SGOTM2 Game Thread

Welcome to your game thread for SGOTM2-Germany

Here is the start position.
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads7/SGOTM2-start-position.jpg

Each team has their own save file. Please download and play from the correct save. If you use the wrong save the server will not accept your submission. Also, please make sure that the software version is correct. PM me immediately if it is not.

You can download your save file >>HERE<<. (http://gotm.civfanatics.net/submit/sgotm_submission_list.php)

The Roster
AdrianE
Alanh
Capt Buttkick
leif erikson
zamint3

:wavey: Hello Xteam and welcome to AdrianE! Nice to see our own thread up and running. I can't wait to see Alan's surprise for us alll. :D

I spent a little time last night thinking about our challenge and wrote out some thoughts, scary I know. Please have a look and maybe it will start a discussion. :crazyeye:

Objective. Win by the sponsored variant of Diplomatic Victory without building the United Nations in the fewest turns possible.

Guiding Principals.
1. Warmongering. We should expand to the domination limit as quickly as possible, tailoring the land area of the defeated civs to allow, perhaps, a couple of them to construct the U.N. and allow us to attack and take the city they build it in quickly without triggering a domination victory.
2. Technology Development. We should attempt to keep a rapid tech pace through gifting, trading and researching ourselves (Monarch difficulty).
3. Economic Development. Gold will be needed for unit upgrades, research and some tech trading.

Key Technologies.
1. Ancient Era.
a. Iron Working for Warrior to Swordsman upgrades.
b. Horseback Riding for mounted combat units (retreat ability). Mt favorite, of course.
c. Map Making for galleys and The Great Lighthouse (Map has 3 continents according to the game announcement).
d. Republic to kick our economy and research into high gear early on.

2. Middle Ages.
a. Chivalry for Knights.
b. Invention for Leonardo’s Workshop.
c. Military Tradition for Cavalry.

3. Industrial Age.
a. Scientific Method for Theory of Evolution.
b. Motorized Transportation for Panzer.

4. Modern Age. Fission for United Nations.

Wonder Construction. The game announcement says there are 3 continents, therefore we need to build galleys, suicide galleys early, in order to find the other civs. This will require Map Making and we should attempt to build The Great Lighthouse. It would be nice to build Leonardo’s Workshop for the reduced upgrade costs. We should build Theory for Evolution for the tech slingshot we will get from it. Other wonders can be built if the opportunity presents itself, particularly The Colossus, but those listed above should be our focus. The Great Library should not be needed in this game and could be captured later should a tragedy befall us and we find ourselves behind somehow in tech. Of course, The Forbidden Palace will be needed to get a second core up and running as well as any of the other small wonders we may need as the game progresses.


:band: Almost time for the party to begin!! [dance] [dance]

BTW - I started last time and would be happy to have someone else take the start turns, perhaps your RNG will be kinder then mine was! :rolleyes: The order we play in does not matter to me. Also, I hope that MB and Karasu decided to tell everyone they could not look in other team's threads but I didn't read that anywhere. Has anyone seen anything?

Welcome to the Xteam everyone, specially to new member AdrianE. Let's have a check-in/roll call and introductions. Here's a checklist of things that would be useful to know as we start to plan our campaign. Leif has already done an splendid job of answering a lot of them :goodjob:

1 Preferred victory/variant options
2 Strengths and weaknesses as a player
3 Preferred playing styles (OCP/RCP/ICS, warmonger/builder ...)
4 What would you like to learn?
5 Any schedule constraints coming up - vacations, exams, births, marriages, divorces ...
6 Prior experience of this game
7 Thoughts about the start position
8 Any volunteers to get us started on the first 20 turns AFTER we've agreed on where we're going?
9 Any other items I've forgotten

My answers:
1 No strong views. Variant bonuses are nice - they saved our bacon in SGOTM1. And a Diplo without UN build would be interesting.

2 Not bad at micromanaging and city placement. Enjoy trading. Sometimes push my luck with too few troops in attacks, and not good at wonder building.

3 I usually build RCP, fairly tight spacing. Tend towards warmonger, mostly because I don't have a lot of playing time and military victories are faster. That's another reason for avoiding OCP as my games don't last long enough to make use of 20 tiles per city. I never build defenders or walls. My approach to defence is to attack first, preferably with fast units. My autopilot beelines to republic, knights and cavalry.

4 I'd be interested to see how to play peaceful in the later game some time, but no rush if it's not appropriate in this game.

5 No known time constraints

6 Never seen or played this start, haven't looked at the old spoilers

7 No food bonuses visible. Some visible coast the the north. Work to do to clear forests to support a big pop. Gold and shields are no problem, but food is power in the early game so we can only *hope* for food bonuses E,SE or S,SE or NW,NW. I think I'd move the worker E to the BG and to check out the tiles along the river. If no food bonuses visible then settle on the spot. Germans are militaristic and scientific - warrior code + bronze. Our UU is very late, so I think we should plan a wonder-driven Golden Age - Sun Tzu or Leo's plus Great Library or Newton's - in the Middle Ages range that seems to give a good boost to infrastructure development. Capture is of course an option, rather than self-build, allowing us to time the GA off another build if we want to. It's more risky in that the wonders we need might not be build locally.

8 I don't mind playing the first 20, but I'll defer to anyone else who would like them ...

9 Let's have fun! It's a game, right?

[EDIT: Re. surprises, I did try to lower your expectations. What you see is what you get. I've simply automated the upload and score management system, based on the new GOTM submission process. ;)

Key Technologies.

4. Modern Age. Fission for United Nations.If we don't have fission when we capture the UN, is it destroyed and gone forever?

We can't capture it until it's built :hmm:, and the civ that builds it will probably ask for a vote on the same turn. We need to ensure that we either win on that vote or it's a stalemate.

Also, I hope that MB and Karasu decided to tell everyone they could not look in other team's threads but I didn't read that anywhere. Has anyone seen anything?In the rules (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=1733966&postcount=61):

The threads used by other teams are off-limits unless otherwise stated.

Hi every one on the X-team, and a special welcome to AdrianE :jump:

Nice thoughts there Leif and Alan :thumbsup:

My answers to Alan's questions :
1) Let's go for the variant. Alan : You have to see those panzers !! ;)
2) I like microm. and building.
3) RCP and then lets use one of our great leaders :D to build FP far from the palace!
4) I would like to improove early warmongering!
5) I might have to go to work now and then :lol: :lol: , I will be out of town on the 29,30 and 31, if we should play for that long? :p , "divorce" : maybe, but then I'll have even more time to play :lol:
6) None.
7) Worker E, I agree. On the original game announcement page it says : "You have easy access to a few luxury resources and there are *numerous* rivers nearby."
8) Either way is fine with me.
9) Let's have fun, I agree as long as we win this time. :cool:

And a few other comments:

Originally Posted by leif erikson
Warmongering. We should expand to the domination limit as quickly as possible

I agree. Let's hope the scientific AI's live far away!

Wonderbuilding: We might have to build the great library (and Sun Tzu) to have a well-timed early middle age golden age. Newton's might be a little late!?

Originally Posted by AlanH
If we don't have fission when we capture the UN, is it destroyed and gone forever?

Good question!

I haven't looked at the save yet, but we must have some scientific AI, maybe Russia and Greece ??
On Monarch level we'll have to gift these into each new age.
My thoughts were to set up a wondercascade from Hoover to UN, but they will still be more than 200 short, so we'll have plenty of time to research Fission (even if we do have the luck, that Fission is there free tech)

Research will depend on the other civs, but I would say straight to Horseback,
with only 6 opponents we might have some space to cover.

Let the [party] begin!

If we don't have fission when we capture the UN, is it destroyed and gone forever?

We can't capture it until it's built :hmm:, and the civ that builds it will probably ask for a vote on the same turn. We need to ensure that we either win on that vote or it's a stalemate.
[/i]

My idea on getting Fission was to gift it to the AI in order to get a quicker build by them. I think we should reach it long before they will, so we'll have to give it to them, especially after we take most of their kingdom away! :smug:

The other thing I was thinking with early warmongering was to take what we want and then spend the industrial age making good relations through gifting, etc. in order to have a gracious friendship with as many civs as we can in case the vote comes up before we can take the U.N. with our Panzers. :slay:

I had not thought of the Golden Age idea and that is an excellent point. We are going to have to have a lot of cities, that is the only answer. :evil:

Alan's other questions.
1. Variant for fun! :crazyeye:
2. Strengths - a builder that can't seem to warmonger early enough!
Weaknesses - too many, but mostly the mid-game. I 'm always torn between building and going to war. :blush:
3. RCP and some serious early warmongering!! :goodjob:
4. Early warmongering and how to get through the mid-game, late Middle Age through Industrial Age. I would also like to learn how to speed up or slow down the tech pace. This game will require us to keep it moving, I think.
5. Real life is pressing hard now but I think I will have little problem. If there is a problem, I'll ask for a skip. You will mostly hear from my during my evenings, little during the day.
6. None.
7. On the start, I agree, east, no food bonus, then settle on the start location. For research, I think we should go for HBR as well, but am reluctant to forgo Pottery. Every time I don't get Pottery, I end up on the short end. We'll have to check what other civs are to start and take a guess about trading for Pottery. It looks like there will be lots of chopping to do at the start location but it will be very nice to have fresh water handy. Build order of Warrior, Warrior, Settler and then Granary?
8. Be my guest Alan! ;)
9. Yes, let's have fun while we learn. We need good discussions and, of course, let's WIN!! :eek:

edit - spelling :confused:

zamint3 result for gotm26 now added to the game and global ranking lisits. zamint3 is #10 in the rankings :worship: And the best news is he's on the Xteam :D
Great work on the update Alan. :goodjob: :D , and playing with you guys should make me able to finish a regular GOTM in the top ten as well. :cool:


I've looked at the save :
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads7/Space_Race.jpg

I don't know if we have cultural linked starting positions, but with 3 continents and 6 opponents, we'll have one or two on our continent, so with a little luck we can trade for pottery!!?? :crazyeye: :confused:


Originally Posted by leif erikson
Build order of Warrior, Warrior, Settler and then Granary?
I tend to agree, or granary before settler? , maybe AlanH can do some math for us ;)

The rule of thumb developed by SirPleb was that if city X is your current highest food producer and you can settle a new site that will produce more than X does then you should build a settler first in X. This is because you can double X's effective rate of food production with a granary, but you can more than double it by building the new city. There are obviously complications like the relative delays involved in building and moving the settler and building the granary, but to a first approximation this seems like a reasonable yardstick.

Sooo! Bottom line is we won't know whether to build a settler or a granary first until we see the lie of the land. It will also be affected by how quickly we can meet and greet the English or Russian potters. I agree we're likely to do so quite fast, but you never know for sure.

I don't know if we have cultural linked starting positions, but with 3 continents and 6 opponents, we'll have one or two on our continent, so with a little luck we can trade for pottery!!??

