Many Leaders Game 9 - Civilization 5

T0
Ouch, not a great starting position... Will roam toward those rivers.

T1
This is THE spot.
Two rivers, three riverside grassy hills, cotton... Spice not that far. Will do.



Moscow founded. I like starting a scout in this game - the bonus meeting city-states is worth it and fast natural wonders findings favor happiness.
As for the tech, we will do a Animal Husbandry no brainer choice - at least with Russia.
We need horses (one day, for Cossack)

Early scouting seems promising - we have potential four luxuries! Cotton, spice, wine and Ivory. Some more to be found later with marble and pearls. We won't lack happy faces, good news.

T7
Copenhagen shows it's happy no-face - Maritime one. Like those for extra food bonus. As I plan going rather the production way, this one will be a nice friend to have.



T8
Find Brussels just next to it. Cultural one, and too close to Copenhagen to be happy with it. One day, a mission will appear... One side or the other.



T10
AH researched - well, no horses that close. However small herds wander north and south of Moscow.

T12
Scout survives to a barb attack. We encounter a strange chain of mountains which look worlbuilded - ain't they ? Anyway, nice zone to settle and prosper.

T13
Met Sulleiman, the poor guy with a useless special ability...

T15
First Natural Wonder discovered, and the first happy face that goes with it!



T18
Finished researching Mining.
Moscow is spotted by a barb stack which eats some city bombing feature I come to love in Civ5. Early game must!

T21
We encounter Sulleiman behind the mountains:



Worker built in Moscow. Start Monument till size three and Policy.

T25
Sulleiman wants an early war - he is sneaking a settler to my side of the mountain. Well, he'll eat some early Krepost fury!

T26
First Civic choice - I go for Liberty path. Russia likes expansion so I'll favor it by speeding the settler production.



Start settler in Moscow. It'll be too late to block Sulleiman, but will do to grab this mountain pass.

T30
In the meantime, the warrior died to some barbs...
Anyway, Sulleiman declared de facto a war on me...



The good thing is, we have BW on the same turn.
Krepost and Spears.

T37
Archery to support invasion is discovered

T39
At last, St Petersburg is settled



T40
Some foreign soul is now classical. Early on prince

T41
Meet Siam. Looks nice, especially his bonus - double Food and Culture from city-states. I'll lurk on your playing style Oz
Sing OB with him on next turn.

T42
Moscow demands Whale.
Nice feature - will trigger a golden age in Moscow as soon as I get whale. The lousy point is - I haven't seen any of it around. Well...

T43
Copenhagen asks assistance with two issues:
- get rid of the barbs
- get rid of Brussels
I may assist them with the task - they'll be happy for a long time while I will get some nice XP before going over Sulleiman.
Get Pottery - Calendar line to get more happiness and expand

T50
Round finishes.
State of the world:



Good points:
Krepost in Moscow almost finished, two mines
Plenty of gold available (415)
Two nice cities

Bad!
Sulleiman settling next to me!
First time it happens to me ever (never seen it so early in Civ4, and it's the first time in Civ5 too)

Well, there will be some warring coming up before peace...

I played lazy and will report lazy.

I went one north and founded. All those forests had me drooling. Early growth will be extremely slow, but the iroquois abilities and special building revolve around forests.

I built and tech'd strangely.

Build: scout->scout->monument->granary->settler->worker with a purchased workboat in the middle somewhere.

Tech: AH (of course) -> pottery -> seafaring -> mining -> calendar (mostly)

Crunched a bunch of barbs. Got gold that way. Bought a tile (fish) and the workboat to work it. Not a lot of cash left. Met a ton of city-states, Suleiman, and Cathy. Nobody's expanded yet, that I've seen. My second city isn't TOO far off.

I got two social policies. I took the cheaper settler and cheaper worker. I started my expansion late, but I need to do it hardcore once I get started. I want everything south of the mountain range. I plan on getting calendar and trapping before charging towards my unique building, at which point I hope to have good production to do whatever I want. Which will probably be to take over the world.

All the happiness around though means that expansion is the order of the day. I will probably need to throw out another warrior or two for a military mirage, at least.

I expect this start to be ... BAD. Food is so important early and I basically just ignored it. Ooops.

The starting location, settled in place


Even if I won't go for cultural victory, Ancien Régime will help me to unlock more cool social policies than my rivals can. My early goal will be building Stonehenge. I don't have (or at least can't see) many resources I can work early on, but chopping forest on spices will help me build the wonder. Therefore my tech order will be
Mining - Pottery - Calendar
While building
Warrior - Worker - Monument (waiting for Calendar) - Stonehenge

Found Brussels SE and met Suleiman of Ottomans.



On turn 9 I could adopt the 1st SP. I was thinking about Tradition. I could be able to unlock the 2nd one while building Henge which could be helping me by 33% but I feel on Prince with the help of the chop I won't lose it anyway. I decided to go for Honor instead to help me fighting with barbs and the 2nd one will be Liberty for faster training of settlers.


T9: finished Mining, start Pottery

T11: warrior 1 found barbs SE


T15: warrior 2 found barbs and Mt Fuji NE


Both camps cleared eventually, warrior 1 promoted drill (rough terrain) while #2 got shock (open terrain).

T24: Adopted Liberty.


T25: A list from Goethe


Met Catherine of Russia (T28) and form a Pact of Secrecy against Suleiman (T29).


T30: Calendar in, started Sailing for fishing boat, will help building the settler later.
T31: Started Stonhenge (Monument was not finished).

T32-35 confused: date not included on screenshot) Pact of Cooperation with Catherine.
T35: Worker finished building a farm across the river, starting chop down the forest.


T36: warrior 1 clears another barb camp E of Paris.
T38: warrior 2 working on a camp N of Mt. Fuji. Promoted Shock 2.

T40: started Animal Husbandry, hoping to find horses.

T45: Found Istambul. He has a settler, maybe too afraid to send out. Not my bussiness


T46: Start Trapping.

T50: Stats from the last turn:



In 2 turns, Paris will finish Stonehenge (hopefully).

Turns 0 through 50 were marked by exploration and pathetic defeats by English warriors while dealing with barbarians.

Elizabeth wanted the sea at her back and some resources near at hand. Both being available, she refused to allow the group to travel any further, and London was established.

Elizabeth gathered her leaders and informed them of her plan to use sea power to reach the other nations and subjugate those who were not refined enough to be treated as equals. The tone implied that this would likely turn out to be everyone. To this end, she ordered some method of attack to be developed that allowed striking from a distance. Quickly the concept of a stick that could propel other sticks at enemies was proposed (Archery) and quickly approved. Further debate lead to decisions that following this discovery, a means to store food (Pottery), a system for determining the best times to plant crops (Calendar), and finally a means to travel the seas (Sailing).

With these matters decided, the Queen directed work to begin on training an elite group of men, knowledgeable in woodcraft and capable of observation. Until these men were prepared, she sent the toughest of our community out to discover the countryside.

Mt Fuji was quickly discovered as were the first of the heathen swine, the barbarians. The barbarians appeared quite ferocious, having fortified a hilltop forest, and the warrior decided to pass and continue exploration.

We meet Suileman and wonder what is in his book.

More decades of exploration before we locate Brussels. (Note: Only got 15 gold, which indicates someone met them before I did. Not surprising since I explored NE first and they were SE.)

We meet more barbarians, the odds still significantly worse than I was expecting. Barbarians seemed much more powerful so far than I have been experiencing. Let me give you an example...

Odds are only slightly in the warrior's favor...


My attack gains a minor victory and some XP (the true goal of the attack)

IBT, the Brute moves onto the hill. My screenshot did not come through but it still listed my warrior as having a slight advantage. Result:

Given the beating, I choose to fortify until healed. Of course, the barbarian then attacks two turns later...

Similar story for our other warrior. So our initial Scout>Warrior>Worker>Settler>Trireme build order plus atrocious fortunes of war leads to a decision to purchase an Archer for national defense.

We stall on taking our first Social Policy, desiring to use the Piety track once we enter the classical era.

Given the loss of our army, we continue exploring with our Scout and adhere to a strict NO CONFRONTATION policy.

On turn 46 we complete our settler and head north. A barbarian is squatting where I want my next city, so the archer clears him away.

IBT turn 49-50, Sulieman tries to sneak an unguarded settler between York and the barbarians. The barbarians capture the settler though. My archers kill the barbarians, setting the stage for us to "liberate" the settlers.

I'm not sure if they will become a worker or stay a settler, but I intend to find out next turn.

So as of Turn 50, here are some key screenshots:
Tech:

Points and Rank:

Demographics:


Overall summary: Nuisance setbacks might put England behind the curve with the other players, unless the Ottoman Settler becomes England's. Regardless of the settler, the groundwork is there for England to rule the seas, as well as the land near the seas.

First of all our start ...


I've seen worse and better ... but don't you hate this dry look Civ V starts? I miss my green, green fields ... Wait ,I still have Civ IV installed :-D

In a couple of turns, I met Mr Tur... Ottoman leader

Probably 20 tiles away or so , most likely too far away for city #2.

Far closer were this two stooges:

One of my favourite combos. a cultural and a maritime city and all conveniently packed in subpolar land that I wouldn't want anyway. Thanks , Mr Oz

Techwise i started with AH, for horses and with the area NE of the starting spot already in the look for settling. I have a UA that cuts unhappiness from big pops, so let's put those cities big


Barbs, the usual stuff ...

In here the barb made a wacky decision and tried to catch me while leaving the lore unguarded ... well, 25 g for the pocket

Mt Fuji found, aparently without Tokio or godzilla nearby ... just pesky barbs and Ottomans
Japan surely changed in the last years ...

As some assumed by the screenies, I had teched Pottery and got to the unbalanced wonder #1 tech, that was also sorely needed for improving those happy resources back home ( obviously to sell: money makes us powerful , happiness only makes us fat ... wait, i already heard that somewhere, and it was not gandhi who said it :-D )

Not long after I meet the first lady ( er... , atleast it is a female human without beard )

Catherine looks to be not very diferent of civ IV ... atleast she continues to jump on the human player ( screen ;-) ) in every oportunity possible.
Sure, I already decided that the beard guy must die and still don't know where you are, but it must be far enough for confort...

Not much after I got my second city out, Bombaim ( or like the revisionist Indians call it now, Mumbai )

It will need 3 tiles of road, surely less than Instabul .

In between this and the end of the set, i finished Mining , killed some barbs and made a sell of cotton to catherine for the usual ripoff ( was spent in a monument in Mumbai, since that city sorely needs to grab the second ring stuff ). that explains partly the t50 screen:

The other part is a thing that I can only call a bug , the fact that , in spite i had finished the spices plantation this turn, it is still not factored in the happy count, leaving me in the red instead of being with + 4 happy faces:


Plans for the next set: roads, city #3 near the wines in the east ( will need a hell of roading but the map does not favour a easy military coup on the turks, with so much hills and marshes in between ), run some specs and start preparing some gunpowder based nonsense. Just because I'm playing with gandhi , it does not mean that I'll be a veggie and peacenik bald guy with round glasses ...

P.S For Oz, the demo stats:

Moved on plot to the south to get into the town the cotton from the south
Selecting Animal Husbandry as science research.
Went with the warrior to the right side, really nice site for a new town with wine and sheep
Already meeting Suleiman in turn 5
Bought the tile with the whale for its 3 apples
Meet Brussels and Copenhagen
No horses near the capital city, hrrr
I need calendar to work those nice resources
Really nice site to the north of the capital city, I see my second city there
I have choose Liberty as first policy, as I'm not sure what wining should I attempt.
Turn 33 Got Calendar and a worker to improve the spice and cotton.
Start building Stonehenge, +8 culture seems to big to miss.
Turn 36 meet Catherine
I forgot again that I need mining to cut down forest so I can not improve the spices, yet
Turn 42 found Istanbul to the east
Turn 50 I'm OK let say, I plan on attacking Istanbul early so after I will discover archery I will build some of them and start the war. Will see.
So I have 50 points on turn 50.

T0 Settle in place. 2 riverside hills will be farmed and worked ASAP. Unfortunately I’ll have to buy the 2nd hill because the stupid city expands to grassland. Not my initial plan but with this start Pottery-Calendar seems the best by far. I may even build Stonehenge

T3 Meet Brussels (Cultured). That’s good. I’ll try to not build the ‘Henge and will instead will plan to use these guys for some bonus culture. Let’s hope they give me an early quest

T8 Meet Copenhagen (Maritime). Okay, first city state to ask me to kill the other wins. Athens grows to size 2 – surprisingly I don’t change to max production to get worker out – working the 2 luxuries is good enough. Check the thread and find out that there are no Ancient Runes…makes sense since I haven’t seen one yet!
I noticed here that the popup windows look pretty cool in 3D. It’s not for everyone and usually takes my right eye a little while to ‘catch up’ (I wear glasses and may need a new prescription I think) but the layers in the multiple windows & foreground/background look cool.

T16 Worker->Warrior. Worker farms riverside hill and will then build two plantations
Exploring worker has killed a barbarian but only got 9XP (no upgrade) so is fortifying to heal for 7 turns.

T25 Everything happens at once: Calendar finishes, New Policy available, Warrior finishes, Athens grows to size 3, scouting warrior finds a barbarian camp nicely placed in a mountain valley. Very cool.

It’s too convenient that Athens grew this turn – I will build a settler and go build a second city at a 2 luxury location (wine/ivory). With 4 unique luxuries this may become a rapid expansion game.

T26 2nd warrior heads north and finds 2 fish/sheep/ivory spot. This will be a rapid expansion – I’ll probably build 4-6 quick cities while scouting. I hope there are some AI’s for some early UU action
Adopt Liberty (of course) for the 50% settler bonus. At this point I’ll be surprised if there are any games that aren’t building Stonehenge or adopting Liberty and building a settler on T25

T29 Find Mt. Fuji. So we’re up to 10 base happiness (I think) + 6 unique luxuries (30) + Mt. Fuji – 46 happiness for only 3 cities. Guess that sets up well for a 3CC to see how big they can get…the Gandhi player must be excited about this start!

T28 Fish/Pearls/Marble up the coast. That’s 6 unique happiness. I’m beginning to think that barbarian in the pass was added and that there won’t be early AI’s. I hope not.

T32 Animal Husbandry in ->Mining. I realized last turn that I can’t pasture the spices until I get mining to clear the forest. Not a big deal. Horses to the NW (4 spaces away). I’m going to make the slightly strange play of building my 2nd city up there and overlapping with the capital. It will build up quickly and produce a lot of gold.

T34 Meet Ottomans. Scout from the East…I realize now that I didn’t scout all the way South between the city states – maybe the continent extends! Settler finished – building another (while waiting for barracks, Phalanx, and finding Ottomans). I might need another warrior if barbs pop up but I’ll wait until I have more food coming in and can grow while building it.

T35 Brussels requests help vs. barbarians – Great! I’m on my way (with 1 warrior). I think this is the worst quest as it requires the barbarians to be “close” to the city state in order to qualify. Hopefully I won’t get stuck on it.

T38 Mining in. I could go with a lot of things here…I have 5 tiles that need workboats in the relatively near future (including Pearls) if I settle North. I’m going to go with Bronze Working instead and get some Phalanxes going because I see a barbarian camp by Brussels with a worker in it. Capturing/returning the worker will get me +Culture and I can pick up some fighting Policies and take out the Ottomans (if I can find them).

T39 Sack encampment, return worker to Brussels (+30), Brussels now friends for 1 turn…but will go up again as I kill more barbarians and only goes down 0.5 because of Hellenistic trait. Brussels adds +4 social points / turn.

T40 Donate to Brussels to make them allies (for 8 turns). +8 social points/turn. Attack the barbarian on the hill at supposed 6-4 but ends up 5-5…need some luck here.
IBT – battle with brute is 4-4! We both survive with 1HP and I run to Brussels to heal.

T42 Barbarian is killed by Athens bombardment. This probably wasn’t smart as it won’t count for the Brussels quest. I doubt I’ll finish that one.
Settler finishes and heads North (following an Ottoman scout to ensure no barbarians. Set build to a worker as I’ll have 3 cities soon.

