m only asking because this SG won’t be for the feint of heart. If you think you’re crazy enough to try it with us, then I would be honored to have your first SG attempt be with us. :D

Hi Khan,

I've got AWM wins (2 as Celts, China, Ottomans) but I am
0-3 @ diety, so I guess AWM is easier for me than diety (as least so far). 5CC AWM... now that's an interesting challenge.

I've never played a 5CC, so I won't be able to add much there from experience, just what I have read. I can probably help some with the AWM part though.

One link that shoul help you alot with AWM is...
Always War Monarch Questions (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=63806)

You'll definitly need to use explorers in tandem with an army to pillage offensively as discussed in this thread...

Offensive Pillaging (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=64471)

I won't have time for this one :( Sounds like alot of fun, and it should be very challenging. Not being at war with everyone should help quite a bit.

From the FWIW department, here's a few ideas for you based on lessons I've learned the hard way in AWM.

Build a load of Cats. The bombardment helps a ton with the kill ratio, and the quick upgrade to cannon helps alot. I have never gon on offense in AWM before chivalry, but give you are only at war with one person at a time that should make it easier to go on offense earlier.

Keeps some chariots & horses around to kill off the last member of a stack & then retreat back into a city. Don't let ANY units limp home to heal if you can help it. Hope this obvious strategy does not insult your intelligence...

Fortify on mountains & hills and force the AI onto flat land where he gets no defensive bonus. Make him come to your kill zone.

A weaker AI is an easier AI. If you get a lucky very early leader, rush the pyramids so keep it away from the AI.

Plan ahead if you want to GL. Start a prebuild. The AI's not at war will likely beat you to Lit. I've won an AWM without the GL, but it is definitly a steep hill. 5CC AWM with no GL would be a challenge!

One last suggestion... for a 5cc consider the Ottomans. Great UU, Industrious + Science lasts all game long. You'll only need to build 5 barracks, so Militaristic may not help as much as you think.

Hope this helps. I'll be lurking this one...

Thanks for the links & the info. I've learned those lessons the hard way as well from AW experience & DI1(yes, a shameless plug for a SG I'm in. Sue me).

I think with Immortals & only going up against 1 civ at a time we'll be able to go on the offensive ALOT sooner than that.

While the Ottomans would be a great choice there's one problem......... I don't have PTW. Therefore all PTW Civs are out for us & the AI.

I also agree that the getting GL would be a huge help to our cause. Almost a necessity really.

Basically all the NOW is doing is forcing to stay at war the whole game, this has several disadvantages: Can't pick out opponent, can't make peace if we need a quick heal, boost in troops, or to concentrate on infrastructure, and no "pointy stick" research.

Originally posted by Gengis Khan
...no "pointy stick" research.

Now that's funny!!

ME ME ME ME ME I WANT IN!!!!

:D

Handy's thread is very good. I wish I had read it before DI1.

Here is another good read: Charis' 5CC Guide (http://www.civfanatics.com/civ3acad_5cc.shtml)
here is another SG that is in progress that covers the 5CC variant: TJ1 - The Famous Five (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=66003)

From our experience in DI1, I know we should make a bee-line for the Great Library.

I'm rethinking the civ. I think we want to be militaristic for the increased leader advantage.

Romans: Great UU - 3 attack, 3 defense, but we'll have our GA in despotism. Commerical can be powerful.

Chinese: The Rider rocks, gives a Middle Ages GA. Industrious is a huge advantage.

Germans: I know it's UU is very late, but we could trigger the GA with the Library and a militaristic wonder (Great Wall, Sun-Tzu). Plus they're scientific. The ability to pull in a free tech with each new age will be huge.

On the NOW - variant, a question: Can we pull other civs in with a MA or not?

At monarchy, if we pick a non-scientific trend civ, we can use 40turn gambits and ride AI research, this allow us to concentrate on our infrastructure and units. I am a little against an ancient UU civ for 5CC as it is likely to drag to industrial ages and beyond. The initial advantage can be quickly lost when we max-out cities in a hurry. I rather pick a middle age/industrial age UU and i think militaristic is a must (industrial may not be very useful as we run out of workable land pretty quickly).

I have limited experience with 5CC, having only won twice using 1 civ (no prize for correct guess). Because I did not have AW restriction, I was able to trade to maintain tech parity, and skipped GL entirely. In view of our DI experience, I would suggest beelining for GL.

Originally posted by Gengis Khan

Bebe- Welcome to CFC!(however I have the feeling that we just brought a lurker out of his shell;)). How comfortable with Emporer/Diety are you? Any AW experience? I’m only asking because this SG won’t be for the feint of heart. If you think you’re crazy enough to try it with us, then I would be honored to have your first SG attempt be with us. :D [/B]

Just fininishing an Emperor game. Tried for domination but will have to settle for retirement win. Not enough turns left to launch a space ship and only one furious AI left so the UN is out.

Won one other Emperor game, can't remember just how. Have several Monarch wins under all conditions, including AW domination.

This will be first attempt at SG. Have lurked on a couple. Looking forward to the fun.

Bede

Using my handy-dandy Civ 3 data sheet:
In vanilla [civ3] there are six militaristic civs:
Romans: Ancient Age UU - Commerical
Germans: Industrial Age UU - Scientific
Chinese: Middle Age UU - Industrious
Japanese: Middle Age UU - Religious
Aztecs: Ancient Age UU - Religious
Zulu: Ancient Age UU - Expansionist

Obviously the expansionist trait won't help us.
Having played as Japan in DI1, I don't think the religious trait is all that helpful once you make your one and only government change.

Ancient Age UUs will give a GA in despotism. So it looks like we want to be either the Germans or the Chinese.

I think gorm is right in that the industrious trait won't be a huge help, although think about how quickly you can railroad to the front. :D

gorm!! I knew you'd show up for this one.:D

The more I think about the civ the more I think you guys are both right.

Militaristic- The trait that keeps on giving.
Scientific- See above
Religious- practically worthless, I forsee only 1 change of government.
Expansionist- OK, will allow us to get more goody huts, but after the initial 25 or so turns will be pointless. Also wasted if we happen to start on an island.
Commercial- Decent, although lowered corruption won't really help us with only 5 cities.
Industrial- While a huge advantage in the beggining, it will taper out as well. Not enough workable tiles, given us long enough it eventually almost becomes worthless.

Germany is starting to sound better & better, China would be a pretty good choice as well.

That's funny, Gengis and I were working on the same thing at the same time. Must be a great minds thing :D

GK, you convinced me... I vote Germany.

Originally posted by Bede
This will be first attempt at SG. Have lurked on a couple. Looking forward to the fun.

Bede

Welcome to the crew!

Hehe, from my limited 5CC experience, AI will railroad to the front for you, since they occupy most of the land (we have only 5CC).

I dun believe I am going to say this, "I pick german over chinese".

That settles that.

The only problem I see with Germany is that we'll be hard pressed to get the Great Wall right after pulling the Great Library. That leaves Sun's(saves us 5gpt & denigs it to the enemy) & Leo's(would help) in the Middle Ages. After that we have only Universal Sufferage to trigger a GA in the Industrial Ages.

[edit] Wow! Already on page 2.

With leaders we'll be able to build either Sun Tzu or Leo's. With either of those wonders we'll have a nicely timed GA.

@Bede - What do you think?

Good luck Ghenghis,

I'm up to my SG limit or I'd join in :)


Ted

I try to plan like I'm not going to get a single leader & having to build brick by brick what ever wonder I want, that way my plan won't be derailed by the RNG. But in all honesty I think its safe to say we'll be getting a few leaders during when those wonders are available.

Thanks Ted!
Wish you could join up, I had a blast in EM6. But I definatly understand, this SG puts me at my limit as well.:lol:

Let's pull Sun or Leo, Great wall really sucks.

I agree. I'll give it another hour or two to see if anyone else wants to join us & then draw up a start.

Originally posted by Sir Bugsy
With leaders we'll be able to build either Sun Tzu or Leo's. With either of those wonders we'll have a nicely timed GA.

@Bede - What do you think?

I've never done well with the Germans, so I know I'll learn something.

I've always liked early GA's to get me across to the GL quickly and get it built quickly.

My other preference in AW or nearly AW games is to build cultural and commerce imporvements as quickly as possible. Happiness and gold keep the home front and the troops in the field functioning at peak efficiency.

Bring 'em on.

Bede

I took the first map I drew up(wouldn't be a challenge otherwise).

Defiantly an above average start: On a river & 3 BGs, but no visible luxs or food. Also a gold hill & goody hut are visible outside the city limits.

Here's the save if someone will post a screen shot I'd be very appreciative(I can't post any screen shots due to a violent & life-altering Photoshop accident.) Let the fun begin! (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads5/GK1_4000BC.SAV)

Any suggestions before I start?? Research path? To explore or to cower in our cave?


We’ll go in order of the sign up on the first page. We still have room for 1 more if any of you lurkers think you’re up to the task(Yes, I’m talking to you!).

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads5/Start.jpg

Thanks! I'm gonna start calling you the flash.;)

Any suggestions??

As soon as I finish up Wiz_1 I'm starting on this game.

[edit]- Thats nice to notice. Now I see why the HOF doesn't allow those smileys.:D

Since we start with BW and WC, I think we might as well go for IW and hope to trade for Alphabet (the key tech). I would then do a 40turn gambit on mathematics and followed by a 40turn gambit on literature. Get one of our cities ready with a GL prebuild and we should be in good shape.

I just finished my turns on DD2 so was in the "neighborhood". Going to play DI1 now.

I'm assuming you mean writing not math. I was thinking along the same lines.

Starting with IW as fast as possible to get Iron visable, trying to trade for TW to get horses visable. We need both these on the map before we start planning our 4 other cities layout.

For once pottery isn't a priority. A granery in our capitol would be nice, but do to the "settler flood" phase being very limited it's not really that important.

We also need at least 1 coastal city, even if this completly busts our ring. Hopefully we can get 2 coastal cities to fit perfectly into a ring around our capital.

I think the advantages of massive scouting far outways the disadvante. True we're likely to meet our neighbor very soon & get forced into a war before we have to troops to fend them off, BUT we need to have some knowledge of the surrounding terrain, need to meet that 2nd Civ & on to trade with, & popping a goody hut or two would be pretty nice as well.

no i meant mathematics. AI does not prioritise mathematics so we can research maths and trade for writing. Researching writing works as well but we lose the trade opportunity as AI will definitely research writing.

Ok. We'll definatly need math as soon as possible for cats anyways, and you're right the AI puts off getting math as long as possible.

However I've never played a game where math was able to be traded for writing even at monopoly price(IIRC it's the cheapest 2nd tier tech).

Sounds like a plan, as it's not a strategy I've used before.

we can always top up with a bit of cash, since we are doing 40turn gambits.

Early thoughts:
Good enough starting position.

Suggest using bow and spear pair for first scouting mission. Park and pillage on capital.

Don't discount granary in capital. More pop=more productivity.

Go for it!

Bede

Let the games begin!!

1(4000)- Found Berlin where the settler stands. Start building warrior. Start on IW at 20%, due in 40 at 3gpt. Worker moves down to work river BG.

2- Worker starts mining BG.

3-5- :sleep:

6(3750)- Warrior produced, start another one. He starts off to explore.

7- Warrior spots cow, BG, & fish to the SE. Not to mention jungle to the south. D’oh!

8(3650)- Worker finishes mine, starts on road.

9- :sleep:

10- Warrior produced, 1 more started up then we’ll get on to bigger & better things. Warrior spots 2 gold mtns to the NE.

11(3500)- Culture expands over goody hut, we get a mostly worthless map of the region. Worker finishes roading, moves to another BG.

