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. One of our Wars promotes to vet fighting a barb warrior N of England.
I sell off our maps again for 5 gcs.

IBT: Not much.

Turn 10 - 1250 B.C. Finally start worker tasks on the grassland tile Alan was talking about. Spot a barb camp in the far W.

Assessment: No new cities, but a fair amount of workers and warriors. A few minor mistakes w/r to moves, but no big ones. Score is 188.
I was considering the jungle 3 NE of Smolensk for the settler I sent out, but decided against it since Elizabeth were moving her settler around in that area. On hindsight, I think I should have...
I think we might consider trading our maps every turn. We don't get a lot of gold, but every bit helps. W/r to the next few cities, I think we should place one of them so that we can road up the iron and start war on Russia sometime before 500 BC.
No new screenie cause I didn't build any new cities.

<< Save >> (http://gotm.civfanatics.net/saves/sgotm2/Xteam_SG002_BC1250_01.SAV)

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:

True about the AI barb crystal ball.

Cutting jungle is tedious, but what we should do is get together large enough bands of workers to reduce the number of turns. 3 is a minimum. I think 8 often is good. That means 3 turn jungle shops IIRC. Then with the help of one other worker we can finish road and mine on that space in the next turn and then move on.

W/r to swordies: I think 15 swords should be plenty to take out Catherine. However, we need to be sure that the English don't move in on us while those swords are away, so we need a few guarding our southern cities as well.

We won't sustain that rate for the next ten, I suspect, because Berlin will only pump one every six turns
Thanks for the vote of confidence :p :lol:
I thought it worked out ok, scorewise :)

Well done Captain. :D

Assessment: No new cities, :cry: :cry:


but a fair amount of workers and warriors. :goodjob:


I was considering the jungle 3 NE of Smolensk for the settler I sent out, but decided against it since Elizabeth were moving her settler around in that area. On hindsight, I think I should have... Maybe our next one, where did that English settler go?

I thought it worked out ok, scorewise You can say that again ;) , I can't explain it, is it because of our palace expanding?

One question: why the archer?

Btw : Nice trading. :thumbsup:

Originally Posted by leif erikson
I think the AI knows where the barb camps are, no matter where they are on the map,
Yes you're right, and the english settler is probably going for some future resource. :)

Capt Buttkick
leif erikson UP
zamint3 On deck
AdrianE
AlanH

Good progress, Captain.:goodjob:

I'll have a look at the save tonight and see if I can contribute any thoughts, but I think we know where we're going.

Thanks for the vote of confidence :p :lol:
I thought it worked out ok, scorewise :)
Sorry, Captain, :( I didn't mean to doubt your ability to get results, it was just that I exploited an existing settler, and diverted Berlin and Leipzig to build two more. That gave us a one-time hike in territory growth that we can't sustain during every set of turns. Our rate of scoring is doing just great, and unless we do something adverse to lose territory or pop it won't deteriorate, because it's based on those two parameters. As we create new cities we'll raise the rate further, and it's going to be interesting to see if anyone else can catch us up. The main future changes in score rate will happen as teams either expand by acquisition and/or create a second core and/or set up a faster settler production site.

As long as we can keep that clear air on the graph then our final position in the rankings will depend completely on how fast we achieve victory.

Capt Buttkick
leif erikson UP
zamint3 On deck
AdrianE
AlanH

Good progress, Captain.:goodjob:

I'll have a look at the save tonight and see if I can contribute any thoughts, but I think we know where we're going.
....Snipped....
As long as we can keep that clear air on the graph then our final position in the rankings will depend completely on how fast we achieve victory.
Got it! Have a RL deal tonight but will try, if not, tomorrow night. Don't want to ruin things by falling asleep at the wheel! :sleep:

Nice job Captain, :goodjob: we are in desparate need of workers and vet warriors so producing some is critical. I have to check, but perhaps the score jump is due to pop increase? Haven't really gone over the save yet, but a couple of questions.
1. Capt., did you have a spot in mind for the settler, I probably missed it. :crazyeye:
2. If I can manage it, should we try to pop an occasional settler from Leipzig or concentrate on workers and warriors?
3. As workers become available, does anyone have a priority of work for them. I would like to get a road network built to allow us some mobility to support war with Catherine. That means getting a road to Konigsberg soonest. If I can, I love to take the capital first, as it is usually the toughest fight, split the civ, and clean it up. Getting a road towards Moscow is necessary to do that.

We have time before I can get to this. Any recommendations, as always, are welcome. Looks like we are on the right track. As Alan pointed out, keeping the air on the graph depends on expansion and ranking will depend upon speed. Almost time to get some air in the graph by relieving Catherine of her responsibilities!! :hammer:

Quotes are somewhat edited...
One question: why the archer?
Maybe our next one, where did that English settler go?
B/c I could... We wouldn't get the settler faster if I built a warrior instead and I'm loath to build spears. It can always tag alone for defensive first strike and stuff.
Don't know where the settler went cause my warrior moved away from the settler on the next turn.

1. Capt., did you have a spot in mind for the settler, I probably missed it.
2. If I can manage it, should we try to pop an occasional settler from Leipzig or concentrate on workers and warriors?
3. As workers become available, does anyone have a priority of work for them. I would like to get a road network built to allow us some mobility to support war with Catherine. That means getting a road to Konigsberg soonest. If I can, I love to take the capital first, as it is usually the toughest fight, split the civ, and clean it up. Getting a road towards Moscow is necessary to do that.
1. Yes, 9 NE of Berlin, I think it was the outmost point of land in that direction, close to some FPs for another worker factory.
2. I'm not sure about more Leipzig settlers. I think prob wars + workers, but you could prob easily convince me otherwise if you made your case :)
3. I thought of that too, and while we really want that it means roading jungle which not only is tedious but feels a little meaningless since those jungles are going some time or other anyway. I sent the Konigsberg-worker to Berlin, but may have been better off doing the road...


Sorry, Captain, I didn't mean to doubt your ability to get results, it was just that I exploited an existing settler, and diverted Berlin and Leipzig to build two more.
:lol: I'm just yanking your foot :p

Btw: with lux online and a few chops around Berlin we should consider making it a 4-6 size settler factory. If we really need some culture let's chop for a temple in Berlin. Just an idea...

Btw: with lux online and a few chops around Berlin we should consider making it a 4-6 size settler factory. If we really need some culture let's chop for a temple in Berlin. Just an idea...
I don't think we need any culture yet. We were even with the others last time I looked. We'll have literature soon enough. Hold on for libraries - they're cheap. A temple would either take a very large posse of workers to chop-to-build fast, or it would take a while and Berlin would grow past 6 and empty its granary.

I'm just yanking your foot I knew that. Ouch!

I have to check, but perhaps the score jump is due to pop increase?
I think it's territory. Remeber we are currently out-expanding the ai, and I suspect we've out-expanded our cometitors for now as well. If anything our pop is suppressed currently as we turned a lot of pop-2s into pop-1 cities. Citizens add a bit to score, but happy citizens add more. In most of my games the citizenry tends to stay rather close to unhappy, particularly in the Ancient Age and early Medieval. If there are excess happy faces in my cities I look hard to see if I'm spending too much on making them happy. But I'm heartless to my little electrons ;)

We might have out expanded the teams who have reported but not those still working on it. We might not actually be in the lead.

The biggest contributor to score is territory. Settling at RCP5 grabs lots of territory. The second is number of happy people. If the people are happy then average score increases. The cheapest way to do that is to get Luxs on line. We have 3 available to us.

I'm a bit concerned about the raging barbs spawning nearby. They will be coming soon. What are we going to to about it?

I love spears as they are upgradeable all the way to mech infantry. I like a few spears as escorts for the swordsmen - either to absorb counterattacks or as garrisons. I also like a few catapults along for early wars. They really help out IMO.

I think it is a priority to push a road through to Koneigsberg as suggested by Leif. The other thing to consider is can we accelerate the settler factory by clearing another forrest near Berlin?

Archers are good for dispersing barb camps in the early game.

As argued before, I am all for early culture.

Adrian

You're quite right to remind us that we shouldn't be complacent about our score. I only said "I suspect"

Yes, we need to hook up our lux in the not too distant future, but remember that teh score we are looking at now, and the differences between teams, are miniscule compared with the victory bonus factor. A few happy faces now, at the expense of getting more pop and a faster growth rate would be a very short term and transient gain.

Raging barbs means stacks of 32 horses will mass at the end of the era. At that point it is my recommendation that we try to ensure that (a) we position some stacks of swords at distance 3 from the camps and attempt to farm some elites. (b) we have as much as possible of the territory covered and/or illuminated and (c) we minimise gold in the bank in case of pillage. 32 barb horses will overrun most defences we could put in place, and if we build enough defenders to survive we'll have wasted more than we could possibly save (see diatribe against defenders below). So lets try to exploit them for elite training, make sure there's not too much they can plunder, and try to encourage them to go for the AI :D

Oh dear! We do seem to have very different approaches to this game :(

Sorry, I don't do spears, as they don't get more than one attack point until they grow up to be muskets, and even then they are specialist defenders. A spear can't defend a sword any better than he can defend himself, and he can't attack any better than a warrior. He's 2/3 the price of a sword, and in my opinion worth 1/3 or less. For the same reason, Nationalism and rifles are just not on my tech shopping list.

If we get to the point where we need mech infantry then we'll have failed. Our panzers should win this game for us pretty soon after we get motorised transport followed by fission. I'm prepared to build infantry if necessary, but I just don't build specialist defenders earlier. Build enough attackers and you can live with the, usually puny, attack attempts by the ai. Check out the timelines of the top players and please find one that says I'm wrong.

Catapults ... :hmm:, maybe. If the ai has big cities or walls ..., but they miss so many times you need an awful lot of them. And the shields for three catapults will buy you two horses or two swords. I'd rather have the attackers.

Yes we need a road south, and yes, we need to clear two forest tiles in Berlin - see my write-up on the settler+warrior factory above.

Yes, a few archers will do a job for us against barbs, but let's not have a big gang of them. They become pretty underpowered very quickly.

I promise I'll buy some culture ... Libraries!

I should have been clearer on why I chose to build 1 (one only :lol: ) archer:
I don't think archers are a better way to go than the warrior --> sword upgrade. If I did, I wouldn't just start going that way on my own.
I built the archer b/c I couldn't MM Berlin to produce the warrior faster than in 2 turns, the archer was 3 turns. Any way I MM'ed, Berlin was going to get a pop increase the same turn the archer was produced, meaning we'd waste shields and/or food on the warrior AND the upcoming settler.

You have some good points there Alan.
Luxuries: no hurry, but before we go republic! ... and the road to Königsberg will hook up the spices. :)
Archer: let him go barbhunting. :sniper:


Originally Posted by AlanH
and yes, we need to clear two forest tiles in Berlin - see my write-up on the settler+warrior factory above.

The best Berlin can do is the 6 turn warrior-settler combo, but I think it can be done w/o further improvement.
W/o the mined grass the shield calculation would be 9+7+7+7. Where the first 9 comes as you described on growth 4->5, the last 7 is 5+2 on growth 5->6 the food-calculation on the last 3 turns being 3+3+4.

Does this make sense? It's getting late over here. :undecide:
(btw. shouldn't your original shield-calculation have been 10+8+8+9 ?)

Oh dear! We do seem to have very different approaches to this game :(

Yes we need a road south, and yes, we need to clear two forest tiles in Berlin - see my write-up on the settler+warrior factory above.

I promise I'll buy some culture ... Libraries!
Sorry I removed some of your points, but I heartily agree with them all!! :goodjob:

I have transposed Zamint's and Captain's dotmaps onto graph paper to help me remember. (They don't have an old guy smiley!!) If I can, I am going to try to start a road south and send any more settlers towards the green dots on Zamint's map as it seems the next logical place to go to help support the downfall of Russia.
W/r to swordies: I think 15 swords should be plenty to take out Catherine. However, we need to be sure that the English don't move in on us while those swords are away, so we need a few guarding our southern cities as well.
This is an interesting point. This means we should try to have about 20 Swords ready. They don't all have to be vets, we could upgrade a few regulars in case those red coats come over the hill. :rolleyes: Are we waiting to connect the iron until we have 15 vet warriors ready for upgrade and, hopefully, the gold on hand? For 15 warriors that is 900 Gold, 60 per, isn't it? Just trying to plan out worker moves before I start up.

Anything else to worry about???? :lol:

Are we waiting to connect the iron until we have 15 vet warriors ready for upgrade and, hopefully, the gold on hand? For 15 warriors that is 900 Gold, 60 per, isn't it?


It's 40 each I think. ;)

Most our cities are doing really fine. :goodjob: ..... and they don't need much worker action.

In ring 5 the third shield is wasted and in ring 9 it's the second. So we are doing good keeping them small, considering the terrain.

I suggest:
Berlin : warrior-settler combo.
Leipzig and Hamburg: warriors + settler when they grow beyond pop 2.
Frankfurt: warrior + worker
Münich: workers
Königsberg and Heidelburg : warriors and a worker timed with their growth to pop 2.
Our new city, which I think should be on the floodplain E-E-NE of Hamburg, : workers.

And I think the workers should irrigate the floodplains east of Hamburg, the Frankfurt workers should start on the road to Königsberg. Keep the slave up north if we want him for the ironcolony.

Thats just my 2 c. .... and as I said it's late :sleep:

Edit: I almost forgot, I think we should move the warrior in Hamburg to Heidelburg asap, I don't like those two English warriors lurking down there.

OK Warmonger, now we have something to play with!! Here it comes.

I’ve decided to do as Capt. Buttkick and report major movements. I can’t keep up with which warrior is which as they grow in number.

Pre-flight -1250 BC
Wake warrior in Hamburg and move it towards Heidelburg due to two English Warriors loitering too close!
After much contemplation, I trade our World map plus 198 Gold to Joan in return for Map Making and her World Map.
I then trade our World Map plus 10 Gold to England for her World Map.
Press enter.

IBT
Konigsberg Warrior --> Warrior.
Barb Horseman moves into the woods adjacent to Munich.

Turn 1 – 1225 BC
Decide to turn archer around, N, and send him towards Munich to do some Barb Hunting.
Awaken and move warrior from Leipzig towards Munich.
Worker from Munich area moving towards Berlin to start road S.
Settler NE.
Worker near Hamburg Irrigates.
Warrior moves into Heidelberg.

IBT
Barb horseman defeats our warrior and ransacks 28 gold from Munich.
Leipzig warrior --> worker.
Hamburg revolts.

Turn 2 – 1200 BC
Lux to 20%.
Warrior fortifies in Heidelburg.
Worker E, S, SE through Leipzig.
Warrior enters Munich and fortifies.
Warrior in Leipzig fortifies.
Vet warrior north of Munich NW, moves next to a Barb Horseman. Finds cattle and wheat up there!
Settler NE.
Offer our World map (WM) to Joan and she gives me her WM plus 24 Gold.
Offer our WM to Liz and she offers 5 Gold, I take it.
Offer WM to Catherine and she offers 7 Gold, I take it.

IBT
Barb Horseman attacks our vet Warrior and dies after inflicting 3 HP damage.
Order restored in Hamburg, warrior --> settler.

Turn 3 – 1175 BC
Warrior in Hamburg fortifies.
Change lux to zero.
Worker moves S next to Heidelburg.
Archer moves through Berlin heading for Barbs near Munich.
Worker moves E to SW of Berlin.
Worker from Munich moves SE, SE, SE, near Berlin.
Warrior attacked by Barb fortifies.
Settler moves NE.
Vet Warrior attacks a barb camp over by England and gets 25 Gold without loss of HP, no promotion.

IBT
Barb Warrior attacks our vet warrior
Berlin settler --> warrior.
Heidelburg warrior --> worker.
Frankfurt worker --> warrior.

Turn 4 – 150 BC
Warrior in Heidelburg fortifies.
Worker near Heidelburg roads in jungle, 9 turns.
Settler moves NE.
New settler in Berlin moves S.
Worker near Berlin roads.
New worker in Frankfurt E.
MM Berlin and Frankfurt.

IBT
Leipzig worker –-> warrior.
We are informed that Joan has established an embassy in our capital.

Turn 5 – 1125 BC
New worker in Leipzig moves SE, SE, SE.
Archer continues to move.
Worker near Frankfurt roads.
Settler S.
Worker near Hamburg NW.
Settler founds town of Nuremburg -- worker.
Warrior near Minsk attacks a Barb camp and defeats a barb warrior, no loss, no promotion.


IBT
Catherine comes demanding tribute. She wants our Territory Map plus 32 Gold. We have a larger military so I tell her to go take a hike and she backs down. She is cautious towards us.
Berlin warrior --> settler.
We are informed that our people want to build the Forbidden Palace.
Konigsberg warrior --> warrior.

