BNW - FPtD 1 - Ethiopia

Well, in our inaugural game on From Princes to Deity (FPtD), my son and I are taking on the world as Ethiopia and we need your help.

We are playing on King difficulty, standard sized continents map, with standard turns. All victory conditions enabled.

The first question is how do you play as Ethiopia? The special ability seems to imply you should go for a tall empire with very few cities. Additionally, the Stele seems to suggest we should try to get an early religion. How does the Mehal Sefari stand up to other units of it's era?

Without further ado, here's our opening map:



So, here's where we need your help. Do we settle in place? Should we move our warrior and/or setter prior to settling? What should we tech first? What about our build order in Addis Ababa?

Let us know. My son is itching to actually play this.

David

Fairly poor start, but coastal which is a bonus in BNW and you got wheat.

I would settle on hill for extra production, but first send warri to hill SE to see what's upstream. I would get stele out first then scout. With anyone else i would reverse the order but stele basically guarantees first pantheon unless Celts are in the game.

Scout with warri so you can make good choice of pantheon, you want a faith producing one over anything else, unless other ones are going to be very useful based on what's around.

Ethiopia can go tall or wide, but you'll probably want 4-8 cities with them no matter what. Your capital seems pretty respectable, it should be alright to settle in place. It's nothing spectacular, but it isn't worth losing a turn to find a new spot in my opinion. You want a stele up in your capital as soon as you can get it, and it should be your first production in all of your new cities.

You don't need to build shrines or temples, so the stele will save you a lot of and that you would otherwise spend on them.

This thread looks interesting and I look forward to following it.

EDIT: Also, you should start scout.

Thanks for the quick response! I almost always lead with a scout, but I was thinking that the Stele might just be the exception. It's such a strong early building.

As for the settling issue, I would usually move the warrior first to the hill suggested by Maxym. It should reveal a bit more of the area around my capital. I figure I either SIP or settle on the hill on the other side of the river. A river coastal start should be decent. I'm hoping my warrior will reveal some more stuff that I'll like.

I forgot one thing in my initial post! What should I be doing with regards to policies? I can see advantages to Liberty, Traditional, and Piety. I imagine Honor is not going to be our first choice.

Ooh, so many plains. At least you got a river and some sea resources.

Ethiopia can be played tall, or ICS, it's all up to you. The bonus obviously emphasizes going tall, but the Stele is maximized by going as wide as possible for a much better religion, though that's not to say you can't get the ball rolling by having an extra 6-8 faith with 3-4 cities from them. The Mehal Sefari is more useful to all strategies; the near capital combat-bonus is nice for tall, but the real boon is the half production cost and free promotion.

So it looks like Ethiopia's all about what you feel comfortable with. Just do what you do better, tall or wide.

P.S, concerning build order, I think you'll want a granary sooner rather than later to make up for the generally poor start, so I'd tech pottery while building a Stele for your favorite early pantheon (I'd recommend fertility rites) and a scout afterwards for ruins. I think you should open social policies with tradition to get legalism, landed elite and monarchy and then switch to Piety. These are rather uneducated suggestions, though, since I've never gone for Piety in BNW.

P.P.S

Have a fun time!

With Ethiopia you could do a fast culture win as described by Sadato in the strategy and tips section. It would be a liberty opener to cheap settlers and piety to reformation to grab sacred sites .??? The one giving 2 tourism for religious buildings, and get monasteries and pagodas in all your cities. Settle ICS style with cap just churning out settlers. Look it up if interested.

I would go piety, and rush Stonehenge for a super religion. On king it shouldn't be hard to do and it's a pretty fun and unique play style. Maybe get +1 production from fishing boats for the pantheon and continue to expand along the coast?

Personally I absolutely love to use the UA to conquer expansionist civs.

Well, this should show how much we need help with this game! Ryan and I went to play our first turns on our game and what should we behold? NOTHING! I forgot to save the game.

I'm terribly sorry to all of you who put forth ideas and contributions, but we decided since we've got so many good suggestions for playing Haile, we are going to use the same setup, but naturally we will have a different map.

