Dr kossin #23

kossin said:

I think the Scout should start investigating along the river for a second city as it looks like The Wheel will not be available for quite some time.

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Control the river! I think Levees may be important in this game. Your coastal cities will be lacking in production, generally speaking, and having FIN encourages cottages, but doesn't do much to help production.

Late-game cottages are a great way to stay food-neutral, which in turn enables you to keep a high population to make full use of those river tiles. But this is looking a bit too far ahead...

The counter-argument to late-game cottages, though, is workshops under State Property. Even with all the enhancements you can gain for workshops, they will still have only 1 base , and therefore do not benefit from FIN. Levees give you the means to have the best of both worlds.

Round 1

I proceeded as planned in Round 0 with the builds and research. Meanwhile, I focused my exploration along the river which is quite long but it's not the greenest land I've seen.

You'll also notice the area is mountain heavy, which may well play into our favor.

On turn 7, I meet Wang Kon from the north. Good, this gives me a little breathing room, he's not too much in my face.


Here's an early look at the explored area to give you an idea of what I mean.


Next turn I follow again the river and notice Wang's Culture border.


Okay, so he isn't that far but it's still far enough. The good thing is that's his capital meaning his second settler didn't settle completely towards us.


I get confirmation a few turns later that I can more or less seal off Wang from my area.


On t13 I meet with the founder on Hinduism.


And on t22, one of the Ceasars shows up. The good one...


My brave scout died unfortunately to a barbarian warrior as I was getting him ready to spawn bust for a few thousand years, to the west of Nidaros. R.I.P.

Up to now I've been thinking to myself I should seal up Wang from my area until I make this discovery:


Once Nidaros hit size 4 and after churning out 3 warriors, I started on a settler which completed on t36. I think settling the gold will be th first priority here as there is at least 1 city in that area.


That'll take about 6~7 turns (depending on the time it takes to avoid barbs en route). During that time I can either build another settler(6 turns) to seal up the choke or a worker (4 turns) or a few warriors(first is 1 turn, second 2 turns, third 1 turn) to help against barbs.

2 or 3 warriors would make the surroundings much safer and would take 3 or 4 turns to complete.

A tentative dotmap.


It's still early to confirm some of those spots but I expect my cities will be in that general area.

An interesting to do here would be Oracle->Monarchy to get an early bonus at working those wineries. I don't think this is very likely [too many techs needed] though as there are good opportunities to expand and I should probably take advantage of that.

I'm pretty certain Saladin is to the north. The wildcard is Augustus I think. He could also be in the north but there is the possibility that he is due east and that I just failed to meet him earlier (I did not explore too much in that direction, instead started fogbusting close to the capital).

If the east is ours, then I'd say the odds of winning this one aren't bad at all. Otherwise, I may have to contend for that land with AC.

I'd say 1 warrior and then a second settler might be a good way to proceed although delaying a second worker isn't good with all those trees to chop.

Next tech is Agriculture I think, to start improving tiles along the river. After maybe The Wheel to hook up the gold and start moving on Pottery... but I'm getting too far ahead already. I still need a way to pop borders somewhere.

The desert city off the coast looks awful: The inner ring doesn't have anything good so the first border pop will give you a headache. Not to mention that you'll likely lose the fish if Korea settles anywhere near it. I dunno if I would build a city in this area.

The land around isn't very friendly, so I like the idea of getting that gold and backfilling. Hopefully you'll find something nice E/SE of your capital, but it looks like desert & tundra.

It'll be interesting to see how you deal with this map, specially if you can't settle the gold before the AI (not that I wish it to happen )

I would agree on the desert city. As I said, it's a tentative dotmap. Placing that city 1N or even 1NW may end up being better and it'd allow to use the wheat on a fillup city as there are quite a few unused tiles in between cities.

I regret never looking at your series before Kossin. Your last two where great, in that you survived at deity(quite a feat to me). Your current start looks rather spacious. I support finding the city with gold first, followed by the choke city. If that doesn't crash your economy at deity, maybe that desert city 1 N? You can run some early specialists, but also choke off some(rather poor) land. It can hopefully pay for itself with Caste.

I'd be more worried about barbs than where to settle city #2... You have lots of empty barb lands around, especially if the east is open.

Good luck with barbs, I hope the AI's help you bust them. I'm going to say barbs are going to be a real annoyance with the way you're spread until you can solidify your borders potentially.