Turn 6 – 1100 BC
Warrior fortifies in Konigsberg.
Settler S.
Worker mines near Berlin.
Worker roads near Frankfurt.
Worker near Hamburg mines.
Warrior in Berlin fortifies.
Warrior near Minsk attacks a Barb camp, defeats a horseman and gains 25 Gold, losing 1 HP.
Our warrior on the other side of the map, near England, discovers horses.

IBT
The English have requested an audience. Liz wants to trade her WM for ours plus 22 Gold. I counter by asking her to offer on our WM. She offers Territory Map plus 7 Gold. After checking, I accept.
Munich worker --> worker.

Turn 7 – 1075 BC
New Munich worker moves E.
Start moving workers to the area S of Berlin.
Settler SW into Konigsberg.
Warriors scout.

IBT
I see an English Warrior moving north of Munich. He is way out of his territory.


Turn 8 – 1050 BC
MM Berlin
Settler SW.
Worker roads S of Berlin.
Worker E of Frankfurt mines.
Worker N of Munich roads.
Warrior moves onto a mountain N of Munich and finds Horses there.

IBT
Hamburg settler --> warrior.
Frankfurt warrior --> worker.
Heidelburg worker --> warrior.

Turn 9 – 1025 BC
Heidelburg worker E onto Incense.
Hamburg settler SE, S, S.
Frankfurt warrior fortifies.
Awaken a vet warrior S of Konigsberg and moves W.
Southern settler SW with vet warrior.
Vet Warrior near Minsk attacks a Barb Warrior and defeats him losing 2 HP. Possible GH and Barb camp seen.


IBT
Berlin settler --> warrior.
Leipzig warrior --> worker.

Turn 10 – 1000 BC
Leipzig warrior fortifies.
Warrior and Settler in the south move SW.
Northern settler moves into Heidelburg.
Worker on Incense roads.
Warrior near Minsk fortifies to heal.

After action report.
There are 3 settlers on the map. One is south of Konigsberg and the intention is to move 1 SW and build a city. Another is in Heidelburg where the intention was to pick up a warrior and moves E, E, and SE to a yellow dot on Zamint’s map. Military advisor says to be aware of tribes of Barbs near Heidelburg (escort??). The third is still in Berlin with its movement intact for Zamint’s choice of where to send it. There are 3 warriors in Berlin as well, one of which can escort the settler. Somehow I screwed up Berlin’s MM and lost a food, so it is ready to grow to 4 next turn. Please feel free to change the intended sites as you see fit. There is a lot to keep track of now!! :crazyeye:

The settler south of Konigsberg and the intended site.
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads7/XMEN_1000BC_SSett.jpg

The settler in Heidelburg and the intended site.
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads7/XMEN_1000BC_Esett.jpg

There are 5 workers S of Berlin ready to start road building towards Konigsberg. A sixth will be available in 2 turns, currently mining SW of Berlin.

We now have 20 warriors, 10 workers, plus a slave, and an archer. We are paying 2 GPT for unit maintenance.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads7/XMEN_1000BC_MilAdv.jpg

Our score is 220 and we have 402 Gold and 15 GPT. Our military advisor says we are strong versus Russia, France and England. I think it is time to begin hooking up the iron. I should have moved some workers near Heidelburg but there are three working in the vicinity. We will have time to get it connected while we build the road south.

Polytheism in 1 turn and our neighbors do not have it yet. However, they also do not have any other techs either. They may try to ask for it as tribute, beware, as that has already happened once.

Except for the early revolt in Hamburg, things went pretty well. It is now imperative that we get the road south built and the iron on line. It is time to pay Cathy a vist!! :lol: I'd like to add some more smileys, but I'm way too tired. Time for some serious :sleep: I'll check in when I get up in case Zamint has questions. Good Luck Zamint!!

<< The Save >> (http://gotm.civfanatics.net/saves/sgotm2/Xteam_SG002_BC1000_01.SAV)

edit - forgot to mention the area in the red circle. It sure looks nice but is way outside the 9 ring. There will be much corruption but thought I would point it out because it sure looks nice. Perhaps we should discuss whether we want to head up there sooner or later????
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads7/XMEN_1000BC_Map.jpg

Well done, leif :goodjob:

I've got one minor issue though:
I think I would have let the warrior stay in Hamburg in the first place, in particular since we knew there were barbs around. Also b/c the barbs seemed pretty intent on moving their horsies in range for the warrior to strike them instead of hitting across open land. We had the gtp deal to cover Lizzie for a while and I really don't think sneaking us would be her choice anyway as there are easier targets around (Russia ;)).

Good job, Leif. We're making excellent progress.

Capt Buttkick
leif erikson
zamint3 UP
AdrianE On deck
AlanH

I agree we are now ready for the first phase of world domination. Hook up some iron and we're off to Russia!

I also agree with Capt Buttkick, I don't think England would go for us with just two warriors unless she had built up a more substantial force somewhere else on uour borders.

Let's keep close tabs on our cities. We need all the productivity we can get, and riots and mssed MM in Berlin won't help.

This continent looks like it might be big enough to get us close to the domination limit all by itself. If so, we should conquor it and build to the limit as soon as possible to maximise score rate, then just keep the others happy and grow and build and milk, with our territory at the limit.. Find a partner who can build the UN for us on the other continent, and make sure we drive them forward on techs and we know their timetable. We may not even need to fight for the UN, as I think the builder mindlessly goes for a vote when it's done. Just bribe all the others to vote for us.

Originally Posted by leif erikson
Except for the early revolt in Hamburg,
These things happen, especially when you play late a night. ;) , I remember AlanH having a fling about 3.00 AM. :lol:


things went pretty well.
They sure did. :goodjob: ... and it looks like you followed my suggested production plan. :cool:

[Edit: Why did you build Nüremberg in the dessert and not on the foodplain=river?]

I looked at the save, and actually everybody has Code of Laws, and England and Russia a lot of cash as well. :) , with Poly comming up we can make some nice trading I think!
So what should our next research be?... Republic at 10% ?

I also think we should start a prebuild for Great Lib, if we want an early GA, the next scientific wonder being Newton's in the late MA. .... or maybe we should just hope for a lot of GL's. :lol: :lol:

Iron : I'm still thinking about the iron next to Münich, we could do some easy unhooking if we wanna build cheap warriors again. The downside is : we need a colony and we have to protect it from barbs. :confused:

Cities: Let's fill out the ring 9 and then....? I'll probably put the settler in Berlin E-E-NE of Münich.

zamint3 UP
Got it, I'll be plaing a little later today. :) , I'm waiting to here your thoughts. ;)

We may not even need to fight for the UN, as I think the builder mindlessly goes for a vote when it's done. Just bribe all the others to vote for us.

So we might not even need those panzers. :cry: :cry:

I've got one minor issue though:
I think I would have let the warrior stay in Hamburg in the first place, in particular since we knew there were barbs around. Also b/c the barbs seemed pretty intent on moving their horsies in range for the warrior to strike them instead of hitting across open land. We had the gtp deal to cover Lizzie for a while and I really don't think sneaking us would be her choice anyway as there are easier targets around (Russia ;)).
You are probably right, but I read a comment by Zamint recommending the move and decided I was sufficiently nervous about it that I did it. In the end it was not necessary, but I wasn't sure of it.
[Edit: Why did you build Nüremberg in the dessert and not on the foodplain=river?]
There were two reasons. The first is that it maintains ring 9, to build it in the FP would have been only 8 squares from Berlin. The second is that I have always been loath to build a city in a FP due to disease, even though I know that it is the squares that you work that cause disease to hit you. Once a builder .... :rolleyes:

Alan is quite right about watching our cities. There is a lot going on now and I found that I had to get a routine going where I checked the cities, and even then I missed things. Sorry about that. :blush:

Research - Heading for Republic is what I would do. If someone gets to Literature first, we can trade for it, or capture it through pointy stick. I am hoping that England or France will build the Great Library so we can capture it!! I don't know how I missed that everyone had Code of Laws when I finished, too determined to get it posted and off to bed!!

Alan, I think you may be right in that if we can dominate this continent, we may not have to do much more fighting. We can shift focus to research, culture and harbors. We may still be able to broker deals with our new friends if one is on one continent and two on the other and haven't found each other. Of course, we have a lot to do here, but it is a solid plan.

We should get a good bounce to score with, hopefully, 3 to 4 settlements during Zamint's turns. Our warrior's are scattered about so I think we should keep building them. Three more towns will raise our support limit by 12 units so we won't have to pay maintenance on them. Besides, it never hurts to have a reserve. ;)

I don't have much experience of diplomatic end games, so we need to check if there's any research on how likely the ai is to call a vote. I know that at least one spoiler this month shows a 4 four votes to one win this way, with no one else voting for the UN builder but himself. If we try this approach could still build a stack of panzers and have them waiting in the wings in case our builder doesn't call it, then go in and take it and call for the the vote next time around. But the peaceful way gets us there 11 turns earlier.

These things happen, especially when you play late a night. , I remember AlanH having a fling about 3.00 AM.
Oh, yes! I've had more than my share of :smoke:, and early morning is the very best time to play to ensure it happens ;)

Yes, cities should really be on rivers if at all possible. We are widely spaced, so we want to be able to grow as many as possible to pop 12, and aqueducts are expensive. A little flood plain disease in Nurenburg would be a reasonable trade for getting all the flood plain in range and the river on tap. I actually agonised over Munich for a while. Its best position from several aspects was one tile south west of its current location. That would have grabbed all the flood plains and the iron without an expansion. But I figured we can get expansion with a pop-rushed library as soon as we get literature, and the river will be a big help in getting us to pop 12.

Have a look at options for Berlin MM this turn. It only needs one food to grow, so you can work a forest instead of the deer and get 7 shields in the box. I don't know whether it's possible to get another 2 growth bonus shields with "emphasise production", as I think the governor always wants to get back to two fpt before he'll let you have more shields, but it's worth a try. If we can get 7 (or 9) shields in the box then p'raps it will be better to build the settler first this time round instead of the warrior?

We can't start Republic yet as we need Philosophy, but one of the others will probably research that pretty soon. Our next research choices are Literature and a Great Library prebuild, or one of the remaining mandatory techs (Philosophy, Currency, Construction) and rely on France and England to build our wonders. Interestingly the ai are only building the Oracle currently. That's very surprising - no one's working on the Pyramids or Colossus? :confused: Colossus and Pyramids would be great to capture for their own benefits. Oracle does nothing for me :rolleyes:. None of them would help with our GA. We absolutely need to have the Great Library, one way or another, otherwise our GA is going to be rather too late, so I'm for a GL prebuild and Literature as fast as we can go, or as fast as we need to go to match the prebuild eta.

Oh, and don't forget we get a freebie at the change of era. It will be Monotheism on vanilla. Everyone else will go for Feudalism - they love their pikes. If we have the Great Library in our pockets we can choose whether to selectively research specific techs fast or cruise on zero science. I'd be tempted to keep going at a fast rate, try to get Leo's to trigger the GA, and push on along the bottom branch, as we want a fast pace.

Someone suggested going for Moscow first when we start hostilities. I'd be tempted to go for Kiev, as that would deprive Russia of horses and allow us to drive a road through and start to build some fast units. It's also on our 9-9.5 ring. With free Monotheism coming up soon we'll only be two techs away from knights [party]

PS Leo's is much better for us that Sun Tzu, as we can build barracks cheaply. If we can capture Sun Tzu, great, but our effort should be towards Leo's.

I think it's my head and not Leif's that needs to come off for the placing of Nüremburg. I stated twice where I wanted it (the second time was because Alan asked, perhaps he was trying to tell me something :lol: ).

I had two reasons, although different from Leif's:
1) The most important being that I thought building the city on an FP increased the chances of disease :(
2) With a harbour it will, in time, grow to be a big and financially sound city, b/c it's got loads of coast and sea tiles. This holds even if we decide to go with placing cities to its W NW and S SE at later dates.

That said, if I knew the first part of my case didn't hold water, I'd prob go with your suggested placement, Zamint. Sorry? :sad:

@ Alan: a GLib prebuild sounds nice. But if we could get one of our Oracle building "friends" to cascade to the GLib, wouldn't that be the best thing? That means prob building the Pyramids ourself, allowing either Joan or Lizzie to build the Oracle and then gifting the other one Literacy.

On research: with our sci trait, I agree wholeheartedly that we go for Lit at max speed.

I think your first premise is correct. Building on the flood plain does increase disease because the probability relates to the number of worked flood plain tiles, and the city center counts as one. But suppose you suffer four disease hits in 100 turns - eight citizens. A flood plain city with three irrigated tiles and a granery will produce a citizen every 2 turns. You make up those disease hits in 16 turns. It will grow like there's no tomorrow, in spite of disease. But we'll need an aqueduct to get past pop 6, and that's 100 shields. That location is not very rich in shields, so it will take a while to build, and meanwhile the city will be stuck at pop 6.

Won't they cascade to the Pyramids and Colossus first? Maybe not Colossus if they are not building Oracle on the coast. I just think the Great Library is so critical to us for our Golden Age that we can't afford to leave it to chance. Suppose it gets built on the other continent? Great Library and Pyramids are both 400 shields. Why do it the hard and risky way?

Originally Posted by leif erikson
The first is that it maintains ring 9, to build it in the FP would have been only 8 squares from Berlin.
Actually the FP E-E-NE of Hamburg is at distance 9. ;), so don't play that late! :D

Originally Posted by AlanH
We can't start Republic yet as we need Philosophy
Oooops...I forgot. :blush:

I think I'll research Lit. at full speed.
Do we know on F7 if the guys on the other continent(s) are building wonders, when we haven't met yet? :confused:

I'll se what I can do about Berlin, I'm not sure of this governor thing either.
I agree on Leo's as well.

But the peaceful way gets us there 11 turns earlier.
How do you figure this out?? :confused:

I have no objections to going for Lit and the GL. My thoughts on heading straight for Republic, through Philosophy are that Phil. is generally fairly cheap and quick to research. Republic is not but worth a bunch in trade. Going to Republic will also boost both our income, for research, and our productivity, in both food and shields. Givng those facts, while we pre-build, because it is going to take a while with pop 6 or less cities, we could jump ahead and then either research lit. "faster" or, more likely, trade for it. Either way, we should be ahead of the game??

Actually the FP E-E-NE of Hamburg is at distance 9. , so don't play that late!
You're right! :cry: I'm headed for the doghouse! No more late nights.

I have played several Diplo games because I spent so much time building that I lost out on early victories, and lost to UN votes too. My limited experience is that if the civ building the UN is not one of the top two, they usually will not call for a vote. If they are one of the top two civs, they will call the vote almost always right away. I don't have any formula that says that, but it is what I have observed in, admittedly, a limited number of games. I have not had time to keep up with the GOTM discussions Alan refered to, but it would be interesting to see if this holds any water. So take it for what it is worth. :rolleyes:

If the vote is taken on the turn when the UN is built then we win on that turn. If we have to capture the city containing teh UN then we have to do it after that turn. UN vote opporunities happen every 11 turns after it's built, and I assume this doesn't change just because it's been captured. Sooo ... if we capture it the turn after it's built (Panzers are as fast as Cavalry and Modern Armour) :D) then we'll still have to wait for turn (UN+11) to call the vote and win.

If they are one of the top two civs, they will call the vote almost always right away. Sounds reasonable, and since there will only be three or four left at that point we can ensure that the most powerful of them is the one we prime with fission. That should ensure the vote is called.

Do we know on F7 if the guys on the other continent(s) are building wonders, when we haven't met yet?I'm not certainn, but I think so. I'm sure I've seen it there and seen messages saying "X is building Y" in the early game, when X is on another continent and unknown to any of my contacts. I assume wandering nomadic tribes carry this sort of rumour around, or we get the occasional message in a bottle :hmm:

UN vote opporunities happen every 11 turns after it's built,

Again I learnt something. :thumbsup: , somehow I allways thought it was every 20 turns, I must have been mixing things up. :crazyeye:

I'm off to play. :cool:

One thing to consider ... since we are planning to go to war with Russia we should consolodate the strike force in Koneigsberg if it will hooked up to the road net and iron in time.

Basically our vet warriors need to be in a city with a barracks hooked up to iron. That city should be closest to the intended victim.

If we are attempting to speed to a UN victory we'll need several tech trading partners. Ideally these should be scientific to speed the overall tech pace. We may wish to keep Russia around as a one city nation so that we can gift them up to a tech level and buy their free tech. Will they get a random tech or will it be the same as us? If it will be the same as us then let's wipe them out.

A diplomatic victory requires vast amounts of cash to be successful. Keep that in mind. The collossus would help with that. Basically we will want to capture the UN while allying all other remainng AI against the builder. That will guarantee a win.

