ALC Game 18: Spain/Isabella

[Thomas G.]

Someone said "Pink city will cost mabye 6 gold in upkeep without courthouse"

Well, it will work two gold mines pretty soon, and that will pull in more than 6 commerce. In my opinion it is worth the effort to go after it. It has tremendous value as blocking city, stake-out land city, jumping-off-point in future wars in that area, it has happiness resource which will enable each&every city of yours to grow +1 citizen, and soon +1 more from forges.

And in addition, it will pay for itself pretty darn quick too. Go grab it.

CoL or metal casting from oracle are pretty equal choices. I would probably take CoL just the same. Forges are expensive, but they, like, add production for ever once they're built. So thats an argument to get em cooking as soon as possible. And trade value of MC is high, and it might be easier to hold it's monopoly longer. But still just now CoL is looking good, MC can be researched somewhat later. You should have enough to build in your cities still.

 

[alcaras]

Take Metal Casting -- forges are an excellent building to have available.

Convert to Buddhism -- Holy Cities spread religion around themselves, so Aachen will probably spread to Liz -- and Pacal is already Buddhist.

Make Liz your best friend, imo

Very nice axe rush btw.

 

[IPEX-731BA5DD06]

Sis..... I"m not trying to take away from you, if your offended, or don't want these say so and I'll stop and just play/compare for myself.

1st No spoilers, as I have different events to you only report on what you've said.

events are met 4th civ Pacal found his homelands, popped hut for 3rd experience for woody, now who's laughing../ who's now laughing...

Found English home lands, DIDN'T nab worker who was building a road, I thought about it, open lands, and I thought 1 tile from capital/2nd city, and counter attack from archer, why waste woody for Nought.

HRE had 3 cities by time woody made way home...and i've completely forgone axe rush...no way hosae

Built stonhenge and Founded Jewdaism in Madrid...next aimed for oracle/theology sling shot, working 2 clams and 2 mined hills.....WOOO HOOOO
*Woody laughed heartedly*, Found Christanity.

I have built NOTHING LIKE YOU HAVE. I don't think it a spoiler, just a different method of building in SAME time frame. I have 2 warriors...1500 BC This was achieved. 3 religion capital, looks like wall street/Great merchants/ priests is my plan.

Founded Barcelona in 1075 BC late, very late, but its my plan/game. It was the GREEN DOT MAP in OTAKAjbshi's dot map..building a road through rice to cows to pasture, thinking this will be Science city till better come along, ie cottages/farms..post civil service.

Barb report, woody fought 2 bard archers in 2 turns while fortified in a forest, waste, heart pounding waste, as was 2 lions, and 1 bear for no scrathes/experience now 15/17 from 3 experience pops from huts two early animal fights.

On to your game, I feel....get the impression the AI's are concentrating on worker techs early, Great work with the AXE RUSH... I would have lost temper, sacrificed all axes, and turtled up awaiting my death.

Comp's are spamming cities early, so would seem to be spreading out strength, and as you know its application of force at critial points not overall strength that matters. Techs, animal husbandry for chariots and pillage HRE, hunting to work commerace animals ie ele's..force the issue with HRE, KEEP at them..writing for open boarders and hope to spread buddism/Hinduism.

Iron working for Swords and Slice through the HRE. Tech to grab from Oracle, assuming you get it, of course you will...Metal casting/forges or Alphabet/spies-tech trading early Literature and great library *man I hate tech trading*....Theology/Apoctalostic palace? I"d feel Metal casting/forges Colossus for Madrid *Mad rid of Izzy*..Mah-Drid....

Move capital to ex HRE CAPITAL, build Great Library/cottages

Pro's Its Central to northern part of Continent, land to expand and work, flood plains for food, your expansive to offset flood plains, shrine city and major religion of continent * I assume so, or am I making an ass out of u and me.*

It makes a great base for continental dominance, combined with Moai statutes in Mad-rid, giving you 2 cities for warfare production 1 for sea, 2nd for land. Once you eliminate Ex HRE, REX on EX lands.

Final note, its interesting watching the 2 games divert, but with same result in mind, Apoctoltic palace voted win....

 

[TeraHammer]

Amazing game, exciting rush!

Hey your isabella, you're a religion fanatic, and there is great land for expansion. So I would definately say CoL, and then research alpha.
Meanwhile convert to the faith you need your citizens to keep happy.

 

[slobberinbear]

The fact that you could settle a second city and build the Oracle and axe rush/pimp-slap Charlie all by 1050 BC means that you sir, are a stud.

Converting to Buddhism seems to be a good plan, particularly if you go for the Apostolic Palace as planned. Charlie's already spread the religion a bit for you, and you can have instant peace-brownie points with Lizzie and Pacal for rubbing the Buddha belly.