12- Worker starts mining BG.

13- I lied. Warrior produced, start another. Last one for real this time. I’m just leery knowing we’re about to be at war with our nearest neighbor.

14- Spot an English scout, Lizzy knows A, P, & CB with 10g. Compared to our BW & 53. We can’t get alphabet from her & won’t part with 2 techs. She’ll trade CB or P for BW & 32g. I take Pottery, & tell her where she can shove her knowledge.

15(3300)- Warrior spots purple border to the NE(france??).

16- Warrior finished, start on granary(may be changed to barracks depending on how the English react).

17(3200)- Meet the French, Joan knows A, Masonry, has 35g, & we’re up Pottery, WC, & 32g. The English scout was on the way up here so I have to get everything I can for P & WC before they meet each other. Trade WC for Alphabet & 27g. However she wants Pottery, 1gpt, & 59g(all of it) for Masonry. I politely decline & promise we’ll meet in the future.

18- Worker finishes mine, starts roading tile(granary due in11). According to my math we’ll get our granary 3 turns before we grow again, not too shabby.

19(3100)- Find a goody hut………. Surprise surprise, there’s 3 angry warriors hiding behind the friendly looking huts. Joan still hasn’t came down on her price.

20(3050)- Warrior promotes to Elite from barbs, but is killed by the last barb. Warrior to the east spots another goody hut.:lol:

We’ve got some good land around us, except for the jungle to the south. Also getting a coastal city or two won’t be a problem. Iron Working due in 21, 69g & 4gpt.

Good luck!

Bugsy- Up!
Bebe- on deck.

If anyone wants to print up a screenshot I wouldn’t object, gotta help out the lurkers you know!.;)

Save! (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads5/Gk1_3050.SAV)

Can I join?

If yes, count me in!

I've got it, and will try to generate a screenshot. Maybe we can start discussing city locations. With only four more city sites, selection really needs to be a team effort.

Here's the raw image
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads5/GK1_-_3050_BC.jpg

One Native luxury+ lots of jungles, doesn't look too good. Suddenly, "not being industrious" might come back and bite us.

I wll work on a dotmap and we can go from there. Hopefully we can have better recon on the southwestern mountain range in the jungles, as well as our north coast.

Here's two ideas:
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads5/GK1_-_3050_BC_Dot_Map.jpg

Red dot gets several hills and BG. It will need some jungle clearing, but we should be able to get some good production out of it early.

Blue dot is our coastal city. But there are several drawbacks to this location. Not a lot of shields is the big one. We may want to hold off here for a while. Down south one tile SE of our warrior maybe a better coastal city location, but it is too early to tell.

Exploration will be job one on my turns.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads5/GK1_-_3050_BC1.jpg

Cyan (solid)

My first pick of a potential city location.

Advantages:
River access, good number of grassland,hills,mountains. Looks like a real production powerhouse to me. Immediate access to BG. No overlap with Berlin.

Disadvantages:
No access to sea, which means we need to have another city with sea access. No immediate access to fishes. No immediate bonus overlays.

Cyan (hollow)

My alternative pick for first city.

Advantages:
Immediate access to fishes and BG (may be 2 BG from influence zone connection from Berlin). Access to sea, so we can check off the sea access requirement off the rest of our cities (though it may be good to have a 2nd sea access city in the north). Across river defence.

Disadvantages:
2 squares overlap. Since we only have 5 cities, this may be a big thing. We gain 2 coast squares at a loss of 1 hill, 1 forest(grassland).

Green (solid)

My pick for 2nd city.

Advantages:
Access to river. hill protection, across river defence. Very good number of hills, grassland. another production powerhouse. No overlap with Berlin. Little if any jungle to contend with.

Disadvantages:
No immediate access to BG.

Green (hollow)

My alternative pick for 2nd city

Advantages:
Immediate access to 2 BG!!! and one more when borders have expanded.

Disadvantages:
No hill defence, 1 BG overlap with Berlin.

Overall comments on Green:
We need full recon of the area to really decide this one. May have other stuff hidden away. Still the location looks good.

Red (solid)

My preliminary pick for 3rd city

Advantages:
Sea Access. River close enough for irrigation. Cattle. No overlap with Berlin.

Disadvantages:
I have no idea what's north of red. Is the water fresh or salty? Most squares will be sea or plains, likely to be a decent city.

Please comment people.

@Bugsy

Your red has, like you said, the jungles. We need better recon to decide.

Your blue seems to be overly exposed to the sea (too many sea squares). But the advantage is no overlap. Definitely a good consideration.

gorm, I like your cyan (hollow) site. (Never knew what cyan was. Always called that "some kind of light blue") But the two overlap might hurt.

I guess what we need is more geographic knowledge. Where is those National Geographic people!! They always have good maps. :D

I'm starting some slow play here at work. (I switch between e-mail, excel, word, and civ.)

The overlaps is a mountain(no really a big deal in my opinion) and a luxury hill. Still it is something we need to consider.

Pre-flight – 3050 BC – A barracks might be better in the short term, but I can see Gengis’ thinking and stick with the Granary. Population will equal power in the early game.
Check in with Joan. My she looks nice this morning. :love: *Bugsy moves his eyes upward.* Concentrate!! Ask her about selling Masonry. Her demands are just too much for a tech we couldn’t use right away.

I check the sliders. I love the early game. Regardless of our science budget, we’ll get IW in 21 turns. Yeah, baby!! I leave it at 10%.

Hit enter

(1) 3000 BC – Move southern warrior to next hill. We might have a good coastal city site here at this river delta. Move worker to next BG. Eastern warrior moves towards the GH. City grew, but doesn’t need a lux bump? 3 content citizens.
(2) 2950 BC – Start mining the BG. The GH gives us an almost entirely worthless map. Southern Warrior heads south for one more turn. I’ll start him circling around to the west now.
(3) 2900 BC – Check in with Joanie to see if she has anything new. :love: She asks me if I’m there for a reason or whether I like to visit just like to look down her shirt. :blush:
(4) 2850 BC - :sleep:
(5) 2800 BC - :sleep: Joan is in my dreams. I ask her about masonry and other stuff. I realize it wasn’t a dream when she slaps me. But she’s still polite! :love:
(6) 2750 BC – I’m circling the eastern warrior back to check out west of Paris. I normally wouldn’t do this, but I feel the local geographic intel is more important.
IBT – Granary=>Barracks
(7) 2710 BC – That is one serious jungle!
(8) 2670 BC – Mine completes on BG, Barracks now due in 2. Start road.
(9) 2630 BC - :sleep:
IBT: Barracks=>Warrior (a settler escort?)
(10) 2590 BC – Our southern (now western) warrior sees dyes and meets a purple warrior. His leader is a wrinkly, polite old man named Gandhi. He has CB, 10G and 2 cities. He’ll sell us CB for 32G. Thinking about getting something from Joan… :love: masonry!! (get those thoughts out of your head!) We go for the deal. Joan will trade us Masonry for Pottery, CB & 82G. We could then sell it to Gandhi and get two techs for Pottery and 70-ish G. :hmm: I go for it. Gandhi gives us 42G for Masonry. So we got Masonry and CB for Pottery and 72G.

Here’s a screen shot with commentary:
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads5/GK1_-_2590_BC_Map.jpg

The orange dot has some potential, although early corruption may hurt, plus cultural pressure from Joan, who by the way will be our second victim. Plus we may find a better site to the west of Paris around gorm’s original red dot.

The red dot coastal city could free us up to use gorm’s original cyan dot.

Gorm’s original green dot is looking like the better choice to the west. At little more intel to the northwest of that site will probably confirm that.

Here’s the
save (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads5/GK1,_2590_BC.SAV)

Originally posted by Stapel
Can I join?

If yes, count me in!

You're in. Welcome aboard.

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

I like the green & cyan dots location. While I'm normally not a big fan of OCP, I think having no overlap will be better in this variant. Larger territory means a better chance of a resource popping up on a square we control.

I also like Gorms original red dot, but only if its a coastal city & not just bordering a lake.

Beyond the first 2 we'll need more map location in the west & north to determine the best sites.

Good trading in the last turn bugsy. Nice to see you're infatuation didn't make you cut her a break.;)

I tot this is Ocillating AW? Dun we need to declare on Joan?

Opps, my bad...we already met Lizzy.

We're supposed to fight our first victim, Liz, until she is dead. Then we have to go after Joan. Maybe we should just get married to her then we'd fight all the time anyway.

That is definately salt water to our north. Now whether that salt water is our version of the great salt lake like in 6-2 is another story.

@Bugsy

I actually got an Great Lighthouse in a city next to the great salt lake in 6-2. Right now, I have monopolistic communications on both continents, and trading 1 continents' tech for the other. WAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!

@GK

OCP = Open City Placement?

Optimal City Placement- perfect borders/no overlap

OCP or RCP - I think in this case we need to throw those out the window and go for our best city location. We only get five and need to optimize each.

Who's next?
Gengis
Bugs (just played)
Bebe (up)
gorm (on deck)
Stapel

Originally posted by Gengis Khan


You're in. Welcome aboard.
Cool!


I like the green & cyan dots location. While I'm normally not a big fan of OCP, I think having no overlap will be better in this variant. Larger territory means a better chance of a resource popping up on a square we control.

I also like Gorms original red dot, but only if its a coastal city & not just bordering a lake.

Beyond the first 2 we'll need more map location in the west & north to determine the best sites.

Good trading in the last turn bugsy. Nice to see you're infatuation didn't make you cut her a break.;)

Settling on a gold hill is always a good idea I think! A 2nd city there (3 tiles west) will boost our early development, but of course cause overlap: very annoying in 5cc.

Maybe we should discover a little bit more land in the northwest and south first?

We are getting IW in 11, so let's finalise our 1st city once we can see iron.

@Stapel

Do we still get the bonus from the gold overlay if we settle on it? I was under the impression that we do not. Please enlighten me.

The only thing about the gold hill that kills it in my mind is that it isn't on the river. Think getting IW before making a decision is a good idea. I also wish I knew where there were some horses. Maybe someone we meet soon will have the wheel.

Way to immediatly jump into the mix stapel!

We still get the bonus, however it is penalized due to being in despot & then again IIRC for being under a city.

The biggest problem with settling our 2nd city to the west is thats the direction of the English. I'd hate to put down that city only to have the English raze a turn or two later. We need to find out where Lizzy is on the map before we start moving west.

[edit]- anyone else having severe server problems??

The green dot gives us an outpost to the west on good defensible ground. Cyan dot has potential for iron in them thar hills.

I prefer a denser build so would probably aim fourth site towards cattle in NE.

From the shape of things looks like we in the chokepoint between two larger landmasses.

If no objections I'll go in that direction.

Bede

[delurk] I'm pretty sure you get the gold bonus even if you settle on the gold hill. Not being on the river is a drag though.

edit - yeah, server problems

A dense build would be our death. With only 5 cities we need to cover as much territory as we can.

Go ahead & start your turns. All I ask is if/when you build a settler, you come back to the forum & post a screenshot with a suggestion of what you plan on doing with him. Since we only have 5 cities we need to all be involved in where they go/what order, ect. Our city placement is gonna be the single most important part of this game.

Hmm....bec you lose cattle bonus if you settle on a cattle square, I would assume that you lose gold advantage as well, since they are both overlays. Well, you learn something everyday.

I don't think you "lose" the cattle, you just can't improve it which is a loss in itself.

At least thats what I though, I can't remember once settling on a cattle.:p

You get 2food, 1shield if you settle on a hill, or tundra as well. Hence, we alway try to settle on the worse square.

Therefore, as far as I know, all production is the same for a city square no matter where you settle. The only exception is river.