Those are some gorgeous rivers though.

Sal has Hinduism, what a surprise. Oh well, at least he's easy to please diplomatically.

Regarding barbs: I might need to make a quick detour to Archery after Bronze Working. Aggressive warriors can handle barb archers a little better (esp with a barracks) but otherwise if the east is open it might be a toughie early on.

I also recommend archery, since it has more or less saved me on immortal games (and of course, deity ones).

You might also want to consider making that capital of yours a future ironworks city (it has a lot of similarities with my Gandhi deity game's capital - same food resources). The only downside is that you don't have that many of riverside tiles.

If I were you, I'd settle the gold first (assuming you have adequate defenses) followed by the chokepoint.

No commerce in capital, I would have gone:

AH-Wheel-Pottery-mining

to get the Financial cottages on line ASAP to support the REX. you can settler several nearby cities to work cottages. I d recommend settle 1N of choke point first to block WK.

Then next grab the gold/spice spot.

Enough Aggressive warriors should be fine to skip archary.

With all the river side cottages you can have + marble + heavy production in capital, would be easy to do down Literature line and grab all the marble wonders/failure gold to get a tech lead. Capital could even be a temp GP farm for GS, later can cottage up...

Blimey, lots of choices here and questions on city placement. Might be worth having the warrior take a peek at the coast where the gold site is. Could show up various things (seafood, horses, bronze when the tech is in or more gold) if you were to settle 1E or 1NE of the gold (there is a foggy plains hill 2E of the Gold which could have a resource on it).

If you aren't going to have Copper hooked up after you settle the second city then it's got to be archery otherwise you really need some border popping options. Monuments seem to be the obvious choice as it's a quick tech grab and writing is a long way off for libraries which are going to be slooooooooowwwwww to build in some of the cities you grab.

I'd stick the desert coast city 1N unless you are worried about the inevitable border conflict with Wang coming early. If that's the case I'd forgo the site and settle 1S of the wheat for a nice production city.

As for the other sites, well, I can't make my mind up which way to go. I think it'll depend on the Gold site, Copper and clearing out some of that Fog to the East (could be a couple of tiles and then coast or it might be tons of land, all of which can easily be blocked off for all we know.

On the question of whether to get Archery...

I've tried Deity starts both ways, and they both work. But to skip Archery, you will probably need an improved Warrior like free C1 from Aggressive, as ABigCivFan pointed out.

If your cities are defended on hills and you have Aggressive, I would definitely give Warriors a try if you happen not to have any resources. The combination of the C1 bonus and the hill bonus makes your cities hard to lose, especially if you make multiple Warriors per city.

Without hills for defense, it's a tricky question to answer. You will either need good tactics or make a few more Warriors (how many, I'm not quite sure...). Perhaps you can utilize Forest tiles with your extra Warriors to give you extra chances to win battles.

If saladin is N I would agree the gold city should be prioritized for
-blocking
-resource
-getting hindu faster

How about moving the "in between" city 2W 1N (or 2E of chokepoint)? Unless you were planning on settling there, you'll cut off the choke point sooner. Also more green tiles for commerce/growth, and you won't net any unusable tile difference (right now you have 1 mountain, 2 desert, and 2 shared with cap).

It looks like your capital is going to be a nice production/whip workhorse.

DMOC said:

I also recommend archery, since it has more or less saved me on immortal games (and of course, deity ones).

You might also want to consider making that capital of yours a future ironworks city (it has a lot of similarities with my Gandhi deity game's capital - same food resources). The only downside is that you don't have that many of riverside tiles.

If I were you, I'd settle the gold first (assuming you have adequate defenses) followed by the chokepoint.

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I like Archery myself to get out of tight spots. However I'm starting to think I'm going to have to research the economics techs right away or fall behind hopelessly. This being Normal speed and with an Aggressive leader, I'm going to make a gamble and skip it.
Nidaros indeed looks like a GP farm. Will be nice if I can get my hands on TGL with the close by marble. It really is a shame there's not any more rivers, especially the resources... the extra commerce would have been quite nice.

I also like settling the gold first, it will bring in a lot of commerce and pay for itself.

ABigCivFan said:

No commerce in capital, I would have gone:

AH-Wheel-Pottery-mining

to get the Financial cottages on line ASAP to support the REX. you can settler several nearby cities to work cottages. I d recommend settle 1N of choke point first to block WK.

Then next grab the gold/spice spot.