A little voice keeps whispering in my ear that I had better remember SGOTM1 and our "luck" with the RNG. :cry:

Sooo! Bottom line is we won't know whether to build a settler or a granary first until we see the lie of the land. It will also be affected by how quickly we can meet and greet the English or Russian potters. I agree we're likely to do so quite fast, but you never know for sure.
It is the "But you never know for sure" part that concerns me. With a river producing an extra gold per turn in each square we work, I think we can research Pottery in about 15 turns, a worthwhile investment imho. :thumbsup:

Congratulations Zamint3 on the 10 spot in the Global Player Rankings!!!! :goodjob:

Hi all. Looking forward to another gotm on the XTeam :)
I'll start with answering Alan's qs:

1 Variant. I think I'll go for variant in most of the sgotms, simply b/c that's part of what succesion games are about imhso.

2 Strengths: Early faze, expansion and early exploring/trading. Weakness: knowing when to stop expanding and pick up the :hammer:

3 I'm an ICS builder, wanna-be RCP warmonger :)

4 I can do early warmongering. It's when to start that still keeps me in the dark. I'd like to try a really early approach this time since we're militaristic and it's monarch difficulty.

5 I'm an economics controller and this month I'm working on putting together next year's budget so I might be pressed on time from time to time ;). I'll give notice if I have probs. I've also been having PC probs at home, but I expect them to be solved today. If I should go AWOL, please skip ASAP (man, I'm into military lingo :))

6 No prior knowledge, first gotm I looked at was gotm 17, I think. Edit: I've looked at Bamspeedy's gotm 14 writeup of course :)

7 I think we should consider scouting S. I think there might be game in the forests to the SW. When I look at the pic, S SW looks promising, but I wouldn't advice moving on what may not be more than a hunch alone so I'd prefer scouting.
Scouting S will reveal 5 tiles, E will reveal 2 tiles.

8 Depends on when we start playing. Norway's national holiday is coming up tomorrow and I definitly won't have any play time then. If we go late today or wait til Tuesday, I can go.

Tech: usually, I'm all for pottery. If we don't get a food bonus however, I think we should secure a good settler factory for our first settler and forego granary in Berlin altogether. By the time our second city is ready for building a granary, we should surely have pottery. Remember, if we can't trade it, it means neither Russia or England are on our continent which should normally increase the number of GHs we can aquire.
Also: I know you guys are HBR fans, but we're halfway (not really, but you know what I mean :)) to IW already. Add the fact that there are lots of mountains near our start, but no visible, possible horse sites and I think we should do min research towards IW for 40 turns while stashing away cash and producing vet warriors in Berlin.

Wonders and GA: I agree on the wonder driven GA. I think the problem with building the Glib is that the tech pace of the AI seems to drop to a minimum every time I build it. They may not be helpful on the sci front til after education if we build it. I think we should try to capture it in the early MAs and then build Leo with Sun as a prebuild. It may seem ambitious, but I think that might be what we need to get an edge over some of the other teams.

Looking at the civs in this game, could the 3rd continent be empty except for barbs? That would leave us, Russia, England and France on the one continent and India, Japan and China on the other.

I think our Berlin build que (barring any food bonuses nearby) should be warrior-warrior-settler-barracks and then Leipzig (2nd city?) should go warrior-warrior-granary-settler and use the warriors for MP.

Good inputs guys. Keep thinking.

We still await AdrianE's arrival - he may just not do weekends, but I think I've PM'd him just in case. If we hear from him today we may be able to kick off tonight. Captain, if you can keep us informed of any problems in advance during your budgeting we can swap the roster around to avoid you losing turns.

We have two players in North America (both EST), two in Scandinavia and me in the UK. I suggest we have a base roster that moves with the sun - Scandinavia-UK-North America-Scandinavia. So here's a proposed running order, presupposing nothing about where in the list we start ;) :

Zamint3, Capt Buttkick, AlanH, Leif Erikson, AdrianE.

Unless you guys have strong views about the starter we can decide according to how late in the GMT day we are ready to roll, giving maximum daylight for one or more subsequent players on the same day, and aiming to avoid having Capt Buttkick UP on Monday (which is why he's after zamint3).

Also: I know you guys are HBR fans, but we're halfway (not really, but you know what I mean :)) to IW already. Add the fact that there are lots of mountains near our start, but no visible, possible horse sites and I think we should do min research towards IW for 40 turns while stashing away cash and producing vet warriors in Berlin.

Believe it or not, I actually considered this as well. :eek: The Russians and the Chinese start with Bronze Working and I figured that with all the AI trading, Iron Working would be available as a trade at some point early on. However, no one starts with The Wheel and we have Warrior Code, so we are, sort of, part way to HBR as well. ;) Once we have The Wheel, we can build chariot units to upgrade. I am not sure of this but I think it is more expensive to build chariots (20 shields) than warriors (10 shields) but cheaper to upgrade chariots than warriors. I will have to check that this evening.

The more I've thought about it, the more willing I've become to take the risk on trading for Pottery in order to get to HBR quicker.

We have two players in North America (both EST), two in Scandinavia and me in the UK. I suggest we have a base roster that moves with the sun - Scandinavia-UK-North America-Scandinavia. So here's a proposed running order, presupposing nothing about where in the list we start ;) :

Zamint3, Capt Buttkick, AlanH, Leif Erikson, AdrianE.

Unless you guys have strong views about the starter we can decide according to how late in the GMT day we are ready to roll, giving maximum daylight for one or more subsequent players on the same day, and aiming to avoid having Capt Buttkick UP on Monday (which is why he's after zamint3).
Cross posted.

Playing from here, mostly in the evening, I have found that when I finish and get everything posted, it is usually morning for you there. If we start in Europe and it is played in the evening, then when it is finished, it goes to America, it gets here in the evening of the same day (Europe time minus 4 or 5). When finished here and goes back to Europe, it gets there first thing in the morning, giving time for discussion and play. Then back here for the evening and back there for morning. So we could alternate between sides of the pond, but whatever we do is really fine by me. Just a suggestion.

Good point. I was forgetting the discussion bit, which would get lost if we try to get too many turns in within a day. So how about:

Capt Buttkick, leif erikson, zamint3, AdrianE, AlanH, back to Capt Buttkick?

If AdrianE shows in time for some input we can start today with leif erikson or AdrianE, and Captain Buttkick gets Monday off whichever way it goes.

I'm here

I don't mind the variant. I think we should have the space race as a backup.

Personally I find warmongering to be tedious and have done a lot of it lately and would prefer something else.

I do not wish to start this one. I started my team's SGOTM1 and started the Oda in the GOTM 24 replay.

I have not played this one before so I have no idea what to expect.

I am fairly busy so blazing fast turnaround from me is unlikely. I have no planned absences for a while.

Adrian

The rule of thumb developed by SirPleb was that if city X is your current highest food producer and you can settle a new site that will produce more than X does then you should build a settler first in X.
I do remember reading about in some GOTM-thread I think, can you remember which one?

Any playing order is fine with me! :cool:

Should we agree on research before we start?
I say The Wheel + HBR full speed ahead, it can't be all forrest and mountains out there? :crazyeye:


Originally Posted by leif erikson
A little voice keeps whispering in my ear that I had better remember SGOTM1 and our "luck" with the RNG. :cry:
I know, I did feel my stomach protesting when i wrote about luck earlier. :lol:

Great! We're all present and correct. Welcome, AdrianE, thanks for the replies. Do you have any thoughts on the start position or on the first research project?

We have proposals on the table to research Wheel or Pottery or Ironworking first. Does anyone have any more to say on this subject? I think there's a good chance we are on the same continent with England or Russia and that we'll have a good chance of trading for pottery. I do see a conflict: If we meet the Russians they will already have bronze, so we would only have Warrior code to trade for pottery unless we build some cash. But we want to push the Monarch tech pace along to achieve a fast finish, whether it's the diplo variant or space. So do we want a 40 turn project that allows us to save up cash or a fast project towards a monopoly tech? I've had success on the latter approach with the Wheel, and Japan is the least likely neighbour in this game. So I think my vote is for Wheel, but I'm open to other views.

How would the Captain like to get us started, leaving his Monday clear, and then following my last playing order? If not, I can take it followed by leif, zamint3, AdrianE, Capt Buttkick. Whoever kicks off will get the casting vote on research. I'll publish a formal roster once we are off and running.

@zamint3: I'll look up that SirPleb post, but I think you'll find my summary is the core of his argument.

Believe it or not, I actually considered this as well. :eek: The Russians and the Chinese start with Bronze Working and I figured that with all the AI trading, Iron Working would be available as a trade at some point early on. However, no one starts with The Wheel and we have Warrior Code, so we are, sort of, part way to HBR as well. ;) Once we have The Wheel, we can build chariot units to upgrade. I am not sure of this but I think it is more expensive to build chariots (20 shields) than warriors (10 shields) but cheaper to upgrade chariots than warriors. I will have to check that this evening.

The more I've thought about it, the more willing I've become to take the risk on trading for Pottery in order to get to HBR quicker.

I think it probably boils down to personal preference. Like Alan said, the Japanese have the Wheel and I don't know if they're any more unlikely a neighbour than the Chinese. I agree that the Russians might start closer to us.
I'll just add one more point in favour of going with IW: you're correct on shield vs. upgrade costs and I think this start with lots of river tiles favour heavy gc costs over heavy shield costs. I'm not really concerned whether the other civs nearby outrace our techpace early on. We'll get those techs in our first peace deal :D

I seem to be outvoted w/r to tech choice so if I haven't convinced any1 in the next few hours, I'll grab it and play the first turns (20?) this evening if it's ok with you guys.

I think it probably boils down to personal preference. Like Alan said, the Japanese have the Wheel and I don't know if they're any more unlikely a neighbour than the Chinese. I agree that the Russians might start closer to us.
I'll just add one more point in favour of going with IW: you're correct on shield vs. upgrade costs and I think this start with lots of river tiles favour heavy gc costs over heavy shield costs. I'm not really concerned whether the other civs nearby outrace our techpace early on. We'll get those techs in our first peace deal :D
Both of your points are valid and pointy stick research will be a valuable part of "building our empire". There are advantages to The Wheel and HBR as well. Chariots give us a unit capable of scouting quickly until Horseman arrive, although they can not enter certain terrain, mountains and jungle I think. It probably does come down to personal preference, so it looks like you get to decide! :lol: And whatever you decide is fine, although I would still vote for beelining to HBR. :crazyeye:

Good luck Captain and I will pray for RNG good fortune. :help: A settler from a GH located with two food bonuses would be kind of nice. :rolleyes:

Go for it, Captain. You choose, as it's your start. I'm not experienced enough to want to impose my views.

Roster:

Capt Buttkick UP
leif erikson On deck
zamint3
AdrianE
AlanH

Go for it, Captain. You choose, as it's your start. I'm not experienced enough to want to impose my views.

Ooops, I hope I didn't sound as though Capt. Buttkick had to do it my way. If I did, I apologize. We have done well by the principle that the player holding the mouse is free to decide and that is how I think it should be. :blush:

No, I didn't read your posts that way. We're all agreed that Capt has freedom to make his own decision, based on the his assessment of the suggestions we've made. If he wants any more discussion he should ask for it. I'm just looking forward to seeing where we get to in twenty turns :D

:lol: I've passed 30 so I'm a stubborn old man who likes things my way...