The more I think about it, I'm not sure that the location of iron and horses will make a huge difference, as long as they are somewhere in our general vacinity. I think we should plan on the strength of a location and use colonies as necessary.

Food and shields are always 2/1 (before C3C, which I understand changes things a bit) for the center square of the city. Commerce depends on the underlying tile -- you get all tile bonuses for commerce, so settling on a gold hill actually gets you a fair bit of commerce from your city square, which makes it kinda nice. You also see this from settling on luxuries occasionally.

HTH,
Arathorn

Arathorn beat me too it.

Well you learn something new everyday. Guess that was it today for me.:D

Thanks Arathorn. I wish I knew that before I started the latest GOTM. :D

Thanks Arathorn. I guess my confusion is my classification of bonuses.

I consider cattle,game, wheat,gold, forest and jungles as overlays, which disappears when you settle on them. Luxuries do not, therefore the bonuses stays. Please forgive me ignorance.

Originally posted by gormdragan
Do we still get the bonus from the gold overlay if we settle on it? I was under the impression that we do not. Please enlighten me.

Yes it does (as said by others I see)! Settling on gold is huge advantage. +4 (-1 in despotism) gold.

But I agree with GK that we can't use overlap in this game. But maybe we discover another great spot if we explore jus a little bit more. City placement will be extremely important in this game.

So far, it hard to say! We really can use any bonus we see!

Based on Bugsy's Screen shot will porceed as follows:

Finish warrior=>spear=>bow=>settler. Settler to west city dot on hill. Defensible location with river and BG and can choke off movement from W or SW into core.

At Berlin same process, sending bow west and spear to SE followed by settler.

Any comments?
Will check in before starting at 8:00 PM EST.

Bede, the humble Irish monk.

Bede, I think that's a good build plan. I don't know if you'll get to move the settler very far. That looks like 80 shields worth of production. and at present we're getting 8 spt. Add another two citizens and...
[Irish Brogue] you might rabbit, you might. [/Irish Brogue]
Bugs

why bow? and why spear? I think war are worth a lot more, since they can be upgraded to swords.

gorm, thinking about the warrior=> sword upgrade then a rush on London? Probably a good plan.

Bede, you might want to consider this idea: pump warriors until you get to pop 5 then go for a settler.

Here's the thinking:
Warriors cost 1gpt to maintain at half the defense value of spears and half the attack value of bows.

<oops should read>So for 6 turns you get 2 on dee and 2 on attack. Spears can cover bows and lock up the western approaches (liz is coming from w no?) Suck her warriors and bows onto open ground around eastern city and slaughter them before the get into core. then drive east towards her capital with a combined force.

If we find iron in 11 turns then we can start to pump warriors for upgrade while workers connect. Meanwhile we're hurting the queen and stalling her offense, building cash and developing a solid base for city defense.

At pop 5-7 Berlin will have a strong prod base of 10-12 spt so turning a spear in 3 and a bow in another 3 and a settler in three should work.

Await your comments.

Bede, the humble monk

While I'm not the biggest fan of archers, having an archer or two, & a couple spears can't hurt while waiting for the pop to get higher. Who knows we might not have access to Iron until we take out the English, so the archers might come in handy.

That's some solid thinking. The only thing better than archers would be horses so they could attack then get back under cover. That's a potential problem with archers. Say you attack a stack of two. The first archer wins, but stays in place. The second wins and advances. I guess that's why you send them out in archer/spear pairs. Nevermind.

If no other comments I'm off like a herd of turtles.

10 turns right?

Bede

Go get 'em Brother Bede!!

Go for it Bebe.

Yep 10 turns. Good luck with the goody huts.

Thanks for the solid start Mighty Khan and Noble Bugsy.

2590 - Preflight:
Berlin grows in 1. IW in 11.
44g +3gpt
Citizens content.

1) 2550
Liz's warriors approach from W.
Move worker SW to hook up incense hill.
Move W Warrior north. Move N Warrior north towards coast.

2) 2510
Worker starts road in forest towards incense.
W Warrior moves NW.
N Warrior move N.
Two more of Liz's troops approach from west.
Warrior finishes start spear.
With two MP at berlin move lux back to zero

3) 2470
Liz loses one warrior. Has stack of 3 at Berlin (2 conscripts, 1 regular)
Scouting warriors continue north from respective places.
Lux back to ten to cover possible loss of warrior in next attack.

4) 2430
Liz attacks twice. Loses one wins one.
W Warrior turns west.
N Warrior scontinues north.
Liz's 1/2 strength warrior turns back to neutral territory. Conscript fortifies.
Growth in 1 lux stays at 10%

5) 2390
W Warrior moves W
N Warrior continues north
Worker builds road
Liz's conscript builds fortified camp on unused tile
Spear pops, fortify, start bow
Growth in 1
Lux at 10%

6) 2350
W Warrior moves west
N Warrrior moves NE along coast.
Worker builds road
Liz's conscript washes underwear.

7)2310
W Warrior moves west
N Warrior moves east.

8) 2270
Liz moves vet towrads Berlin
Archer pops, fortified, start spear.
Move citizen to roaded forest. Increase spt to ten and gpt to 3.
Lux stays at 10%
W Warrior move NW, spots barb on hill.
North Warrior moves south

9) 2230
Liz attacks. loses vet warrior
W Warrior moves N
N warrior moves south
Worker starts road on incense hill
Lux at 10%
Bow takes out last warrior.
Change spear to warrior.

10) Start spear tpwards western city location
Fortify archer.
Move N Warrior south
W warior has barb to SE and Liz warrior to west. Move N, let 'em chase me.

Sit rep-
IW due in 1
71 gold-2gpt-10spt
1 happy 4 content 1 unhappy
Lux at 10%
Warrior due in 1
Worker will finish incense road in 5
Growth in 4

Could some kind soul pull screen shot? The monastery's manuscript illuminator's are on strike for higher pay and better working conditions. Can you imagine, they want more and bigger candles! The nerve! Let 'em work in the dark

I hope this leads you all to the save.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads5/GK1_2190BC

Bede, the humble monk, working in the dark.

Don't know why that isn't letting me load it. Here's the Save (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads5/GK1_2190BC.SAV). Don't know whats up with that, it's loaded in the uploads folder just fine.

Good set of turns. I would post a screenie but I'm as in the dark as you. I'll send you a couple candles if I can spare the gold.;)

Originally posted by Bede

3) 2470
Liz loses one warrior. Has stack of 3 at Berlin (2 conscripts, 1 regular)
Scouting warriors continue north from respective places.
Lux back to ten to cover possible loss of warrior in next attack.

Oops! You don't need to be pro-active with unhappiness! I think that is a CIV I & II thingy! It's not a big deal, but we should be careful with these unneeded actions. I expect this game to be tough!

On our troop building: A few spears and one (or maybe, very maybe, two) archer is fine, but we should make a choice between either horsies, or swords, I think.

Since we will have iron in Gorm's first turn, swords seem logical. My usual tactic is to build 20 warriors and upgrade them in one turn to swords. We do not need to hook up the iron immediatly.

On the city placement: I really can't tell yet.... It is very important! A bit moreland recovery would be nice!

I would vote for swords for the following reasons.

1) Iron is revealed in my next turn.
2) We have no UU in Chivalry so the advantage of knights is not as distinct.
3) The cost of upgrading to swords is 40 while upgrade from horse to knights is in the range of 80!! (Not sure the actual cost, I only know upgrade from horse to rider is 80).
4) We have lots of jungles and hills in the west and south and that's the direction Lizzy is on. Advantage of mobility of horsemen are lost.

I think a screenshot at this point is worth a thousand words. "Hint, hint."

Actually, in this specific instance, you DO have to be pro-active with happiness. After the human's main turn, the AI takes its main turn. If it kills one of your MP units during its turn, you will not have an opportunity to deal with the happiness loss before the city riots (unless it's a later city and you can use scroll-ahead). It's rare that one needs to be pro-active in Civ3 about happiness (YAY!), but it does happen. Spending one or two gold as insurance in this case is a very wise move.

Arathorn

Originally posted by Arathorn
Actually, in this specific instance, you DO have to be pro-active with happiness. After the human's main turn, the AI takes its main turn. If it kills one of your MP units during its turn, you will not have an opportunity to deal with the happiness loss before the city riots (unless it's a later city and you can use scroll-ahead). It's rare that one needs to be pro-active in Civ3 about happiness (YAY!), but it does happen. Spending one or two gold as insurance in this case is a very wise move.

Arathorn

Yes, it does happen, but I am pretty sure not in this case.

If the city was unhappy, but not rioting in the turn before, a pro-active move is very wise. But in this example, this wasn't he case, I think.

You'd be wrong, but you're welcome to believe that. Loss of MPP is one of the ways that happiness can change after a player's main turn and before production. Since check for rioting is the first thing done in the "city production" phase, you're SOL.

Arathorn

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads5/GK1_-_2190_BC_-_West_Map.jpg
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads5/GK1_-_2190_BC_-_East_Map.jpg

BTW - I think Arathorn is correct. If you have two MPs and a balanced city happiness-wise. Then lose one of your MPs due to an AI attack, at the start of your turn the computer will detect an unhappy city because you now only have one MP => riot.

Can someone explain the logic of letting Berlin grow so big? We have MP issues to tackle + we are really losing out on production and $$$. It has been 40turns without a settler.

Based on what I see from the screenshots,

I will vote to settle NW of the Northern cattle 1st.

My reasons
(1) it's away from Lizzy.
(2) it has a cattle in the immediate vicinity.
(3) it is only 1 square away from road connection with Berlin.
(4) most of the squares are plains, which require 2 turns for irrigation as opposed to 3 turns for mining. Therefore, I think this is the fastest city to grow to decent production state.


I think we have delayed city production for way too long (my opinion). I am probably going to quick build 2 settlers in a row to make up for losses. Lizzy war is pretty much out for a while due to the huge jungle between us (I am assuming Lizzy is in the south). I think it is better to start building a production base. The merit of having a big city as a settler factory is really lose in view that we only need 4 cities. It's better to have more cities to start growing and start productions. My 2cents.

Originally posted by Arathorn
You'd be wrong, but you're welcome to believe that. Loss of MPP is one of the ways that happiness can change after a player's main turn and before production. Since check for rioting is the first thing done in the "city production" phase, you're SOL.

Arathorn

I am doubting now!

I dont' think I have ever let it happen then! Will check!

I was thinking that we might build our northern city one tile west of the wheat. That would grab the wheat, the fish, four hills and a BG. It could have some serious production. The long term gains in shield production would out weigh the short term improvement gains.

Edit - And I think Berlin is at the right size to finally start pumping our four settlers. We can probably get four or five turns per settler. Grow to six, drop to 4 or 5 depending on where the food box is. We're in good shape in Berlin. Plus we're at war. We've needed the military units.

Sounds good Gorm, settling NE of the cattle. I think N could be better, as we will cover more land tiles. But once again, we need to explore more!

@ Bugsy

I agree with your choice of location, but we are really running behind in production, and I would like a quick start city soon. The other comment I have on that spot is no sea access and is abit far from our capital. Strategically, we will be at a disadvantage. What about SW of wheat instead of W?

Edit - We have no bonus squares. There is no way we can get 4 or 5 turn settlers. Looks like a 10 turn settler cycle to me. (we produce 2 extra food a turn, with granary, we need 20food to grow 2 citizens). Therefore, having a large population doesn't help since the growth still needs to catch up with production.

@Stapel

Actually after a 2nd look, I was wondering about N of cattle myself. It gets 1 more hill, retains sea access and more land. I think it would be a good choice as well.

