ALC Game #9: Incas/Huayna Capac

Thanks for the input thus far, everyone.

Yes, I'd forgotten that I had not yet finished researching Bronze Working. I'm so used to having it in the bag by now that when I wrote the post for the round I assumed I had it. So copper has yet to appear, and that could definitely change any dotmap proposals.

I will check the map again regarding the nearest landmass, but as several people pointed out, it may be just a few uninhabited islands rather than a continent. It's still worth checking out.

I'm inclined to leave my options open for now. I agree that I should focus on expansion, as well as pursuing some key wonders. Stonehenge is not as important since I have a religion, but would still accelerate border expansion and contribute Great Person points, so I may go after it soon. The Oracle is very attractive, especially if it looks like tech trading will be delayed. Parthenon? Maybe...unfortunately I don't have any marble. Or stone, for that matter. The Great Library is, as usual, very desirable, and I like the idea of the capital as the Great Prophet wonder city and a city to its east as the science city with the GL.

So what I propose is that I play a few more turns and glean some more vital information. Finish Bronze Working and see where the copper is. Build a city whose borders will expand to make the nearest landmass reachable, as well as other cities. Research Priesthood, then Fishing -> Sailing and maybe get a Galley up there to explore. Then we can make some more informed decisions about cultural versus space race versus domination and so on.

Sisiutil said:

So what I propose is that I play a few more turns and glean some more vital information. Finish Bronze Working and see where the copper is. Build a city whose borders will expand to make the nearest landmass reachable, as well as other cities. Research Priesthood, then Fishing -> Sailing and maybe get a Galley up there to explore. Then we can make some more informed decisions about cultural versus space race versus domination and so on.

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You can use a workboat to explore the north you know, I've known People to get the Circum-Nav Bonus using only a work boat on Islands Map LOL Just be careful of barb Gallys Al though I doubt they'll appear till Caravels, havn't seen them appear early in the game.

the city with the golden rice will be tough to irrigate. i think you have the 3 bests spots in the yellow, red, and green, with the next best 2 being the fishy cow and golden cow. it really doesn't look so good for 4 super cities. it's just a bit too dry.

(i hope the dot map shows up..my first time to post an attachment.)

LosBlack said:

the city with the golden rice will be tough to irrigate. i think you have the 3 bests spots in the yellow, red, and green, with the next best 2 being the fishy cow and golden cow. it really doesn't look so good for 4 super cities. it's just a bit too dry.

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Red would be excellent. It has room for 15 cottages, a gem mine, and 3 water tiles. There's really only 1 tile that wouldn't be a good commerce generator.

Green isn't really that great. First, it has 2 tiles of overlap with red. Second, it has 3 desert tiles and 1 mountain tile. Third, it has 3 non-grassland hills which can't take a cottage. That leaves room for 10 cottages. Cyan is actually better -- 10 cottages and a gold mine.

Where is fishycow? If you mean magenta, that has fish and rice, but it misses the cow by one. Unfortunately you can't get both the fish and the cow in the same city.

You don't need 4 super cities. 3 is enough for a cultural win. Still, even finding 3 is tough on this map.

I just sketched out the idea of moving red one tile west and moving light yellow to just west of the mountain. That's also not that great. Red is still ok. The 3 tiles of overlap don't hurt it that much. Light yellow, however, only has enough food for about 12 cottages. Still, that might be your best option if you want to do cultural.

I'm thinking go space race or diplomatic or something. The land to the north isn't going to be islands. Count on it. It's very common on a continents map for one continent to be split into a northern half and a southern half. Build up down here, do what you can with the land, then make a military move to conquer all or some of whatever you find to the north.

Also, don't forget that religion might find the other half of the continent for you. I wouldn't want to count on it, but for some reason (a bug, I think), religion can spread over oceans before you have Astronomy.

yes, i meant magenta (fishy rice..eat more chikin)..

i refer to a 4th city for a GP farm to get GA. i don't know if it's best to have that as a different city, or in one of the 3 main culture cities.

Dr Elmer Jiggle said:

I usually prefer 14 as a minimum for my legendary cities, if I can manage it. But factor in the food problems, and I think you've got about 3 or 4 cottages and a gold mine.