If we are goint to warmonger in the early going isn't monarchy a better choice? It will be quicker too.

I uploaded the save.
Score is 269. :)
Turnlog in an hour or more. :eek:

One thing to consider ... since we are planning to go to war with Russia we should consolodate the strike force in Koneigsberg if it will hooked up to the road net and iron in time.

Basically our vet warriors need to be in a city with a barracks hooked up to iron. That city should be closest to the intended victim.Good thinking

If we are attempting to speed to a UN victory we'll need several tech trading partners. Ideally these should be scientific to speed the overall tech pace. We may wish to keep Russia around as a one city nation so that we can gift them up to a tech level and buy their free tech. Will they get a random tech or will it be the same as us? If it will be the same as us then let's wipe them out.On vanilla every scientific civ gets the same freebie. I respectfully suggest we wipe them out :D

A diplomatic victory requires vast amounts of cash to be successful. Keep that in mind. The collossus would help with that. Basically we will want to capture the UN while allying all other remainng AI against the builder. That will guarantee a win.

If we are goint to warmonger in the early going isn't monarchy a better choice? It will be quicker too.Republic generates the most cash. I think we'll kill Russia before we are in Republic, and we'll kill England and France in short order if we can get a good stock of horsies and ugrade them to knights. I used to run in Monarchy, but I now find I can manage war weariness OK in Republic, and even if you have to raise the lux slider to 20 or 30% for a few turns, you are generating so much more cash that it's still worth it. Maintaining order requires that we get lux hooked up and some markets in the bigger cities, or course. The secret to lowering war wearinenss is short wars with fast units that can stay out of enemy territory most of the time, and don't die so often because they can retreat.

The cost of UN votes is not high. We'll be tech rich by then, so we may not even need to give cash, and there will only be one or two bribes required.

I uploaded the save.
Score is 269. :)
Turnlog in an hour or more. :eek:
Looking very good! :thumbsup:

All mandatory ancient techs except Currency.
Lit in 2 turns and we're up Philosophy on Russia.
GL is going to take 92 turns right now at 4 spt in Leipzig - we only have 35 shields in the prebuild, but we should be able to accelerate that by growing the city and working the soil.
Three lux hooked up and some very happy cities.
Warriors building up in Konigsberg nicely.
France has started to produce a bit of culture, but a few libraries will even that out nicely.

I like it! :beer:

One thing to consider ... since we are planning to go to war with Russia we should consolodate the strike force in Koneigsberg if it will hooked up to the road net and iron in time.
Good point, time to move warriors south.

Just looked at the save, iron almost hooked up and road south completed. Looks like AdrianE will start the campaign.

Alan, I was thinking about your wanting to start out with Russia's horse city, sorry forgot which it is. Perhaps we can take both at once, although I hate to split forces when I go after a capital. Perhaps we should try to get an updated map to see what roads Cathy may have built. In the last update, there don't seem to be any roads heading for the horsie farm. Perhaps she doesn't have it hooked up yet, but nooo, that would be too good to be true. ;) Looking at how Russia is layed out, Moscow really is the hub and it must be fairly productive. Taking it would not allow the horse resource to get to her best cities anyway. Removing Moscow early will split them and remove a lot of capability for unit production and whipping of pop. Just some thoughts.

BTW, I forgot to check, does Russia have iron?

In case you get going early, Good Luck and Good Hunting AdrianE. :eek: And please give Catherine my best regards! :mischief:

edit - It is looking nice, :goodjob: Zamint.

Turnlog
1000 BC Preflight :
Settler in Berlin heading N., MM in Berlin to max shields. Change production in Leipzig to Palace as prebuild.

IBT:
Our archer got ambushed by barb horseman, but survived.
We learn Poly start on Litt. At 80% - 12 turns.
Königsberg : warrior -> worker
Berlin grows, I did tell the governor to emphasize production, but the extra citzen was put on the deer. We’ll be one shield short of a settler in 4 turns.

975 BC Turn 1 :
Sell Polytheism to Elizabeth for Code of Laws, WM + 206g.
Sell Polytheism to Catherine for WM + 142g.
Sell WM to Elizabeth for 17g and to Catherine for 14g.

IBT:
Berlin : warrior-> settler.

950 BC Turn 2 :
Cologne founded 4 tiles SW of Königsberg, starts on worker.
Unit cost down to 0, Litt in 10. Breaking even.

IBT :
Hamburg : warrior->settler.

925 BC Turn 3 :
Archer dispersed barb camp north.
Popped GH in the south, Celt warriors!!

IBT :
Warrior survived Celt attack and promoted to elite.
Frankfurt : worker->warrior.
Münich : worker->worker
Heidelberg : warrior->worker

900 BC Turn 4 :
Hannover founded E-E-SE of Heidelberg, starts on worker.
Unit cost down to 0 again, Litt. in 7, breaking even.

IBT :
Nüremberg worker->worker.

875 BC Turn 5 :
Bremen founded E-E-NE of Münich, starts on worker.

IBT :
Berlin : settler->warrior.
Königsberg : worker->warrior.

850 BC Turn 6 :
Settler is moving north to fill in a ring 5 spot.
Russia got Philosophy now, and France got their horses connected.


825 BC Turn 7 :
Sell WM to France for WM + 30g.

IBT :
Berlin : warrior->settler
Frankfurt : warrior -> warrior.
We got a road to Königsberg … and the spices.

800 BC Turn 8 :
France got Construction.
We buy Philosophy from Russia for WM + 211g.
We buy Construction from France for Philosophy, Polytheism, WM + 420g
We sell Construction to Russia for WM + 266g.
We sell Construction to England for WM + 145g
We sell our WM to France for 6g.

IBT :
Heidelberg : worker->warrior.
Incense hooked up.

775 BC Turn 9 :
Warrior dispersed a barb camp NE of Hannover.

750 BC Turn 10 :
Stuttgart founded N-N-N-NE of Berlin, starts on …. warrior….?

We have 3 lux hooked up, there's fur in France and England and only a few unexplored landtiles left.
We have a road to Königsberg, and 5 workers down there, intended to road to Cologne.
Warriors are starting to gather in Königsberg. Maybe some of our outer cities should build a reg. warrior and start sending their vet warriors towards Königsberg.
We are at tech parity, and Literature is up in 2 turns, the only AA tech missing is Currency, beware of the barb uprising anytime now. We should spend all our money upgrading to swords.
France got horses hooked up, the others got nothing, I don’t think there’s iron anywhere near Russia.
There are two workers near Berlin who hasn’t been moved, they could speed up the iron-connection if we want that.


http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads7/Germany_750_bc.jpg

Perhaps she doesn't have it hooked up yet, but nooo, that would be too good to be true. ;) Looking at how Russia is layed out, Moscow really is the hub and it must be fairly productive. Taking it would not allow the horse resource to get to her best cities anyway. Removing Moscow early will split them and remove a lot of capability for unit production and whipping of pop. Just some thoughts.

BTW, I forgot to check, does Russia have iron?Moscow doesn't have horses or iron in her trading list yet. Of course Kiev may have horses and be capable of producing them, but not be connected to Moscow yet, but I think Kiev would fall quickly.

In case you get going early, Good Luck and Good Hunting AdrianE. :eek: And please give Catherine my best regards! :mischief:
Yes, may the RNG be with you. Please make sure you are outside Russian borders when you declare - we cant afford a bad rep in this game. I know, grandma and eggs, but I thought I'd better mention it anyway ;)

Well done zamint3. Looking very good. 12 cities already, from a pretty foul start!

Capt Buttkick
leif erikson
zamint3
AdrianE UP
AlanH On deck

The secret to lowering war wearinenss is short wars with fast units that can stay out of enemy territory most of the time.

So staying out of enemy territory lowers war wearineness. :) ....learning again, I like this SG game. ;)


Please make sure you are outside Russian borders when you declare - we cant afford a bad rep in this game.

If we attack an enemy outside the border or across the border, and say yes to the "they are scum" part, is that considered a honorable declaration?

So staying out of enemy territory lowers war wearinenessDelays its increase is more strictly correct. There's a war academy article on war weariness that's well worth reading. For example, if you declare on one civ, then anopther, then kill or make peace with the first one, your war weariness at that point reduces considerably. Subjectively, it seems to help to start the next war a little before you finish the first one in Republic - something to watch for when we are scheduling the demise of Joan ( :cry: ) and Liz ( :D ) (My smileys are not expressing nationalistic bias - I just fancy Joan rather more than Liz :love: )

If we attack an enemy outside the border or across the border, and say yes to the "they are scum" part, is that considered a honorable declaration?As long as we and the victim are outside Russian borders we're fine. I tend to use the diplo screen and declare formally before attacking any unit or city, just to be doubly safe. It makes no difference to your ability to attack, whether you declare first or not. But equally, I don't imagine it makes any difference to the ai attitude either.

BTW. Something to watch out for: Our Great Library (pre)build is not particularly speedy currently, and we haven't a big prebuild lead yet. We need to avoid trading Literature until it's researched by others, keep an eye on whoever starts building it, try to estimate their completion time, and make sure we either beat them or are able to make a take-over bid for it. That Library is really important to us. Newton's wouldn't be a disaster as an alternative for our GA, but it is really a bit late.

Nicely done. I have it.

However I would have put Bremen 1 square NE on the coast. We will need a productive coastal city or two later.

I may move it. IIRC If a build a settler in a pop 2 city that will cause the city to disappear, right?

Adrian

No, I don't know if that was a Civ2 feature, but it doesn't work here. The city will just sit and wait until it has pop 3.
But hey, let's not start moving each others' cities :eek: We have settlers being built in Berlin, and we are about to collect southern cities from our friends. The new settlers can build all the northern coastal towns we need. We'll also inherit southern ones. There's lots of north coast. We need more cities, not replacement ones!

That's some nice trading, Zamint :goodjob:
We're looking good. Good luck, Adrian, with the invasion :cool:

My smileys are not expressing nationalistic bias - I just fancy Joan rather more than Liz :love:

Could it finally be someone agrees with me on the who-is-the-foxiest-female-civ3-leader debate? :lol:

For you ppl that haven't been hanging around the forums that much, this is a very important reoccuring discussion, in which I've taken a lot of heat defending the fair lady of Orleans :)

Is there another foxy lady in Civ3? Of course I don't know who you guys with PtW and Conquests get to play with. Hannibaline is Joan's sweet little half sister, of course, and she's OK, but Joanie's the only one I really regret having to put out of her misery.

:hmm: STAFF team is shadowing our score line, just a couple of points ahead at turn 50 (1750 BC). The other two to watch are bugsy and DGIT. They've only played to turn 40 (2150 BC) so it's difficult to see their trends, but bugsy was tracking us and DGIT was well ahead of the entire field at that stage. The rest of the teams are running on curves that are 4 to 10 turns behind ours. Interesting to see it developing.

I'm done my turn and can't upload the file using Alan's utility. Must be some weird MAC-OS thing. I'm using OS10.2.8. It reports the following:

Fatal error: call to undefined function fscan() in home/virtual/site7/fst/var/www/html/BabyBeast/Expander.php on line 358.

Short report :
We are at war with everybody !!!! I took Moscow easily.

Pre-turn MM Berlin for settler in 2

730BC - send vet warriors to Koneigsberg
IBT England completes Oracle in London and starts Collosus and Pyramids

710BC - send settler off to secure horses
IBT lose warrior to barb horse
Russians and French start Pyramids

670BC - Iron road complete
IBT massive uprising near Munich

650BC - Upgrade lots of warriors
France and England have currency - I could trade Lit but dont

630BC - 24 barb horses appear near Munich

610BC move 10 swords to edge of Russian Territory
IBT France move 2 warriors adjacent to Cologne

590BC Declare War on Russia
France sneak attacks us and razes Cologne ! I decide the are no threat since they are so far away
Munich is sacked by 24 barb horse for the loss of 23G and 1 citizen!

570BC exterminate French forces, 1 sword promotes, 10 sword SOD closes in on Moscow
France signs England up to be in a MA against us !

550BC attack goes in at Moscow
- 1st sword wins vrs reg spear -2HP and TAKES Moscow and captures a worker!!!!!
- 2nd sword kills an archer south of Moscow -2HP
- 3rd sword kills a spear escorting a settler NE of Moscow -2HP promotes

Found Cologne to secure horses - but its going to get hammered by barbs so I leave it undefended.

I left 7 swords unmoved near Moscow

Score 322


>>save<< (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads7/Xteam_550BC.zip)

I'm done my turn and can't upload the file using Alan's utility. Must be some weird MAC-OS thing. I'm using OS10.2.8.
I see that you figured out that it must be in .SAV format and can not be zipped. I have downloaded it from Alan's brilliant creation. From the sound of your short report, you don't mess around. When you go to war, you go all the way. :lol:

Sounds interesting, let me have a look! :goodjob:

I'm done my turn and can't upload the file using Alan's utility. Must be some weird MAC-OS thing. I'm using OS10.2.8. It reports the following:

Fatal error: call to undefined function fscan() in home/virtual/site7/fst/var/www/html/BabyBeast/Expander.php on line 358.
As before, when mad-bax did it, I unzipped your file and uploaded the .sav with no problems. I'm using Safari in OS X 10.3.3.

Are you using a different browser? Or are you trying to upload the zip file? That error means the software didn't detect a compressed .SAV file and is trying, and failing, to process an uncompressed .SAV.

We are at war with everybody !!!! I took Moscow easily.
Is this the guy who said he was tired of war and just wants to settle down to a bit of peace and quiet? :D

Great stuff, Adrian! Well played. You certainly had a busy time. The barbs weren't so bad really, were they? Least of your worries.

Looks like I'm UP again. I'll play tomorrow. Too dangerous to try now. :sleep:

Capt Buttkick On deck
leif erikson
zamint3
AdrianE
AlanH UP

Looks like I'm UP again. I'll play tomorrow. Too dangerous to try now. :sleep:

Go ahead Alan, rub it in!! :lol:

Adrian, you certainly were busy. :goodjob:

Just looked at the save and it is interesting! We certainly do have different ways to achieve victory.

I think we had better start producing swords. Our treasurery is low enough that Barb Horseman can not hurt Cologne too seriously, even if they sack it 32 times. We should have some swords ready to meet them if they get into the 9 belt to prevent any damage. In the meantime, we may be able to sneak our archer towards that barb camp to prevent any more barb units from spawning. Is there a certain amount of time before they produce more units and does anyone know the rate they produce them?

Back at the front, Russia is now in tough shape. Most of her cities are size one. Do they self-destruct in vanilla? I can't remember. If these cities do get autorazed as we defeat them, we will need more settlers.

In looking at the terrain, France is much prettier than England (no offense Alan :eek: ). I would propose that our main force should head south, take the Russian and French cities as we go, for Paris. Frankfurt may need a few extra units to hold off any English that show. Meanwhile, we can send a token force of swords, say 5 or 6, towards the former East Russian empire. I think I saw 3 or 4 cities over there. The capital moved east, which surprised me a little bit. I thought her older cities were west and south.

As we move south, we will have to watch for the French horseman moving freely along the roads. Those 6 moves could cause us a little delay but it should be an inconvienence.

Good Hunting Alan, Go get 'em.. :D

We certainly do have different ways to achieve victoryThat's very true. I have some questions:

1. What can we use spears for?
I've already pointed out that a spear has no better defensive strength than a sword. So you get a unit with one third the attack strength for 2/3 of the cost. It doesn't compute. If you are thinking of them as cheap er MPs than swords then I would argue that we won't need any MPs once we get to Republic, and meanwhile we can use regular warriors we already have and/or money to keep the population happy.

2. Do we need catapults? We have no walls to knock down, and very few cities greater than pop 6. I count one right now, maybe two if Paris grows before we get there.

A catapult can knock one hit point off a defender. This increases the probability of the next sword killing that defender. My guts have told me they don't do a good job, but since different people's guts can feel very different that's not a sufficient argument. So I thought I'd better back mine up with facts. So I've done a spreadsheet to find out what combination of a cat stack plus a sword can match the kill probability of two swords. I used the online combat calculator to get attack/defence stats, but I don't have info on catapult probabilities, so I tried it with several values to see the effect.

I defined a fortified vet spearman in a town on flat land as the defender. Of course we will often meet regulars and sometimes hills, so this is an approximation. In this case two swords have a 92% chance of a kill, with a 44% chance that the first one will die.

Seven cats plus one sword can achieve the 92% result IF the cats are 50% successful. If the cats are 25% successful it takes 16 of them, and at 20% success rate, which I think may still be optimistic, you need 20.
Taking the generous 25% success rate that means we would need 320 shields to build a cat stack that can do what one 30 shield sword can do. Now I agree that the cats always survive, as long as we defend them well, but the ten swords we could build with those shields can kill or die supporting kills, on over 20 spears. Surely it's no contest?