Our lack of exploration is my fault. I diverted our warrior in the NE to check out the lay of the land to the north. I felt that knowledge of the local terrain was more important than far away exploration to the east of Paris. We lost about eight turns of exploration because of that move. I still think it was a good idea, since we are now discussing where to place our northern city.

gorm, I think a good quick start location would be the cyan dot location due east of Berlin. It has some plains for easy irrigation, it is away from Liz, our worker has a road completed part of the way there, and it is on a river for more commerce.

I agree with your site one north of the cow. It would only have three sea tiles, would grab a gold mountain, and would have some good shield production. Plus we could use it to build some workers which we will need a few more of soon. Once we get some slaves we could merge the workers back into our cities.

I think we have pretty good exploration, I wouldn't settle any where further than what we can see now. I think what makes or breaks our choices is where the resources (horse and iron) lies.

I apologise to Bede and Arathorn ;) !

Well, we'll know about iron as soon as you hit enter.

What should we research next? Should we count on the AI researching the wheel and go for math, or should we go for the wheel at a pretty quick pace and find out where the horses are?

I'd say go for Math.

I say go for Maths, the lose in horses is not so drastic if we have cats and our cities are close by. Furthermore, we are plagued with jungles and hills so horseman are pretty useless.

In a related topic on exploration, I personally think the recon is sufficient and am toying with the idea of using the forward scouts to look for other AIs. If anyone has any objection to that, let me know where you want more recon and I will do so b4 hunting for the rest of the gang.

gorm - I'd just like to see what's under that dark spot north of green dot. One or two tiles from our western warrior would be sufficient. It may help out in our city placement.

I'd like to see some more northwest of Berlin! But it can wait!

I think you are both talking about the same spot. In any case, I will post a screenshot, once we get IW and let's start the discussion again from there. Screenshot will be tonight though.

Bede's tuppence:

Liz approaches from the West Riding. If her capitol is to the south west she's mired in the jungle and can't be very productive. If her capital is to the west or northwest it becomes imperative that we lock down the western approaches with a walled town on the hill above the river. It is defensible ground and with proper unit placement we can force her approaching warriors into the open killing ground west and south of the river or towards the NW.

We know where Joanie's borders are, we haven't found Liz's border yet. Once we know that we need to take the war to her, and develop our backline cities to the north and east. Incense on line and Settler production at Berlin will solve the happiness and lux tax problem. With Berlin at pop 5-7 we can alternate builds between military and settlers.

I can't buy the 20 warrior plan. That's 400 gold to upgrade and meanwhile they are not much more than MP's and each one costs 1gpt meanwhile.

I would want to take the war towards Liz. It will keep her poor and stunt her growth.

Good hunting, gorm.

Bede

Preturn:

Good news!!! India already has the wheel, and mystism. French has mystism. I should be able to trade for the wheel and mystism the next turn.

Trade 25gp for a french worker.

2150:
Berlin makes war, starts settler.

Trade IW for Wheel+29gp. India got IW IBT.

I will stop here, so that we can discuss. This is a very bad start. We have neither iron nor horse and only 1 single luxury (don't even have extra for trading). We are in for a rough ride. :D

To be continued.



http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads5/Map.jpg

The only iron I see is in the SW mountain & I don't see a single horse. I'm sure I'm missing some(I really hope so at least).

Can you edit your map with the iron & horses highlighted or circled or something to make it easier to plan.

Thanks in advance!

Red circle denotes Iron. No horses in sight.


http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads5/Map1.jpg

:lol: See I was missing something..................one freaking iron source.

I remember saying this challenge would be tough, but I don't remember naming it Mission Impossible. Looks like our first dozen battles will be fought with *gulp* archers.

:suicide:

My first view:

No chance with iron! It is gonna take a 100 turns before it is hooked up to our capitol.
Since we have no horsies at all (you did make the screenshot after the IW-wheel trade? Of course you did, just wishful thinking here), we have no choice, I think!

Maybe someting shows up northwest of Berlin?

General thoughts:

Ouch. no iron, no horse.

Looks like a war of attrition.

Won't have the muscle to launch an offensive against Liz till we get cats (where the h... is she anyway?). She's at least 14 squares away to the W or SW and probably already has IW from India. If she keeps coming at us from the W an outpost city on that hill and river to the NW will help. If there's a barb camp between us and Liz that may slow her down a little.

What about pushing bow/spear pairs toward Liz, once we find her, and try a park and pillage tactic? That will stop her growth and we can pick her mililtary to pieces as they emerge into the open.

Good hunting, gorm.

Some, including myself, consider a pillage growth tactic as abusive. I like to know the group's opinion on this.

I don't have experience with the pillage growth tactic. It seems a bit abusive, but I think it is fair in this game ;) !

We are not in a hurry! We don't need to finsih lizzy rigth now!
I keep saying that settling on the right spots still is the most important thing to do! We should focus on that first!

Just throwing options out here:

Option #1 How about a spear archer rush on Paris. I know we're not suppose to start our AW with Joan until Liz is dead, but that doesn't mean we can't start a limited war much earlier. Paris could be our western city and we could put three more in between Paris and Berlin. Many the cyan dot, the cow dot, and the dot by the game from my post earlier. With a force of 7 archers and 3 spears, we could take Paris. We would then sue for peace when Joanie will talk to us.

Advantages - Don't have to clear jungle, Good defensible land. Iron, wine
Disadvantages - Not as many rivers. Two front war for a few turns.

Option #2 - Settle down by the iron, then have a city north of that by the dyes, the coastal city from my turns and probably gorm's green dot.

Advantages - we get the lux and iron. A lot of rivers
Disadvantages - We have to clear that jungle. Better go slave hunting.

Option #3 - Work our original plan. save one or two cities for remoter locations. Bring in resources with colonies and long roads.
Advantages - We get production up quicker.
Disadvantages - Scattered cities, defending colonies

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads5/GK1_-_2190_BC_-_West_Map1.jpg


I think you hit the nail with the first option, for the following reasons.

(1) Paris has iron.
(2) We get our 2nd luxury in the wine south of Paris.
(3) We still have a decent defensive placement strategically.

Here is my take on a new dotmap based on your option #1.

Our 5 cities can be:

(1) Berlin
(2) Red or Blue (we can do a palace jump).
(3) Paris
(4) Cyan
(5) Yellow or Orange (or even a city west of Berlin).

Boy, Bede's archer and spear build is looking smarter all the time.

I would go for the tile between yellow and orange. It gets the game without having two mountains in its 21 tiles.

As for palace jump, I'd do it only if we do it with a leader. Disbanding Berlin would cripple us.

Do we want to consider the cyan dot one tile south for a coastal site, or are we in enough trouble that we should max production?

I'd go for blue dot for more shield producing hills.

Just so option two get's a hearing, here's a potential dot map:
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads5/GK1_-_Option_2.jpg

Pro's: once that jungle is cleared we will have a lot of Grassland. Grabs the iron and dyes. Defensible land without horses.

Con's: Jungle

To be frank, I think option #2 is very problematic.

(1) We need to road 4 grassland, 4 jungles, 1 mountain and 1 hill to bring iron back to Berlin.
(2) I very must doubt our settler will make it there b4 anyone else.

@Bugsy

The square between yellow and orange does not have river access. That's why I picked Orange. Having a token number of mountains is actually good for production so I dun see what;s wrong with yellow.

When I said palace jump, I meant building or rushing. Disbanding Berlin is a Free Palace Jump. Sorry about the confusion.

Gorm, I'm not convinced option 2 is our best option either. I just thought it should be given a fair hearing. If everybody else thinks it's :smoke: Then it should be given it's last meal and shot at dawn.

Another reason to consider orange, more river tiles=more commerce.

I didn't know the spot between yellow and orange didn't have river access. Which makes yellow more problematic. With the red/blue site not being on a river, we're already having to build one aqueduct. Not having to spend another 100 shields on a second aqueduct would be a good thing.

We definitely should consider all our options. Therefore, my response were merely my first thoughts on option 2.

Edit - now that you mentioned it, can someone confirm that the spot between yellow and orange has river access? If so, I think it's a better spot.

Let's see if I can open up the game here at work.
*opens multiple databases to obscure the task bar*

Yes, the spot in between is on a river. Yellow dot is not.

That's good, I picked orange only because of the river access. Your choice is definitely a better spot.

One last thought, and then I'll shut up. A bit of reconnaissence around the north side of Paris might be a good idea before starting our short war against Joan.

*Sigh* - I guess she'll never like us now :( :D

Sir Bugsy, I now see why they call you guys "errant". You sure do think outside the box.

gormdragon, we're going to need all the mojo firebreathing you can muster. You sure inherited a bunch of bad choices.

I'll push one more time for the West Riding city placement as the first next best move. Pushing east towards Joanie and the iron and vino looks to be the best of the rest.

Joanie's got TW and IW no? We need to locate her horses, if she has any, we know where at least one iron is. That can be done while the Army of the East is a-buiilding. We've 12-16 turns for recon.

I'd stay out of the jungle meself. Too dark, too wet, too much like the monastery.

Talk to ya'll later

Bede

Bede, sometimes we are some far away from the cardboard, we need to use binoculars to see where we used to be.

Have the time we discuss all sorts of crazy ideas and never get close to doing any of them. I find the strategy discussions to be very instructive in learning both positive and negative aspects of the game.

Onward, knights errant! I like that title, we can be

The Knights Errant of the Civ Table

I think cyan should be our first city built. That will be a nice bonus to our production base & is on a river.

Beyond that we really need to find the nearest horse source before we build any more cities. Who knows we could get lucky & find a horse 6 tiles away from Berlin in the NW.

2110:

2070:

2030:
Berlin makes settler, starts war.
reg war kills con war, +25gp.
Still no sign of horses.

Stop here to review.

Located a wealth of ivory. I have half a heart to go for the dyes+ivory and settle to the west of Berlin.

The settler is on his way to cyan spot, can veto.


http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads5/map11.jpg

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads5/Map2.jpg

Bede's going to love this one. So far outside the box, the cardboard is only availble with a telescope.

How about if we built our cites quite a distanc e away from each other. Like one by the ivory, one by the dyes, one by the incense, and Paris.

Advantages - If the spacing is right, corruption shouldn't be an issue. We have a much greater coverage of land. Other civs won't be able to settle next to our resources and ruin our colonies.

Disadvantages - can't give mutual support until roads are developed. A lot of worker turns to connect each city.

What do you think?

*Bugsy grabs the empty pizza box and places it on his head expecting incoming empty beer cans to be thrown at him*

Bugsy,
Having our cities so far apart scares this old monk!! But that's why I'm in the monastery and you're on a quest I guess.

gorm,
Keep pushing that warrior west. We need to find the wicked witch of the west and position ourselves to get advance warning of any of her flying monkeys heading our way.

The SE city spot looks good if you still intend to shortstop Joanie with a "little war". Then I should think up the coast to just above the cattle, that way we will funnel the witch of the east into the plains surrounded by mountains directly east of Berlin. Need to keep a gimlet eye on that iron mountain NW of Paris. If Joanie hooks it up we got a BIIIG problem as the military we can build will just get chewed up by her swords.



Keep on pushing gorm.

Bede

Interesting idea Bugsy.

Advantages:
If we could work it out with regards to RCP, corruption wouldn't be that bad at all(maybe 1 to 2 shields lost to each city).
Happiness wouldn't be a problem for..........ever.
No colonies to worry about protecting.
Mass amounts of cultural building in each town would ensure we control the whole area & don't have to worry about the AI settling in between our cities. Plus a better chance of new resources popping up in our territory.

Disadvantages: We'd have to pump out a bunch of workers. At least 1 to go along with each settler/spear pair initially.
Very difficult to reinforce threatened cities.
Slow initial growth.