T44 Screenshot of minimap – Ottomans fog looks like a screaming face from the movie The Mummy. I’m very happy to see the Ottomans have built a settler! No AI turtling at one city is always good news! Let’s hope he settles within 20 tiles of his capital.

T45 New policy (+25% worker build speed (typo in policy screen)). Found 3rd city – starts on Stonehenge . This may actually work as it is working marble for 2 hammers and in 15 turns will work a sheep for 2 more hammers. By then it can also work the horse tile shared with the 2nd city (bought this tile) and I will have a worker up there to pasture the sheep or if I side-track to Masonry quarry the marble.

T47 Bronze working in. I’m tempted to go Masonry (7 turns) but it’s not critical and I still want to get some Companion Cavalry out and the Wheel will let me build some cheap connecting trade routes (and shorter travel to the Ottomans )

T50 Brussels no longer an Ally (still slow negative so will be easy to boost again). Ottoman settler that I saw on T44 has not moved either because of me, a barbarian, or both. Finally after two attacks by their city their warrior kills the barbarian. I should have set myself up to settler-steal I suppose to see if they still would have attacked out, but that’s quasi-cheating tactics

Pottery (9)
Calendar (25)
Animal Husbandry (32)
Mining (38)
Bronze Working (47)
The Wheel (around 5 more turns)

Sloooow buildup
I’ll have two workers in the next two turns to hook up spices +gold, build road network +gold, & hook up luxuries +gold/+excess happy. At this point I may just expand out to 8+ cities just because and then befriend the Maritime city-state. Maybe while killing the Ottomans. It’s only Prince, right?

Demographics screen is not surprising. I suppose being 2nd in Literacy (techs achieved) is a good sign for the AI, but unfortunately the Ottomans are last in land and probably in the bottom 1/3 of everything. They will have to die.

I wouldn’t be surprised if I got Stonehenge in ~12-15 turns in the 3rd city
My city placement looks a lot like Civ4 or even Civ II / III! I’m not sure how/why that happened, but the cities have good first ring tiles and I won’t have to worry about +culture in the short term. They’ll be good production cities and good +gold cities even at small size.

So I've decided to go culture, hopefully applying the lessons I've been learning following the first Civ V Hall of Fame Gauntlet.

Namely...

• One City is best for culture, maybe 2 at most, lots of puppet states and city state allies instead.
• Try and unlock Patronage as early as possible.
• Build Stonehenge, Great Library and Oracle early
• Unlock Acoustics with GS bulb early
• Marble is essential and capital with lots of production on a river
• T100 or so, go to war

That is all ideal world stuff, so lets see how we actually did.

Well the starting position isn't really bad, but would like Marble (in which case I'll only go with one city) and more production. So I decide to move settler and warrior east, hoping to find Marble but instead find...



Not ideal but will do, might be a struggle to get all the early wonders done but will be a powerhouse, especially if I can ally with a maritime civ for the food

Start with a scout (didn't realise at this stage that ruins were off ) and Mining.

Next turn I find the marble



Besides the cows on the river would have been the perfect spot and only 1 city required, oh well!

Discover Mt Fuji early and Suleiman, Brussels and Copenahgen. Copenhagen as a maritime state will be my first ally as I will want the food bonuses.

Scout is replaced by worker and Mining by Pottery (for Calendar to hook up cotoon).

Just as we meet Catherine, we are found to be middling in shiny things.



Start up a settler to get to the Marble and research Writing after Calendar.

Settler goes here



At the end of 50 we are here



Capital is now on wonder builds (Stonehenge now and then Great Library). Ideally I want to have Philosophy and Great Library built on the same turn, to take Theology from GL but we'll see. At the same time adopt my first policies down the patronage path and bribe my closest city states into allies.

Lost time building settler and scout I didn't need to, still should be good, to build some horseman and take down Suleiman and maybe Cathy as well.

One benefit of having the second city is that I am not landlocked and can get out eventually and see the world.

Research: Mining, Pottery, Calendar, Writing, Animal Husbandry, Wheel

Who got settled behind his own lines on Prince Civ V ????