If you want to see my spreadsheet I can pretty it up and post it. At the moment it would mean nothing to anyone else, as there are no headings or explanations.

Your logic, as always, is impeccable! :goodjob:

No spears, no catapults...I totally agree.

@AdrianE : I do hope you can see the points AlanH are making.

Our treasurery is low enough that Barb Horseman can not hurt Cologne too seriously, even if they sack it 32 times. We should have some swords ready to meet them if they get into the 9 belt to prevent any damage. In the meantime, we may be able to sneak our archer towards that barb camp to prevent any more barb units from spawning. Is there a certain amount of time before they produce more units and does anyone know the rate they produce them?
What happens if our treasury is down to zero and Cologne is pop 1, with no shields in the box, will the barbs just keep sacking for zero gold or will they move on? I've seen 8-10 keep sacking for just 1 g each. :confused:
Once the massive uprising from the huts at the end of the era is over, things should get back to normal. So I hope. ;)

Back at the front, Russia is now in tough shape. Most of her cities are size one. Do they self-destruct in vanilla? I can't remember. If these cities do get autorazed as we defeat them, we will need more settlers.
They must have been using the whip a lot, at 750 bc, St. Petersburg was pop 4 and Smolensk pop 3. Unfortunately I think they will autoraze. :cry:

More settlers : yes :D

I agree we only need a small force in the east. Notice that the barbs must have payed Sevastopol a visit. :lol:

If Moscow only had one defender, the other cities won't have much more. We should send our swords out in groups of 2 or 3. :cool:

I also think we should change research to Republic and get Currency from England or France.

What happens if our treasury is down to zero and Cologne is pop 1, with no shields in the box, will the barbs just keep sacking for zero gold or will they move on? I've seen 8-10 keep sacking for just 1 g each.I don't think they move on, I think they mindlessly attack the nearest city.

Once the massive uprising from the huts at the end of the era is over, things should get back to normal. So I hope. ;) From my limited previous experience they don't seem to come in multiple waves from any one camp. However, we have multiple camps - I can see two in the north west. Have they both sprouted their hordes yet? Dunno :hmm:. We still have 11 warriors. Several of them are vets and really ought to upgrade. Some of the regulars could upgrade as well and go after the barbs for promotions, except we have no cash :(.

They must have been using the whip a lot, at 750 bc, St. Petersburg was pop 4 and Smolensk pop 3. Unfortunately I think they will autoraze. :cry: If they've been whipping the there will be some extra spears somewhere. That's what they produce in emergencies. Russia has no culture, so yes, their pop 1 towns will autoraze. England and France both have some culture, but I doubt if it's in any of their pop 1 towns. So Berlin had better get cracking on settlers. It's in a funny state right now - just grown and about to produce a settler :hmm:, I'm not sure what it's been doing.

I checked the game specs, BTW. They say "Restarting players off". I assume that means dead civs will not respawn? This is important, as we'd have to keep them all alive in dead-end towns, otherwise they might pop up again anywhere. :scan:

We should send our swords out in groups of 2 or 3. Yes, they'll fan out for more rapid assimilation/annihilation.

I also think we should change research to Republic and get Currency from England or France.I agree, Republic would take 19 turns at the fastest rate we can run without going bust, or 40 turns at 10% and 40 gpt. I think I'll run at 10% for a few turns at least, so that we can upgrade some more warriors. The Great Library is still a long way off unless we get a Leader during the upcoming unpleasantness. I agree, pointy sticks are the best way to get Currency.

France always was prettier than England :D.

Alan and Zamint, I agree with all you have discussed. Changing research is a good idea and I think we should use up as much gold as we can each turn for upgrades as the barbs will get whatever is left.

I think the barbs will exhaust themselves on Cologne, at least I hope so. The big question for me is how many other barb camps were active on our continent and where will they come from, don't be surprised Alan if you meet more barbs than French or English units!

As far as I am concerned, if we can take out the Russian, English and French and their cities autoraze, then it leaves us free to rebuild the continent, although it will take time. If the RNG is kind enough to allow us a Great Leader, I suggest we find a place between Moscow and Paris, build a city and the Forbidden Palace. If we can get Moscow and Paris fairly productive, the terrain will allow us to build settlers all day long with all the cattle and wheat down there.

When we wipe out a civ and get some pointy stick research, we need to be sure we wipe them out immediately so that they can not tell anyone how evil we are and spoil our perfect rep!! :rolleyes: I know you know that though. In a recent GOTM, I thought I had it all figured out and wiped out a civ and it turned out they had a settler on a galley somewhere and I suffered a rep hit for it. :cry:

I wish you luck Alan, there is much reorganizing to do in these turns moving units and setting up for attacks. It looks like we will be at this for a while so, let's wipe them all out!! :eek: :king:

Well, we seem to be all discussed out. I'd have preferred some feedback from Adrian before I go and change everything .... I'll get started on it. I didn't post a formal GOT IT - sorry. Well, I have now!

Alan

Cats save the lives of our troops thats why I built them.

Consider the case of 5 cats supporting 5 swords (250 shields) and 8 swords (240 shields attacking 5 fortified spearmen in a stack of 3 then a stack of 2. My gut tells me that the cats will only lose 1 or so swords in the battles while the sword only approach will lose 2 or 3. That is a 60 shield difference. Properly escorted cats will last forever. They will easily pay for themselves over time by saving the lives of our units.

Cats are also great units to built in corrupt cities as the cost 20s and don't need a barracks.

To attack without cats is foolish IMO.

The spears are there to relieve vet warriors in garrisons to be upgraded and sent to the front. They are also there to cover wounded swords as they recuperate and escort the cats.

I don't like the idea of dispersing our forces. There should be a concentrated force. Dispersion runs the risk of failure. If you are going to split up send forces no smaller than 5 swords.

I often build lots of catapults on higher difficulty levels and you're right, Adrian, they do increase the survival chance of our swords. However, I often feel that this is more important on emperor and higher levels because loosing any units are so much worse then.
On monarch we can calc with loosing a few units b/c we know the opposition won't be all that adverse anyway. The gain is of course a much faster conquest faze.

I often build lots of catapults on higher difficulty levels and you're right, Adrian, they do increase the survival chance of our swords. However, I often feel that this is more important on emperor and higher levels because loosing any units are so much worse then.
On monarch we can calc with loosing a few units b/c we know the opposition won't be all that adverse anyway. The gain is of course a much faster conquest faze.
Guess I need to experiment with this sometime. I seldom build them for two reason. First, they can't keep up with my horsemen. Second, I can never seem to hit anything with them. Guess it goes back to my faithfully poor RNG. :rolleyes:

How about a new topic for discussion, the location of the Forbidden Palace. I took a look and think that Canterbury is a good place for it. If Canterbury autorazes, then we can fine tune the location a little bit. Canterbury is 8 from London and 8.5 from Moscow. Paris is further away, I think it was 12. Of course, I tried to center it between the three empires taking productive sites into consideration. As always, I am looking for feedback. Hopefully I can learn something despite the stubborness. :lol:

Preturn

City checks
Berlin is pop 6 with a settlre next turn. OK
Leipzig is pop 5. Switch the Palace prebuild to Great Library, current eta 54 should come down with growth.
Hamburg - sword in 9 OK
Konigsburg grows next turn. Change cat to Sword.
Frankfurt growing slowly. Change spear to sword.
Munich from Cat to Barracks
Heidelberg from spear to horse.
Nuremberg building Galley in 25. Switch from forest to flood plain as it's wasting the shields. Tune for growth.
Hannover from cat to sword
Bremen from cat to sword adn whip. He'll be a regular but the barbs may promote him.
Stuttgarrt from cat to barracks
Bonn building warrior. OK
Cologne from spear to warrior
Moscow is on a diet :D Building a worker.

Economy Switch research to Republic. Sliders to 10.0.0 with a scientist in Moscow.
43 gpt and we'll spend it each turn on upgrades to avoid feeding the barbs.

Units Move the 7 sword stack south towards St Petersburg en route for Paris.

Diplo No one will talk to us

IBT
Two French warriors spotted in the south and east.
Three barb horses take 3 gold from Cologne.
Berlin settler -> settler
Bremen Sword -> Barracks
Paris buillds the Pyramids :thumbsup: We'll take that, thanks!
English cascade to Great Wall. No other changes reported, so maybe we really don't get to hear what the others are doing :hmm:
McCauley reports the richest nations: French/Indians/English/Germans/Japan/China/Russia
Don't expect to get any cash out of Cathy then, but Joan should be worth a bit.


Turn 101 530 BC
7 swords move on south to the gates of St Petersburg
3 swords move towards Kiev
3 swords and a cat move towards Smolensk
3 Russian workers road north of Moscow to connect it up to Konigsberg and the German war machine.
2 swords move west towards Oxford
Settler heads south
MM Berlin
Archer kills barb horse and promotes to 3/5
Warrior dies vs barb horse.
Upgrade vet warrior
Warrior heads for unguarded Sebastopol
Settler and workers move south as we shall need a strategic road network.

IBT
16 horses attack Cologne and take 11 god and the one shield we had saved up towards a warrior.
Stuttgart barracks -> Sword

Turn 102 510 BC
St Petersburg: One sword dies, one promotes to 2/5. Town destroyed. No gold.
Stack now sees a french spear/settler party
Sword kills reg. spear in forest. No damage.
Cat takes one HP off spear in Smolensk. Sword kills spear and destroys town, captures worker and promotes.
Warrior walks into Sebastopol and razes it.
Russia will talk. She will give us Tblisi and Sverdlovsk for peace. Decide to roll on a bit further.

IBT Nothing. Barbs all gone.

Turn 103 490 BC
Sword kills French warrior and captures settler. Workers road towards Kiev and the horses.

IBT Frankfurt Sword -> Sword, Bonn Warrior--> galley

Turn 104 470 BC
Orleans pop is down to 1 from 2.
Sword kills English warrior on a hill near Moscow.
Sword kills French warrior on mtn near Konigsberg and promotes.
2 swords kill 2 spears and destroy Kiev.
Sword kills spear and destroys Oxford for 3 gold
Russia is down to four cities and will give us two of them for peace. I take Odessa and Sverdlovsk on the southern coastal area. As the fog lifts we see two French warriors near the undefended towns :(

IBT French warrior destroys Odessa.
French archer from Orleans attacks stack and dies.
French horse appears on a hill.
Berlin settler -> pop 3. I started another settler but this changed later to a library using a forest chop, to get the pop back up.
Stuttgart warrior -> warrior

Turn 105 450 BC
2 swords kill 2 spears and destroy Orleans for 10 gold
Sword dies vs horse on hill, who survives without a scratch :(
Sword from Sebastopol takes 25 gold back from the barbs to the east.
Settler builds Salzburg SW of Konigsberg.
New settler heads south
We've upgraded most of our warriors now and we are getting some supplementary income from our warfare and from barb camps. I decide to switch on research. 16 turns to Republic at -2 gpt.

IBT French horse attacks 2/4 sword and dies, leaving the sword down to 1 HP. French warrior attacks the sword and dies, sword promotes to 2/5 :)

Turn 106 430 BC Sword attacks spear on a hill and dies.
Road completed to the ex-Russian horses and a Russian slave builds a Colony.

IBT Some French and English troop movements, including an English settler pair.
A barb horse sows up, but this is just your regular barb activity. no horde in sight.
Hambiurg Sword -> sword

Turn 107 410 BC
5/5 sword kills English spear in the open. No leader.
Joan will talk but expects US to PAY for Peace :eek:
Liz will talk, but won't give Currency for peacce. We'll have to hurt her some more.
Switch all sword builds to horses. Horses have a future. Swords are dead enders in this version.

IBT Barb horse attacks regular sword and promoted him with no damage.
Stuttgart warrior -> warrior
Berlin chop completed and we'll have a library in 2 turns. I did promise to build some culture.

Turn 108 390 BC
Still no good deals for peace.
Troop positioning and road building.

IBT The French want to talk, but only to ask us to pay for peace :hmm:
Barb horse shows up at Cologne. Sorry, no one home. They all went to find your camps.
Hannover barracks -> horse

Turn 9 370 BC
2 cats bomb French spear on a hill to 2/3 (one hit one miss)
Elite sword kills spear - no Leader
Elite sword kills warrior on the hill - no Leader
Vet sword retreats a horse
Elite sword kills an archer - no Leader
Vet sword has arrived near Sverdlovsk as a French warrior approaches. He attacks on open ground, and dies :eek: The French will take out Sverdlovsk.

[IBT
French warrior razes Sverdlovsk. Barb horse takes 2 gold from Cologne. French archer tries to break out of Avignon and dies.
Moscow completes a Russian worker to reduce pop to 1. Set to Library. Feel free to change it.

Turn 10 350 BC
3 swords kill 2 spears and destroy Avignon for 12 gold
Settler builds Dirtmund east of Konigsberg
An elite sword dies attacking a warrior on open ground :(
2 swords kill 2 spears and capture York. It was pop 2 and doesn't auto-raze.
Then the RNG runs out on us again. 2 swords both die at the gates of Coventry.

After action report
The map's changed a bit - see screenshot below.
We are currently at peace with Russia and at ware with the other two.
Russia is a shadow of its former self, and France is down two cities as we approach Paris and the Pyramids. England is also down 2 towns, but they both need more encouragement before they will give us anything useful for peace.

Note that Paris is down to pop 5 - it was pop 7 earlier. I met a couple of situations where there were two defenders, and I think France has been whipping out some attack troops as well, which probably means she's pretty well gassed.

Minsk has just expanded but our colony is safe for a while. We'll deal with Cathy long before the next expansion becomes a problem.

Paris and Rheims both have culture, so they should not autoraze, even if they reduce to pop 1.

The road network down south was really poor. I've connected some of it up, but it's particularly hard work reaching England, and there have been too many wandering warriors an spears around to let the workers loose in that area while our main attack force is trying to regroup on Paris. Even where we have roads, the large number of rivers slows you down.

Over to you, Captain. Good hunting.

>> The Save << (http://gotm.civfanatics.net/saves/sgotm2/Xteam_SG002_BC0350_01.SAV)

The Screenshot

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads7/Xteam_350BC.jpg

Capt Buttkick UP
leif erikson On deck
zamint3
AdrianE
AlanH

Very good progress Alan. :goodjob: Excellent work.

Looks like there were many skirmishes over a wide area. Glad to see you didn't meet many barbs and that they exhausted themselves on Cologne. Looks like the French are on the ropes and the Russians are barely hanging on. After Paris, some clean up and then on to England. Too bad the Russian cities Cathy gave us were being visited by the French, tough break.

There seem to have been quite a few promotions. We should be able to do some leader farming. :thumbsup: Also, I noticed a switch in production to horseman, excellent!! :love:

We should discuss the FP should we get a leader It would be nice to get it built and bring productivity to the southern area, as long as we can adequately defend it. :cool:

Again, good work. May the good fortune of a please RNG deity shine upon you Capt. Give Joan a kiss for me under the l'arc de triumphe (sorry my French spelling is worse than my english)!! :lol:

:lol:

This is a Got it btw.
However, I'm at my parent's house and I won't get to look at it for some time still. If I have any q's I'll prob ask them this evening or else just play it then.

A couple of late night bloomers I'll try to learn from :smoke:

1. If you plan to get cities in a peace negotiation make sure your troops are ready to defend them.

2. Two swords are not always enough. Coventry is a grassland town and should have rolled over as easily as the rest, but it would have taken at least four swords to do the job on this roll of the dice. Unfortunately, even if we had built more cats, they couldn't have reached it to assist the swords, who approached it via the mountains.

Some pointers on the current situation. They may be obvious, but it's a big map with lots going on:

- Our troops are now close to France's horses, so we can pillage them on hte way to Paris and stop Joan rushing any more horses - one pop point buys a horse.

- We have an archer and sword ready to strike two barb camps in the north west for another 50 gold. I've been running a deficit for Republic in 7 more turns on the basis that we can grab a bit of gold from enemy cities and barb camps.

- There are several swords who will heal on the next turn ready to move on Paris. Horse pillaging can take place while the force assembles. There are 2 cats there already.

- Paris is down to pop 5 so will not be such a tough nut to crack as it would have been a few turns ago at pop 7, and I suspect we've already been visited by the troops that they whipped then so the defences are probably not enormous. There I go being over-optimistic again :hmm:

- There's an English settler party in no man's land, and we probably need to reinforce York asap.