I think it would defiantly help us out if we could survive long term, but setting it up & lasting that long with the inevitable SoD the English will be sending our way would be difficult to say the least. Although if we could pull it off & win a 5CC with our cities set up like that from the jump it would defiantly be one for the record books.

I would go for a widespread strategy. Please comment on where we want the 4 cities.

You would go along with it or you think it would be advantagous?

Never tried b4, I think it is doable and I think it is advantageous. I think we need the extra ivories and dyes for trading and since we are only at war with 1 AI at a time in Monarch, defence shouldn't be a concern.

:lol: If we could pull this one off "errant" doesn't even begin to cover us.:lol:

I'll check it out. It would be nice if we could get a perfect ring with at least the dyes, incense, & ivory.

Where's the settler at now?

The mountain 2 squares east from Berlin under the war.

One thing to consider.........
You will never get your borders expanded fast enough to prevent the AI from dropping 1 or even 2 cities between your cities.
That in itself brings a lot of implications to bear. For instance, will you need an ROP just to move units from city to city?
Just some food for thought.

I know we wouldn't, but that indirectly would help us out even more.

Say they do drop a city in between our core, nothing like razing it(netting some slaves in the process) to make them cough up some techs, & with us surrounding them we could raze it & then sue for peace long(hopefully) before they could get troops to our cities........ as long as horses are as scarce for us as they are for them.

I full agree. An AI settling in between is no problem at all.

Gorm, go ahead! We can decide about the other 3 cities later.

Err, I am not sure if we are still settling on cyan. Please give me a confirmation.

The Curia is, as always, slightly obtuse, but the consensus seems to be the cyan spot, the ivory, then the dyes, at the same time trying to wrest Paris from Joan and fend off the flying monkeys from the west.

Does that sound about right?

Bede, the confused

Go ahead Gorm! Cyan dot is fien to me. I am not 100% convinced, but I do not know a better alternative!

Wow, my idea is actually getting discussed :eek: :confused: :lol:

Well if we want to pull this off we don't want to settle cyan. We'll want to head settler #1 off towards that ivory. By the time he gets there we'll have a location

You are the brainchild of this outfit. :grad:

I follow the same line of thought as well. I think we should move to the distant cities as we have got a long way to trakk.

gorm if you could post a screen shot with grid lines of both the Paris area and the lux areas, I'll work out a ring profile.

I'm at work, and hence have no access to my save. Sorry.

I am also "Still waiting on C3C from Amazon :("

Let me see what I can do with past screen shots.

:goodjob: Bugsy

:goodjob: gorm

White smoke from the chimney.

Bede

Brother Bede, does the white smoke mean:
a) we have a new pope
b) the cardboard box is completely gone
c) our brains are completely fried

First, it appears Paris is 14.5 from Berlin.

Ivory is 10.5 from Berlin
The NW Dyes are at 10.5
We can have a coastal city at 10.5

So QED... Paris must burn, sorry Joan.

Here is a potential dot map of our future western cities.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads5/GK1_-_Western_Dot_Map.jpg

Problems I see, The Dyes-city won't be on a river, but that will be the only one.

Here is a proposal for the New Paris:
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads5/GK1_-_New_Paris_Map.jpg

This city would be at distance 12.5 from Berlin, but it would grab the all important iron.

does the white smoke mean:
a) we have a new pope
b) the cardboard box is completely gone
c) our brains are completely fried


AB or BC depending on how you draw the lines.

Can't wait to see how this works out.

Bugsy, better order another pizza, you are all out of cardboard to put over your head when the candlesticks start flying.

Good luck, gorm.

Bede

RCP is lost even if 1 city is off target. What abt sacking paris, and build on the BG SW of wine lux. We can use a colony for iron. But this spot has no river access. The other alternative is East of Northern Wheat. This was a spot chosen by you in an earlier discussion. This one needs a wine colony too.

both gets 10.5 from Berlin. Both needs a colony for iron. Both have no river access.

I am not saying we should go for 10.5 RCP. I am just throwing ideas out.

We're going to be walking a tight rope on this one for about 100 turns. And we're going to be walking that rope regardless of how we place our cities. If you're tighter, we'll need colonies. If we're loose we'll need to block the AI's settler pairs that will try to settle "our" lands. I think some early cultural buildings will be key. Probably need to start doing some leader fishing.

So, I'd say our plan for the next 50 turns or so will need to be:
1. Get our 3 additional settlers built.
2. Get a strong escort service for each one. (At least two spears each)
3. Peal off workers as soon as it is feasible.
4. Build Task Force Paris. (How big?)

Man, I love the discuusion on this! Gorm, do you know where to move the settler now? Ivory first I guess!

The discussion is cool, but it brings up a small personal problem. I was hoping to play my first turns tonight. Tomorrow morning (btw, I am six hours ahead on NY, one on London, and I 9 on California), I will be hospitalised. I will get out saturday or sunday (with a new cruciate ligament).
Feel free to change positions! And don't panic when I won't show up before sunday.
After that I will be home for a month at least, which is pretty much why I signed up for this SG.

@Stapel

why dun you take the save and play first? I wil post my 3 turns save to you, you can play 10turns and I will complete my 7 after you. I should be home around 1900ET/1800CT. As a matter of fact, you would be doing me a favor as I am up in other SG (Rick1) as well. Appreciate if you wouldn't mind swapping with me. :thanx:

Stapel - I hope everything goes well. Having messed up knees isn't fun, but neither is the surgery.

Originally posted by gormdragan
@Stapel

why dun you take the save and play first? I wil post my 3 turns save to you, you can play 10turns and I will complete my 7 after you. I should be home around 1900ET/1800CT. As a matter of fact, you would be doing me a favor as I am up in other SG (Rick1) as well. Appreciate if you wouldn't mind swapping with me. :thanx:

That would be ok, but, when you get home, I will be asleep already (1 am then). This one is posted a 11:09 pm.

I am not in a hurry! I'll 'claim' my turn saturday or sunday ;) .

Cheers & later,

Stapel

It never fails, by the time I get on all the good strategizing is done.:lol:

Excellent dotmap bugsy! I also agree we should go with the Ivory first.

And the long trek across a tightrope begins.

I still can't believe we're going to do this, but the more I think about it the more it makes sense.

Any wagers that our plans will change again before we have our third city founded?

:lol: I think that is virtually guarenteed.

I think we have officially left the box miles behind.

If we pull off this variant with 5 cities that are each 10 tiles from our capitol.....wow.:rotfl:

I think it's time to bite the bullet, we have to agree on something or this game wouldn't move. Ivory city it is.

@GK

GOTM24-Oda is opening more slots, you can sign up.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=67030

Thanks, I posted a reply in the SG A thread.

Go ahead & take your turns; make for the ivory like a drunk chasing happy hour.

Good luck!

gorm's on Team B - This should be fun :D

You're going down gorm!!;)

Hmm, I wonder if I can ask for a roster swap to the A team? Would it be unappropriate? is that uncool?

Go for it, I'm all for another SG with you 2.

[edit]- Just post a message in SG A forum & hopefully someone will be willing to switch. :D

Gorm, you did go ahead with your seven remaining turns didn't you?

btw, I am back home way sooner than expected!

I will finish the game by the end of today. Sorry about it.

Take your time!

2030:

1990:
Gave Joan 40g for contact with Russian.
Trade IW for Mystism with Russian.

1950:
Vet archer kills vet war, redlines.
vet spear kills reg war, promotes.

I checked, suing peace with lizzy gets us writing. :( too bad we can't do that.

1910:
Berlin makes spear, starts arch.

IBT:
Elite spear kills reg war.

1870:

1830:

1790:
Berlin makes arch, starts settler.

Next better player.


The save (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads5/GK1,_1790_BC.SAV)


http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads5/Map21.jpg


What about settling where the war is. Reasons

(1) Access BGs immediately
(2) Sea access
(3) But lose river access.

Can someone please post screenshots, this pic was taken some time back, does not reflect actually maps now. My graphics is screwed up because i installed the GOTMs packs for the GOTM-Oda game. In my graphics, the incense we have is now rubber.

Suggestion:
Settle in corner next to mountain, will have river borders on three sides for better defense. Can post sentry on mtn to west for early warning of incoming flying monkeys and or barbs. will have prime killing grounds on plains surrounding mountain.

Bede.

The problem with settling where the warrior is or next to the mtn is that it will throw off our RCP plan. While normally I'm not a fan of RCP I think with how few & spread out our cities are it will be necessary.

We could settle there we just have to figure out what it would do to all our other future cities.

Got it!

Here is our northwest situation:

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads5/WoK_1790BC.jpg

Settling with keeping RCP in mind seems the most logical thing to do. To do so, we need a large grid map to make a dot map (I'll see what I can do).

It may take some time to find out out where to settle and to agree, but it IS important in this game.

Anyway:

PT 1790 BC: Switch lux to zero%

Here it is: gridmap with dots. This are Sir Bugsy's dots.

Let's face it lads: these locations are louzy! But I can't find better ones :(

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads5/WoK_1790BC_grid_dots.jpg

Somehow, I am reluctant carrying out the plan above? Do I have a go?

I think the ivory spot is SE o where yours is. We try to keep on the other side of the river.

Gorm, if I move it one to the SE, it will mess up the RCP! My dots are all 11 or 11.5!

I tot we were doing 10.5. I think we can't keep pushing the cities out. I dun see much advantage of an 11-11.5 RCP to Bugsy 10.5 plan earlier. Every turn we delay, we are digging a deeper hole for ourselves.

10 / 10.5 it is!

Pre Turn 1790 BC: lux to 0%

Turn 1; 1750 BC: Move some units.
Turn 2; 1725 BC: Our northwest warrior scout discovers Lizzy’s border
Turn 3; 1700 BC: We discovera barb camp and a Russian scout
Turn 4; 1675 BC: We have a settler, make another spear. The barbie camp adds 25 gold to our treasury! The settler goes to the dyes.
Turn 5; 1650 BC: Hamburg founded on ivory.
Turn 6; 1625 BC: Our warrior in the northwest climbs a mountain and has an English archer nect to him
IT: The English Archer is victorious :(
Turn 7; 1600 BC: Spear finshed in Berlin, another spear? Up to next player ;) . Our ‘French’ warrior scout is surrounded by barbies….
Turn 8; 1575 BC: Our warrior is left alone by the barbies.
Turn 9; 1550 BC: 2 units arrived at the dyes: It is a dyes paradise! I decide tochange production in Berlin to settler.
Turn 10; 1525 BC: :sleep:

The save (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads5/GK1_1525_BC.SAV)

And a new dotmap:


http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads5/WoK_1790BC_grid_dots2.jpg


The red can be 1, 2 or 3 to the west, but then we won't have acces to the sea. The yellow can be founded on one of the three dots. I prefer the one closest to the iron!

BTW: Hamburg is prebuilding for whatever we want! Maybe a granary? We need workers!

We will want red dot to be one SW of stapel's location on the river.

Good location for Hamburg.

At least we know where Lizzy lives now.

Any of the dots around yellow will be at 10 or 10.5 (the corruption calculator rounds down so it doesn't matter)

We might want to think about some alliances to draw Lizzy away from us.

Originally posted by Sir Bugsy
We will want red dot to be one SW of stapel's location on the river. No we will not, I think! One SW of my red dot will bring it on 11......

Any of the dots around yellow will be at 10 or 10.5 (the corruption calculator rounds down so it doesn't matter) The middle yellow is 10, the outer two have 10.5. The others around have 9.5 or 11......

Sir Bugs,
Do we use different rcp grids?