0 4000 B.C. Worker E spots game. Settler SE.
1 3950 B.C. Berlin founded, starts warrior. We got the food resource, but we decided to gamble on trading pottery. I follow my nack for swordies so IW @ min (20% for the time being). Worker builds road.
2 3900 B.C. Nothing
3 3850 B.C. MM for more gold, still warrior in 2.
4 3800 B.C. Worker mine.
IBT: Berlin warrior --> warrior.
5 3750 B.C. MM back to game. Warrior1 moves E.
6 3700 B.C. Warrior1 moves E.
7 3650 B.C. MM to more gold. Warrior1 moves E.
8 3600 B.C. Worker moves E, spots incense.
IBT: Berlin warrior --> warrior.
9 3550 B.C. Warrior1 E. Warrior2 S.
10 3500 B.C. Worker SE. Warrior1 E, we've hit the eastern coast already. Warrior2 S, spots spices.
IBT: Berlin expands, if we had settled on the spot we could have had a perfect settler factory :lol: It would have taken some time to set up though and we're in a hurry... Berlin size 2.
11 3450 B.C. Warrior1 N. Warrior2 S. Worker chops either for archer/spear or for granary.
IBT: Berlin warrior --> barracks.
12 3400 B.C. Warrior1 w. Warrior2 S. Warrior3 W.
IBT: A russian scout moves into sight.
13 3350 B.C. Russia are only up by pottery to our Warrior Code. She wants 56gcs, 1gpt and WC for pottery which is way steep, but I get the lump payment down to 42 gcs and accept. Warrior1 W Warrior2 S. Warrior3 W. Switch production in Berlin to granary.
14 3300 B.C. Warrior1 N. Warrior2 S. Warrior3 NW, looks like we were fooled by some fresh water that we thought was the coast...
15 3250 B.C. Warrior1 W. Warrior2 S, spots Russian border. Warrior3 W.
16 3200 B.C. Warrior1 SW. Warrior2 S, Russia got Ivory. Moscow is defended by a spear. Warrior3 W.
17 3150 B.C. Warrior1 W. Warrior2 E. Warrior3 E.
18 3100 B.C. Warrior1 N. Warrior2 S. Warrior3 E.
19 3050 B.C. Warrior1 N. Warrior2 S, spots GH. Warrior3 E. MM Berlin so it doesn't grow before after the chop is done.
20 3000 B.C. Warrior1 W. Warrior2 S. Warrior3 E.

Our score is 64, Russia 70. If left alone, Berlin will recieve a chop next IBT then build a granary the IBT after that and then grow to size 3 the turn after that. We've got 21 turns left before IW is done. We've got 13 turns left of paying 1 gpt to Russia.

<< Save >> (http://gotm.civfanatics.net/saves/sgotm2/Xteam_SG002_BC3000_01.SAV)

I hope someone else will post pics, It's way past my bedtime :lol:

:lol: I've passed 30 so I'm a stubborn old man who likes things my way...

I hope someone else will post pics, It's way past my bedtime :lol:
I know how you feel, I'm in the same boat; over 40 and stubborn! :eek:

Got it!

I promise to post some screen shots in a couple of hours. Looks like a very good job :goodjob: , have a restful night's sleep and a Happy Holiday tomorrow, or maybe that is today for you! :lol:

Well done Captain. Looking good. Here's a screenshot to be going on with:

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads7/Xteam-3000BC.jpg

Come back and look for sympathy when youre over 60 and stubborn :p

Roster:

Capt Buttkick resting, on his Norwegian holidays
leif erikson UP and got it
zamint3 On deck
AdrianE
AlanH

Come back and look for sympathy when youre over 60 and stubborn :p
That will happen all too soon! :cry: Do you ever sleep Alan? :worship: Thanks for posting the screenie, saves me some space.

Turn log:
3000 BC – Pre-flight
Everything looks good so we press enter.

IBT
Forest is chopped and 10 shields to Berlin. Granary in 1.

2950 BC – Turn 1
I am unsure which warrior is which so I am going to guess. The northern warrior is 1, the southern warrior is 2 and the one next to Berlin is 3. That is how I will name them.

Warrior1 W.
Warrior2 S, pops a GH, we got 25 gold and found a wonderful city site, two cattle, incense, and I think, fresh water. It is located south of Moscow, one we can use later!
Warrior3 N.
Worker irrigates.

IBT
Granary is built in Berlin –> Settler.

2900 BC – Turn 2
Warrior1 W.
Warrior2 W, spot Russian settler and Spear.
Warrior3 NW.

IBT
Berlin grows to size 3.

2850 BC – Turn 3
Change lux slider to 10%.
Warrior1 NW.
Warrior2 W.
Warrior3 S.

IBT

2800 BC – Turn 4
Warrior1 W.
Warrior2 SW. Moscow is a perfect 4 turn settler factory with Ivory in its radius. Can’t wait to move there.
Warrior3 stays in place.

IBT

2750 BC – Turn 5
Warrior1 W.
Warrior2 N and sees an extended border. Russia now has two cities (St. Petersburg), but I can’t see the city center from a hill, interesting. :confused:
Warrior3 skips turn.
Worker roads.

IBT

2710 BC – Turn 6
Warrior1 S.
Warrior2 SW.
Warrior3 skips turn.

IBT
Berlin grows to size 4.

2670 BC – Turn 7
Change lux slider to 20%.
Warrior1 SW.
Warrior2 SW.
Warrior3 skips turn.

IBT
Berlin produces a settler –> Barracks.

2630 BC – Turn 8
Settler NW.
Worker NW and W.
Warrior1 SW.
Warrior2 W. Moves into Russian territory because I couldn’t see the border in the plains and river squares (old eyes). Sees a pink border (France) to the South.
Warrior3 NW.
Change Lux slider back to 0%

IBT
Catherine of Russia complains that we have violated her sovereignty and tells us to get out. I explain gracefully my stupidity. Unfortunately, she is annoyed. She has Masonry but is unwilling to consider any offers.

2950 BC – Turn 9
Settler moves NW.
Wrestled with the decision on the worker task. Thought about chopping, but at 10 turns, there are more pressing things to do now, as in getting our second city running and connecting the Ivory. I decide to road the woodland.
Warrior1 W.
Warrior2 SW. We meet the French.
Warrior3 NW.
I meet Joan of the French who is polite towards us. We have Pottery plus 97 Gold and are making 3 GPT and she has Masonry and Alphabet and 10 Gold. She wants Pottery plus 50 Gold for Masonry. She wants Pottery plus 97 Gold (all we have) plus 3 GPT for Alphabet and she won’t settle for Pottery plus 97 Gold. I decide to wait to trade because Russia has Masonry but not Alphabet. Sometime in the next 10 turns, we should have enough Gold to purchase Alphabet and then trade it to Russia for masonry, unless Joan trades Alphabet to Catherine first.

IBT
Berlin increase to pop 3

2550 BC – Turn 10
Change lux slider to 10%.
Settler NW.
Warrior1 W.
Warrior2 W.
Warrior3 NW, this is where I had planned to place our next city to take advantage of the wheat, the fresh water and the Ivory. Next player’s option on location, of course.

The situation map as of 2550 BC.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads7/XMEN_2550_BC_Situation.jpg

Post-turn analysis.
I decided to build a Barracks in Berlin which can be changed if needed. We will be pumping out units in between settlers and thought it better that they were vets.

We are about to build our second town. I would usually have tried to place it three squares from our nearest town. The resources and terrain make that difficult, so it may end up being up to 5 squares away. The map shows the area and the options I propose. It is up to Zamint3 where it goes.

There is a trading opportunity with Joan of the French. I described it under turn 9. I did not check it on turn 10, deferring to Zamint3.

Warrior1 is currently far west of Berlin. Warrior2 is down near the French border. Warrior3 is near the proposed city site. Wish we could label them, it is going to get confusing when our Army of 50 Cav strike fear into the heart of every civ! :smug:

This is a map of the proposed city site.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads7/XMEN_2550_BC_City_Site.jpg

Good luck Zamint3!! :cool:

<< The Save >> (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads7/Xteam_SG002_BC2550_01.SAV)

edit - I loaded the save onto the server the per-AlanH way and then submitted the game on Alan's new form. I found out that I guess we should submit the game first because it automatically saves the game file to the server and we should get the link from there, is that correct Alan? It is a really simple system, :goodjob: Alan!!

Do you ever sleep Alan?Only when I'm supposed to be working :D

I found out that I guess we should submit the game first because it automatically saves the game file to the server and we should get the link from there, is that correct Alan? It is a really simple system, :goodjob: Alan!!That's the general idea. The link is also in the submissions listing.

Good turns, leif. :goodjob:

Roster:

Capt Buttkick
leif erikson
zamint3 UP
AdrianE On deck
AlanH

zamint3 gets to choose our first city location. If anyone wants to create a dot map for discussion first, let's do so.

zamint3 gets to choose our first city location. If anyone wants to create a dot map for discussion first, let's do so.
I probably should have asked everyone about that. Saw the Ivory and the Wheat and got carried away, headed straight for them, full speed ahead. I'll check in come morning, I'm joining the Capt. for some Zzzzz's. ;)

Originally Posted by leif erikson
I guess we should submit the game first because it automatically saves the game file to the server and we should get the link from there, is that correct Alan? It is a really simple system, Alan!!

I don't know how you do it Alan, but it's brilliant. :thumbsup:

That's an awful lot of jungle and mountains out there :eek: , so we won't need horses for a while :( , good choice on research Capt. ;)

My guess is that there's nothing up north, so we should be expanding south towards Russia to claim the land, the problem is where?? :crazyeye:

We should then go for the two wheat! We may have to skip the RCP idea!

Do we get the wheat at Leifs two proposed spots?

edit: I would like to change production, we can have a settler in 4 turns, we should expand, expand, expand and we might get some promotions barbhunting. ... and you may want to know I'm just a stubborn as the rest of you. :cool: , not quite 60 but close enough. :D

That's an awful lot of jungle and mountains out there :eek: , so we won't need horses for a while :( , good choice on research Capt. ;)
It was a good call Capt., sometimes stubborness pays off!! :goodjob:

edit: I would like to change production, we can have a settler in 4 turns, we should expand, expand, expand and we might get some promotions barbhunting. ... and you may want to know I'm just a stubborn as the rest of you. :cool: , not quite 60 but close enough. :D
Looking at the map this morning through clearer eyes :rolleyes: , I think it would be wise to get some settlers out to the south as well. We can fill in the north later. I tired to make a dot map but quit in frustration because we don't have enough of the terrain exposed to do it justice. From what I can see, it looks like the optimal RCP number would be about 5 squares because of all the mountains and jungles, however, without better details south, that is an educated guess. I wish I had explored more south but was afraid of leaving the settler alone with raging barbs. :eek:

There is another wheat to the NNE of Berlin about 5 squares. It is along a river but I didn't head that way because of the Ivory to the west. I was hoping that, when Berlin expanded again, we could get to the spices S of Berlin and have the Ivory west to help us keep some gold in our treasury instead of paying lux for happiness. And where will the Iron be??

Zamint, you have a tough decision to make for this city. I'm sure it will be as good as the Captain's. :)

edit - spelling??