- Re. Forbidden Palace, how about Rheims? It saves a settler, it shouldn't auto raze as it has cultural expansion, and it's 5.5 from Paris and 9.5 from London. It'll be pop 1 when we get it, so resistance should be easy to suppress. I've been Leader farming a bit. Four or five elite wins I think, mostly warriors or archers in open country. So far no luck, so maybe the dice will roll for the Captain! :where's the fingers-crossed smilie:

- We have several libraries in build to get our research rate up, or to keep a decent rate while accumulating cash fro knight upgrades. I'm thinking we shouldn't rely on the ai to push us along via the Great Library, but if you want to change that or discuss it some more please say so. The libraries will also start to give us cultural credibility in case it's needed for when we meet new friends.

- F11 says we are #2 in land area, but I think it might be counting the barbs as #1, 'cos #1 isn't anyone we know and we're #1 in everything else that matters. We're #5 for diesase - jungles and flood plains aren't healthy - #4 life expectancy, and #7 military service. We're #1 for literacy, so no one else has built any libraries yet.

- We have 21 swords. I lost 5 during my turns, including the three in the last turn :eek: I built five, including new warriors I upgraded. I stopped building them and switched to horses. We still have a couple of towns building vet warriors and they'll upgrade as required to top up the swords.

- We have 14 turns of peace lef with Russia. I think we have enough to do for most of that time, subduing France and England, so we probably don't need to be dastardly to Cathy - just pick her off later.

- FWIW my view is the swords will be obsolete once we reach knighthood, and there's no upgrade path. They cost money for upkeep and the value of disbands is minimal. Unless we change our minds and go for Monarchy we won't need them for MP duties, so if there are no swords still standing at the end of the campaigns on this land mass it won't break my heart.

- There's at least one more 5-ring site to fill on the river, between Dortmund and Heidelburg, then plenty of work for settlers to do in the 9-ring, and round any new core we can set up. When we grab the Pyramids then we may be able to get a second settler farm going.

- Re. Forbidden Palace, how about Rheims? It saves a settler, it shouldn't auto raze as it has cultural expansion, and it's 5.5 from Paris and 9.5 from London. It'll be pop 1 when we get it, so resistance should be easy to suppress. I've been Leader farming a bit. Four or five elite wins I think, mostly warriors or archers in open country. So far no luck, so maybe the dice will roll for the Captain! :where's the fingers-crossed smilie:
To start, Rheims is an acceptable alternative as they are only 6 squares apart. But, since I am trying to learn RCP better, I will try to clarify my recommendation for the Canterbury area.
Distance from Canterbury to Moscow 8.5, London 8, Paris 11.5, York 5.5, Newcastle 6, and Dijon 9.
Distance from Rheims to Moscow 12, London 9.5, Paris 5.5, York 11, Newcastle 5, and Dijon 5.5.
I am not sure if Newcastle (currently size 2) will autoraze or not and certainly Dijon will, so those distances are less important.
Building the FP in Canterbury evens out the distances a little bit better. It also allows us to build a ring around south of it, in the Rheims area, because Rheims is nearly on the water. That would mean that we could have a ring at 5 to 5.5 and a ring at 8 to 8.5. That would leave Paris alittle bit out, but still productive. If we build it in Rheims there is no clear ring pattern that could be used as the distances are less uniform. :crazyeye: However, Canterbury will probably require a settler. This could be considered a minus or a plus as we could fine tune the location a bit. Depends upon how effective we think RCP is around the FP.
Looking a both proposals and their pluses and minuses, it is probably a wash but I thought I would make the case, its good practice! :lol:

Preturn

City checks
Heidelberg from spear to horse.
You found a stray horse, never seen that before. :rolleyes: .....oh I know, 3.00 AM typo. :D

Very good Alan. :goodjob:

I agree in your swords discussion. :)

Forbidden Palace : Does RCP count for FP?

Maybe we should keep an eye on the iron in England.

Happy hunting Captain, keep leaderfarming, but don't attack a warrior in the open. :p

:lol: The stray horse was what the sword build turned into before I finished. My notes didn't say what I had selected, so I went back (at 03:00) to check :rolleyes:

As I understand it a town's rank is defined as the number of towns closer to the Palace than its distance to the nearest Palace/FP. That's what makes the palace jump rank exploit so powerful. If the Palace is in a remote, solitary location, and no city is closer to the Palace than to the FP, then all cities are rank 1.

I think RCP is less important around the FP, as any city between zero and 5.5 from the FP will be rank 1, and any city between 6 and 9.5 from the FP will be the same rank as our 9-ring cities - i.e. the number of cities in our 1st core 5-ring. If we build the one I'm suggesting between Dortmund and Heidelburg then Our 5-ring will have 7 cities, so the 9-ring cities will all be rank 7 (or is it 8, counting Berlin? :confused: ).

So if we put the FP in Rheims then Paris would be at the same rank as our 5-ring first core cities, ie 1, but it wouldn't increase the rank of our 9-ring cities. London would be the same rank as our 1st core 9-ring cities, and would not be affected by any cities such as Paris that are closer to Rheims.
Of course, I may be wrong, it has been known :mischief:

No one else has iron hooked up yet, but yes, we should watch for it.

... but don't attack a warrior in the open. :lol: Not without catapult support anyway. Actually, I think the cats exceeded my expectations. I probably fired 4 or 5 times, and I think I scored a couple of hits. Dunno whether this changed any outcomes of course, but it probably didn't do any harm.

Just a few comments on cityproduction.

Now the war is going so great, :cool: it's time to grow our empire.

Do we need any more barracks? I would say : no. We have 8 (I think) and when the war is over and we are in republic, we won't need many troops for some time!

I've said it before, and I'll say it again : we need settlers. :) , lets grab some land, it should boost our score. Our size 3-4 cities should finish what they are building and start settlers. Bremen should change to settler. We should connect Bonn and whip the galley. (Hamburg and Heidelberg could do a library first. ;) )

One last thing, France is pretty big culture-wise, so when we take Paris watch out for flips. I suggest we leave our troops outside and just retake it if it flips.

@AlanH : I think you're right about the rank-corruption. :confused:

One thing to consider: razing towns (even auto razes) is a negative AI attitude hit. It is a +1 per city razed to all AI's and +12 to the owning AI. See Bamspeedy's AI attitude exposed article for the gory details.

We can not allow the unknown civs to contact any of Russia, France or England. They will tell them of the razed cities and we will be saddled with a permanent +10 or so. I count 6 razed cities at our hands so far. We can count on a few more with all the size 1 cities, so I say +10. The attitude plays a large part in the AI decision making process on voting for diplomatic wins.

That being said we no longer need the galleys in the short term. If you do build them and contact other civs do not trade contacts!!!

Good points Adrian. We captured two in my turns, plus Moscow in yours, we took two in peace deal which France then razed. I think we actually razed seven including Sebastopol, and there will be more, as you say

I agree on the reduced need for barracks, and we can take it easy on troops as well for a while. We need to be strong when we meet the others to avoid ugly confrontations, but we probably have most of what we need now to finish the job on this continent. I took seven towns by force and lost five units. If the offensive strength of France and England is largely spent then I'm guessing the rate of attrition will not get worse and may well reduce. There are twenty ai towns left, so our existing 21 swords should be able to finish the job with a little help from some horses.

Another question. Has anyone seen any indication of the percentage land on this map? It's standard size, so 5000 tiles total. At a quick guesstimate our continent's land area may be at least 1200. Even if the sea area is only 60% then that makes our continent 60% of the 2000 total land. That means we can indeed get close to domination, and maybe a diplo victory, without fighting another war. We then just need to be strong enough to discourage any ai thoughts of attack.

I agree we let Paris flip if it must, it will just help to get the pop down, as it will reduce by one each time we recapture it. It might cause some confusion in our growth though, having the granaries come and go as we take and lose the Pyramids :confused:

As I understand it a town's rank is defined as the number of towns closer to the Palace than its distance to the nearest Palace/FP. That's what makes the palace jump rank exploit so powerful. If the Palace is in a remote, solitary location, and no city is closer to the Palace than to the FP, then all cities are rank 1.

I think RCP is less important around the FP, as any city between zero and 5.5 from the FP will be rank 1, and any city between 6 and 9.5 from the FP will be the same rank as our 9-ring cities - i.e. the number of cities in our 1st core 5-ring. If we build the one I'm suggesting between Dortmund and Heidelburg then Our 5-ring will have 7 cities, so the 9-ring cities will all be rank 7 (or is it 8, counting Berlin? :confused: ).

So if we put the FP in Rheims then Paris would be at the same rank as our 5-ring first core cities, ie 1, but it wouldn't increase the rank of our 9-ring cities. London would be the same rank as our 1st core 9-ring cities, and would not be affected by any cities such as Paris that are closer to Rheims.
Of course, I may be wrong, it has been known :mischief:
Let's see if I can get this right? :blush: What you are telling me is that if we follow the proposal for Canterbury, we are adding corruption to our primary core cities because the ring 9 will be further than the ring 8 cities around the FP.

If we build in Rheims, then Paris should equal the corruption found in our 5 ring cities in the core and our 9 ring cities will remain as they are. The end result would be slightly elevated corruption in the second core, as long as we build cities at ring 5 distance or greater than ring 9. Is that an adequate summary? ;) If that is so, then I buy your reasoning for Rheims. :goodjob:

@Adrian. You are correct in your warning about trading contacts. However, I don't think that means holding back on the galley builds. We are probably going to lose some of those galleys and should start the search for the other civs soon.

@Alan. I think we will have the largest share of the world when we get this settled. Is it considered an exploit to use mapstat? I think I asked this last game but, at that point, we knew where all the other civs were. That would tell us a bit about the percentages.

@Zamint. We're back to expansion, aren't we? :lol: One of the worst things that could happen now would be another civ landing a settler and establishing a city somewhere on our continent. Got to develop it as soon as we can. The question is, will it matter how we do it? Is it even worth the effort to try to develop another set of rings. I would think not, but we should try to fill it out as best we can and get librabries built. It is time to get some culture built as we promised Adrian. :)

Horsemen can become knights and cavalry, so we should build some of these. Alan's right about the swords, they are a deadend.

Let's see if I can get this right? :blush: What you are telling me is that if we follow the proposal for Canterbury, we are adding corruption to our primary core cities because the ring 9 will be further than the ring 8 cities around the FP. No. I wasn't criticising Canterbury. I just suggested Rheims because it won't auto raze. A leader can go straight to Rheims and set up our store.

If we build the FP at least 18 tiles from Berlin then anything we do around it will have no effect on the corruption in the existing rings around Berlin because all the cities in the existing rings will be closer to the Palace than they are to the FP and their rank corruption will be solely determined by the number of cities closer to Berlin. Ring 5 cities will remain at rank 1. Ring 9 cities will remain at rank 7, based on the number of cities in the 5-ring, including a new one to be built.

I hadn't even done the rank calculations, but as you've counted the tiles, let's look at it. I've included Rheims and Canturbury's location as well.

Distance from Canterbury to
Moscow 8.5, rank = 7, the number of planned cities in our 5-ring
London 8, rank = 7
Paris 11.5, rank = 15?, the sum of the 5-ring and the 9-ring.
York 5.5, rank = 1
Newcastle 6, rank = 7
Dijon 9, rank = 7
Rheims, 6.5, rank = 7
Total rank = 51

Distance from Rheims to
Moscow 12, rank = 15?
London 9.5, rank = 7
Paris 5.5, rank = 1
York 11, rank = 15?
Newcastle 5, rank = 1
Dijon 5.5, rank = 1
Canturbury 6.5, rank = 7
Total rank = 47, but Canturbury will raze and can be rebuilt at 5 for rank = 1 giving total rank = 41.

But the most important objective is to get the highest shield and gold producers at rank 1 to minimize waste. So it's not just a matter of city count, but of quality of terrain as well. And Rheims gives us 3 rank 1 cities, Canturbury only gives us one.

@Alan. I think we will have the largest share of the world when we get this settled. Is it considered an exploit to use mapstat? I think I asked this last game but, at that point, we knew where all the other civs were. That would tell us a bit about the percentages.
I believe we should not use it until we know the world map. We should not use tools that give us data we can't get from looking at the game. I consider Mapstat as a labour saving device for counting tiles that I could count manually if I were patient and painstaking enough.For now I don't think we need to worry. We need to build settlers just to replace ai cities and redevelpop that territory. Expanding into the outer reaches of the continent can wait. Meanwhile we can pension off our swordies to go and farm barb camps at 25 gold per pop.

Is it even worth the effort to try to develop another set of rings.No, because the corruption out there will be total. But we should be careful to settle to cover the ground effectively - distance 4 between cities wherever possible so that they cover the ground and fill the gaps without needing too many cultural buildings. Settlers are cheaper than libraries, especially once we have the Pyramids, and they can be built in productive cities and sent out to cover the continent. Libraries would have to be rushed because of the corruption. In Republic that's up to 160 gold per library plus upkeep - never forget the upkeep. And they won't do anything for us in terms of science either, because of the corruption.

I'd like to understand how much culture we think we need. We'll have libraries in all our productive core cities of course, but will we also need them in corrupt cities as pure culture generators? If we are not going to take territory on the other continents then we shouldn't suffer flips. I'm not aware of any interaction between culture and the ai's UN votes. Is there any?

Thanks for the explaination on RCP Alan. :goodjob: The only other question I have is why the number 18 tiles from Berlin for the FP is important? Is it because we chose 9 to be our outside ring and as long as we are double that, we don't interfere with the main core? I have used RCP in several games but have never understood all the fine points and I appreciate the lessons.

Understanding what you explained in your previous post, it would benefit us to plan out a couple of rings around the FP, wouldn't it?

Regarding the corrupt areas outside our cores, I think I understand that we should build ICS. If so, we have lots of settlers to build. :eek: These cities should remain around size 6 and be kept happy, perhaps with a marketplace, and just producing goods for gold? That will keep the maintenance payments down for sure, allowing us to focus on research.

Re: culture flips. I don't think we will need to worry about culture flips unless another continent is close enough for their city radius to contact ours. I have lost cities before that I had built to culture flips, but they are usually on the periphery and closer to a civ's palace than to mine. I don't think that will happen here but we will know after we have run around our continent in a galley or two.

How much culture will we need? That is a deep and mysterious question but the answer is enough to keep our rivals from having more than twice what we have. I would think that if we build a library and a university in our core cities, along with a wonder or two, that we should have enough to avoid culture flips and maintain some respect from the AI.

Yes. 18 is twice our outer ring radius.

No there's no need to build on rings round the FP - more like disks. All cities you build at 5.5 or less from the FP will be rank 1. All cities between 6 and 9.5 from the FP will be rank 7. All cities further out than that will probably be too corrupt to worry about.

I found an interesting passage in my Civ3 game manual under culture.
"When you enter into diplomatic negotiations, the other ruler's opinion of and attitude towards you are affected by the relative strengths of your cultures. If your civilization's culture is impressive enough, a positive relationship is easier to establish and to maintain."

Additionally, the manual says,
"What we're concerned with here is your civilization's overall cultural rating and its effects. The combined culture points that all your cities accumulate make up your total culture rating. Modifying this are several factors, including your scientific progress and your form of government."

Sounds like there will be an effect when it comes to voting time. The greater our cultural rating, the greater our "friends" will think of us. Sounds like we should be even or greater than their cultural rating, especially if we are not the one's with the U.N. It also sounds like we should change to democracy ASAP, once we get it.
:lol: I don't think I have looked at that book since two weeks after I purchased Civ3. Maybe it is more useful than I thought!! ;)

I think that only applies to trade negotiations, but I could be wrong. Perhaps we's all better read up on the AI Attitude article in the War Academy that Adrian mentioned.

I think things like government differences can be important, but these factors probably only come into play when the vote is marginal. If we do the big things right, like bribery, and protecting our rep, and ensuring the rest of the world hates our rival, I don't think we'll need those second order effects.

I think things like government differences can be important, but these factors probably only come into play when the vote is marginal. If we do the big things right, like bribery, and protecting our rep, and ensuring the rest of the world hates our rival, I don't think we'll need those second order effects.
Yes, nothing like keeping up appearances!! :lol: We can operate just like any other real life government. :mischief:

Perhaps we's all better read up on the AI Attitude article in the War Academy that Adrian mentioned.
The AI attitude article can be found << HERE >> (http://www.civfanatics.com/civ3acad_ai_attitude.shtml) .
It is interesting and seems to apply to all diplomaitc situations, although BamSpeedy doesn't really say that. You sure can get into trouble many different ways and for big drops, but it is hard to get back into good graces! It reminds me of a quote by Julius Ceasar, "The evil that men do will live long after them, but the good is oft interred with their bones." :nono:

The Captain must have had a long night, I'm off for :sleep:

Sorry to keep you waiting, Leif. I played it yesterday, but due to internet connection trouble had to take it with me to work and wait for an opportuinty to post it.