You a re probably right. I'll have to double check my counting. I don't have a grid. I count diagonal tiles (N,S,E,W) until I can go straight (NE,NW,SE,SW) and then count straight tiles. Straight tiles count one, diagonal tiles count 1.5.

My counting was probably off.

This link is very helpful for RCP. N.B. The FP works not as the Palace, so the pic is not completely ok. Since we will not have an FP, it is ok.

RCP (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?postid=1075532#post1075532)

Genghis, up to you I think!

Gengis
Bugs
Bede
Gorm
Stapel (just played)

Stapel,

First the illuminators, and now the readers are on strike!

For some reason, I can't open your save file.

Any ideas?

Bede

I downloaded it my self, to another location. Works fine.

I zipped it:

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads5/GK1_1525_BC.zip

Stapel,

Thanks. Don't know what gets into the monastery brethren.

Bede

Got it.

Any progress GK?

Do we consider settling and disbanding a cheat? If not, it might be a fine way to get rid of the jungle!

Since this game will be somewhat challenging anyway, I rhink it is ok!

I am not sure if that is a cheat, but it is very costly isn't it? I am not familiar with settling and disbanding, but you don't get a settler back right? At least the few times that I did disband, I don't get anything back.

No, you won't get it back. But it will chop the jungle and build a road. Workers aren't for free!

But workers can be used over and over again. I don't think it's an exploit as I think the cost is unmeasurably expensive. Particularly in our case, we will be hard pressed to match AI production with our 5 cities and sidetracking to produce jungle chopping settlers is IMHO not viable.

Moreover, using this strategy would mean that we can only settle 4 cities permanently, since we can't have 5 cities and settle for jungle-chopping. At that split-second, we would have 6 cities, which violates this SG's rules.

About the cost: We will gain it back! chopping jungle for 24 turns means a loss of 24 sheilds 24 food and 24 commerce....

About the 5 cities: You have a point there! :( Maybe we should consider it before conquering or building the 5th city.

I have one word to say....slaves. :devil2:

We're going to be at war through out this game and we're going to get a lot of slaves. I'd say just be patient

With our soon to found dye & jungle city, I would hate to rely on patience.

I think reliance on slaves is not too practical at the early stages of the game. I agree that we do have a problem, particularly in the dye city.

Looking at an example of a 4 turn settler factory,

Cost = 2 population (and the linked production) + 30 shields + 20 food.

Gain = +1food and +1/3 shield(assuming 33% chance of BG) per turn immediately. (1food for jungle icon versus 2 food on a grassland).

However, we still need to produce additional workers to work the jungle-chopped tile.

If instead we produce workers,

Cost: 2pop+20shield+20food (10 shield surplus from above example could be use to make a war in between)
: -12 food from immediate chopping since 12 turns needed to chop a jungle tile.
: -2gpt(if we exceed our allowable limit)

Gain: 2 ready workers that can work on the chopped tile and still use for additional work on other tiles.

IMHO, jungle-chopping settler is not cost-efficient. Plus we don't have a 4 turn settler factory which makes it worse.

Sorry for the delay guys, I've been super busy over the last 4 days with work & classes.

But I'm done with classes today & have the day off!! Playing now. :D

:p I'm not complaining. I still have lots of turns more to go for 6-2. :D

Actually I'm getting an Error reading file message as well ????

stapel: can you resave it & upload it again? I'm getting an error. :(

GK, when does this occur? when loading my save? Or just random during a turn? I can e-mail it!

pressed end-of-turn ans saved again:

1500 BC (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads5/GK1_1500_BC.SAV)

Hmmm, still getting the error. It pops up as soon as I try to load the game:

DataIO Operating error.
Load Error
Error reading file
C:/Program Files/Infragames Interactive/Civilizationn III/Saves/GK1_1500_BC.sav

Can anyone else get it loaded or is it just me? Also did you maybe get Conquests recently & are playing the game through Conquests? Don't know if that would change anything or not.

I use PTW. No conquests yet.

According to your description you use vanilla civ?

It works for others just fine! I just asked a few to test it.

Maybe re-install ptw?

@Stapel.

Knowing Sir Bugsy, Gengis and Gorm, I doubt whether they are using PTW at all. They are hardcore vanilla Civ3 players.

P.S. You're first name isn't Huub; right ;)

Rik

Originally posted by Gengis Khan
Thanks for the links & the info. I've learned those lessons the hard way as well from AW experience & DI1(yes, a shameless plug for a SG I'm in. Sue me).

I think with Immortals & only going up against 1 civ at a time we'll be able to go on the offensive ALOT sooner than that.

While the Ottomans would be a great choice there's one problem......... I don't have PTW. Therefore all PTW Civs are out for us & the AI.


I have vanilla only.

Since I don't have PTW, there's no way to reload it. How did we get from a Civ III to PTW game???

[edit]- I failed to list this as a Vanilla SG in the first post, so I aplologise for the confusion. Any chance I can get you to replay your turn with Vanilla instead, because to my knowledge noone else in this SG has PTW.

Here it is.

I decided to build another settler first in Berlin. It is travelling south with an escort now!

vanilla save zip (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads5/GK1_1525_BC1.zip)

vanilla save (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads5/GK1_1525_BC1.SAV)

Thanks stapel! I thought I was going crazy for a minute there.:lol:

Playing now & will post in an hour or so.

I know this is probably a bit late, but the vanilla save file works.

Rik is right, I couldn't see going out and spending $30+ for PTW and then have the same package available in C3C for another $30+ Call me cheap, but Atari didn't help themselves much.

Almost finished with the turn, but I have to head to class. Will finish up & post when I get back.

Pre Turn- Looking good, 2 settlers on their way, both with spears in the area.
Military Report: 2 settlers, 1 worker(1 slave), 3 warriors, 2 archers, & 3 spears. Currently burning 3gpt in overcharges but that we’ll be under the cap once we settle a town. We also have a strong army compared to the French & an average compared to Lizzy. Also there’s a barb tribe somewhere in the vicinity of Berlin, hopefully it’s closer to Paris then Berlin so Joan will have to deal with them.
Diplo Front: Everyone is up Writing & HBR. Everyone also wants 3gpt & 80g for writing. HA! Too rich for me at this point.
Lizzy- 3 cities, 3g, & 0 luxs or resources.
Gandhi- 4 cities, 0g, wines & horses.
Kathy- 5 cities, 0g, silks & horses.
Joan- 4 cities, 88g, 0 luxs or resources.

Hamburg is currently 5 shields into a temple, while we need its culture to expand we need a worker over there to improve the terrain even more. I veto the temple & switch it to a worker(due in 5), a temple will probably be the next thing built(maybe a barracks depending on how many troops the English are sending.

IT- Berlin’s culture expands & produces a spear, I order up an archer.

1- Workers finish mining our last BG in our city. Berlin can now support 5 citizens just working BGs, I think this is adequate improvement for now. The worker starts roading towards the jungle(dyes-city), and our slave starts roading the quicker to improve flatland(ivory-city). French exploring warrior spots a red border across 2 tiles of coast(Babs). Spear heading south with settler goes another tile south & steps next to a barb camp(Doh!). I could either retreat the settler to safety until our archer gets down there & clears it out or risk the settler & pretend I didn’t see it. Delaying settling anymore isn’t really an option so I pray a horseman doesn’t pop out this turn & continue on with the settler.

2- I don’t think we ever completely decided where to place the dyes & southern city, so I’m gonna use my judgment to place them in my favorite spot. If you don’t like the spots feel free to ridicule and taunt me mercilessly.;)
The good news is the horseman doesn’t attack. The bad news is don’t really have much of a choice on the Southern city. Bugsy’s original planned city(next to the river, on the hill) is at an 11 count, the only coastal spot is 1 tile NE of that on the hill.
However with our dyes-city we have 3 spots to chose from: 2 dyes & a hill.
N dye- 3 forests, 6 dyes, & 2 hills in its 21.
NE dye(middle spot)- 2 forests, 6 dyes, & 3 hills. I’ll trade a hill for a forest anyday.
Hill(eastern spot)- 1 forest, 5 dyes, & 2 hills(not counting the one its on). But that’s where it gets complicated, this location also has 2 river bordering tiles, will have a D bonus, & will have iron 1 tile outside it’s border once it expands to 21 tiles. While IMHO the middle spot has the better terrain for our city, the hill has improved defense & iron will be easier to defend(not to mention the extra 2gpt helps). This gets a big plus in my book so I move there.

Everyone will sell us HBR for 66 gold, but it’s a dead end tech that we can’t use so I’m putting it off as long as we can. Writing is down to 2gpt & 85g, not good enough. Also the exploring warrior moves down onto the peninsula spying into the Babylonian spice jungles & waits for a worker to show himself(hopefully soon but with the AI we never know).

3- Found Dyes-City which starts on a worker. Also rename Hamburg to Ivory-City to help out the lurkers. Barb warrior moves out of the hut next to out spear settler pair, I fort the spear & move the setter south out of range(praying the spear wins & there’s no barb camps to the south.:lol:

IT- Barb impales himself on our spear.
Berlin: archer>spear. We can keep Berlin stagnant at 5 citizens & produce a worker every 4 turns(will be produced in 1) before it grows & units in between.

4- Archer from Berlin heads west to Ivory-City(wow, that hyphen is getting old already). Nothing new on the Diplo Front, I’ll consider buying writing when it drop to 1gpt & sum.

IT- Ivory-City: worker>temple(maybe a barracks if the need arises)

5- And the very turn we go over our military limit…..*drumroll please*………Coastal City founded. Any guesses to what it starts??;) I also edit all the city names to take out the hyphens!
Everyone wants 1gpt & 101 gold for writing. It’s REALLY expensive but considering the Babs aren’t sending a worker out in the open to lower our cost & the fact that I can’t see what other techs they have until we get writing, I reluctantly cough it up(to Gandhi). If the babs show up next turn I’m gonna shoot someone! And surprise, surprise no one has anything else.:smoke:
I also change Berlin from a spear to an archer to go pillage the barb camp.

6- :sleep:

IT- Berlin: archer>spear

7- Archer near Dye City spots the Russian border. Ok, the Babs are starting to piss me off, I could really use that warrior elsewhere. Don’t they want to hook up their silks?? Crazy AI!

8- Barbarian warrior approaches Ivory city, looks like there’s 25g around there somewhere.:D
Barb horseman also moves next to CC.

IT- Barb warrior attacks an archer across a river & dies. Horseman also dies attacking Coastal City(but redlines).
Berlin: spear>spear

9- Spear heads towards Ivory City, that should be enough to hold off an English SoD for awhile. Everyone now has MM, but the cheapest(Gandhi) wants WM, 8gpt, & 42g. Sorry Gandhi, I’m still praying the Babs will show up.

10- Archer around IC kills barb horseman.

**End of Turn Report**
*Military Report:2 workers(1 slave), 3 warriors, 4 archers, & 5 spears. We have a strong military compared to everyone except the English. We should be seeing a SoD headed towards IC shortly.
*Ghandi is down to WM, 2gpt, & 48g. Or 7gpt & 36g. That gives you an idea of how valuable is to Gandhi. This situation is complicated cause I don’t really want anyone knowing our WM, but the Babs are separated from us by only coastal tiles, so if we hold off for a while we won’t be the first to make contact. But if they go after their silks we’ll meet them anyways(I have a warrior forted there) & reduce the price of MMing, and Russia is the only Civ with the potential to have a coastal city on the west coast & meeting them within the next 20 turns or so. Personally I’d hold off for awhile, but it’s a tough call……………….. so I’ll leave it to the next person.;)
*Berlin is to produce a spear next turn and grow in 4. You can then get another archer/spear in, & a worker after that 1 turn before it grows. That will drop it to 4 for one turn until it grows & we can repeat the process making it so we don’t need any entertainment & get a worker every 4 turns.