I wish I had explored more south but was afraid of leaving the settler alone with raging barbs. :eek:
I don't think we need an escort this early, :confused: , but I may be wrong. :(


Zamint, you have a tough decision to make for this city. I'm sure it will be as good as the Captain's. :)
I wish I was sure. :cool:
I'll go play now!

I don't think we need an escort this early, :confused: , but I may be wrong. :( That's my assumption too. Raging only starts happening around the turn of the era. Before that, and particularly if you are not going near the coast, it's unusual to bump into one. And leaving teh city undefended is also OK. They don't destroy cities, they only destroy work on improvements, or citizens or steal gold. A new city only usually has a few shields and a little gold to steal.

I wish I was sure. :cool:
I'll go play now! Good hunting. We are on the low score line currently. I assume the scores are bunched into those who founded in 4000BC, those who founded in 3950BC, and Kuningas who seems to be playing a different game :confused:

I uploaded the save, it didn't go too bad :D
Score is up ;)

More in an hour, or so. :p

I uploaded the save, it didn't go too bad :D
Score is up ;)

More in an hour, or so. :p
Wooohooo! It won't surprise you to hear that I have an open window of the score graph that I refresh frequently, so I saw that we have lift-off before I saw your post.:thumbsup:

That's my assumption too. Raging only starts happening around the turn of the era. Before that, and particularly if you are not going near the coast, it's unusual to bump into one. And leaving teh city undefended is also OK. They don't destroy cities, they only destroy work on improvements, or citizens or steal gold. A new city only usually has a few shields and a little gold to steal.
Is my RNG luck so bad that I am the only one who has lost an unescorted settler to Barbs? :cry: It has happened to me in two GOTM's, although I still often send unescorted settlers, losing one really, really hurts, especially early in the game. I guess I have become too cautious in old age! :confused:

Score looks good Zamint, can't wait to see the map! :goodjob:

Score looks good Zamint, can't wait to see the map! :goodjob:
If you're really anxious, as I am, you can always DL the save from the submission list :)

Sorry if I'm out of line on this one, but I don't think so... :) (http://gotm.civfanatics.net/saves/sgotm2/Xteam_SG002_BC2150_01.SAV)

If you're really anxious, as I am, you can always DL the save from the submission list :)

Sorry if I'm out of line on this one, but I don't think so... :) (http://gotm.civfanatics.net/saves/sgotm2/Xteam_SG002_BC2150_01.SAV)
That's aboslutely correct. There's really no need to post the save link in the thread at all, except that's where people expect it to be, and old habits die hard.

Sorry to have kept you waiting. :rolleyes:

2550 BC Preflight Changed production to settler.

2510 BC Turn 1 : Settler NE, Warrior3 SE, Warrior1 N, Warrior2 W.

IBT Barb appearing two tiles N of worker, so much for my thoughts on barbs :lol:

2470 BC Turn 2 : Settler NE, Warrior1 E , we need back up, Warrior3 E towards the barb
warrior, this is getting a bit too exciting. Warrior2 W.
Micromanage in Berlin to grow in one turn.

IBT Barb attacks our warrior on the mountain and loses J, our warrior loses one hitpoint.
Berlin grows to pop 4, lux will be set to 20% for one turn.

2430 BC Turn 3 : Leipzig founded on spot #1, starts on warrior. Warrior3 healing, Warrior2 W, Warrior1 E.

2390 BC Turn 4 : Berlin builds settler --> settler, settler NE towards the other wheat. Lux down to zero.
Warrior3 E, Warrior1 E, Warrior2 W.
We make a tradedeal with France :
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads7/Tradedeal_France.jpg
..and one with Russia :
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads7/Tradedeal_Russia.jpg
Not bad, and Catherina turns polite as well. :)
.. and then another one with France :
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads7/Tradedeal_France2.jpg
French slave NW.

2350 BC Turn 5 : Worker completes road and moves NW with our slave.Warrior3 E, Warrior1 E, Warrior2 W, settler NE.

2310 BC Turn 6 : Berlin grows to pop 3, lux up to 10%.
Warrior3 NE, settler NE, Warrior1 E, Warrior2 N, see an orange border, must be The English, wauw it’s crowded on this continent.
Slave starts on road, worker NW. I won’t mine the BG for now, we have
a nice 6-turn settler-factory in Berlin, so I’ll work on improving around Leipzig and connecting the ivory.

2270 BC Turn 7 : Worker starts irrigating the wheat, Warrior3 E, settler NE, Warrior2 N, Warrior 1 NE, there’s the barb camp on a mountain.

2230 BC Turn 8 : Leipzig warrior à warrior. Warrior4 S, Warrior1 NE, I won’t attack just yet, Warrior3 E, settler NE, Warrior2 N onto mountain, but we can’t see London yet. Micromanage in Berlin to grow next turn.

IBT Another barb N-NW of Leipzig. Berlin grows to pop 4, lux will go up to 20% for one turn.

2190 BC Turn 9 : Warrior4 back to Leipzig, Warrior1 fortified on mountain, hope for promotion on barb attack.
Warrior2 N, and we meet Elizabeth, she’s doing well !! :
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads7/Elizabeth_trade.jpg
We buy Mysticism from France for 64g (3g cheaper than with Elizabeth :) ), we sell Mysticism to Russia for 81g, what’s happening here, maybe I can sell some sand to the Arabs later ?? ;) . Catherine turn polite again.
Hamburg founded 5 tiles NE of Berlin, starts on warrior. Warrior3 S,

IBT Elizabeth tells us to get lost, we agree. Barb attacks our warrior on the mountain, no loss of hitpoint, no promotion. . Barb just north of Leipzig.

2150 BC Turn 10 : Berlin : settler --> settler. Warrior3 S, Warrior2 E.
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads7/World_ranking.jpg

I haven’t moved the settler, I don’t know where??
The warrior in Leipzig can still move, but maybe we should just fortify him in Leipzig and let the barb attack.
Russia just got The Wheel otherwise we are at tech parity, and we've got iron comming up next turn.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads7/Germany_2150_bc.jpg

And just for old habits sake here's the >>save<< (http://gotm.civfanatics.net/saves/sgotm2/Xteam_SG002_BC2150_01.SAV) ;)

Please feel free to comment on any of my moves, we are here to learn. :cool:

Sorry to have kept you waiting. :rolleyes: It was worth the wait! Good trading, and we're well on our way!
Please feel free to comment on any of my moves, we are here to learn. :cool:Indeed. I'm interested in why Hamburg is not on fresh water? An RCP radius of 5 could have put it one tile south of the wheat, and on the river.

Some thoughts on the settler:
We need to know about those spaces south east and south west. It will be difficult to map our complete core out until we have that info. We need to find ways to deprive Cathy to our south, and those mountains could even hide our iron. The settler might have to be our next explorer in that direction, and south seems to me to be the right general direction for our next city. Since England is South east I'd tend to go that way.

Indeed. I'm interested in why Hamburg is not on fresh water? An RCP radius of 5 could have put it one tile south of the wheat, and on the river.You might very well be right. :confused: My thoughts were: Hamburg is going to manage on its own for a long time, south of the wheat it will only grow to size 3, producing 4 shields w/o worker actions. This way it will be more productive, until we eventually wanna go beyond size 6. Maybe we could turn it into a warrior - worker factory.


The settler might have to be our next explorer in that direction, and south seems to me to be the right general direction for our next city. Since England is South east I'd tend to go that way.You mean south west.
I'm not so sure about the unescorted settler any more, :rolleyes: , maybe we should move him south to meet with our eastern warrior, or maybe he should just follow the iron. :)

You mean south west.
I'm not so sure about the unescorted settler any more, :rolleyes: , maybe we should move him south to meet with our eastern warrior, or maybe he should just follow the iron. :)
I stand corrected. My typing fingers sometimes seem to suffer from directional dyslexia :confused: You're right. I think the iron next turn may provide his compass with a sense of direction.

You guys are just blazing through this game!

I like the sites S-S-S-SW or S-S-S-SW of Berlin for the next settler. They would be range 5.5 and would secure the spices. These sites are also on fresh water and have potential to be very productive cities. Since we have started on the RCP at range 5/5.5 we might as well continue with it.

Another worker or two might be useful as well.

Adrian

This is all propositions. I find that dotmaps often are overvalued (any work got to be better than none, right? :crazyeye: ). I think this team will probably let me know if I'm wrong on something though :lol:

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads7/SGOTM2_XTeam_Dotmap_CB_2150_BC.JPG

We've got options to continue the RCP at 5 (red dots + the yellow which probably is a mountain (in which case the dot to its N NW is promoted to red 2) + a blue one that's still in the blue :)) or even squeeze a ring in at 3 (brown dots). Ring at 5 would prob mean quite a few ICS placements.
Optimum ring distance would probably have been 6 which would put Leipzig just N of the lake.
I think we should landgrab for now and continue with the RCP in the order indicated by the red numbers 1-3. While Hamburg is not ideal, it'll work good for now and we can do an ICS placement at the spot marked with a red 4 later on.
After we've founded red 1-3, we can go for a third ring at ~ 9 if we've explored that far, pushing S first. Else: we can start doing the inner ring (brown numbers 1-3).

BTW: I know that my imaging tools are a tad outdated :rolleyes:

You guys are just blazing through this game!

Well, we're still behind the most advanced teams - not that it's a race. You're UP now, so please feel free to slow the pace and provoke a discussion before you dive in if you wish. Here's a question ...

We get Ironworking next turn. What are we going to research next?

Roster:

Capt Buttkick
leif erikson
zamint3
AdrianE UP
AlanH On deck

:lol: Obviously I'm not the greatest RCP placer either. I didn't know 5.5 = 5 :rolleyes:

I agree completely with Adrian on the next city them: S S S SW.

I like S-S-S-SW as well. What was your second position, AdrianE? It came out the same, but I'm sure you intended another one?

Edit: I would suggest an early worker in each city as we develop. There's lots of chopping to do to make this core work effectively.

I like S-S-S-SW as well. What was your second position, AdrianE? It came out the same, but I'm sure you intended another one?

Edit: I would suggest an early worker in each city as we develop. There's lots of chopping to do to make this core work effectively.
You guys have been busy indeed.:goodjob:

AdrianE's suggestion for the next city is a very good one. It will get us moving south, keep us on the 5 ring and enlighten the southern area. Alan has also made an excellent point about workers. With this terrain, we are going to need roads to move our forces south to include Catherine's cities as our outer ring. There sure is a lot of engineering work to do on this map. It will be tough to support war in its current state.

You did a better job on the map than I did Capt. I like the concept but it would be nice to see under the fog, I guess we should suggest a priority to try to get a scouting unit southwest and southeast, although things look a little busy up north right now. Building a city where AdrianE suggests will help some.

On tech, I am still in favor of getting HBR as soon as possible as it is pretty open down around Russia, France and England (what we can see, at least). If we can trade IW to Russia for The Wheel and then do a 40 turn on HBR? Unless you all think that the AI will research HBR and we can trade for it. Then we should start the race for Republic. Doesn't the AI generally go for Writing to open up Map Making, Lit., COL and Phil? I should go read the article on "What will the AI research next?" Tonight's homework assignment for me.