That would seem to dictate wiping out Charlie ASAP and peaceful yet wild-ass REXing to take over as much land as possible as quickly as possible.

For these reasons, Code of Laws would seem to be the clear winner for your Oracle tech choice, allowing courthouses for horizontal growth now, caste system for vertical growth later, and a bonus religion to boot if you want to go religion/shrine hoarding and pop into free religion in the late game. You also keep Lizzie or Pacal from founding Confucianism, an important factor while many cities have no religion at all...

Techwise, I see three priorities:
*Theology, so you can build the AP.
*Alphabet, so you can backfill techs.
*Currency, so you can continue to fund your expansion.

I haven't looked at your save yet to see which one of these is the easiest to get first. My gut says Alphabet is the right choice so you can trade with Lizzie and Pacal. Remember that both of them are Financial, so you should get some good techs from them. That leaves us with something like three phases of teching and expanding:

"Horizontal Phase" techs -- necessary to allow rapid expansion
Code of Laws (from Oracle)
Alphabet (300 beakers base cost)
Mathematics (250)*
Currency (300)

"Vertical Phase" techs -- necessary to allow growth of cities
Theology (500) -- plus its prerequisites*
Monarchy (300)*
Calendar (350)
Construction (350)
Civil Service (800) -- capital moved to Aachen, Civics of Monarchy/Bureaucracy/Caste System/Decentralization/Organized Religion

"Worldwide Religious Domination Phase" techs
Iron Working (200)*
Compass (400)
Metal Casting (450)
Machinery (700)
Optics (600)

*you should be able to trade for these techs

As part of the worldwide religious domination phase, you may need to smack down/Vassalize Lizzie or Pacal to keep them from Financially outpacing you.

 

[Gocho]

Strong start and that new capitol is going to be a monster, I would either move the palace there asap or build it up as a silly strong wall street/shrine/corp city.

 

[Mesousa]

It's fun how suddenly everyone is talking about vertical and horizontal expansion ... futurehermit really started something there.

In my view, these early phases of the ALCs are the most entertaining ... later on it's too much "watch Sis trade tech after tech", if I dare say so. This here however, both the discussions and the actual game, interest me much more.

That being said, my vote goes to CoL. Wake the slightly distributed hydra, so to speak.

 

[slobberinbear]

Re: Sisiutil's dotmap

My only quibble is the brown city. I think there's room for two cities there, one to the north of the brown city's current location (grabbing all of those grassland tiles that are presently unworkable in the dotmap), and one to the southeast, to get the cows and wine. Neither of these are high priorities, but you'll want to get them built after you've finished your western expansion.

Each of these cities will have overlap issues, but if you are pursuing an AP victory and avoiding wars with your neighbors, it's an easy way to expand while you are sending your caravels of religious domination to faraway lands.

 

[Gooblah]

Hmmmm....Looking at the area, I suggest getting Metal Casting from the Oracle. In most of my games, it seems to be a tech the AI doesn't pick up for a while, until they finally come around to Feudalism to Forge-spam Longbowmen. Since they need it for defensive purposes, its a handy trading tech. Code of Laws, if the Gold Mine City becomes your main research center, should be an easy grab after the mines are hooked and a Library is in place. Remember that Elizabeth is a nasty religion grabber, and will beeline for CoL or Philosophy. Either way could be detrimental to you, since it'll make her an enemy for quite a while. Spread the golden statue of Buddha to Pacal and Liz ASAP. Pacal can become your lap-dog if you treat him right, and if you're in a sticky situation, you could probably sic him on Liz.

 

[TheArchduke]

Strong start and that new capitol is going to be a monster, I would either move the palace there asap or build it up as a silly strong wall street/shrine/corp city.

One vote for moving from me. The science city should be the best one, so move the palace. You are planning to convert to Christianity anyway, so you can probably influence in which city it is founded.

 

[Winston Hughes]

Finally got some time on my hands to contribute a little to the ALC, and a copy of BtS so I can understand what the hell y'all are talking about.

For me there's no question in this situation: CoL and REx. Look at all that beautiful land! Westward Ho!

(I never, ever get maps like this - east to west in the temperate zone with floodplains, forests and resources aplenty; strong starting location with copper in the BFC; three neighbours on a seven civ map; easily rushable uber-capital/holy-city nearby... This is another awesome starting position.

How on earth do you get so lucky? Most of the time I end up with starts like in the first Peter game, or worse )

Of course, congratulations are due on pulling off the rush and nailing the Oracle.

The early religion might now look like a bit of a wasted effort, especially as you could end up with as many as five holy sites. As KMad hints, the danger is that there'll be a happily trading Jewish block on another continent, undisturbed by the tensions only competing religions can provide.

On the other hand, screw it! You can never be sure they won't end up all chummy even if you bypass all of the religions. And you've now got a great chance to give the super-powered multi-religion strategy a go.