Good Luck! (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads5/GK1_1275BC.SAV)

OK I've got it, although I may not get to it today.

What's the big plan? Should we:

A) Build a delaying force against Liz and go for Paris (Task Force France).

B) Go for a pre-emptive strike against Liz with Task Force England (TFE) and slowly build TFF

C) All of the above

D) None of the above

We probably have 14-16 hours to discuss it before I play.

Nicely done O mighty Khan.

Bede

Sir Bugsy,
I'll try to get a look tonight and shoot some opinions your way.

Initial prejudice says go forr for the steenking Limeys. Joanie can be our friend, at least until she starts to move through our borders, but meantime she can beat up on any bar-bars hiding to her east and south sides. And since there is iron in the hills between Dyeburg and the Coastal Cities whacking sweet Jaan for hers is less of a priority, no? Besides, she'so sweet when she smiles at you!!

Bede

I go with building up TFF while slowly putting a few more units into our TFE(at Ivory City). Maybe a 3 to 1 ratio or something like that depending on what the English & French do.

Crippling the Englis would help because it slow down their production & make sure they'll never be a threat to us. Taking out a French city however will net us some slaves & we can sue for techs to regain parity.

The cities are in the correct places I think!

Switching to a worker in IC is good! We really need to work some tiles. One comment though. The worker near Ivory city is mining a non-bonus grass. Irrigating the plains is faster and gives the same result. So it is better to irrigate plains anyway. Since the plains have ivory, extra cash is generated.

Furthermore (sorry, I can't help) buying writing doesn't give an advantage?

What task force to build first? Hold of the English, and demolish thre French seems fine to me

Stapel: I bought writing because after about 7 or so turns of everyone being up writing I figured they had writing & then some techs we couldn't see without getting writing first. I was getting paranoid that we were getting left in the dust without realizeing it, but of course that wasn't the case.

Also mining the planes instead of irragating the ivory was definatly :smoke:, no arguement there.

Well, even if the AIs had more than writing, what difference does it make? Isn't it better anyay, to find out we can develop math first? Then trade it for writing to one AI, and then trade it for the next tech with another?

That strategy will never harm us, even not if the AI has more techs. It's not a real big issue, though.

Also mining the planes instead of irragating the ivory was definatly :smokin: , no arguement there.
You mean mining the non-bonus-grass....

Pre-flight (0) 1275 BC – I like Gengis’ idea of placing units on high ground serving as lookouts. Builds don’t make sense. Mostly workers. We need workers, however, a worker due in three with a city at pop 1, growing in 13 won’t work. I decide to play now since infrastructure will be the focus of these turns.

There’s a worker mining a regular grassland. I don’t move him since we’ve already invested some turns in the improvement.

I make the following build changes:
Ivory (I’ll drop the city part in this report): Temple=> Worker (due in 5, grow in 5)
Dyes: Worker => Warrior (still due in 3, grow in 13, with iron in sight this guy will be upgradeable. I’m going for some early quantity over quality here.)
Coastal: Worker=> warrior (city grows in 15)

IBT – Berlin: Spear=> Archer

1. 1250 BC - :sleep:

IBT – Barb horse approaches Ivory

2. 1225 BC – Disperse the barb camp north of Coastal for 25G
If we don’t have rubber around Dyes someday, I’m going to be ticked off.
Diplo – Cathy now has CoL. We can’t touch it.

IBT – Barb horse rides right next to our archer :devil2:
Berlin: Archer=> Spear
Dyes: Warrior=> Worker

3. 1200 BC – We kill the intruding barb horse.
Diplo – now literature is out there. Gandhi traded it for CoL.
We can get MM from Gandhi for 3gpt, WM, and 95G
Joan will give it to us for 47G and our WM :hmm:
Cathy will give CoL for 100G, WM and 2gpt
Gandhi wants 3gpt and the rest.
Buy CoL from Cathy for 100G, WM and 2gpt
Sell CoL to Joan for Literature, 44G, and her TM.
So we get CoL and Lit for 56G and 2gpt. Not bad.
This is interesting Joanie has a 5/5.5 RCP going.

4. 1175 BC - Berlin grows… lux to 10%. We’ll peal a worker off of here next.

IBT – Berlin: Spear=> Worker
Ivory: Worker=> Rax
Coastal: Warrior=> Worker

5. 1150 BC – Our spear SE of Ivory climbs a hill and spots an English spear heading our way. A little pillaging mission Lizzy?
Route archer from Ivory to catch on the open plains.

IBT – Look out spots English SOD of four archers is heading towards Ivory.
Berlin: worker=> archer

6. 1125 BC – Manuevering. Lux to 0%

7. 1100 BC – 4/4 Archer loses to 3/3 English Spear on the plains (redlined)
Our 4/4 spear kills English spear (no loss)
Archer in west sees Indian border.

Call it a night and hopefully can finish in the A.M.
IBT – The four archers move with range of Ivory
Our warrior outside of Dyes is attacked by two barb horses. He kills one, but dies to the next.
Berlin: Archer=> Archer

8. 1175 BC – At the gates of Ivory: 4/4 warrior kills 3/3 English archer (-2hp)
4/4 archer kills 3/3 English Archer (-1hp)
Now Liz just has two archers attacking across a river for the siege of Ivory.

IBT – Liz’ archers: 1st 3/3 kills our 2/4 warrior (-1hp)
2nd: 3/3 kills our 3/4 archer on a mountain (no loss) Sometimes I hate the RNG :mad:

9. 1150 BC – Maneuvering. Cathy and Joan both have Philosophy. Two turns to math. Berlin grows – Hire a scientist for 2 turns to keep science and lux at 0%

IBT – Wounded English Archer runs for cover. Two Archers move to the gates of Ivory. They’ll have to attack across a river.
Barb horse attacks Dyes and dies (our spear -1hp)
Berlin: Archer=> Worker

10. 1125 BC – A second Bab boarder is now visible to our lookout. I keep him un fortified so I check each turn.

After action report: We now have two spears in Ivory. There is a small task force of 2 archers and a spear headed that way. There is another spear on lookout duty SE of Ivory that could be moved there. It looks like it may become a focal point for Liz since it is the closest city for her to attack.

TFF – got a little smaller since I pealed the two archers off it to reinforce the western front.
TFE – took a hit in losing the warrior and the archer.

The road to Ivory should complete during the next players turns so that will help our happiness.

The next section of the Dyes road should complete soon. I’d send any new workers that way since that jungle is tougher to build in and we’ll need to clear some more jungle just to have something for our citizens to work. Or maybe that’s where we put a scientist.

Math is due when you hit enter. Someone is probably researching Monarchy, I think I would go for Currency next. They don’t usually go for that one until the government techs are discovered. Could be a good 40-turn gambit.

I didn’t post a screen shot because nothing has really changed.


>Save< (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads5/GK1,_1025_BC.SAV)

Can I suggest we go back to normal city names? this is really confusing.

At first I did too, but once you play a few turns it actually is easy.

We could even rename Berlin to Capitol City.

I would have picked something like Jungleland and Seaside for names, but it is Gengis' game and Dyes, Ivory, and Coastal work for me.

Originally posted by Sir Bugsy
Pre-flight (0) 1275 BC – I like Gengis’ idea of placing units on high ground serving as lookouts. Builds don’t make sense. Mostly workers. We need workers, however, a worker due in three with a city at pop 1, growing in 13 won’t work.

:lol: Forgive my :smoke:, I finished up my turns after being up for about 22 hours straight so I wasn't exactly all there. Glad you caught that.

Jungleland?!:lol: I like that, the only problem is we'd have to name every city Jungland with our terrain.;)

Got it.

Will look at the save before 7:00 PM EST and post my thoughts then.

Bede

:goodjob:

I love it when a plan works out.

The English War Heats Up
After action report: We now have two spears in Ivory. There is a small task force of 2 archers and a spear headed that way. There is another spear on lookout duty SE of Ivory that could be moved there. It looks like it may become a focal point for Liz since it is the closest city for her to attack.

TFF – got a little smaller since I pealed the two archers off it to reinforce the western front.
TFE – took a hit in losing the warrior and the archer.

The road to Ivory should complete during the next players turns so that will help our happiness.

The next section of the Dyes road should complete soon. I’d send any new workers that way since that jungle is tougher to build in and we’ll need to clear some more jungle just to have something for our citizens to work. Or maybe that’s where we put a scientist.

Math is due when you hit enter. Someone is probably researching Monarchy, I think I would go for Currency next. They don’t usually go for that one until the government techs are discovered. Could be a good 40-turn gambit.


Tough act to follow, but here's the plan:

Spear and two archers to mtn SW of Dyeburg
Spear and two archers on hill NW of Dyeburg.
Two spears in city.

As new units become available cover forest areas with one warrior or spear.

That should hold Lizzie.

Follow the build two units, then worker plan at Berlin. Build warriors in Ivory City, Dyeburg and Coastal City for defense and barb hunting.

Trade math for whatever we can get. Research Currency.

Road and chop jungle as appropriate.

I foresee needing at least six archers, a couple of spears and a settler in TFF. We will probably need to take down one other city before we can burn Paris as Joanie is moving west.

If Hammie shows himself will trade for whatever we can get: contacts, money, techs, in that order.

Question, now that we have Writing, should we spend some cash on embassies in Moscow, New Delhi and Paris?

Will start play tomorrowaround noon EST. Await commentary, queries or candlesticks.

Bede

Originally posted by Bede

Tough act to follow, but here's the plan:

Spear and two archers to mtn SW of Dyeburg
Spear and two archers on hill NW of Dyeburg.
Two spears in city.

As new units become available cover forest areas with one warrior or spear.

That should hold Lizzie.

Question, now that we have Writing, should we spend some cash on embassies in Moscow, New Delhi and Paris?

Bede

You mean Ivoryopolis instead of Dyeburg??

I wouldnt' worry about an embassy in Paris, seeing as it will be a smoldering pile of ruble shortly. Other then that use you're judgement, although I'd concentrate on using our money to trade. Its not like we'll be signing any RoPs anytime soon. :lol:

The rest of the plan looks great!

:crazyeye: Oops, Ivoryopolis it is.

You're right about embassy in Paris, but maybe we can pull an alliance against the English from Cathy or the Old Man. We've got at least twenty turns before we have to go to war against one of them. ;)

Bede

6-2 finished. I am back in the shuffle. :D

The Chronicle of the First Reich

IBT Liz attacks at Ivory CIty and goes down
Joan founds Chartres NE of Berlin

1) 1000BC
Math=>Currency
Berlin-Worker=>spear. Head worker to CC
Hire scientist at Dyeburg
Warrior at CC towards Dyeburg
No sign of Hammie
No trades available-Every body has Math. All others too expensive

2) 975BC
India starts GL. No other events of note

3) 950BC
Berlin Spear=>Archer
Start archer towards Ivoryopolis
South war climbs mtn nothing to see
West archer N
No sign of Hammie

4) 925BC
W archer spots English border

IBT India founds Karachi

5) 900 BC
West archer N
Worker completes at Dyeburg Hire scientist Move worker to Dye
Move archer/Spear pair across river at Dyeburg. Arriving troops fortified

IBT Barb moves toward Dyeburg from W

6) 875BC
Berlin Worker=>Archer
S warrior to Dyeburg
Dyeburg worker to hill away form barb.
Ivory road complete
French worker west to irrigate ivory plains

7) 825BC
Berlin Archer=>Archer
CC and Dyeburg start libraries as placholders for warrior or worker
Worker at CC roads hill

IBT unescorted English settler moves toward Hastings

8) 800BC
Workers road
Archer moves toward Hastings

9) 775BC Hastings burns

10) 750BC
Hire scientist at Berlin

SitRep
Ivoryopolis defenses complete
Currency due in 30
Hastings burned
TFF 3 archers
TFE 5 spears 6 archers
97 gold 0pt
Ivoryopolis RAX due in 4
No sign of Hammie

Save (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads5/GK1_750BC.zip)

Manuscript illuminators now working to rule. Still no screenshots, though. Will work on those later.