Nice trading Zamint, I am glad I left it for you as more options opened up several turns later. Things are looking good. We now have to expand and get some engineering infrastructure built and we are on our way!! :D

Good luck AdrianE!! :cool:

edit - just read Alexman's article on AI research << Found Here >> (http://www.civfanatics.com/civ3acad_ai_research.shtml) If I do my math right, the next tech the AI should research will be HBR as it provides a resource and an offensive unit. If this is correct, I suggest we head for Republic and trade for the other techs.

edit2 - Another thought just occured to me. For those of us who have been playing GOTM with psuedo C3C rules, we are playing Vanilla now so the contact and map trading are active with Writing and Map Making. I almost forgot about this as I am so used to the other way now! :crazyeye:

Got it. What are your thoughts on trading Iron working. Do we keep the monopoly or trade it at premium prices?

Edit: I started to play. We have 2 irons relatively close but England will only pay 25G for it which means they are close to researching it so I'll trade it away. Polythesim is a good trade gambit as most of the AI's research something else.

Adrian

There's only one tech avaiable for trade currently - Russia has Wheel, but she has no cash. Liz has cash - about 135 gold, but no techs. Joan has some gold.

There are no deals available currently that would be good swaps for Iron. I'd wait until second tier techs are available before we trade it.

But right now, can't we broker Wheel from Russia and sell it to France and England? We can buy Wheel from Russia for 5gpt plus most of our 95 gold. We should then be able to sell it to England and France an get most of that back as cash. We end up having changed gpt into gold in the bank, and we get Wheel virtually free. We're then in good shape to know when HBR comes on the market, and we have three researchers working on it for us. Seems like a plan to me ;)

[Edit: Cross-posted. Sounds good, but that means Liz hasn't done any work on Wheel, so she should pay a good price for it if we buy it from Cathy]

Got it. What are your thoughts on trading Iron working. Do we keep the monopoly or trade it at premium prices?Adrian
I don't think we can keep it a monopoly long enough for it to matter. It might be good to hold it a short time as the only thing that can be traded besides Gold are The Wheel with Russia. In a few more turns, there might be more available, too many turns and another civ will discover it and we lose the opportunity to get anything from it. According to Axelman's article, IW will be high on the AI research list because it provides a resource and allows an offensive unit. I hope that helps you make your decision.

May fortune shine upon the German Empire!! ;)

edit - I guess Alan and I cross posted. You couldn't get any more different opinions! :) Sometimes I wonder how we can all get through games with fairly good scores???? Good luck!

edit2 - If we can pull of the scheme Alan describes with The Wheel, that sounds like a good deal. Glad you thought of it Alan. To get all the civs working on HBR would be nice, but I still think we need to start on the road to Republic soon. Good luck for a second time! :crazyeye:

I used to think Poly was a good idea, but I've been beated to it frequently lately. With Writing and Mapmaking important again in the standard game, maybe we should be majoring on that path?

Do we know where France is? Will they have met England and Russia by the time we can trade contacts?

France is south of Russia. They must have met Russia.

Russia will take 5GPT and 84G for the Wheel. That might be worth doing.

I'm going to do a couple of hours of work and then play later tonight.

Adrian

:hmm: Not much chance of making any contact trades from Writing then.

A Wheel deal still sounds good to me. You'r probably best to trade iron for it with Russia now that England have iron. Otherwise they'll deal direct, cutting us out as middle man. We should then be able to grab over 100 gold from England and France for Wheel.

While we seem to have plenty of things to build and improve, as we approach Map Making, we probably ought to start thinking about a city on the sea. It would be nice to get a suicide galley or two out to see if we can find the other civs and broker some trade, or contacts. To trade maps again would be like walking down memory lane! :groucho: In addition, if we are going to try a palace pre-build for The Great Lighthouse, we should think about it soon. :)

Pre turn

England is cautious and has 133 gold. We are weak.
Russia is cautious, has 0G and is up the wheel. We are average in strength.
France is polite and has 69G. We are weak.

IBT - Barbs attack Leipzig and die. We learn Iron working - I set research to Polytheism. Palace expands

2110BC trade IW , 2GPT, 83G to Russia for the Wheel.
Sell Wheel to England for 135 gold (all)
Sell Wheel to france for 70 gold (all)

I do not wish to send out unescorted settlers so Berlin switched to warrior

IBT England learns IW so its a good thing I sold it. England starts Oracle.


2070BC - Leipzig warrior -> temple (get the flood plains in range and Leipzig will grow)

1910BC - Found Koniegsberg to secure spices -> temple (get grass in expansion to grow)

1830BC - MM Berlin to produce a settler faster

1750BC - settler and escort unmoved E of Berlin. I was planning to go E-E-E-SE to secure incense.

Notes Russia is gaining 4GPT, England 2GPT and France 1GPT net.

score 116

Edit: got a fatal error trying to use the SGOTM uploader (Alan line 358 of expander.php) so here it is:



>>save<< (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads7/Xteam_1750BC.zip)

Once I had unzipped the file, it worked fine for me Adrian, And your name is correct in the database. Alan will need to sort it out I'm afraid.

Hey guys, on the submission page this morning I saw something new, the Xteam is in the lead. [dance] [party] [dance]

I've tried a little dot-mapping also. First one ever. ;)

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads7/Dotmap2_Germany.jpg

I pretty much agree with Capt Buttkick. :)

Red #1 will cover the lux and it'll have one plain in its city radius. It won't cover the iron, but we could use our slave to build a colony?
Red #2 is not on fresh water, but will be (somewhat) productive.
Green and yellow is ring 9-9.5, one of the green being top priority.

... and we need to discuss cityproduction, being scientific, I would never build a temple! :nono: :lol:

Once I had unzipped the file, it worked fine for me Adrian, And your name is correct in the database. Alan will need to sort it out I'm afraid.If it worked for MB, it would probably work for me as well. The error was deep in the code that expands a compressed save. The form should have rejected any file that didn't have .sav on the end, so I don't imagine you submitted the .zip. It will remain a mystery unless you can supply me with an exact copy of the *actual* file you tried to submit.

I think we should rather go for a tighter city placement than start building culture this early, whether it's sci or rel buildings.

We may consider building a city 5 SE of Berlin to get iron online. I know it will be a poor city to start with, but it'll be highly productive once we clear some jungle. If we only clear one jungle/forest for that city to use, we can build workers every 10 turns for as long as we need them. Not saying it's optimal, but it would save our slave worker and we need all the workers we can get so it might be worth a thought.

My take on temples: Temples are cost neutral later on, and they generate culture. They cost 1 gpt to maintain and they save 1 gpt in happiness costs once the free happy faces and MPs and luxes are used up. In the early stages they are a drain as they cost shields to build, and they absorb 1 gpt. They don't save on lux tax at this stage on Monarch because we get two happy faces and we will probably have MPs in our outlying towns. Unless the target is a cultural victory, a scientific civ should probably wait until Literature and then build libraries rather than temples. They produce more culture and their payback is much greater as they augment science income by 50%.

Meanwhile I must say I'm feeling a bit agrophobic with this wide open city planning. To be using temples to fill or extend cultural borders feels wrong this early in the game, rather than relying on city builds to extend.

I'm going to spend a little while looking at our placement options and the dot maps you guys have produced, and try to work out how we can get our expansion moving faster. We have lots of space, and unless we have neighbours to the north (unlikely - we'd have met them by now) there will be no limits to growth.

We either need to squeeze England out and try to prevent them from expanding into that area, or let them do our city building for us. Russia, as usual, is not a threat, and we can't do much about France - they are too far away right now. I'm thinking we should perhaps focus for the time being on getting the 5-ring built and productive rather than extending our communications and defences further out. If England builds some cities outside that ring, so be it. They'll be ours soon enough anyway :D

We need to get some workers out to get this core going. Konigsberg is growing very slowly right now so it can't produce its own. I guess it's building a temple to grab the BG to the south, but that's going to take forever. We're not industrious, so forest tiles are going to take about 20 worker turns each to fully develop, and we have lots of them to do.

I have some RL stuff to do, but I'll come back in a little while with some more coherent thoughts (I hope :rolleyes: )
[edit: crossposted with Capt Buttkick, but I think we are saying the same sort of things. He said it in far fewer words :thumbsup:]

Capt Buttkick On deck
leif erikson
zamint3
AdrianE
AlanH UP

I've got it, but as I said, I'll come back for discussions before I play. We all need to be on the same page on city planning and development, and on research, and I'm not sure that's the case right now.

Good morning, or afternoon for most of you. Just downloaded the save and thought I should add my 2 cents. :rolleyes:

I think we can all see that this terrain is not optimal for city development. :sad:

From my perspective, I want to look at what we said in the pre-game and try to bring some things into focus for your consideration and then you can then tell me I'm crazy and we'll march on! ;)

We wanted to prep for early war. I would suggest the following changes.
Berlin - a 6 turn settler factory to try to fill in the nicely done dot maps of the Captain and Zamint, which are pretty close. I think we have to keep the expansion up. I think we all expected a closer build of cities, but with this much room and the terrain as it is, expansion at rings 5 and 11(edit-I meant 9) seems the order of the day. A closer build does not seem to gain us anything because of the terrain, we will still have to develop it to get any production, so why not expand farther out, pushing our borders, and fill in later if we find ourselves able to do that.

Hamburg and Leipzig - change production to barracks and begin alternating the production of warriors with workers. It builds up a pool of vet warriors for upgrade to swords and produces the workers we need to get some improvement.

Konigsburg - change production there to barracks and produce vet warriors for upgrade to swords. Its pop is growing slowly and it will serve no other useful purpose production-wise until we can build a road there and cut some of that jungle.

Generally, I think we can wait for cultural expansion until libraries are available. AT this point, temples will be a drain on GPT imho. We should be able to have 3 luxs on line once we get the roads built and we are not exactly expanding our pop at a rapid rate.

In expanding our rings outward, we still need to get a city on the sea to try for pre-build of The Great Lighthouse and to build suicide galleys.

On research, I hope the Polytheism gambit pays off and we can trade for Writing and HBR. I checked the save and we can not speed up the research at this time. After Poly, I think we have to head for Republic and trade through the tree to MA.

I have found myself in this position many times, we know we have to do some warmongering as some of the other civ's areas look really nice but we are stuck in the building mode because of the terrain and the area for expansion. I think we can do some of both and be prepared for mass warrior upgrades to swords so we can bust out of this crappy terrain. Just some early morning thoughts for everyone to chew on. I would love to hear everyone's thoughts on where we go now and how we get there. :)

edit2 - Please have a look at the histograph. Something is going on with France as they have made a large recent leap forward in score and power. Is this a war with Russia or perhaps a several city expansion? I should have checked the diplomacy screen, that would tell me about war but RL calls.

You're crazy :crazyeye:
*Marches out*

J/k, only thing I disagree on is second ring distance. We need to at least make sure we use all our land so 9 or 10 may be better than 11.
I espescially like the rax --> warriors --> upgrade scheme :)

You're crazy :crazyeye:
*Marches out*

J/k, only thing I disagree on is second ring distance. We need to at least make sure we use all our land so 9 or 10 may be better than 11.
I espescially like the rax --> warriors --> upgrade scheme :)
You're right, I cross posted my edit with you. I changed it to 9, guess the sleep wasn't out of my eyes yet!! :crazyeye: Thanks for the correction.