If at all possible, I would suggest aiming to build the AP, UoS, SM and AW (a big ask, I know, but it would be mighty cool).

All four can take advantage of those cheap temples (especially the AW), giving a significant boost to science and gold, and (potentially) a very substantial boost to production, whilst allowing you to pump out the Great Prophets for shrine building and settling.

I'd also suggest going for cottage-driven to complement the religious economy's and

Right now, the land spread out before you is quite adequate for developing a powerful empire, which makes CoL + REx the best option. Once you've settled your corner of the world, you can set about developing the religious economy from hell, and using spies, missionaries and the AP to mould the world's diplomacy in your favour.

 

[madscientist]

One word of caution that could foul things up a bit. Assuming Judaism is on the otehr continent, one potential problem is that Ramses II is there and founded it, in whihc case he could be generating GPs left and right and bulb theology first (which I very well could beat you to the AP). My suggestion would be to use the first GP on theology and get it out of the way.

 

[SickCycle]

You just got lucky with that worker..

 

[Quotey]

Info on my games with Pacal: He doesn't expand much, is kind of backwards, but easy to get along with. I only play on Prince/Noble though.

The link to Round 2 in the OP goes to Round 2 for me, but the link should take me to round 2! What manner of sorcery is this?

 

[flamingzaroc121]

Info on my games with Pacal: He doesn't expand much, is kind of backwards, but easy to get along with. I only play on Prince/Noble though.

The link to Round 2 in the OP goes to Round 2 for me, but the link should take me to round 2! What manner of sorcery is this?

yeah when i clicked on the round 2 link it took me back to round 1

 

[patagonia]

Nice axe rush - I was right about Barcelona only contributing one axe to the stack, but having it founded has both advantages and disadvantages...had you not built it, you'd need to settle another city now, but you'd also have the option of creating a double holy city. As it is, snagging CoL and Confucianism with the Oracle will probably land that religion in Barcelona since it doesn't currently have one. It's a shame you won't be able to double up on shrines, but not the end of the world.

I think CoL is the right choice of free tech for a number of reasons. It'll allow you to build courthouses facilitating ReX, give you an EP boost against the two remaining neighbours and also get you a free missionary for another religion. That'll allow you to spread Confucianism to Madrid, getting you an extra temple and priest specialist. 8GPP will get you your first prophet and theology much quicker than 5GPP and since the focus of this game is an AP win, that can only be a good thing (especially with no marble around). MC is a more expensive tech, but it just isn't going to give you the payoff it would in another situation, so to my mind it's the wrong option here.

You'll have to consider that the state religion must be present in the city that builds the AP, and also consider which religion you want the AP to be for. For a cheesy/easy win, have a confucian AP and spam buddhism elsewhere, for a more hard-earned win, have a buddhist AP and spam buddhism everywhere.

As for what to tech next, you want to pick up monarchy sooner rather than later. I'd probably go for that and aesthetics (you've got ivory and the statue of zeus is a big help) before thinking about alphabet because both have more tangible benefits and you can't rely on picking them up in trades. While you're doing that, finish off Charlemagne, ReX towards Liz and backfill. The city sites between her land and yours are too attractive to just surrender to a financial AI.

 

[Ankh]

It's fun how suddenly everyone is talking about vertical and horizontal expansion ... futurehermit really started something there.

vertical and horizontal expansion is a well known and used term for many turn based strategy games, it's not something futurehermit started.

 

[tazpn314]

yeah when i clicked on the round 2 link it took me back to round 1

Perhaps if the thread where used in the url:
Round 2

 

[NaZdReG]

Damn you got lucky that his capitol wasn't on a hill!! nice work on the axe rush. metal casting from the oracle seems like a fine idea at this point. I like the dotmap you presented, and you are right about needing another 5 axes or so to take on his new capitol but its so resource heavy that you should anyway.

calendar should be fairly high on your list of techs to grab when you can. aesthetics would also be good for the SP religious wonder of goodness.

engineering should be grabbed earlier than normal to take advantage of her UB, and do you have any plans towards getting her UU up and running?

long term strategic goals at this point?

nice recovery from what looked like a rough starting position.. yeah you definately look ready for emperor.

NaZ

 

[uncarved block]

Don't have much to add as far as the game at hand goes, but can add that my experiences with Pacal have been decidedly not very peaceful. Since I play Noble, early religions are always within reach, and Pacal almost always seems to found his own . . and then the fun starts. He's very demanding- expect him to start asking for techs soon after you get Alphabet- and this works him up into a frenzy. Considering that Pacal techs well for an AI, this is even more frustrating. He also seems to missionary spam, at least for his home grown religion, which is something to think about as you go for the AP victory. Never had him share a religion with me-- that may change everything.

Always interesting to consider how far the AI has come since Civ2, eh? Your advisers were usually smarter than your opponents, IIRC