Who said we couldn't have luck with the RNG? :p

Preflight: On Alan's notion that swords become obsolete in the near future, I change build from warrior to worker in Cologne and Stuttgart.
The spear in Heidelburg moves to cover the horse colony while the elite sword on the colony moves towards the battlefield.

IBT: The french are fighting someone else S of Russia, prob barbs. York ends resistance. Frankfurt library --> horseman. Heidelburg horse --> horse. Stuttgart worker --> library. Cologne worker --> worker.

Turn 1 - 330 B.C. Leipzig is size 7 and will riot if we don't do something. Lux is not a good idea since this is the only town we've got probs with so I relieve a waste-producing citizen of his field duties and make him a tax collector.
Swordie disperses Khazak barb camp. Archer take care of Macromanni camp, loosing a HP. We defeat an English spear and cature a settler. Vet sword looses 2 HP to a French vet warrior S of Russia then promotes. I move the slider to 0.10.0 and change the tax collector to a scientist for the Republic in 5. One elite win, no luck.

IBT: 2 reg English archers move onto the mountain E of York.

Turn 2 - 310 B.C. Upgrade a vet warrior. Whip sword in Munich then change back to library.

IBT: Our elite sword in York is redlined and then defeats an English reg archer. Hamburg horse --> horse. Konigsberg horse --> worker. Bremen rax --> horse.

Turn 3 - 290 B.C. France no longer has horses cause the tile was bombarded :) MMing. Paris is size 2.

IBT: Berlin settler --> settler.

Turn 4 - 270 B.C. Tax is 3.7.0 at +7 gpt cause we still need 3 more turns after Berlin built settler. Bonn hurries galley. Another elite win, no luck.

IBT: Bonn galley --> worker.

Turn 5 - 250 B.C. 1 vet sword promotes to elite.

IBT: Our vet sword in York is redlined by a reg English warrior, but defeats it. Our 3/5 elite looses only 1 HP to the reg archer that attacks next. Frankfurt horse --> worker.

Turn 6 - 230 B.C. A vet horse is redlined, doesn't retreat and then takes the two last HPs of a reg spear at Canterbury --> promotes. Canterbury is autorazed for 3 gold. Disperse a Jute barb camp in the N. 60% sci for republic next turn.

IBT: We discover the Republic and I immidiately start the revolution cause we seem to be pretty geared up for Republic. We get 6 turns anarchy.

Turn 7 - 210 B.C. Loose 2 vet swords, upgrade another. 2 elite victories after each other give us our FP GL, Barbarossa :D We take Paris with 6 slaves to boot (around :)).

IBT: A vet sword in the open dies to a reg French horse. England wants peace, but I'll save it for my own turn.

Turn 8 - 190 B.C. We get revenge on the French horse and his reg horse buddy. I'm not keen on peacing yet anyway, cause now Russia has made a discovery (see next turn) and perhaps some clever brokering between the AI will lead us to a lot of money :cool:

IBT: Paris is starved.

Turn 9 - 170 B.C. The Republic to Russia for Currency, Monarchy, 264 gold and world map. We discover Monotheism :)

IBT: Munich builds library off a forest chop. I checked the save and we wasted 4 shields so not too bad, but I hadn't expected it :(

Turn 10 - 150 B.C. A suicide galley makes contact with the Japanese. They are annoyed, very backwards and disdainful of our culture, 13 cities. We get his territory map and contact with the Chinese for Polytheism. The Chinese give us Contact with India and Territory map for Polytheism and 3 gold. The Chinese have 12 cities and are cautious. Gandhi is the rich one. I get 161 gold for Polytheism and he turns polite. He has 12 cities. All 3 civs seem to share a continent cause China has a city up N, close to Japan while sharing a border with India. Our settler moves into place for founding the next city. Move troops towards Rheims.

Score: 443.

Most of my turns were spent consolidating our forces and trying to fend off the English at York. However, we had two major RNG events going our way during my turns. 1) Well, with close to 12 elite wins, we'd soon be a little unlucky if the GL hadn't popped up soon. 2) Our first suicide galley surviving is a much bigger surprise and all the more pleasant :)
I went for Paris before Rheims to capture the Pyramids and split their empire like discussed before. I think we prob should do a culture flip calc on Paris. We may be able to hold it w/o moving more forces out.
Barbarossa is fortified in Paris for the time being, awaiting decision on the FP build. I should prob have moved the settler I built down Canterbury lane instead of filling our 9-ring, but it occured to me a little to late (I hate moving back when I've first started :(
I'll leave it to Leif to consider further diplomacy. I don't think there are any good deals going, but if the 3 asain civs aren't at tech parity, we might gift them intra-continental tech parity :p
We have an option of either monarchy or republic when the anarchy ends. Might have to do a calc, but in the long term there's no doubt that republic is better. Beware of WW kicking in on the first turn if we choose republic...

Whooohoo! That was a productive set :thumbsup:

Capt Buttkick
leif erikson UP
zamint3 On deck
AdrianE
AlanH

I'll have a look at the save and see if I have any suggestions.

Btw: since I played this yesterday there's a lot of your advice that I didn't see before playing so please don't judge me too hard if I still built rax and horses...

Sorry to keep you waiting, Leif. I played it yesterday, but due to internet connection trouble had to take it with me to work and wait for an opportuinty to post it.
With progress like this, you shouldn't ever worry about keeping me waiting. It allowed Alan and I to have a nice conversation about a number of things. I even dug out my original civ manual and "read" it?!?! :lol:

I haven't looked at the save yet because RL is calling. However, from the Captain's write up, there are several things to consider. Obviously, we have to maintain the destruction of our rivals on our continent, and thanks for the horsies, Capt. :cool: It sounds like our best bet to build the UN is India at this point, but we need to see where they are and how big they are. If they are that far behind, we have some reasearch to do and some gifts to make.

How do we want to proceed up the tech tree? My experience is that the AI will often go up the culture side, education through democracy, but we have to try to guess in order help the AI help us.

Now I think we have two goals. One is to get to Fission as fast as possible. The second is to finish our continent and get it settled and developed before Asian galleys and settlers start showing up. A big question here will be what we build or not. Having slept on it, I think we need to try to keep cultural parity with the AI's because if there is a vote when the UN is finished, it can't hurt. Later we will need to discuss using spies to determine where the UN is and how far along it is.

OK, Great job Capt., see you all in a while.

We can keep tabs on the UN build just by using F7 and city investigation AFAIK.

I haven't found out how to use spies, but my simple mind says you don't need them unless you are behind technically and need to steal techs or sabotage major builds, and/or you are building a spaceship. So I normally wouldn't even buy or research Nationalism/Espionage/Communism. But I have little experience of that end of the game, preferring to end it in the late Medieval/early Industrial, so I'd appreciate your insights.

Re contacts: The other civs have had Mapmaking for a while now, so I would have expected them to have made contact across the ocean. If there's a 6-tile crossing - they know where to find it. As they haven't done so I assume the shortest route needs the Lighthouse. I recommend that, if we get a chance, we should build it, mainly to deprive the others.

We haven't traded world maps yet. I see no reason not to do so, as I doesn't affect the ai's non-ability to achieve contact, and it will allow us to see how big we can grow without triggering domination. Giving the other continent our map shouldn't make you nervous, but if it does, we want the others to move ahead on the tech tree anyway, so we could give them the bargain of the century with a technology for their map.

Re. our next govenrment, I recommend Republic and live with war weariness for a few more turns. If we have to spend lots of lux tax, so be it. We'll only be at war for another 20 turns max, but we could lose 8 turns completely if we have to revolt again after we make peace.

I recommend Engineering rather than Feudalism for our next project. The ai always likes Feudalism first, so we could get it in peace negotiations, or out of the GL. BTW, what was the cost of 10% lux? If it allows us to have 7 productive citizens in Leipzig to build the Great Library, I'd have thought it would be worth spending. We've already had a remarkable run at zero lux tax.

We'll get France's furs on line soon. With four lux connected we ought to start building markets to help handle WW and subsequently to allow city growth with all our free granaries.

I noticed in the previous save that Lyons will not autoraze, as it had some cultural expansion. The rest of the French cities probably will. The only reasons for signing peace with either France or England now would be to grab some cities without having to fight for them, and so avoid auto-razes, and to stop war weariness. Neither has cash or techs to make a peace deal interesting otherwise

A quick question about scientific civ. If we gift China the techs it needs to get into MA and include Monotheism in the mix, won't they get a free tech other than Mono? If we hold back Monarchy and Republic, then we could trade one of them for the new tech China gets, probably Feudalism. Then we can go on to engineering and invention.

The more I think about this, the more I realize we are going ot need to get our research capability up becasue I think we are going ot do most of it ourselves.

China isn't scientific. Russia is the only other one in the pack and they're already in the Medieval. But in your scenario, if we did have another scientific civ to trade with, you can only trade ancient age techs during the first round of diplo. If that gets the ai to the Medieval then I think they immediately get their freebie, so you don't have a chance to give them Mono before that happens.

Incidentally we are at a disadvantage against PtW teams here, because they can use Russia to get a different free tech.

Re contacts: The other civs have had Mapmaking for a while now, so I would have expected them to have made contact across the ocean. If there's a 6-tile crossing - they know where to find it. As they haven't done so I assume the shortest route needs the Lighthouse. I recommend that, if we get a chance, we should build it, mainly to deprive the others.
I don't recall ever seeing the AI try a suicide galley. I don't think they can cross because the arrow trace won't go over tiles the galley can't survive in. i.e., when we move a suicide galley, we have to do it one square at a time. So I think we are safe until The Great Lighthouse is built by our opponents or Navigation is discovered. Yes, we should try to build TGLH and fill in the east side of the map as a first priority.

That's right, and that's why I suggested it, and why we are safe giving them our world map. I think the Great Lighthouse is a highish priority for us. We can then rule the waves until Astronomy/Magnetism. We can also create a very valuable world map, as we can safely explore three tiles out from the sea. Unfortunately, I don't think we can use it to trade luxuries across the ocean.

China isn't scientific.
Now I'm junking that old Civ3 manual. It says that China is Scientific and Industrious. But I couldn't remember so I went into the save and the civlopedia says they are militaristic and industrious. Can't trust anything these days!! :blush:

I'd like to share with you a renewed sense of urgency ....

I just checked F7. No one's building the Great Lighthouse yet. But there are several Colossei being built, so a cascade will probably happen real soon now.

The Colossus builds must all be coastal, the Pyramids and Oracle have gone already, they aren't ready to build Hanging Gardens or Great Wall yet, so when the Colossus is announced (200 shields) most will cascade to the Great Lighthouse (300 shields) and it could be completed 100+ shields later - maybe 20 or so turns with the ai's Monarch production bonus? As soon as the Lighthouse is built we can assume contact will be made within a few turns.

I don't think we can win a lighthouse race. We have two coastal towns. Nuremberg has 28 shields and is about to complete a galley. Bonn is only a baby town. We don't need Nuremberg's galley now as Capt Buttkick was so successful with his first one, and we should be able to learn enough geography by trading maps, so naval exploration is not a priority. But Nuremberg is at 4 spt currently and would take 70 turns to complete the lighthouse. It's at pop 5, and can only grow one more citizen without an aqueduct. After the revolution we'll have more food from the flood plains, so we could afford to mine its two desert tiles for 4 more shields. We'd need to expand it's borders to get the second desert using a neighbouring town (rushing a library's no good as it would absorb the existing shields). These actions could get it to 8 spt and 35 turns for the lighthouse. That's probably still too long.

So I think we have to delete our local neighbours in fewer than 20 turns, to be reasonably sure to avoid our reputation reaching the other continent. We only took two towns in the last ten turns, so our hit rate has to increase now - 8 to 10 per session.

BTW The English are building the Colossus in Hastings, whose terrain looks like about 5 spt at their current pop 4 level. My guts tell me they might build it first. If we let them win before we attack Hastings we get a double prize. We'll inherit the Colossus, and Hastings won't autoraze for sure. On the other hand if we stop them building it we may delay the cascade and the lighthouse by a few turns. Difficult choice :hmm:

What that tells me is that we need to take Rheims immediately and get the FP built. Then we have a leader spot open so that we can pray to the RNG Gods for another lightning strike!! :rolleyes: I know how thin the ice is I'm standing on, but it is worth a try?

I will read up on advice this evening and take the next ten turns. So far, it would be nice to get into Republic, watching for WW, defeat our adversaries quickly, start feeding our tech to our new "friends" to get them up and helping us with research, set research to Engineering at best speed, see if I can start another pre-build for Leonardo's, and concentrate our production on settlers. I hope I covered everything. If not, I am sure you will help me!! ;) I need all the help I can get.

One last question. One of the techniques I have used in the GOTM is to check for how many cities the AI will give me for peace. If it is all but their capital, and I have my units lined up on their doorstep and they haven't used their turn yet, I take the deal and then, in the same turn, take their capital city, sending them to oblivion. I understand this does not give us a rep hit because it all happens during our turn, so they can't tell anyone about it. Again, the only problem is if they have a settler on a galley somewhere. Is this an acceptable technique to everyone? It sure speeds up their demise and you don't lose too many combat units, nor do you face all this autorazing going on. :cool:

BTW The English are building the Colossus in Hastings, whose terrain looks like about 5 spt at their current pop 4 level. My guts tell me they might build it first. If we let them win before we attack Hastings we get a double prize. We'll inherit the Colossus, and Hastings won't autoraze for sure. On the other hand if we stop them building it we may delay the cascade and the lighthouse by a few turns. Difficult choice :hmm:
Should they lose that race, they might cascade to the lighthouse as well. Thanks for bringing it up, good food for thought. :goodjob:

Yes, but it doesn't matter who gets to the lighthouse first initially, we have to assume whoever does so will get to meet the other continent. Remember the ai all know where the narrowest crossings are, and we should assume they all probably have a galley ready to jump across as soon as it's possible. In gotm31 I used the Iroquois, with their lighthouse, so show me where to try a suicide crossing. They were right, of course.

Remember, anyone who cascades to the Lighthouse from the Colossus has another 100 shields or more to build, because by definition they had fewer than 200 when they cascaded. They will then take some turns - typically 15 to 20 on Monarch at this stage of the game - to complete those shields ad build the Lighthouse.

One possible ploy is to gift Construction before the Colossus is completed. Some of them will then cascade to the Great Wall, and the furthest advanced of those will blow 200 shields on that. We *could* even do the same with Monarchy and Literature to further dilute the Lighthouse competition by making the Library and Gardens into alternative cascade options. we should only use Literature that way if we are confident that we can beat everyone else to the Library though.

[EDIT] PS. Re. the last poit, we have 191 shields accumulated towards the Library, so anyione cascading from Colossus right now with close to 200 shields is going to give us problems. Yes, the best option is a leader to rush the Lighthouse for us.

Nice discussion on the rank issue guys. :thumbsup: I might even understand it now. :) , I donno how long I can remember it though. :mischief:

I looked at the save and I say : Let's make peace with Joan, we can get Rheims, Tours, Rouen, Dijon and all her gold. This means FP in Rheims in one turn and fur. :cool:
Somehow Besancon is very dear to her?

edit : Is Barbarossa safe in Paris, it can still flip or..... :confused: , do those french workers count as garrisoned units, or what are they doing. :crazyeye:

That sounds like a very good deal! Then you can focus for a few turns on handing it to the English and come back to Joan later. BTW, in four more turns you can honorably delete Russia's two remaining cities

PS The bad news it we don't get her furs yet. Is it worth taking Lyons first?

Somehow Besancon is very dear to her?Wonder what strange substances are under that tundra? :hmm:

edit : Is Barbarossa safe in Paris, it can still flip or..... :confused: , do those french workers count as garrisoned units, or what are they doing. :crazyeye:
We also have three elites in there. Quite a high risk garrison as we're so close to the French capital.

Workers don't count. You have to have units with lethal attack capability as garrison I think. But if you have just one you suppress resistance. You need lots to make any impression on flip probability. Best to find a low capability unit we can afford to lose, and keep the rest out of the city.

BTW. It seems to me that, given the risk of our rep getting out, we should not go out of our way to make it worse by breaking peace deals, at least until we are sure we can contain the information. IMHO that means we have to have the Lighthouse before we commit despicable acts. Razing cities is one thing. Breaking peace deals is quite another.

PS The bad news it we don't get her furs yet. Is it worth taking Lyons first?
Ooops, I thought Chartres was on my list. :blush: , but I'll still say let's make the deal. If we are dishonest now on in 15 turns doesn't matter. :evil:

If you take Lyons the capital will move to Marseilles I think. That puts it further away from Paris and Rheims and reduces the flip probability.

We don't want a flippin' FP!

If we are dishonest now on in 15 turns doesn't matterI say it does. I consider we are at high risk of contact being made before we can kill the locals.