Bede

got it. will play after cooking breakfast. :)

Here is a fine pic:

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads5/WoK_750_BC.jpg


What are those (two) workers between dyesburg and ivory city doing????????

Some ideas:

-We will hook up the iron in 30? turns, (when we build a temple in dye ciry). It seems logical to stop building archers and start on warriors
-Chopping and roading is faster than roading and chopping.
Ivory city doesn't need a rax soon, as it is defended just fine. A temple? That will give us two bonus grass.

We did not PREBUILD FOR GREAT LIBRARY!!!!!! We are not even building it. I see that we did not learn from our mistakes in DI1. Sigh!!! I hope we get a GL soon to rush it.

Ok these are my thoughts of the game.

(1) We can get iron from Dye city, the drive to Paris has lost strategical value. I would like to move all troops to the Anglo-Deuch front. Spliting our forces is the bad idea of bad ideas.

(2) I would like to make our 5th city between Dye City and coast City, or East of Berlin. I will make a dotmap.

(3) I would like to bring our troops to London and lay siege.

(4) I would like to reorganise the worker actions, some workers seem to be working meaningless actions. I like to bundle into them into worker teams.

(5) I would like to veto the libraries in Dye and Coastal cities. I see no point in making libraries at all. Chances are we will be doing 40turn gambits and the extended borders gets us more jungles anyway. I would suggest switch to worker/war cycles for both cities. Maybe rax for both and harbor for coastal city.

(6) I would like to keep rax production in Ivory city. Producing units from Ivory city and berlin, I like to take Lzzy down soon. Vet troops will help.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads5/south2.jpg


http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads5/East1.jpg

I agree in the libraries. We do not need them. But we do need either cultural expansion in dye city for the iron, or the use of a colony.

What's the rush in getting on lizzy? I think a temple in Ivory City will gives the bonus grass. Seems more valuable to me.

I fully agree on the worker strategy. We have a lot to work, so making roads to nowhere is out of the question, I think.

Spear+Archer combo will turn obsolete soon. We build so many I think it is a waste to leave them "sitting on their butts".

If we have no intention to attack Lzzy, we have just wasted 200+ shields.

At 3rd extended border, it is not practical to expect to reach the iron with culture. It is more viable to make a slave colony.

Originally posted by gormdragan
Spear+Archer combo will turn obsolete soon. We build so many I think it is a waste to leave them "sitting on their butts".

If we have no intention to attack Lzzy, we have just wasted 200+ shields. A good argument! Let's get Lizzy then!

At 3rd extended border, it is not practical to expect to reach the iron with culture. It is more viable to make a slave colony. I thought it was on the 2nd. Looking closer I see you are right!

BUT, we are not going to use an upkeepfree slave worker, if we can use a 1gpt one, are we?

An upkeep free slave is 1/2 as efficient as a home breed one. In other words, it takes 2 slave workers to do what 1 local worker can do. Given that we are non-industrious and this is not AW - I do not anticipate a whole lot of slaves - I would prefer a slave colony to save a better worker.

But you are right, I think a normal colony would work too, especially since we are 5CC and every upkeep counts.

Please comment on the 5th city, I don't think we should delay any further. It doesn't look like we can get horses no matter where we settle, but the 5th city will bring extra upkeep free units not to mention an additional production base. I say we go ahead and make a 5th. If we find a better site later (like Paris or Lyon), we can then disband.

The good news about our startup is that in view of the huge amount of jungle we have, we are likely to have rubber and coal near/within our city limits. The close proximity of the desert between Dye/Ivory city likely spells an oil resource nearby too.

RCP comments.

The green dot is NOT on 10 or 10.5. It should be moved one tile west, southwest or southeast.
The other dots are ok.

The red dot might be occupied, before we are there...

One tile southwest looks good.

- river access
- less jungle to work with
- an immediate BG
- this is a city we should get expanded borders asap.

Sorry about the miscalculation. I am not experienced with RCP. :sad:

About the workers. If half a worker costs nothing, but a whole worker costs something...... It's not a real issue I think, but wasting free units seems illogical to me.

I agree with Stapel with the worker. Let's use a homegrown worker for the colony.

The red dot site may be taken soon. Therefore, if we're not going on the warpath against Joan (which is probably a good idea.) I would favor green dot due to it's river.

Ok, this is what is going to happen.

(1) Ivory city swap to temple. (My preference is rax)
(2) Dye city and Coastal city swap to rax, for 20 turns, and then start a warrior/worker cycle (I prefer vet troops). The alternative (my 2nd choice) is to start a warrior/worker cycle immediately.
(3) Berlin to swap to settler. My preference would be green spot too.
(4) move archers from Berlin to Ivory city.
(5) Scratch the 2 workers southeast of Ivory city.
(6) Scratch the hill mining worker in coastal city to join road making worker from Berlin.
(7) Scratch jungle chopping solo worker east of Dye city (this takes way too long) to join road making worker team north of Dye City.
(8) Abandon troops guarding forest/mountain at Ivory city to muster a SOD on London.

Please let me know which is objectable and we can make ammendments from there.

(1) Making an Iron native colony is beyond my turns + we should accumulate more warriors before making the colony. We should road to the iron asap but we can delay the colony.

(2) Settling our 5th city is beyond my turns. Green dot has the added advantage of providing "covering fire" on our future colony.

(3) Actual siege of London is beyond my turns, so if we decide not to go through with it, we should decide now.

Go ahead. Part of the fun of SG is that not all is fully agreed upon!

BTW: I have C3C [dance] !

Sounds like a good plan gorm.

[party] I just got it too Stapel [party]

So did I.

:jump:

A couple thoughts.

I agree that the colony needs to be built with a normal worker. We don't want to throw free workers away at any cost.

I don't think building our 5th city would be advantagous(green dot- yellow is even worse). It's gonna overlap our other cities by 3 tiles, which may or maynot be a big deal depending on if those tiles turn out to be the only 3 BGs in the area. Plus if we later abandon it for a more valuble site to the north, we'll have wasted a ton of worker turns developing that land, when they can be better used elsewhere.

Also I don't like the idea of having our capitol being the northern border to resist attacks. I'm alot more key on still building our last city in former Paris area, at 10.5 tiles to the NE will put wines within its boarder, and will be 4 tiles from horses. If there's no French to worry about there's also noone to worry about taking over our colony.

I disagree with the general concensus to go after lizzy. If we wipe Lizzy out we'll be forced into war with Joan, when that front is at it's weakest. Lizzy's military is at least as strong as ours, & we gain nothing(except some slaves & crippling her) by taking out London. Where if we still go after Joan(who's military is weaker then ours) we'll gain a city site that will benifit us for the rest of the game, rather then just for the next 20 turns or so.

But, this being a SG, I will go along with the concensus of the group even if I disagree with it.

All valid points Gengis.

I don't think I would rule out the city in the vacinity of Paris. In that case it would be a good idea to hold off building our last city. I do think that clipping Lizzy's wings right now would be a good idea. We razed Hastings. Razing London would be very good. Gathering up some slaves would be most excellent.

So I suppose the question I would pose to the team would be,

"Do we build our fifth city as soon as possible in one of gorm's locations or wait and build it in French lands?"

Each path has advantages and disadvantages.

Consider: improvement of lands, loss of productivity, overall strategic gains and losses, short term gains and losses.

I have an option, but I'm going to keep my mouth shut for the time being. I hatched the crazy scheme we're on now and I'd like to hear everyone's options

At least build a scrappable city for added unit support. I see no advantage in delaying. If we decide to keep Paris later, we could scrape the 5th.

Looking at where we stand, if we do not go to war against Lizzy, it will be at least 50 turns b4 we will see Paris. Is it logical to hold for so long? I think it is disadvantagous to delay our 5th city any further. As a matter of fact, I think it makes more sense to go to war against Lizzy if you want the 5th to be on Paris.

Strategically, we should attack a stronger enemy to prevent him from getting stronger. In an NOW (Non-oscillating War), it seems to me that having the troops and not attacking the designated enemy is abusive. I would agree with not attacking if we are weak. Not attacking Lizzy because we gain nothing does not strike me as being inconsistent with our SG rules.

Striking France where our troops are weak and we have yet any qualms does not appeal to me. We will end up fighting a 2 front war with 2 out of 4 cities not in production mode. That strikes me as sucidal.

Paris is without doubt a better city. But with French having confirmed iron resource, I think it is no longer advantagous to attack Paris. Even if we attack Paris, I estimat at least 50-60 turns before we build a sufficient army and take Paris. Can we really afford 50 turns with 2 useless cities and only 2 producing cities? without great library?

Having Berlin where it is now as our northern border would appear to me as strategically advantageous. Berlin stands as a bottleneck to where the French are stuck. Once we settled with Lizzy (by then our iron should be online), we can proceed to wack off Joan.

If we build a scrappable city, I would build it slightly northeast of Berlin, where grassland and plains are plentiful. Little work is needed and it is a good midway to Paris, much like a staging ground.

I am definitely against not going to war with Lizzy. I am also for building a 5th city even if we scrape it later for Paris. My 2 cents.

:hammer: :hammer:

"Meaningless worker actions" is right. Don't know what came over me there.

As always there are good things to be said for all the points in all the posts.

I will add my two pence worth:

We will need at least seven archers to gain our TFF objectives. Chartres and Lyon will have to fall in addition to Paris. However, if we do clip Joanie's wings now that means much less to worry about on the Eastern Front when the time comes to put her away for good. There is also the opportunity for "pointy stick research" which should not be overlooked.

A two front war against widely separated opponents who are both militarily weaker, at least to this point, is not a bad thing, especially since our TFF objective is a limited one. If our intention were to prosecute the Eastern Front to the destruction of Joan, you're right, that would be the worst thing we could attempt.

As for improvements for cultural expansion, we are a Mil/Sci civ, no? Libraries are less costly than temples and the resulting expansion is nominally quicker. If I remember right libs build with 40 shields and temples with 60 and the expansion is in three rather than four turns. I don't foresee any happiness problems in either Dyeburg, Ivoryopolis or CC for a while yet. It's going to take a while, even with gangs of workers to clear all those trees and vines, so growth is restrained until the jungle is gone and the productvity at Ivoryopolis is not going to come on line real soon now.

Settling at least temporarily in the jungles west and east of Dyeburg will have the benefit of defusing any barb threats from there. We have had no barb actitivty from the East. Queen Joan must be doing a good job on that front. All the barbs have come from the west, no? However, building the settlers and the defensive units might require too much productitivity from Berlin, just when military is needed for TFF or TFE.

The western archer regiment is well positioned to harass Lizzie's southern marches, remember. Moving the archer/spear pairs west towards London with the intention of harassing/razing London is not without risk but may be a good use of those units.

Can we trade for a map that might give us a better idea of where Lizzie has placed her cities? My concern right now is that when we do take Lizzie out, but haven't knocked Joanie back a little we will have an army in the west with a long road to the Eastern battlefields. With an Eastern outpost we not only gain wine and iron we at least have Joanie just that much further away when time comes to take her on and a fortified town on her western border.

Looks more like thruppence than tuppence. Sorry for rambling but both strategies have much to offer.

Good hunting, gorm.

Bede, the humbled and long-winded.