I have found myself in this position many times, we know we have to do some warmongering as some of the other civ's areas look really nice but we are stuck in the building mode because of the terrain and the area for expansion. I think we can do some of both and be prepared for mass warrior upgrades to swords so we can bust out of this crappy terrain. Just some early morning thoughts for everyone to chew on. I would love to hear everyone's thoughts on where we go now and how we get there. :)
Good point, but we don't need to wait for our swords to do it, another option is an early palace jump to a better location of which there are plenty. All we'd lose in Berlin is a granary.

Just a wild idea!

I think an early temple or two are mandatory builds. They really help with the long term culture as insurance against flips. Leipzig is not going to grow very fast until the flood plains are inside its territory. I really strongly believe that the investment in a temple in Leipzig is absolutely vital.

Koniegsberg gets a temple because it will max out at size 2 without one. It can't grow until we get a worker down there and that will take longer than building a temple.

BTW there is a worker in leipzig - He was heading to hook up the ivory.

I don't like palace jumping.

Basically I'm on the same line as Leif. :love2:


I would suggest the following changes.
Berlin - a 6 turn settler factory
I very much agree.



Hamburg and Leipzig - change production to barracks and begin alternating the production of warriors with workers. Yes, though I think Leipzig should complete a settler first, to fill in my red #2 spot.



Konigsburg - change production there to barracks and produce vet warriors for upgrade to swords.
Or produce two warriors and then whip :whipped: :devil2: a barrack which could serve as an upgrade station.
Or alternate between warrior and worker.

The Great Lighthouse : You're probably right Leif, but I'm not sure we need it. :crazyeye: :confused: :crazyeye: , but prebuilding for something is a good idea.

Palace jump : Might be an option, Moscow looks nice :) , I kind of like it. :D

We should try and buy workers when ever we can, they are rather cheap in civ-vanilla, right Alan! ;)

I think an early temple or two are mandatory builds. They really help with the long term culture as insurance against flips. Leipzig is not going to grow very fast until the flood plains are inside its territory. I really strongly believe that the investment in a temple in Leipzig is absolutely vital. Thanks for your feedback. You still need to convince me about temples though.

I would rather put the flood plains into our range by building them in if we can. We are going to build libraries like there's no tomorrow once we have Literature. A library generates 50% more culture per turn than a temple as well as magnifying our science budget. IMHO we aren't going to have more than your average level of problems with flips by the time we are in cultural dispute even if we never build a temple.

Koniegsberg gets a temple because it will max out at size 2 without one. It can't grow until we get a worker down there and that will take longer than building a temple.It will still max out at only 3 with a temple. It only has one 2 food tile within 21 tile range. Meanwhile it could be using the shields for something else. We get cheap barracks - that seems a much better investment to me.

BTW there is a worker in leipzig - He was heading to hook up the ivory.Thanks I hadn't spotted him. I'm not sure lux is the priority right now, as we have MPs and low pop. We need food to build the pop to create the problem that lux will solve, so perhaps he can do some irrigation for Leipzig first, then hook up the ivory.

I don't like palace jumping.Neither do I. But we have a poor starting position and I was trying to think outside the box and provoke exactly this kind of discussion. As I say, I'd like us all to be moving in an agreed direction before I play. If we don't all know where we're going we probably won't get there :p

Please keep the debate coming. I'm here to learn, so I'm looking for clues ;)

edit2 - Please have a look at the histograph. Something is going on with France as they have made a large recent leap forward in score and power. Is this a war with Russia or perhaps a several city expansion? I should have checked the diplomacy screen, that would tell me about war but RL calls.Just spotted your edit. France only has one more city than us, like England. They are both rated stronger than us by our friendly lieutenant. At this stage in the game the histograph gets excited about each city that's built, and they've just caught up with England. Our curve will show a similar leap when our current settler-in-transit drops anchor.

I've got no qualms about palace jumping. However, if we put effort into an RCP, I dislike it very much. Besides, even setting up for the jump will take time and with (admittedly even more) time our Berlin core will be top notch.
I'd rather we use the standard GL fishing and rush the FP in an all-corrupt area for a second core.

This is a great discussion.

Palace jump : Might be an option, Moscow looks nice , I kind of like it.

We should try and buy workers when ever we can, they are rather cheap in civ-vanilla, right Alan!

I'm on with Capt. Buttkick. I don't mind palace jumping but by the time we are ready to do one, Berlin should be cranking. I think we should keep an open mind and see where we are in 30 or 40 turns. To get the palace where you want it to be requires good coordination and setup - not that we can't handle it, but we have to make sure. Zamint3 is right and we should buy or trade for workers when we have spare gold as it really hurts the AI. But we also need gold for warrior upgrades. Lastly, I agree that if we can build a settler in Leipzig, we should. Anything to keep expanding as quickly as possible.

On the pre-build, the problem I see is that along the coast is far enough away that there will be some corruption and I hesitate to build any wonders in corrupt cities. Otoh, if we get a pre-build going early enough, it won't really matter if a little corruption exists because we should have most of the sheilds we need when it is time to change. The only reason I keep thinking about The Great Lighthouse (TGLH) is that some of my best scoring games have resulted from contacts on other continents that I could monopolize, so I have found it to be very effective. We can also send suicide galleys without TGLH and probably should.
I think an early temple or two are mandatory builds. They really help with the long term culture as insurance against flips. Leipzig is not going to grow very fast until the flood plains are inside its territory. I really strongly believe that the investment in a temple in Leipzig is absolutely vital.

The greatest insurance against culture flips is to take the continent and assimilate the other civs into our backward culture! ;)
The time has come for us to decide whether we are going to build or warmonger. Temples means building and Barracks mean warmongering and pointy stick research and diplomacy. Imho, the time has come to prepare for war! To control our continent will mean controlling our destiny. If we are going to build, then we must be concerned with culture flips and getting infrastructure for culture built. We are a militaristic civ and should use that trait to get GLs and expand our borders. Gee, it is nice to talk like a warmonger, I think it is my first time! :eek:

I hope this helps you make your decisions Alan. Go get 'em! :thumbsup:

edit - This was probably Zamint's point, but an MP or two in Konigsburg is just as effective as a temple and will allow it to grow to size 3 without revolt.

edit2 - Sorry, I'm on fire today! :lol: I have tried to look at each city and figure out how to use what is there most efficiently to meet our current needs. That is why I recommended cetain builds for certain cities. If someone sees a more efficient way to do it, please speak up. Of course this will change as we develop the empire so we should reevaluate as we go along. RL calls, back in a couple of hours! :cry:

Konigsberg's size limit is nothing to do with revolting peasants. Revolting peasants can be given food or lux or money or PMs to keep them under control. I have no problems with running lux tax at 10% or 20% or 30%, and frequently do.

It's about food. I think we had a similar conversation during SGOTM 1. Putting it simply, unless there are food bonuses, the highest pop you can sustain in any town is N + 2, where N is the number of 2 fpt tiles you have in its radius, assuming you have at least two 1 fpt tiles. You can't have any more citizens, because if you try, by joining a worker for example, they eat 2 fpt, make 1 fpt, and starve.

Until we get a worker involved, there are no 2 fpt tiles in Konigsberg's 9-tile radius, except the city center itself, which produces +2fpt without anyone working it. Each citizen eats 2 fpt and can only produce 1 fpt. So two citizens, as Adrian points out, eat the food produced by the city center and the net result is 0 fpt. Its population maxes out at 2. The temple we are building currently would increase the city's area to 21 tiles, and one of those produces 2 fpt. So that tile would allow us to support one more citizen. Pop maxes out at three instead of 2.

The temple allows one more citizen to produce one more shield per turn. It costs 60 shields. So that citizen will take 60 turns to pay back the shields that made her possible. Only then will we start to get a positive return on the investment. That's why I'm arguing against that temple. But I don't like changing build orders if I can't convince the originator that it's a good idea to do so. This is a team and we need to work together :)

I've got no qualms about palace jumping. However, if we put effort into an RCP, I dislike it very much. Besides, even setting up for the jump will take time and with (admittedly even more) time our Berlin core will be top notch.
I'd rather we use the standard GL fishing and rush the FP in an all-corrupt area for a second core.
I agree, especially being militaristic, but remember our luck in the past with the RNG. :sad: :lol:


Originally Posted by leif erikson
The only reason I keep thinking about The Great Lighthouse (TGLH) is that some of my best scoring games have resulted from contacts on other continents that I could monopolize, so I have found it to be very effective.
The only problem is, when we get the contacts we'll have nobody to trade them with, they'll all be wiped out! :evil: :D

[edit: crossposted, Originally Posted by AlanH
But I don't like changing build orders if I can't convince the originator that it's a good idea to do so. This is a team and we need to work together Good point, I agree. :) , but I think the vote is 4-1.]

Good luck with the game Alan. :thumbsup:

I'm off to :sleep:

Konigsberg's size limit is nothing to do with revolting peasants. Revolting peasants can be given food or lux or money or PMs to keep them under control. I have no problems with running lux tax at 10% or 20% or 30%, and frequently do.

It's about food. I think we had a similar conversation during SGOTM 1. Putting it simply, unless there are food bonuses, the highest pop you can sustain in any town is N + 2, where N is the number of 2 fpt tiles you have in its radius, assuming you have at least two 1 fpt tiles. You can't have any more citizens, because if you try, by joining a worker for example, they eat 2 fpt, make 1 fpt, and starve.

Until we get a worker involved, there are no 2 fpt tiles in Konigsberg's 9-tile radius, except the city center itself, which produces +2fpt without anyone working it. Each citizen eats 2 fpt and can only produce 1 fpt. So two citizens, as Adrian points out, eat the food produced by the city center and the net result is 0 fpt. Its population maxes out at 2. The temple we are building currently would increase the city's area to 21 tiles, and one of those produces 2 fpt. So that tile would allow us to support one more citizen. Pop maxes out at three instead of 2.

The temple allows one more citizen to produce one more shield per turn. It costs 60 shields. So that citizen will take 60 turns to pay back the shields that made her possible. Only then will we start to get a positive return on the investment. That's why I'm arguing against that temple. But I don't like changing build orders if I can't convince the originator that it's a good idea to do so. This is a team and we need to work together :)
You are correct, of course. My fingers were typing faster than my brain was thinking. You are also correct when you talk about investment and allowing one more citizen for 60 turns of work, plus 4 until it expands, for one extra citizen. I believe you are correct concerning the working of the team as well, but to get 100 percent agreement will not always happen. We seem to have 80% agreement. I am at a loss on what protocol to follow to resolve how we should proceed, but the four of us seem to agree on the course we need to follow and we should do what is in the best interest of the team and the objective we set at the start, unless we decide to change it. I guess AdrianE needs to read all that we have written and decide whether we are doing the right thing or not? :confused:

Thanks guys. I'll probably sleep on it and play tomorrow evening UK time - I'm working during the day tomorrow and I have other challenges tonight. So there's another 16 hours or so to make contributions. I think we have enough inputs on city placement, but any more ideas and comments are welcome. We are agreed we shall need to [cough]"ask our neighbours for assistance"[cough] at some point to get a high performance second core, but right now we need to get our own cities pumping vet warriors and cash. Vet warriors plus cash = vet swords :D. And, as you say, we have 80% agreement on the temples issue.