Workers don't count. You have to have units with lethal attack capability as garrison I think. But if you have just one you suppress resistance. You need lots to make any impression on flip probability. Best to find a low capability unit we can afford to lose, and keep the rest out of the city.
So we have been playing with fire for about 3 turns. :eek: :eek:


We don't want a flippin' FP!We sure don't, but if I read the "flip-calculator" correctly :crazyeye: , 4 units should be enough to secure Rheims (and Paris!)

I don't see that we are so flush with troops that we can afford to put eight of them into retirement. That's eight units who could be out giving Joan and Liz a bad day at the office :D

Deleting Joan is the safest way to secure Rheims and Paris.

It seems to me that, given the risk of our rep getting out, we should not go out of our way to make it worse by breaking peace deals,

I just went through Bamspeedy's acticle again, and breaking a peace treaty only gives you +1, and if every autorazed city also count as +1, this deal looks even better! ;)

I don't see that we are so flush with troops that we can afford to put eight of them into retirement. That's eight units who could be out giving Joan and Liz a bad day at the office

Deleting Joan is the safest way to secure Rheims and Paris.

I agree. :D , but we need to use Barbarossa, so that we can go fishing again. :D

Wow! That does surprise me! Well, in that case, go for it, but make sure we are in a position to defend the cities we acquire. Otherwise the French will go and raze them for us, as they did when I took two from Russia.

Just another thought : If we gift Construction to our new friends, won't they cascade to the cheaper Great Wall before Lighthouse?

Yes. It was one of my suggestions. That should remove the most advanced loser from the lighthouse race.

Yes. It was one of my suggestions. That should remove the most advanced loser from the lighthouse race.
So it was, :blush: , and Monarchy, as you pointed out, might be a good idea as well, the AI seem to like the Hanging Gardens. :)

...and we will be gifting them a lot very soon anyway. :D

I will read up on advice this evening and take the next ten turns. So far, it would be nice to get into Republic, watching for WW, defeat our adversaries quickly, start feeding our tech to our new "friends" to get them up and helping us with research, set research to Engineering at best speed, see if I can start another pre-build for Leonardo's, and concentrate our production on settlers. I hope I covered everything. If not, I am sure you will help me!! ;) I need all the help I can get.

Looks good. :goodjob: , and try to connect the fur, our unit cost will be pretty high, so we can't effort any lux. :lol:

Good luck, and good night. :sleep:

Do you guys live on line? There are dozens of new posts every time I look.

It is very important to keep a good reputation when targeting a diplomatic win. We will own our continent anyway. Who cares if it takes 5 extra turns? If we break deals we will not be able to make GPT deals. Plus we may need ROPs later for the attitude adjustments. Those won't be available if we break deals now.

The other thing to think about is what to do to improve score. That will mean happiness once we have filled up our continent. We should look at what it will take to keep everyone happy. We have 4 luxes or 5 on our continent?

In our builder phase we will need to prioritize science (libraries, universities and science wonders) to drive research, then cash and happiness (markets do both, then temples and cathedrals). The hanging gardens and sistines will help with happiness and thus score. We will capture the Oracle from the English I believe.

We will undoubtably be the scientific leader and lead the others. Therefore the Great library will be useless to us. 4 turn research on our part is required to get an early finish date. Maybe we should swap the GL to something more useful to us. I do like the GL for its massive culture though and to deny it to the AI.

Alan - remember these are 3 move galleys not the naval differential move galleys of recent GOTMs. I haven't looked at the save, but are we sure they other guys can contact us with the lighthouse?

Check the cities. I just noticed Berlin is about to riot at pop 6.

Good luck Leif.

Do you guys live on line? There are dozens of new posts every time I look. Yep! :)

It is very important to keep a good reputation when targeting a diplomatic win. We will own our continent anyway. Who cares if it takes 5 extra turns? If we break deals we will not be able to make GPT deals. Plus we may need ROPs later for the attitude adjustments. Those won't be available if we break deals now. That's why some of teh discussion is about ensuring that the remaining civs will never know about what we did here.

The other thing to think about is what to do to improve score. That will mean happiness once we have filled up our continent. We should look at what it will take to keep everyone happy. We have 4 luxes or 5 on our continent? We have three hooked up now, and we'll have furs when Joan gives them to us.

In our builder phase we will need to prioritize science (libraries, universities and science wonders) to drive research, then cash and happiness (markets do both, then temples and cathedrals). The hanging gardens and sistines will help with happiness and thus score. We will capture the Oracle from the English I believe. Agreed.

We will undoubtably be the scientific leader and lead the others. Therefore the Great library will be useless to us. 4 turn research on our part is required to get an early finish date. Maybe we should swap the GL to something more useful to us. I do like the GL for its massive culture though and to deny it to the AI. I saw the Great Library as important purely because it's the only way for us to get a Golden Age before Newtons or Panzers. I agree we won't make much if any use of its techs. We need 4 turn techs asap, and we need to bring a partner along with us to build the UN as soon as we can give them fission.

Alan - remember these are 3 move galleys not the naval differential move galleys of recent GOTMs. I haven't looked at the save, but are we sure they other guys can contact us with the lighthouse?You're right! I had forgotten how slow galleys are in classic civ. We don't have the world map yet, so we don't know whether there's a Lighthouse-enabled route. We only know there isn't a basic galley route, otherwise the AI would have used it by now. Until we have the world map and can assure ourselves that there is no 4 turn sea-to-sea route we have to assume there's a risk of early contact. IMHO the world map is a high trading priority.

Check the cities. I just noticed Berlin is about to riot at pop 6.

Good luck Leif.
Thanks! :) I need to stay on this!

Got all the input, thanks! Off to do great things?? :crazyeye:

The short report is mixed news. I didn't get anywhere near as much done as I wanted but the FP is built in Rheims and we got a second GL that is almost to where The Great Lighthouse is to be built.

Pre-flight.
Check cities. Berlin is about to revolt (Thanks Alan). Select a Taxman for Berlin.
Awaken Barbarossa and move into Sword stack near Rheims.
Awaken all units in Paris and move the workers to the Sword stack near Rheims.
Forify an elite 3/5 Sword in Paris.
Move the other two swords SW and fortify.
Decide to trade for some WM:
Trade Construction to India for WM plus 20 Gold.
Trade Construction to Japan for WM.
Trade Construction to China for 10 Gold, wouldn’t trade map without contact, NO WAY!!
Examine areas of map traded and find a danger. There is a crossing place near Hastings that is only two Ocean squares and two Sea squares across.

IBT
I am informed that the Japanese are building The Great Wall.

Turn 1 – 130 BC
From the Sword stack outside of Rheims, the entire stack, less one Vet Sword moves NW, next to Rheims. The vet Sword moves S towards Paris. Barbarossa stays with the stack next to Rheims.
Vet Horse near Paris enters Paris and fortifies.
Awaken Elite Sword in Paris and move towards Lyons.
Awaken two Swords outside Paris and move toward Lyons.
Move Sword towards Rheims and Horseman towards Paris.
Elite Horseman fortifies and protects English workers S of York.
A Settler pops up and is 9 from Berlin so I found the town of Brandenburg set to warrior.
Sword moves to protect Brandenburg from a Barb Warrior.
Move stack of 3 workers and 1 Elite Warrior NE towards Brandenburg.
Move galley SE.
Move worker near cologne to horse square.
Attack Barb Camp with Elite Bowman 3/5 and defeat a horseman losing one HP. Gain 25 Gold.

IBT
We are attacked by a Barb Warrior near York, our Vet Sword defeats him without loss and promotes to Elite.
Barb Warrior moves next to Brandeburg.

Turn 2 – 110 BC
Cat attacks reg Spear in Rheims, failed. Second Cat attacks and fails.
Elite Sword attacks and defeats the Spear, redlining in the process.
Who da Man Swordie attacks reg Spear and wasn’t the man, defeated while redlining the Spear. Oh well, you only live once!!
Vet Sword attacks across the river and defeats the redlined Spear, Rheims falls and we install a Govenor. There is one resistor in Rheims, in fact, there is one pop in Rheims. Got to get the resistor cleared up before I can rush the FP. Production is FP.
Move Horseman to support attack on Lyons.
Move Vet Sword into Paris and fortify.
Vet Sword attacks Barb Warrior near Brandenburg and defeats him w/o loss and no promotion.
Workers road near Brandenburg.
Worker roads horses near Cologne.
Elite Archer fortifies to heal.
Move stack into Rheims to end resistance.

IBT
Resistance ends in Rheims.
We are now a Republic.
The Japanese are building The Colossus.

Turn 3 – 90 BC
Check the Domestic Advisor and there is a lot of unhappiness out there. We are making 60 GPT at 10.0.0. Set lux at 10% and research Engineering at 40%, 17 turns. Treasury is 555 Gold and we are losing 1 GPT. Current settings at 5.4.1.
I visit with Joan and she will only give up half of her remaining towns, so conquest will continue. It is interesting to note that most of Joan’s cities gained a pop point last turn.
Awaken Barbarossa and use him to rush FP in Rheims.
Begin moving cats towards Southern French cities.
Move workers in Rheims N.
There are 3 Elite Swords and a Vet Horseman outside of Lyons (size 5). We decide to attack.
Elite Swordsman defeats a reg Spear and we have another GL, Richtoffen. I name the unit after our GL, AlanH.
Elite Sword attacks reg Spear and is defeated, causing a loss of one HP in the Spear and the Spear promotes to vet.
Vet Horseman attacks reg Spear and is defeated without retreating. Spear does not promote. The RNG is getting back at me.
Elite Sword attacks vet Spear ¾ and loses, no damage to the Spear. Spear does not promote.
Richtoffen moves NE of Paris with Cats and Sword.
Almost forgot, with Republic come tme to check the production in our cities.
Change Munich from Barracks to Marketplace.
Change Nuremberg to The Great Lighthouse, now I have to get Richtoffen up there??
Change Salzburg from Barracks to Library.
Awaken Sword in Cologne and begin moving S.

IBT
Our Sword near York is attacked by a Barb Horseman who is defeated and we lose 1 HP.
Konigsberg Worker –-> Library
Forbidden Palace is completed in Rheims –-> Library.
The Chinese are building The Great Wall.

Turn 4 – 70 BC
Cats move towards Lyons.
Sword 1/5 moves into Paris and fortifies.
Awaken vet Sword in Paris and move S to cover cats.
Richtoffen is a problem because I have to move him north but have no escort unit. Decide to move him into Rheims until a spare horse can be freed up for escort.
Awaken Elite Sword in Rheims and move him towards Lyon.
I know there are at least 2 defenders in Lyons and I have an Elite Sword and a vet Horseman. Decide to fortify them and await cats and other Swords.
Move workers near Brandenberg to complete road there.
MM Moscow with a tax collector. Mine hill SW of Moscow.
MM Bonn with 2 entertainers to keep citizen content.
Due to general unhappiness, change lux slider to 20%.
Have decided to continue building Horseman where they were started due to losses. We have to end this war as quickly as possible.
IBT
Forrest harvested to Stuttgart.
Hamburg Horseman --> Horseman.
Frankfurt Worker –-> Horseman.

Turn 5 – 50 BC
Cats move SW along with Sword.
Richtoffen remains in Rheims.
Awaken vet Horseman in York and move towards Rheims to escort GL.
Worker stack near Salzburg completes removing Jungle to find a BG.
Sword attacks and defeats a Barb camp with loss of 1 HP.

IBT
Several Barb Warriors wander into view near Moscow
Berlin settler --> settler.
Heidelburg Horseman --> Horseman
Nuremburg riots give them an entertainer.
The English are building The Hanging Gardens.
The English have completed The Great Wall.

Turn 6 – 30 BC
I decide to check on our new friends to make sure they have not made contact, and they haven’t.
I visit with Joan and Liz and they still refuse to give me very much for peace.
I visit with Cathy and she has nothing to trade.
Cats move into position NE of Lyons.
Getting escort set up for GL.
Settler move S, SE to complete the 5 ring.
Begin moving Richtoffen N.
Awaken Vet Sword in Moscow and attack and defeat Barb Warrior.

IBT
A Barb warrior attacks our Archer and is defeated.
A French Archer moves near our forces near Lyons.
A French Horseman moves out of Lyons.
A Barb Horseman moves near Moscow.
Hannover Horseman --> Horseman.
Our Galley was lost in treacherous waters when I tried to return him to our shores.

Turn 7 – 10 BC
Cat attacks Lyons, bombard failed. Same with second Cat.
AlanH attacks a vet Spear in Lyons and wins without HP loss.
Vet Sword attacks Vet Spear in Lyons and defeats him while going redline.
Vet Horseman attacks reg Spear in Lyons and retreats after doing 1 HP damage.
Elite Sword, one square from Lyons, attacks reg French Horseman and defeats him without loss.
Richtoffen NE, NE, E.
Vet Horseman meets Richtoffen on a hill and is ready to escort N.
Vet Sword near Moscow attacks Barb Horseman and defeats him without damage, no promotion.
MM Bonn.

IBT
Here come the English! English reg Arhcer moves towards Rheims.
Two French Archers appear and a French Warrior and are moving towards Paris.
Cologne Worker --> Settler.

Turn 8 – 10 AD
Cats bombard Lyons. First shot fails, second destroys the Temple.
Elite Sword attacks Lyon’s reg Spear and defeats him losing 1 HP.
AlanH attacks Lyon and defeats a reg Spear, losing 1 HP. We have captured Lyons, but can we hold it?? There are 4 resisters in Lyon. And we captured 1 worker. Move a 1/5 Sword into Lyon.
Richtoffen moves north with escort, he is almost to where he can travel alone. We need the troops down south.

IBT
French reg Archer attacks Horseman near Lyon and defeats him, losing 2 HP and capturing our 2 cats.
Bremen Horseman --> Horseman.
Stuttgart Library --> Horseman.

Turn 9 – 30 AD
Move workers near Moscow towards Salzburg to clear some jungle.
Continue to move horseman and sword S towards France.
Near Lyons, things are still tough. An elite Sword 4/5 attacks a redlined Archer NE of Lyon and defeats him without loss.
Two swords are fortified in Lyon (one is ¼, the other 2/5).
The fir is hooked up, BTW.
Change taxman in Moscow to an entertainer to prevent revolt. MM Moscow.
Change taxman in Leipzig to entertainer and MM. Great Library in 18.
Change taxman in Hamburg to entertainer and MM.

IBT
Two workers are killed by a barb warrior near Munich. Never saw him.
A French Archer kills our elite sword near Lyon, redlining in the process. It is getting closer!
Berlin settler --> settler.
Salzburg Library --> Marketplace.
Hamburg Horseman --> Horseman
Frankfurt Horseman --> Horseman
Bonn Worker --> Worker
The French are building The Hanging Garden.

Turn 10 – 50 AD
Bonn worker moves S.
Settler founds New Berlin --> Warrior
Richtoffen moves N, within 1 turn of The Great Lighthouse.
Units continue to move towards France.
Workers have not been moved, next layer’s choice.
There is a settler in Berlin that has not been moved yet.

After Action Report.
We have captured Lyon and Rheims. The Colossus has not been completed yet and we are the only ones building The Great Library and The Great Lighthouse. We have a GL almost to Nuremberg so the Lighthouse can be finished in 2 turns, one to travel and one to build. The English built The Great Wall, that means fortified cities. There have been no communications established between our world and the new world. I have been hesitant to trade techs to our new partners until we get the ugliness finished with the French, English and Russians. The Russians still have but 2 cities but I was moving strength to France to try to get Joan to capitulate. Boy, is she stubborn, wouldn’t give in at all. London has The Oracle and The Great Wall located in it.

Rheims has The Forbidden Palace in it. There are some units in York that could go after London, but I did not want to risk losing York when I had no real way to reinforce it. Paris and Rheims are growing and could soon produce swords to help reduce London. I lost our cats, but it was them or Lyon and I decided on Lyon. Lyon is in no immediate danger and should be relieved by the Horseman approaching N of Paris.

Score is 511. Treasury is 552 and we are gaining 6GPT with Engineering due in 7 turns. Munich has a Barb Warrior located next to it that could be attacked across a river by the warrior fortified in Cologne or the warrior fortified in Bremen, your choice Zamint. Beware, there are also barbs approaching from north of Bremen. Please let me know if you have any questions.

<< The Save >> (http://gotm.civfanatics.net/saves/sgotm2/Xteam_SG002_AD0050_01.SAV)

As always Zamint, please feel free to change anything I have set up if you see a better way. ;) As always, Good Luck and please get rid of Joannie for me. She may be cute but she is a pain in my backside!!