Enough Aggressive warriors should be fine to skip archary.

With all the river side cottages you can have + marble + heavy production in capital, would be easy to do down Literature line and grab all the marble wonders/failure gold to get a tech lead. Capital could even be a temp GP farm for GS, later can cottage up...

Click to expand...

I tried your suggested opening until where I played. As usual, you're right BW could be delayed here as the cap had strong production even without chops. I really must get better at reading the maps for the urgency of BW or not.

I disagree however on settling the choke first. The risks of losing the gold site are much higher this way and I can always block Wang Kon with a city a bit southwest of the choke. Even with settling the gold city, he'll be able to go around it so I need a border pop there pretty soon.

Skip Archery is agreed. Now I have to choose between TW and Mysticism to secure my land or the economy...

I would like to think working the gold tile will offset the economical hit of delaying TW and having all that land to settle later on will eventually pay off.

Decisions... decisions...

Ambro said:

Blimey, lots of choices here and questions on city placement. Might be worth having the warrior take a peek at the coast where the gold site is. Could show up various things (seafood, horses, bronze when the tech is in or more gold) if you were to settle 1E or 1NE of the gold (there is a foggy plains hill 2E of the Gold which could have a resource on it).

If you aren't going to have Copper hooked up after you settle the second city then it's got to be archery otherwise you really need some border popping options. Monuments seem to be the obvious choice as it's a quick tech grab and writing is a long way off for libraries which are going to be slooooooooowwwwww to build in some of the cities you grab.

I'd stick the desert coast city 1N unless you are worried about the inevitable border conflict with Wang coming early. If that's the case I'd forgo the site and settle 1S of the wheat for a nice production city.

As for the other sites, well, I can't make my mind up which way to go. I think it'll depend on the Gold site, Copper and clearing out some of that Fog to the East (could be a couple of tiles and then coast or it might be tons of land, all of which can easily be blocked off for all we know.

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Skipping Archery is what I'm doing. For the moment, I'm inching towards Mysticism next to block off my land. Not too sure about moving the gold site away from the cows, it's a pretty good tile and I'll probably lose it if it ain't in my first culture ring.
The desert city has to get the fish in the first culture ring or not exist I think now, so NE. It'd be too risky getting it in a second ring. 1N isn't going to get me the cows - I'm not Creative. They're WK's and I'll be lucky to get the Fish.

Artichoker said:

On the question of whether to get Archery...

I've tried Deity starts both ways, and they both work. But to skip Archery, you will probably need an improved Warrior like free C1 from Aggressive, as ABigCivFan pointed out.

If your cities are defended on hills and you have Aggressive, I would definitely give Warriors a try if you happen not to have any resources. The combination of the C1 bonus and the hill bonus makes your cities hard to lose, especially if you make multiple Warriors per city.

Without hills for defense, it's a tricky question to answer. You will either need good tactics or make a few more Warriors (how many, I'm not quite sure...). Perhaps you can utilize Forest tiles with your extra Warriors to give you extra chances to win battles.

Click to expand...

That's my experience from Deity as well wrt barbs. It works especially well with Aggressive (if you get some wins early on and get Cover on a few spawnbusters, you're set). Warriors are cheap and the barracks here costs as much as an Archer.

It's a gamble for certain to skip archery, it's almost certain I'm going to be hit hard by barbs, but the beakers saved could be huge if it pays out. In any case, I think I won't have that much trouble surviving them, the landscape has some forested hills to park Cover warriors on them.

I'll go with a few more warriors for now, a barracks, and delete the extra warriors as the threat goes down.

@goodolarchie
I'm almost certain the in between city won't go there. Wang Kon only has 2 cities right now, meaning he's likely to get a 3rd pretty soon. That being said, he could settle north again allowing me to settle the choke but I think it's more likely he'll settle the ring around his capital -> possibly in the direction of the choke, preventing me to settle where it's currently marked.