Revolting peasants can be given ........... PMs to keep them under control.

Great, what's the address, I'll start sending some asap! :lol:

:lol: @ Zamint

@ Alan: Good thing you waited til today to play cause I won't be able to pick it up until tomorrow. I'm swamped at work today and then I've got to go over to a friend's to help him paint the house. If (believe me, it's a big if...) I can get my home comp up and running I may be able to pick it up late tomorrow. If not, I'll look at it from work friday, provided there are screenies :D and then play it on my laptop friday evening.

"Police militaristique". I'm being pro-Europe today :p

You guys are having too much fun on that side of the pond!! :goodjob:
I'm swamped at work today and then I've got to go over to a friend's to help him paint the house.
I figured you could suspend the laptop from the roof and play. Just think of the possibilities, you could repaint the terrain map with a few dozen bonus grasslands in and around Berlin!! ;)

I figured you could suspend the laptop from the roof and play. Just think of the possibilities, you could repaint the terrain map with a few dozen bonus grasslands in and around Berlin!! ;)

:lol: I'm afraid I'm not much of an artist. In addition, my friend must be really desparate when he hires me in for manual labour...

I tell my friends that if they want derivations done, I'm their man :D
Not that I remember much of calculus now, but they'll never know :blush:

Alan

You are driving the game currently. Do what you want. That's the way it works in SGs.

My thinking is that with a temple and a modest investment in worker turns (clear one jungle and irrigate the plains) Koneigsberg will be productive far sooner than without a temple. Without a temple we will have to clear multiple jungles. Temples in my opinion pay back IMMEDIATELY when constructed through culture and happiness (score). However, Alan you should feel completely free to change builds.

Leif - we can't exterminate the civs that we need to vote for us later. Therefore culture now is important for the long haul.

We can exterminate all civs on this continent as long as the others don't get to know about it :D

we can't exterminate the civs that we need to vote for us later.
In gotm30 I had a diplo victory. I eliminated England, the Keltoi and the Vikings on the way, and was at war with Persia early on as well. At the end it was down to me against America and the vote was 3:1 in my favour.

quote from my gotm30 spoiler:

I chose my war victims carefully as I expanded, and ensured that they didn't live to vote against me.

The fewer nations there are left at the end of a diplo game the easier it is to ensure victory, as long as there are more than 2 in total. I'd say three is optimum :D.

We can exterminate all civs on this continent as long as the others don't get to know about it :DThere's no ptoblem with them knowing about it as long as you are honorable while doing it. No RoP rapes, no broken 20 turn deals, no 20 turn alliances brought to a premature end by eliminating the victim too soon.

quote from my gotm30 spoiler:

I chose my war victims carefully as I expanded, and ensured that they didn't live to vote against me.

The fewer nations there are left at the end of a diplo game the easier it is to ensure victory, as long as there are more than 2 in total. I'd say three is optimum :D.
Exactly!! :evil: That also means fewer resources to spend appeasing them in prep for diplo.

There are 6 rivals in the game, eliminate 3 and we have three remaining. With this many civs on our continent, we, hopefully, are on the largest continent, the more real estate we can borrow the better. The quicker we can consolidate our continent, the higher the score we shall achieve. I can assure you we shall have plenty of culture, once we get lit and can build libraries and, later, education and universities.

At this particular time, imho, temples require too much time for the benefits they provide. In 60 turns we can build a barracks and 3 to 4 warriors that can become swordsman. With three lux and marketplaces, plus libraries, we should be just fine. If we can't grow our own pop fast enough because of the terrain, then I guess we will have to go capture some. :ar15:

The whole key for me is expansion. Expansion means score and war is as legitimate a means of expansion in civ3 as planting settlers. It took me a long time to learn that because I'm stubborn, but I finally have learned it :grad: , I hope!! :lol:

edit - Sorry Alan, almost forgot. Good luck!! :king:

OK, here we go. I'll type this turn by turn and edit it as I play.

Preflight:

General:
Food makes population and populaton is power. We can only see 11 food bonus tiles, of which we are exploiting three. The other eight are on flood plains to the west and the north east. I agree with Adrian that we need to get to the ones to the west, but I disagree about the method of doing it. A temple would snag two of them. We'd still need a city to get to the other two. A temple would cost us 60 shields, a city would cost us 30 plus the lost shields while we recover pop 2. Leipzig will recover 2 pop points in 8 turns. I will therefore build a settler in Leipzig, but not for red dot 2. He'll go to an early radus 9 site covering the flood plains. Corruption will be higher there eventually, but it's a food/population center, and food is not subject to corruption, and until we grow our city count it's rank corruption will be low. We can also pop rush there once we have the flood plains in production.

Units:
We have a worker in Leipzig. He was heading for the ivory, but irrigation is more important. Clicked on him to ensure we kill any open go-to command. A French slave is irrigating a plain outside Leipzig, but there's a better tile next to the river with a gold bonus. It also points towards the flood plain.. As he still has 8 turns to go I'll interrupt. We only lose a couple of slave turns, and we don't need another tile for Leipzig immediately, as its pop will drop when it produces a settler.

Divert settle+warrior in transit towards iron or incence. We don't need incense yet, and iron can wait a little, so he's going for red dot 2. It has no food bonuses, but it's a productuve site with several grass/bonus grass. There's a river nearby, unfortunately not adjacent, but it will grow faster once we get out of despotism and build an aqueduct. Also wake up the warrior asleep at his post in Konigsberg and move him west. There's unexplored territory to his west and we need to know about it. For a start, the nearest horses we know about are miles away from Berlin. Surely there are nearer ones? Also our keen military intelligence officer is telling us there are barbs nearby As we know the west reasonably well and even have an exploring warrior in that direction it seems more likely they are in the west. Let's go look for them :D

City checks:
Berlin OK. Pop 2. Producing a worker in 3, expands in 1. We really need it to expand, but we really need the worker
Leipzig. Pop 2 grows in 2. Change temple to settler in 3. We need the pop, but we *really* need the city.
Konigsberg. Pop 1 grows sometime never (16). Change temple in 26 to barracks in 6. Konigsberg can then produce vet warriors for upgrade and wait until we can get some worker support in.
Hambug's building an archer. I've switched it to a barracks. We need vets from now on.

F1:
Check science options. We are 31 turns from Polytheism at +6 gpt. We could reduce it to 24 turns at -6gpt. I'd rather keep our options open wth cash in hand in case a deal comes up. Slider stays at 9.1.0.

Diplo check:
France is strong, polite, has 9 gold, down iron working
England is strong, polite, has 43 gold, tech parity
Russia is weak, cautious, has 101 gold, tech parity

Preferences - turn off that wretched civilopedia cursor.

IBT
Barb horse arrives outside Konigsberg ... from the east :eek:
Livy publishes his list of the most powerful nations: England/France/Japan/Germany/India/China/Russia.

Turn 51 1725 BC
The Russians have settled Kiev SW of Berlin. Ideally placed on our 9-9.5 ring, thanks Cath. They also have Writing as do our other friends. It looks like France researched Writing and swapped it for Ironworking with England, and they've redistributed the wealth - France now has 55 gold, England 35 and Russia 68. The best deal is 115 gold for Writing, from my favorite trading partner, Joan.

Settler+warrior move to forest north of red dot. Sticking to defensive groud now there are barb horses around. Worker and slave both move to river/plains tile outside Leipzig. They can road and irrigate it between them.

What to do about Konigsberg? :hmm: We have a barb horse at the gates. We could let him do his worst and lose some gold (my guess -25 gold, based on pop ratio) or the 10 shields we've accumulated towards our barracks. Or we could move the warrior back into the town. The town has zero defensive bonus, unfortified warrior vs barb horse at monarch level: 60% chance he loses, then we lose him as well as whatever is plllaged, 40% he wins and we lose a couple of hit points. I decide to let the barb pillage. I move the warror to an adjacent mountain, where he might distract the horse into attacking him, and he illuminates some more map. If the horse goes for the decoy he has a 60% chance of killing the horse. If not at least he survives.

The other warriors exploring warriors keep moving. Russian settler/warrior pair spotted east of Moscow.

Checking cities - Berin's growth has put a total of 8 shields in the bin and it's producing 5 spt. If it prodiuces a worker this turn we'll waste three shields. Decide to switch it to a settler to let it grow a bit before cutting back. We need to get it pumping settlers every 6 turns. Workers will come from the new cities.

[IBT Barb pillages 40 gold - I underestimated, I *then* realise I should probably have bought some embassies to clean out the treasury. :(
Russian settler+warrior move to west coast. Where's that barb camp :hmm:

Turn 52 1700 BC
MM Berlin for extra gold, growth in 2 turns ->+9gpt

IBT Leipzig settler -> barracks

Turn 53 1675 BC
Warriors explore, settler NW out of Leipzig towards flood plain unattended, BUT our northern warrior moves west to meet her.

IBT French start the Oracle. I think ass we are on the same continent as the two top rank civs we should let them build wonders for us :p
Russia builds another city on the East coast
Berlin grows to pop 4

Turn 54 1650 BC
Frankfurt founded on red 2. Slider to 8.1.1 to support Berlin - one turn only until they pop their settler.

IBT Barb horse appears two tiles north west of the escort warrior heading west.
Berlin pops a settler -> barracks to allow it to grow back

Turn 55 1625 BC
Escort warrior moves to forest on next city target, 2 tiles from barb horse - come and get me if you think you're hard enough! Settler moves to tile one south of destination, out of barb horse range.
Warrior in the west spots a cow next to a small lake. Slider back to 9.1.0. Berlin's settler moves east unescorted :eek:

IBT Barb horse attacks warrior and dies. Warrior -> 2/3. Settler moves to target tile.
Konigsberg completes Barracks. Starts warrior (5 turns)

Turn 56 1600 BC
Munich founded next to flood plain -> worker.
This illuminates a barb horse to the north west, on the coast.

IBT Bab horse attacks Munich warrior and dies. Warrior 2/3. No promo.

Turn 57 1575 BC
Warriors move. English are showing an unhealthy interest.

IBT Hamburg barracks -> warrior

Turn 58 1550 BC
England has Mathematics, wants the sun, moon and stars for it. No thanks Liz, back to your milk bath, my dear, and come back when your monopoly's worn off.

IBT Nothing

Turn 59 1525 BC
Build Heidelburg on the hill 'twixt iron and incense. We'll need another city to fill the borders in to grab the iron, but this is a better spot for food.

IBT English warrior attacks something near Kiev :hmm: Maybe a barb, maybe a Russian?
berlin barracks->warrior. Now Pop 4. Let's get it higher before we start pumping more settlers.

Turn 60 1500 BC
Slider to 8.1.1 for Berlin pop 4

After action report

I'm not the builder, right? Warmonger, yeah? :hmm: And I said we needed workers? :confused:
Well, we have NO new units. None! Not even a worker. We still have 8 regular warriors and two workers and one slave. And I lost 40 gold, but no warriors.
What we *do* have new is Frankfurt, Munich and Heidelburg. And we have three barracks and counting. We're bigger than the rest, and we have three vet warriors in the bakery. We're down Mathematics on Liz and we have enough cash and gpt to buy and sell her if we want.