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Here's another cut....



There's still room for three cities on the western coast, one in the center, the rice and the gold mine in the east. Red Dot gets the Hermitage, I think, being the weakest of the three. Are we going that far up the tech tree?

Blue dot looks to be the best candidate for a GP farm - three floodplains and cows isn't great, but maybe the mines allow us to spare a floodplains from each of white and yellow? and there is some grassland available to farm as well.

Variations on the theme:



In this variation. yellow plays the role of the GP farm (although we are still trying to make it one of the three cities). That has the effect of irrigating the red rice, giving us another cottage on that city. Again, if we can count the mine as a cottage, there's another floodplain that can be swapped from white to yellow. The cows give us a city in the north, we've still got room in the west, the southern cows now fuel a small city, and we've still got the rice and gold in the east.

I'd just use a workboat for the exploration. Sailing is a wasted tech unless it hooks up a trade partner or gives you access to settling other lands. You can find out whether either of them will happen with a workboat from Fishing. Also, I don't think the Great Lighthouse should be chased. Extra trade routes aren't all that useful if you don't have anybody to trade with. And as Financial, you'll be leaning more heavily on the cottage based commerce than the trade route economy anyway. Being Fin makes isolated starts less painful.

Good to have a religion to help with happiness -- that's +2 happy per city right there. With no Stone or Marble, you may want to consider avoiding Masonry, focusing on the Oracle, then use it and Priests to generate a series of G Prophets to pop yourself through CoL and CS. Or if you want to grab Monotheism (for Organized Religion) before popping CS, you'll have to pop Theology and avoid Monarchy to get CS from a Great Prophet.

In fact, going that last path should net you Confucianism and Christianity. Three founded religions (especially if you're able to get each founded in a target Legendary City) is a nice setup for the Cultural Victory.

BTW, how in the world do you get that lucky with huts?!?! My last dozen games or so, I've only popped one tech, and it was Hunting which I was 2 turns from completing on my own anyway.

LosBlack said:

i refer to a 4th city for a GP farm to get GA. i don't know if it's best to have that as a different city, or in one of the 3 main culture cities.

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Oh, OK. I usually prefer to make it a different city. It's deceptive, because up until the point where you throw the switch and go to 100% culture, the GP farm will probably be your top culture city. With all the artist specialists, a theater, probably the Sistine Chapel somewhere to increase the culture from the specialists, etc., it produces tons of culture, so it's tempting to think that should be one of the 3, but once you go to 100% culture, there's no way it can keep up with the hundreds of culture per turn that the cottaged cities are making.

One cottage can make 8 or 9 culture per turn (before modifiers), depending on whether it's next to a river. A farm on the same tile will make enough food for 1/2 an artist, and the artist will make 6 culture if you have the Sistine Chapel, so the farm is making 3 culture per turn. There's no way farms can come close to cottages that way.

VoiceOfUnreason said:

Here's another cut....

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Yeah, that's more or less what I was looking at. I miscounted the food on your red city when I drew it (forgot to count the +2 from the city square). It's better than I thought. It's still going to be the worst of the 3, but it should be fine. You should irrigate one grassland to get water into the rice paddy.

There's still room for three cities on the western coast, one in the center, the rice and the gold mine in the east. Red Dot gets the Hermitage, I think, being the weakest of the three. Are we going that far up the tech tree?

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I sometimes won't research Nationalism myself, but assuming you have a decent economy (you should with Financial and all your cottages), beelining for the culturally important technologies usually gives you a number of nice, tradable technologies that can net you the late Renaissance era military technologies. You should easily have Constitution and Democracy before anyone else. Scientist specialists in the "junk" cities can also help keep research going.

It's also not unreasonable to research Nationalism. It's good not only for The Hermitage but also for The Taj Mahal. The Taj Mahal is a high culture wonder (8 per turn), it generates artist points, and the golden age will produce more culture for you when you dial the culture slider to 100%. That's 3 good things from one wonder.

Don't forget fogbusters (and probably plenty of them).

Round 3: to 2040 BC

I didn't go too far--800 years, or 20 turns. What I wanted to do was achieve three things:

1. Finish exploring the continent (i.e. reveal all the ocean tiles within reach of a fat cross/Work Boat/Galley);
2. Build my first Settler; and
3. Research two key technologies: Bronze Working and Animal Husbandry.

My idea was to post the round and the map with the additional vital information this would reveal (i.e. the locations of bronze and horses) so we could make some more informed decisions regarding city sites.

To start off, I began pulling my Quechuas back. One of them encountered a lion, survived the fight, and I gave him a Shock promotion. I decide to make him the capital's defender and sent him home.



I also sent the Scout to the southern tip of the peninsula, and look what he turned up:



So it looks like I'll be able to put a city down there. In fact, as you'll see, there's additional motivation for doing so.

A few turns later, I finished the first of my two goal techs for this round:



I immediately changed to what has become one of my favourite civics:



And look at where copper turned up:



Not in the fat cross, but within my borders. I did kick myself a little for not settling 1 tile south of the starting position, because then it would be in the fat cross! I didn't start working it right away, trusting to my UU for the time being.

Nothing too exciting happened after that--the first barb units started appearing; one of my Quechuas took out a Warrior south of the capital. The Archers should start showing up soon as well, I would imagine.

Shortly after that, I finished my second key tech--on the same turn as the Settler completed!



And guess where the horses showed up:



AARGH!! Can you imagine the capital we'd have had if we'd settled 1 south of the start?!? Horses, gold, copper, corn, and 7 flood plains! Plus it would have been a lot easier to put cities on the northwest coast.

Oh well. At least this way we can have a really good city to the east as well, and the eventual health problems from the flood plains are slightly reduced. Speaking of which, Horses also appeared in the east near the cows, rice, and gold, and copper also showed up on that little southeastern peninsula.

Here's the map of the known world:



And here's a map that's zoomed in on the continent and cropped for us to use for dotmapping.



Now on to a few key decisions:

• The Build Queue: I whipped the Settler on the previous turn for some hammer overflow. I put Stonehenge in the build queue, but is that the best choice? Should I build a Worker instead? Another Quechua for fog-busting? A library? A Settler?
• Research: I selected Masonry as the next technology, with an eye to grabbing Monotheism for Judaism. Again, is that the best choice? Should I go after Fishing for an exploratory Work Boat? Priesthood for the Oracle? Something else?
• Second City: The Settler awaits our pleasure in Cuzco. Where should he go? I was thinking of the spot to the north between the cows and gems--I already have a road built to it and a Quechua fortified there. My thinking is to get Hinduism to spread to it along the road for +1 culture, maybe build an Obelisk first for another +1 culture, and when its borders pop for the second time, I can send a Work Boat exploring to the north. However, do I have bigger priorities elsewhere? And is that necessarily the best spot for a city? Time to revise those dotmaps a bit and come up with a final consensus.

I should also say that the more I think about it, the less enthused I am about a cultural win. I know I've only done one in the ALCs, but I've done a LOT of them in my off-line games when fractal maps planted me in a position similar to this. Granted, I haven't done one on Monarch...

But the main problem I have with it is the waste of the Aggressive trait. The whole purpose of the ALCs is to see how to exploit each leader's unique trait combination. Plus the warmonger in me is nonplussed. I'm thinking instead of bee-lining whatever techs we need to start amphibious invasions, then going for either domination or, failing that, maybe space race.

Can we still take out opponents if we can't get to them ultra early? Can we keep up in techs? Can we found and manage a continent-spanning empire early in the game? Doesn't that sound like a challenge? Not to mention FUN?!?

We have some important decisions to make and a very important round coming up. Frankly, the only vital thing we don't know now is the location of Iron, but I don't expect to know that for some time, and I expect if it's around it will appear within the borders of one of our next few cities.

I'm really looking forward to everyone's input this time!

I'd say go for the cultural. True extra religions won't give culture by themselves, but the temples and monasteries will generate culture, and let you build cathedrals. Get Music as soon as possible and get those in your three big cities and watch the culture roll in!

I do like having a boat to explore, so if you have neigibours, you know how to get to their continent. You may not fight your first war until Maces and Cats, but you'll have to be ready...

Definetly a library. As your capital is your main source of research for several turns and provides a nice boost.

Stonehenge is less of an issue as you don´t need to panic about other people´s cultural borders.

I would go for Domination/Space Race. It is way more fun then any cultural victory where you basically sit around three cities and wait for them to grow. Cultural feels way too artifical imo anyway..

That means try to concentrate to get Optics, so Metal Casting and Machinery should be priorities..

I would like to see a cultural victory. The map is well suited for it and the leader also, cause he starts with mysticism. I rarely go for culture, so to see one from the beginning would be good.

A question first. Why didn't you farm the corn? You think the commerce from the cottaged FP is more important than the food?

I wouldn't go for stonehenge. If the choice would be cultural, it is better to build obelisks. That way you keep culture generation after calendar. Plus you have religion, so you don't need stonehenge.

I would think about building another worker, you have quite a lot to develop or a quechua. But don't put the overflow to the quechua, its not worth it.

Regarding research, i would suggest priesthood, so you can finnish oracle before the AI. Then it depends on the winning condition. Either religion or to optics. If you choose the war path, I would use the Oracle for MC.

You should be ready for the barbs. As Cuzco has a nice large border, there is little chance for barbs comming from the west. So maybe you can try and don't move the quechua back to the capital and leave him outside fogbusting.

I would place the second city to the E near the river (based on dotmaps) It would also help to fogbust barbs, while the northern city will be inside borders.

I don't know.

I think you have a better chance fo getting to the northern Continent's coast if you settle on the river between gems and rice, I'm not sure IF you could get to the northern continent if you settle between Cows and gems untill the 2nd broader expansion. The down side about the Rice Gems location is that you'll have to wait for Broader pop in order to Work the rice.

The 2nd broader expansion... is 100CP You'll be waiting 50 turn unless you build a wonder or found religion as the holy city site up there.

About Dot maps It depends on what Victory Condition you want, If you want a Domination Get as many Coastal Cities as possible to spam Gallys and Galleons

I vote for non-cultural (personally I think it's boring, but not that it's easy).

Sorry for saying again, but seeing this capital site. I really wished you settled 1S, I just knew the horses would be there (cause of the blue circle), but the copper is a nice suprise. That site is prob one of the best I have seen so far. Could you imagen if there where any foes on this continent (muhaha)?! But there aren't.

I am assuming you are not going cultural.

I wouldn't build stonehenge. Why? You don't need the obelisk bonus since you have a religion. The GP points come in handy if you like my idea of GPP farm for capital and GS farm in the east. Though I would rather spend my hammers on the partheon. I think the partheon is good for ALL stategies at this moment. Sure no marble, but the absence of military power makes sure you can put those forest in wonders (and setllers).

But stonehenge is the 'safer' route.

The east GP farm has enough forest to chop the GL for a big part, should be enough since the AI doesn't prioritize it. I would get this city online fast though... (maybe second city)

Masonry, well I agree Organised civic comes in handy, but would you realy delay the Oracle? I would get another worker and settler out fast (you have the food) and then build the Oracle straight away, meaning priesthood first. Then it would be a choise between going for the 25% hammer bonus or leave room for CS slingshot from your GP..

i'd go for a coastal city first (cows + gems on the coast, why not), and build another quechua then a another settler = 3 big ones asap.

And a coastal city can build colossus and great lighthouse = some culture rolling in. True, the coast won't give you enough commerce for the final push, but with the ermitage there, you should be fine.

edit : i assume you go cultural sorry voek (you're german, voek?)

Reason I would settle cow+gems later is you don't have iron working yet and maybe not for a long time. I would time the gems with ironworking, so prob third city. Another (lower priority) reason to settle east first is to fogbust more efficient with your city's. Not a biggy, but does count.

Culture is a waste of the aggresive trait and besides if we go cultural I can't spam the forum with advice.
Cabert, I am Dutch

voek said:

Cabert, I am Dutch

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Sorry, I should have known better (Germans were eliminated by Italy, not Portugal )

Culture is a waste of the aggresive trait and besides if we go cultural I can't spam the forum with advice.

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Somewhat true about the trait, but who are we gonna fight?

Nobody prob., for a long time... That't the challenge, combined with a oversea invasion. Yummie.

Portugal cheats.