The capital is indeed nice. I don't know if I'm going to be whipping it much however, if the block is successful, there's not much to gain by whipping it.

~~~
There was something I meant to say but I seem to have forgotten it... more later if it comes back.

Settling Gold/spice first is a good move. I d send a worker there along with the settler. Since you ll get BW soon, you prob still can settle the choke point before WK. The gold mine can help research to pottery, and then you should be in good shape.

Yes, the capital's worker is currently a few tiles ahead of the settler to 'fogbust' the way there. There really isn't much to do in the capital for a worker right now, forest chops into warriors aren't exactly great

Round 2a

As I mentioned in my last post, the worker was 'fogbusting' ahead of the settler. The fun thing on Deity with barbs is they show up soon enough so that animals (panthers/wolves) aren't a threat to 2 move units.


My warriors were performing exceptionally well against Archers. Being on forested hills and across rivers certainly helps.


I founded Uppusala to work both the gold and cows in my first culture ring. The worker improved the gold right away and I let the city work the cows in the meantime.


Nidaros built a barracks next, followed by several warriors and then a second settler for the chokepoint. Research was directed to Mysticism to attempt to ward off Wang Kon from my land.

Barbs start being a nuisance by 2280BC.


I fared better than I had expected and I may have overbuilt warriors somewhat.


WK's 3rd city was soon spotted, close to the choke... can't that settler hurry up???


Once the gold was completed, the economy looked quite a bit better. The worker started chopping a forest to get a monument out ASAP.


The second settler moved in place to block the choke. Research is now The Wheel>Pottery


Once I get there, I put him to sleep rather than settle immediately. It would kill research and achieve nothing useful right now.


Update on barbs:


Once WK shows up with his next settler, I yell: "You shall not pass!"


So why was he so slow?


I let Uppsala grow after a while so it can work the cows and gold.


Next turn however, Wang Kon shows up with his settler I blocked!


By 1600BC, I finally have The Wheel! AH->TW->Mining->Myst->Pottery may well have been a much better opening.


I kill another barb... nice streak.


Pottery completes 10 turns later and now I can lay down the foundations of an economy.


Continued in next post...

Round 2b

The second half of the round was much easier. I wasn't splitting commerce into hair anymore and barbs were calm once again. Therefore details will be a little more sparse.

Next tech was Writing, then Agriculture. I built a Library in Nidaros (chopped) and then ran 2 scientists while teching Masonry/Polytheism and then Aesthetics with binary research.

WK would revolt to Judaism eventually and Saladin would of course attack him.

Once Aesthetics was in, WK came by with this offer I couldn't refuse:


I make a quick detour to Alphabet next turn..


And get to see if I have any iron?


My next tech is obviously Literature.


Up to this point, Hinduism refused to spread to my cities. It finally did and I waited 1 turn to get more diplo points...


On the very same turn, my first wonder is up.


Nidaros starts on the National Epic next.

Of course, I couldn't resist getting the Parthenon...


It'll help fight off WK's culture next to the Judaism holy capital.

The next tech was Drama, for trading purposes and to depreciate this tech's value to the AI:


I make a few more trades before 1AD hits home.


Nidaros is looking pretty good as a GP farm already.


The next Scientist makes an obligatory Academy.


I researched Code of Laws next... Wang went for Music and got it before I could have.
By 1AD, I'm ready to research Civil Service and start farming grasslands finally.

Here's a look at the partially explored east. Room for another 4~5 cities. I just have to keep an eye on incoming AI units to make sure they don't capture the barb cities before I do (Wang has a stack in Uppsala, I'm considering closing borders. Problem is I won't be able to reopen them after that - he opens borders at Cautious only)


Techs


Diplomacy - safe from the Hindus. Wang is a concern but I think Saladin will keep him busy for a long time after the peace is up (war, peace, war, peace, etc...)


I think Liberalism looks won already to be honest. Barring something awful on the other landmasses or on this one, I think I have a good shot at this one.

Seeing horses east makes me crave for a mounted war on at least Wang, if I can get there soon enough.

More thoughts tomorrow, I leave you with the save for now.

Looks like a very strong position now, lots of available land and a decent tech situation. One thing I'm realising is that the powerful pre-1AD techrates I see people get on deity are partly down to the speed that the AI techs - a lot of available trades very early. Pre-chopping is something I should use more often too, 300BC Great Library is very effective, earlier that wonder comes the better it is I think. Cavalry war on wang looks like the best option, he hates saladin too so should be solid diplo wise.

kossin said:

While it looks like an obsolete start at first

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Yes, this term is pure genius indeed

To close borders or get a thorn city in your backside is a good question... AFAIK you will still have foreign TRs through him even with closed borders so maybe it is indeed worth it. At least the Horse spot is 100% safe.

If you get exclusive on all that backyard land, you're in for smooth sailing for this game unless something really drastic happens. Though, considering it's Deity, drastic things happen on a regular basis.