Save uploaded >>HERE<< (http://gotm.civfanatics.net/saves/sgotm2/Xteam_SG002_BC1500_01.SAV)

Screenie (click it for a big one):

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads7/Xteam_1500BC_small.jpg (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads7/XTeam_1500BC_full.jpg)

Capt Buttkick UP
leif erikson On deck
zamint3
AdrianE
AlanH

Good luck Captain. Hope your painting goes well, and inspires you to emulate that late and infamous German painter of the last century, at least in this game :D

PS Score doesn't look too bad, either :) And I swear I'm not manipulating the graph .... in any way whatsoever ... honest ...

After action report

I'm not the builder, right? Warmonger, yeah? :hmm: And I said we needed workers? :confused:
Well, we have NO new units. None! Not even a worker. We still have 8 regular warriors and two workers and one slave. And I lost 40 gold, but no warriors.
What we *do* have new is Frankfurt, Munich and Heidelburg. And we have three barracks and counting. We're bigger than the rest, and we have three vet warriors in the bakery. We're down Mathematics on Liz and we have enough cash and gpt to buy and sell her if we want.

It is looking pretty good to me. :goodjob: I think we could consider two new settlers and three new towns as very good news. In fact, I'd take the settlers over other units any day of the week at this point. You can see the score took a big boost, expansion!! :beer:

Imho, the next step is to get some workers pumped out between the warriors in Hamburg and Leipzig. What do you propose we do with Munich, a worker factory? Perhaps a good use for the time being? Connecting roads and cutting jungle may be best done in pairs of workers, once we get the pairs set up. ;)

Who do you think our first victim should be, Catherine? How many swords do you think it will require, 15 to 20, or more? Directly south of Berlin is grassland and then two squares of Jungle, one through the spice square, to Konigsberg. To iron we can road to Munich, 2 more squares of flood plain, and then use our slave to build a colony. However, I wouldn't be too quick to connect it, as you said Alan.

How much pop do you think we will need to maintain in Berlin to keep the 6 turn going, or can we rev it up to 5. I didn't think so when I looked at it, need more food.

On research, it looks like the AI may be heading up the writing path to Map Making. If so, AdrianE may have made a very good call on Poly, if we win the race to it. We should try to get Map Making as soon as we can, reasonably, and trade some maps around to see what we are up against.

I think Alan has a good idea in letting the French and English be our wonder builders. That means we can probably forgo the coast city pre-build, which Zamint pointed out may not have been a great idea anyway. It would be nice to find some time to prebuild a little later for Leonardo's Workshop though. I will have to think about the timing on that one. Or are there other wonders we should prebuild for?

All in all, it looks like we are moving now. :yeah: And Alan, I really am liking that graph. I don't care what you did to it, keep doing it!! :lol:

edit - Good luck to you, Captain! One of these times I'll remember that before I hit the save button. :blush:

Turn 59 1525 BC
Build Heidelburg on the hill 'twixt iron and incense. We'll need another city to fill the borders in to grab the iron, but this is a better spot for food.

Just got done looking at the save. Berlin will grow in 1 turn due to our excellent culture. I think this should put the iron near Heidelberg into our boundries. A little more work to road over there. I guess it goes into the TO DO pile! :lol:

You can see the score took a big boost, expansion!! :beer: A lot of that beer goes to Adrian - the scoring rate took off during his turns, and my first town was his settler. We won't sustain that rate for the next ten, I suspect, because Berlin will only pump one every six turns

Note that Berlin has a barracks now, and I *think* that it can produce a warrior between each settler if we can get some workers in there to clear one, maybe 2 forest and mine the existing unimproved grass. At pop four it's currently producing 4 fpt plus 5 spt. A mine on the grass will get that to 6spt. So turns 1 and 2 of the cycle it can produce a warrior and 8 food. Turn 3 it moves off the deer and onto a mined grass (cleared forest) and produces 2 food to increase to pop5, and 9 shields including the pop increase bonus. The next 2 turns it can produce 7 spt, and on turn 6 it again moves off the deer and delivers 10 ahields. 10+7+7+9 is plenty to complete a settler in these four turns.

Imho, the next step is to get some workers pumped out between the warriors in Hamburg and Leipzig. What do you propose we do with Munich, a worker factory? Yes and Yes.

Who do you think our first victim should be, Catherine?Yes, again. She will provide some of our second ring cities plus the start of our second core.
How many swords do you think it will require, 15 to 20, or more? 4 or 5 per city should be enough. She has 4 cities now, but we have a way to go, so maybe six or seven cities - 30 swords?
Directly south of Berlin is grassland and then two squares of Jungle, one through the spice square, to Konigsberg. To iron we can road to Munich, 2 more squares of flood plain, and then use our slave to build a colony. However, I wouldn't be too quick to connect it, as you said Alan.I would prefer to keep all the workers we can. A settler can build somewhere around that black tile south east fo Berlin. That will close the cultural borders around the iron mountain east of Berlin, There are only two tiles to road to connect it, including the iron mountain itself.

How much pop do you think we will need to maintain in Berlin to keep the 6 turn going, or can we rev it up to 5. I didn't think so when I looked at it, need more food.See my dissertation above. It will do a settler plus a warrior every six turns if we manage it right.

On research, it looks like the AI may be heading up the writing path to Map Making. If so, AdrianE may have made a very good call on Poly, if we win the race to it. We should try to get Map Making as soon as we can, reasonably, and trade some maps around to see what we are up against. Looking good .I don;t think they are hunting in a pack, which is also good, as it means we aren't seeing a lot of duplication of effort - the English went for Mathematics, the French did Writing. It's likely someone's going for HBR, so they may leave Poly alone as you say..

It would be nice to find some time to prebuild a little later for Leonardo's Workshop though. I will have to think about the timing on that one. Or are there other wonders we should prebuild for?Plenty of time for that later. Right now we need workers and warriors and settlers. It may have escaped your notice, buy the way, that Catherine is looking after our horses in Kiev.

Well played Alan :goodjob:

Originally Posted by AlanH

Leipzig will recover 2 pop points in 8 turns. I will therefore build a settler in Leipzig, but not for red dot 2. He'll go to an early radus 9 site covering the flood plains.

We have a worker in Leipzig. He was heading for the ivory, but irrigation is more important.A French slave is irrigating a plain outside Leipzig, but there's a better tile next to the river with a gold bonus. It also points towards the flood plain

Divert settle+warrior in transit towards iron or incence. We don't need incense yet, and iron can wait a little, so he's going for red dot 2.

Very good thinking there Alan. :thumbsup:


Originally Posted by leif erikson

Imho, the next step is to get some workers pumped out between the warriors in Hamburg and Leipzig. What do you propose we do with Munich, a worker factory? Perhaps a good use for the time being? Connecting roads and cutting jungle may be best done in pairs of workers, once we get the pairs set up.

Yes. :) ...and some more Settlers, one every 6 turns is a bit slow, remember : expansion, expansion.. :D .
Worker actions : it takes forever to cut jungle, this should be low priority for now.

Do you really think we need 20-30 swords to handle Catherine :confused:... and what are those English warriors doing? :mad:

Should we do somthing about that barb camp in the mountains east of Munich?

Do you really think we need 20-30 swords to handle Catherine :confused:... and what are those English warriors doing? :mad: Maybe I was a bit pessimistic for a change, but I wouldn't go with fewer than 15. What do you think? I think the English are just circling. If they were intending to attack they would be bunched together, but two ot thre are wantering about looking lost. But remember we were weak before my turns and we'll be weaker now, so she might decide we are a juicy target.

Should we do somthing about that barb camp in the mountains east of Munich?Not until we have a stronger unit than a warrior, or we use a stack. It's fortified on a mountain :eek:. I did start an archer with that in mind at one point but changed my mind. Archers don't upgrade to swords :D

Got it

I'll look over all your comments and then play asap.

Do you really think we need 20-30 swords to handle Catherine :confused:... and what are those English warriors doing? :mad:

Should we do somthing about that barb camp in the mountains east of Munich?
I think the AI knows where the barb camps are, no matter where they are on the map, i.e. whether they can be seen or not. They always seem to go for the 25 gold, no matter who's territory they have to cross to get there. In GOTM 31, I had Iroquois warriors all over the place hunting barbs south of Paris. Those warriors, I hope, maybe going barb hunting for the ones near Konigsberg.

edit - cutting jungle is a tedious, time consuming affair. :sad: Once we get to Republic, doesn't our worker efficiency increase? Perhaps we should select some squares as priority for clearing jungle to meet certain goals. One that comes to mind is the spice square in Konigsberg. It will be more efficient to do this and help expansion! :jump:

Preflight: preferences, Always start building previous unit.
I debate getting maths for 288 gold (including gpts) and then hopefully sell it for 204.
I decide for b/c of two things: we want to speed up research and a gpt deal with the English may stop them from a premature attack.
Trade maths from the english for 4 gpt and 208 gold, sell to France for 120 gcs and Russia for 54 gcs. All in all, maths for 104 gcs, fair enough.
I'll let you know if our Wars encounter something instead of typing that they move around every turn :)

IBT: Konigsberg Warrior --> Worker.

Turn 1 - 1475 B.C. MM Berlin for gcs and shields (will build warrior next turn anyway, but there's always the turn after :))

IBT: Berlin Warrior --> Settler.

Turn 2 - 1450 B.C. Nil lux for one turn. Warrior MPs Berlin.

IBT: Leipzig Barracks --> Worker. Hamburg Warrior --> Worker.

Turn 3 - 1425 B.C. 10% lux. MM Berlin for food. Hamburg Warrior starts moving W.

IBT: Frankfurt Barracks --> Warrior. The English are warrior-escorting a settler passed Smolensk.

Turn 4 -1400 B.C. Not much...

IBT: Barb horsie arrive on forest N of Munich. Hamburg Worker --> Warrior.

Turn 5 - 1375 B.C. MM Munich for food. I attack the barb horsie cause even with the forest across river attack there's a higher chance of winning than by waiting for it to attack.

IBT: Berlin Settler --> Archer MM Berlin for shields. Konigsberg Worker --> Warrior.

Turn 6 - 1350 B.C. Nil lux. The English got HBR as well which they want 200 gcs for. I'll have to keep an eye out for twofers. Settler starts trecking 9 NE of Berlin to setup another Worker factory.

IBT: Leipzig Worker --> Warrior. Munich Worker --> Worker.

Turn 7 - 1325 B.C. Nothing.

IBT: Nothing.

Turn 8 - 1300 B.C. We sack the barb camp on the mountain in the N without HP loss. All the others got HBR + Maps now. Better hope our Poly gamble works...
I've got experience that holding out for trading maps is seldom wise so I get HBR + territory map from Joan for our Map.
I get territory map + 38 from Joan. Both France and England has furs that aren't hooked up.

IBT: England reg War kills a barb War and promotes with only one HP left. Berlin Archer --> Settler, MM for growth next turn. Hamburg Warrior --> Warrior. Frankfurt Warrior --> Worker.
Heidelburg Barracks --> Warrior. We've got ivory online and palace expands [party]

Turn 9 - 1275 B.C. Warrior from Hamburg starts moving towards the city site 9 NE of Belin. O