The Northern Area
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads7/XMEN_50AD.jpg

The Battle Area
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads7/XMEN_50AD_Battle_Area.jpg

Excellent. Well done massaging the RNG into giving us another GL :goodjob:

Won't we be wasting shields in Nuremburg? Perhaps change to something we can finish next round and then hurry the GLight from scratch? Or else, at least build a library or something first. We've got plenty of time after the cascade starts unless the AI gets a GL (establish embassies, which also are good for relations?).

Sorry for the unresolved issues with the save I left. Again: don't play while tired :p

Are we sure Rheims won't flip now? I thought Paris was secure...

Steady progress, and excellent timing on the Great Leader for the Great Lighthouse. Secure that and we have the world at our feet.

Did you consider the alternative of holding him in the south and grabbing a coastal city to build the lighthouse in? Also, I agree we should use up the shields in Nuremberg if at all possible before rushing the Lighthouse. What about rushing it in Bonn instead?

Capt Buttkick
leif erikson
zamint3 UP
AdrianE On deck
AlanH

AdrianE - did you agree with the reasoning on the Great Library? Or do you still think we should switch to the Gardens? Ideally we would like both, of course :)

The GLib is only needed for its secondary benefit of allowing us a GA.
However, it'll be a long time coming to grab the only other available sci wonder before panzers (Newton). With that in mind, I think if we want to do a wonder gamble, it better be the HGs. We should make sure we get the GLib.

I just realized that if we can build the GLib and get another leader before our wars on this continent are finished, we can time our GA perfectly to conincide with our opponent-less (in lieu) expansion to populate all of our home continent... :D

Excellent. Well done massaging the RNG into giving us another GL :goodjob:

Sorry for the unresolved issues with the save I left. Again: don't play while tired :p

Are we sure Rheims won't flip now? I thought Paris was secure...
Thanks! I really wanted to get Rheims set up and try for another GL. I was very surprised to get one the next turn! :eek: But then I lost two Swords, and came down to earth.

Actually, those unresolved helped me. I spent more time in pre-flight looking and thinking, so it was no problem at all. However, I was tired when I finished. :crazyeye: In fact, I left nearly all the worker turns and a settler unmoved for Zamint to decide upon. Sorry, but I liked doing it that way.

I took a number of chances down S with culture flips, leaving only 1 unit in Paris and marching other units past to have one nearby in case of flip. I hope that once Libraries are established in Paris and Rheims, and with the FP, that it will be more secure. The reason I decided against peace deals was the fear of flips and then not being able to retake the cities, figuring war was easier to keep what we had. :D

Good luck Zamint. :thumbsup:

Steady progress, and excellent timing on the Great Leader for the Great Lighthouse. Secure that and we have the world at our feet.

Did you consider the alternative of holding him in the south and grabbing a coastal city to build the lighthouse in? Also, I agree we should use up the shields in Nuremberg if at all possible before rushing the Lighthouse. What about rushing it in Bonn instead?

I actually did consider this but decided against it because I was afraid of flips, couldn't find one I could quickly take with what I had and know I could hold, and that I didn't think would autoraze. At the time all the French cities "available" were size 1, the larger cities were S of Lyons. The English city "available" was between Rheims and London. I could have built one but then I would have had to move into the area between Moscow and Paris where there are barbs operating.

As an aside, we do need to get some cities down S to keep the barbs down there down. There were barbs at Moscow and near York. Babr hunting was a diversion a couple of times and I just wasn't going ot risk losing our GL, they are too rare. :)

France's culture is now no more than ours and England's and falling fast according to F8, so flip risk is reducing. The cultural monsters are now Japan and India, but we are increasing. With the Lighthouse and the Library or Hanging Gardens we'll make some more significant gains.

Speaking of which I've looked a tthe save and we can have the Hanging Gardens in 6 turns in Leipzig. No one else has Literature yet so we could start that and probably beat the rest to it even if we have to build it without another leader. If we switch to HG and get it before anyone has Literature, HG plus our Lighthouse will kill the cascade because the Great Wall is finished.

As an avid lurker, who really shouldn't pass comment, I've been biting my tongue regarding this Great Library debate for days...

I must wait for the spoiler thread... but I'll most likely be sitting in a rail mounted boat listening to "It's a small world after all" endlessly, by the time you post there. :p

Well, thanks mad-bax! Don't worry about passing comment. That's as cryptic a remark as I've seen in a while, and doen't help (me) with the decisions at all.:confused: :p

I've been meaning to ask the team what they'd like to do about the spoiler thread. I'm thinking maybe an initial post that goes as far as 1000BC, to provoke some discussion re. development, but avoiding giving anything away about our military developments. The 'end of era' cutoff is a bit arbitrary, with lots of other key things in progress around the same time, and information about our military and wonder and contacts status could affect the way other teams play on after that point.

Waddaya think?

Just to add another factor into the equation ... if we capture the Great Wall in London that satisfies our Military trait. If we then complete the Great Library our Golden Age starts immediately.

Sorry for being cryptic, it made perfect sense to me. :ack:

The only thing I was going to ask was partly answered by your last post. You can capture the Great Wall. You can also capture the UN (at some point). The other wonder you can capture of course is the library. IIRC you have a monopoly on lit. Gifting lit to a weak opponent with a productive capital would give them a head start on the GL. You could then for example research to MT and then take the GL and perhaps gain several techs. You could then time the GA whenever you like by building or rushing any wonder. This could potentially save you 300 shileds or 10 horses, and allow the score multiplying HG build with more comfort.

I guess you have never been to Disney and sat on that awful fake boat ride with that awful music... You don't know how lucky you are. :p

guess you have never been to Disney and sat on that awful fake boat ride with that awful music... You don't know how lucky you are. :pOh, I have! Twice :eek: Once on a business trip and once with the kids. It didn't get any better the second time :(

I got it, but I won't be playing for another 16 hours, so keep thinking. :)

I'll post some comments later today, if I can find the time!

Thanks for the clarification, mad-bax. Interesting options. My head hurts. :hmm: Sooo ...

Option 1: We could make peace with Liz for some towns, give her Literature, complete the Gardens and the Lighthouse so that she cascades her current Gardens build to the Library, then take the Library and kill England some time before contact is made.

Option 2 is to do a similar scam with, say, China, on the other continent, but that means using force on the other continent to take the Lbrary later. We could do that, and then eliminate China so that they can't vote against us. We'd have to be absolutely honourable in that war, of course. Then, when we have eliminated the locals, we'd only have India and Japan left. One would be the one we want to build the UN for us and the other would be the one we want to bribe to vote for us.

Note also that I've been caught in this sort of situation before. Our primary core is too far from the sea to provide much ship production on the north and west coasts. Fortunately in this game we will have a productive maritime center in the south west around Rheims. But that means that if we want to wage a war on the other continent we'd be best to do so against China or India so that we can reach them easily with our ships. I cited China in Option 2 because (a) they are the weaker civ currently and (b) they are near our south west coast.

As far as I can tell, inter-continental contact will only be possible for the others after they have either Navigation+Magellan or Magnetism. So Option 1 means we probably have to take the Library before magnetism. Option 2 allows us to do it later. But we were thinking of starting our GA before Gravity anyway, and the two are usually only a few turns apart. Also, don't forget that we would still need to build a wonder after we capture the Library to actually trigger the GA.

So the key question is when do we *really* want our GA?

BTW. I still think we should try to win on the first ballot rather than capturing the UN, and hence save 11 turns. :confused:

Since we have the big continent to ourselves soon and since we don't want any cities on the other continent due to domination limit, I think it would be a waste of time and resources to go warring on the other continent.

I don't think we'll have happyness issues once we're out of the wars. With that in mind, the real question should be: when do we want our GA? If the answer is asap, we need to cature London asap. That would also mean finishing GLib in Leipzig.

The only real option should, IMHSO, be to finish the GLib before we take London (like I said before, I really don't think we should consider warring the asian civs, they're our friends :)). Remember that the Asian civs didn't even have poly 10 turns ago so they'll be some way off Monarchy yet. No doubt the Colossus will be built and wonder production seize on that continent before they get to monarchy. So London is then the most probable HG builder: make peace with Lizzie leaving her London only and then redeclare on her at our convinience when she finishes HG. Going with this option we can then handbuild any wonder to time our GA at our leisure.

Ooops, sorry :crazyeye: I forgot the third option: finish HG in Leipzig then start the GLib at once and capture London before GLib is built.

The third option was the one I was thinking about before mad-bax threw in the alternative approach. I agree that we should maybe not take war to the other continent unless we have to do so to take the UN and force a vote. It will drain resources and doesn't seem to buy us much.

HG is valuable for score, as it will increase our happy face count.

My preference is actually still for option 3. Letting London build the Library for us doesn't really save us much, as London is ours anyway. Liz just doesn't know that yet. So it makes little difference whether it produces shields with Liz's head embossed on them or the Kaiser's as far as I can see. I guess there will be a waste benefit if the London shields are produced in Liz's capital, but is that going to have a big effect?

M, I've got no probs with option 3 as long as we think we can do it (that is, handbuild the GLib; we may even start it now in another city than Leipzig).

My point with letting Liz build a wonder is that it ensures an early peace with the English (we need to get all of her other cities though) while she happily keeps building our wonder.
I realize she'll spend more time than 20 turns though...

I agree that plan C might be the best, but in that case I'd like to see us starting the GLib asap in another city than Leipzig.

Can I ask a question that may be considered dumb? What do we want to achieve during a Golden Age? Wouldn't that affect our timing?

If we want to use the golden age time to finish off our opponents, then we should finish the GL as soon as possible and go to London and take GW. Then we can use the production boost to finish off our opponents and get this continent settled.

If we want to use the golden age to increase research capability and infrastructure, then it can wait a little longer, not too long, and we can do Hanging Garden then G. Library.

I agree that we are ahead in tech and will probably remain that way. I see no benefit to waging war on the other continent at this point, unless we want to make sure the vote goes 2 to 1 and can not go 2 to 2. But I think we can set that up.

We have to get to 4 turn research as soon as we can and that means finishing off the French, English and Russians and getting settled and peaceful. I would recommend we build the G.Lib. as we are and capture the GW on the same turn, or as close as possible, and use the production to set ourselves up for research gain and filling out the continent by ending the wars, favorably for us, of course. The increase in sheilds will probably allow us to build the HG as well. We might even get another leader. :rolleyes: Then we can start gifting tech and get our friends on the other side into this as well, hopefully? :mischief:

I'm not sure what option that is, but it is my .02 on what I think what we should try to do. ;)

GW? Did you mean Hanging Gardens? :confused:

Whoops! Sorry - Great Wall ! :crazyeye:

Our golden age is not best used during the remaining war turns. I think it should be timed for when we achieve peace with France and England (Russia can be taken out any time) and remove war weariness from the equation. We can then go hell for leather on research and infrastructure improvements.

I like the idea of completing the Gardens soonest in Leipzig and starting the Library in another city. This will allow us to give Leipzig a Library to assist with research. Together with the Lighthouse, this will terminate the Colossus cascade unless someone gets Literature in fewer than the six turns it will take.

We could arrange to gift Literature to England so that she is the only one who can cascade to the Library. But keeping London alive to build the Library for us means we are in Liz's hands as to when we can trigger our golden age, and she may not have the same sense of urgency about it that we would have. Call me a control freak, but I would prefer that we have it in one of our own cities where we can keep an eye on it. We could even safely build it in Berlin, as we know we will not have to fall back to a palace.

Our golden age is not best used during the remaining war turns. I think it should be timed for when we achieve peace with France and England (Russia can be taken out any time) and remove war weariness from the equation. We can then go hell for leather on research and infrastructure improvements.
This is fine by me. I just wanted to hear how and why you wanted to do this.

I like the idea of completing the Gardens soonest in Leipzig and starting the Library in another city. This will allow us to give Leipzig a Library to assist with research. Together with the Lighthouse, this will terminate the Colossus cascade unless someone gets Literature in fewer than the six turns it will take.

We could arrange to gift Literature to England so that she is the only one who can cascade to the Library. But keeping London alive to build the Library for us means we are in Liz's hands as to when we can trigger our golden age, and she may not have the same sense of urgency about it that we would have. Call me a control freak, but I would prefer that we have it in one of our own cities where we can keep an eye on it. We could even safely build it in Berlin, as we know we will not have to fall back to a palace.
What do we have to lose by gifting Lit to Liz. :lol: If she cascades to GL from HG, that is great. If we have to build the GL ourselves then that is what we might have to do anyway. If Liz gives it to Joan or Cathy, I don't see how it matters, they will never get to use it. I don't see how we can lose?? :confused:

What do we have to lose by gifting Lit to Liz.What do we have to gain? :confused: She's only just started to build the Gardens, so she has very few shields to transfer to the Library. If we start a build ourselves then we are depriving ourselves of other improvements and duplicating her effort. If we rely on Liz to build it then we are delaying adding English cities to our second core, and we don't have any control over how fast she builds it.

What do we have to gain? :confused: She's only just started to build the Gardens, so she has very few shields to transfer to the Library. If we start a build ourselves then we are depriving ourselves of other improvements and duplicating her effort. If we rely on Liz to build it then we are delaying adding English cities to our second core, and we don't have any control over how fast she builds it.
I think I picked up a shriek all the way over here. :cringe: If she builds it before we do, we can always tranfer the shields to a palace pre-build for something else. There are certainly any number of wonders available in the Middle Ages that we can prioritize to fit our objectives. We have discussed Leonardo's, there is the Sistine Chapel, Copernicus' Observatory, Bach's Cathedral, Newton's University and Shakespeare's. The is even Sun Tzu's Art of War. While I understand that some of these will come too late for an early pre-build, certainly we can utilize the shields efficiently and some of these wonder will fit into what we are trying to do.

So my point is that, from what you have written, we should probably build it ourselves. If we give it to her and she cascades to it, then we decide to take it from her before she finishes it, we have lost nothing. In fact, if she is concentrating on the GL, then she is not building military units to oppose our invasion of her little, temporary kingdom. She can't really trade it for any advantage for if she does, we will eliminate anyone else who has it. :beer:

The only way I can look at it as lost production and opportunity is if we count on her to build it. Again, if she does, we channel our shields into something else that is a benefit to us.

The only way I can look at it as lost production and opportunity is if we count on her to build it. Again, if she does, we channel our shields into something else that is a benefit to us.
Not necassarily. Like Alan said before: if we capture London, we only loose the shields difference between her no corruption and our second ring placement. However, we should gain quite a lot of gold during those same turns.
It really depends on how quickly we can get the rest of the English cities in a peace deal. Most of them will be valuable, productive cities after a short while and that will even out the gold lost by waiting to capture London. Also: with the GW in place, London might be harder to take than we'd care for before we get some knights.

Timing of GA: I agree wholeheartedly with Alan that we should wait til war is over before getting our GA. Personally, if I have this choice, I wait just a few more turns even, to set up my cities for the GA.

Good luck, Zamint. Remember to switch production in Nuremburg :mischief:

That's some difficult decisions you've left me there. :eek: :D

I'll finish Lighthouse in Bonn, and start a prebuild for G. Lib. in Hamburg. :)


Originally Posted by AlanH
As far as I can tell, inter-continental contact will only be possible for the others after they have either Navigation+Magellan or Magnetism.Near Hastings and Marseilles there are 3 movement crossings from sea to sea, so wont the AI cross there once they learn Astronomy?


....and what do we research next, I might slow down research a bit so that we can discuss this after my turns.

........ well....off to play. :cool:

I keep forgetting about Astronomy allowing sea tiles. It usually lasts such a short time in my games until Navigation or Magnetism arrives.

Re. Gifting Liz Literature, that can't do any harm in itself, as long as you don't make peace just to achieve it. I think we should start a build for the Library elsewhere, grab the Gardens and the Lighthouse and then move forward on England as and when we want to. If we overrun London before they build it, so be it.

The biggest risk we are taking is really restarting the Library. Any time now one of the remote civs could learn Literature and start the Library. Then we'd be in a race. If that happens we need to investigate the city involved closely and work out plans to ensure we beat them.

It's not a big issue anyway. Firstly we should be done with conquering the european civs way before Astronomy. Secondly, we control tech pace in this game so we can turn it off for a little while if we really need it.

Re. Gifting Liz Literature, that can't do any harm in itself, as long as you don't make peace just to achieve it. I think we should start a build for the Library elsewhere, grab the Gardens and the Lighthouse and then move forward on England as and when we want to. If we overrun London before they build it, so be it.
There goes my whole idea as you can't gift Lit to Liz while we are at war with her?? :blush: I enjoyed the discussion so much, I forgot that we can't just give it to her without a peace deal, which I don't think we want. Can't we send a secret courier behind the lines with the plans and sketches? Actually, I'll bet if we gave Lit to Cathy, she would give it to Liz. Now that would be an interesting experiment?? :p

Good luck Zamint. Take 'em down!! :hammer: