Many Leaders Game 2 - Sword Training

I usually settle in place, no matter what. At least on Warlords, this proved to be a good strat. On Vanilla I usually evaluated the idea of losing one turn to find a better place.

I like founding on a plains hill. That extra hammer in the very early stage of the game is good enough for me to not think of anything else. Of course, later, this should prove wrong.
But not necessarily I intend to run Big B, nor leave the capital on the initial city forever. Usually when I see a coastal start I think of moving the capital. If I can find a cottageable land, I move. Else, I just wait until Liberalism to run either Free Speech or Nationhood.

As TriviAl said, this game is turning out good enough for new thoughts. I may re-evaluate my ideas soon with this expansion!

First things first, if i don't win this through rushing preatorians, i've decided to get either a diplomatic or Space victory.

That lonely blue dot will get you some recources and some floodplains. It also had some nice hills and gold.

The red dot is the Gold City. It gives some food resources, some floodplains and alot of production.
The greyish dot city gives you the floodplains near the capital, 2 wine/spices (don't know which it is) an elephant and a lonely hill.

The yellow city is my and many others second city. It gives us The only copper in our pinninsula. It also has rice and pig.
The Cyan dot is possibly the most optional of all of them. it has qutie a bit of desert but that city will give us more resources then any other city. The resources include, Cow, Horse Elephant, rice, 3 production hills, and ounce it expands some floodplains.

My 3rd city is going to be on the Orange dot.

Let me explain it's use: First of all it's a coastal city, i think it has clam nearby, it has a river to the south, It has Rice, Dye, 4 production hills, and is covered in grassland. It will give aggresion to Alexander, which as you see is to the south of us, i'm not going to open border with anyone, so noone will be able to explore my part of the continent.

You probably won't get through all the AIs by praets alone.

Ah, Bureaucracy. That's a civic I usually don't run. I prefer a cottage economy, as gold is a rather flexible commodity, and usually run FS for the Town bonus instead of depending on my capital for everything.

I can certainly understand that. But then what do you run while you are waiting for enough of your cottages to mature to towns? Or while you are researching to Liberalism? The extra hammers and commerce from bureau is pretty nice while you wait ...

Will your cyan city site have enough food to work those resource tiles?

I like the choke idea, but my choke city will be a bit north, capturing the elephants too.

Maybe your site is better, but I want to rush down there and choke off the land soon.

By the time I've got Civil Service, I'm usually at war for some reason or another, and I use vassalage instead. As I generally focus on an empire-wide strategy of VERY early cottaging which I need to fuel my far flung early expansion maint. , I have alot of towns by Civil Serivce, and a better promoted army is more important for me.

I'm in the same boat with cottages. Normally like to cottage up the capital where possible. Also tend to make my 2nd or 3rd city a cottage site. On this map, I'd normally cottage the floodplains site. However with the philo trait and my goal of exploring golden ages, I'm doing it differently this time.

I like Bureaucracy and Vassalage quite equally. My fave is to stack the build queues under Bureaucracy and switch to vassalage/theocracy to finish the builds - although it's only a sane plan with spiritual.

Do find Bureaucracy can be crazily good with a strong capital. Something I saw in another SG was to move the capital just for that - picking up some distance benefits at the same time. Seemed too much effort for my liking, but could be worthwhile.

I know, i'm just planning on getting through Alex and possibly Ghandi through Preatoreon rush.

Will your cyan city site have enough food to work those resource tiles?

Click to expand...

Yes i think it will. Rice and Cows, plus when it expands for the third time, it'll get some floodplains and grassland river tiles.

About the Choke idea, By going there we'll get our only Dye Resource and really put prussure on Alex. But that's better for me since i'm going to kill him!

Cities don't work third ring tiles.

of course they don't, i must be drunk...

Made a leisurely start, with no plan yet.
1N and Poly, Archery, Agr, AH, Wheel, Pottery, Mining, half of BW.
Popped some scouts and explored the whole subcontinent.
In 2000 BC I have a city at the choke (started Stonehenge, we'll see) and am building my first Worker.

Portugal…. Finally Civ IV includes us! And with a decent historical leader too( I agree that the leaderhead of D. João II is somewhat.... dubious ( comparable to Louis XIV), but Firaxis atleast used a historical picture to make the LH ( in spite of D. João II got his hair turned white before he gets the 30’s) ),. A decent UB and....

Now the problems start: D. João II has a somewhat weak trait combination: Imp/Exp ( both of them usually considered somewhat weak or worse ) and a naval UU ( civ III bad memories... ). Not the warmongers dream, isn’t it?
But, since more solid intel about BTS started to appear, I started to think about how to maximize this somewhat weak package and made a skech of strat: IMP gives a bonus on hammers when buiding settlers and EXP gives a ( nerfed ) bonus in building workers, Carrack is a mini galleon with Optics, and Feitoria ( bad name.... Feitorias were buildings or fortresses were Portuguese made their deals in foreign lands, but is better that Belem’s Tower being a harbour.... ) gives bonuses in trade routes. How about:

Early REX

Mass worker force

Southern route research to Optics

Get overseas cities ( war or settling ) and make colonies

Tech to Astro + Economics ( for the UB )

Profit

Win (space or Diplo)....

This will be my basic plan. But let us go to action:

The start ( like if you didn’t knew it... ):



After moving scout:



Food, food , food .... aka whip, whip and whip some more.... Now first decision, move settler north ( for the double seafood ) or settle in place (for the double hammers in city tile)? I decided to move north ( food is power... ask to the Chinese ) and Lisboa ( I hate anglicised names.... ):



Hut gave me gold.... Work boat as build ( the usual 15 turns ). Hunting -> AH->BW->Wheel->Pottery ( maybe agri in the middle )

At turn 4 other hut gave me gold.... a tech would be better, methinks.... turn 7 : other hut . more gold..... turn 11 another hut: more gold... ( this is getting ridiculous... )

Turn 14 work boat finished. Turn 15... another hut: a map.... turn 16 Buddism FIADL and found horses... Turn 18 another hut: something useful at last: a scout. Turn 21 more gold from hut ( this should be noble.... where is the tech or even a worker/settler? Did the bonuses changed? )

Turn 22 the first event of game:



Turn 25 Hindu FIADL

Turn 26 BW is researched, slavery is in.

Turn 29 another hut: experience......

Turn 36 A big suprise:



Ok, not so big, but makes things diferent. Alex is too far away to be a early menace, but is blocking the way to south. Eventually we’ll need to face him, but hopefully the jungle will deter him to move north.

Turn 41Another neighbour:



Turn 43 One more:



Turn 45 Add this one to the party:



Second city online

Turn 50 ( end turn ) Finshed Sailing. Research Myst.

Our powerful ( lol ) empire:



The south....



Glance



F6



Thoughts for next round:

I have a decent chunk of land avaliable, good for the proposed rexing ( I’ll start to spit settlers soon ( I needed to the capitol to get big for better use of the bonuses in production ) ). There is a distinct possibility to cut land acess to a area as big as a normal continent ( I’m not so keen to do that now, maintenance would kill us and wouldn’t prevent galleys ).

There is a good mix of civs: crazy Alex ( I hate him.... ), peaceful techer Gandhi ( I hate him...), Churchil and Wash so far ( there are some more to discover... ).

My third city will be in the flood plain area and will be my settler/worker pumper ( via whipping ) and Lisboa will be used for some wonder building ( moai statues will help here a lot ). Some axes will be made in Porto to protection issues.

After myst writing->Alpha

I’ll need to think in a dot map ( I confess that I really am completely inept on dotmapping, but this land is too big and too poor to settle without precise goals )

And now finally I can lurk the spoilers ( curiosity is killing me )

Nice turns, About your fear of facing Alex, you should make a choke point city. (see spoiler with city possibilities).

Also my fav civ in bts is portugal!

If you see my report, I'll notice that I thinked about that too. But I not to keen on it: a cithy in the choke point would be decent at best, wouldn't block completely our big penisula and would put alex with some thoughts. Maybe I'll settle there, but I have 2 more cities to settle before that, and probably it would be too late to choke them out.