Here's our new "salty" map:



Well, no coast and only 1 lux showing, but there is desert to the south which might be outstanding for our pantheon. I'm assuming I should move the warrior onto the desert tile east of the wheat prior to settling?

Again, I'm sorry, but I have definitely saved the start this time and we'll run our first turns tomorrow. Any advice you give between now and then is appreciated.

Well you're in luck, because salt is one of the best luxuries in the game, after marble IMO.

My son just said "Told you" after reading your post, MantaRevan. And for the record, I agree. It's a great resource.

Well, for my two cents, I probably would have looked up the autosave of your previous start and used it instead. I'm not sure what people are grumping about, wheat (albeit on a plains, still something like 5 or 6 food at civil service with a granary), and fish and two luxuries besides, on a river with hills for production and a couple grasslands for extra food. On the other hand your new start has potential. I would consider moving onto the forest river tile just southeast of you and settling there, you'd still have access to the salt pretty early (all three eventually but if you're just playing computers its not like you need more than one anyway), which would make you eligible for Petra, a great wonder in conjunction with desert folklore.

Sorry, being next to the desert is what would make you eligible for Petra, that was vague lol

Not a bad start, actually:

1) Move the opening settler to the plains/river/hill spot one tile to the right
2) Settle there and you now have a reasonable spot for opening production as well as defense (river on one side, city itself on a hill)
3) Tech Mining fairly quickly and get a worker quickly as well to chop for extra production, which is going to have to be done anyways for the Silk tile


After all that above, I'd go as follows:
Ultimately, you're on coast, a river, and a hill, with forests to chop to aid in production. As Ethiopia, you will probably want to go wide, so the forests can be chopped to help get through your first hard-built settler. Once you've settled a couple cities, build your unique building for a good faith and culture start. In all reality, to aid this, go Liberty; the Ethiopian unique building is more useful than the unique ability, so it helps to get the unique building up early and in good numbers. A second reason to go Liberty is to close Liberty and pick a Great Engineer to use on a faith-based wonder (Borobudur, Hagia Sophia, Great Mosque of Djenne, depending on what is most useful). After going Liberty, it's going to get too situational to forecast what should go next for SPs: Tradition can help get you growing and has happiness SPs, Piety can be taken to aid with faith, and the others may be equally good in different ways.

my two cents...
go one tile down (to the right of the warrior), and settle there. Pottery first. Build granery.
Explore desert side, if you have enough, quickly get stele up (preferably through tradition), choose Desert pantheon, go Petra!

With that much salt and an improved grain you grow rapidly. Try to find a site for a second city, and build a settler before building HG. Try to build 2 workers (or steal one and build one). Skip calender for now (so no NC, but with a second city and high growth you will still do good science). You need mining too. Then Beeline Petra, build HG then Petra. Win!

good luck!

Check if you'll be building in desert or tundra, and grab the acccording pantheons for faith generation.
Policy wise, go tradition: after opening, get legalism for free steles (and free amphitheater in capitol if you already have stele there before popping the policy).
Then get the landed elite (or whatever it is that gives +food and +growth in capitol), and if you're looking good for building a wonder (or the NC) around the next policy get the +wonder production. IF you're short for gold/happiness, get the other policy. Oligarchy is only for finishing, only worth popping if you see yourself in a defensive war during the next few turns.

Your build order should be Scout -> Stele -> Granary -> Library with a unit or two thrown in there.

My first move would be warrior SE-SE to the desert hill. There you should see enough to decide where to move the settler. without that move I never would give any suggestions for a city spot. perhaps there are plenty of desert hills/luxes south of the grain?

That's a somewhat easy start. Hill+river, plenty of trees to chop buildings/wonders, 2 luxies and 2 good sources of food.
I'd hit that.

Well, I really did screw up by not saving. I'm going to re-enable auto saving. I don't remember disabling it on this computer, but I know we did on the old one because the turns were SO slow. Thanks for the advice to everyone. Andy, I'm thinking the same thing about Petra. Which means Lord Katana is probably right about where we should settle. Prior to going that route though, I think we'll take caiman0815's advice and move the warrior to the hill to verify that spot is a good city location. debaser, you provide excellent advice regarding going tradition. I'm sure that will be our initial policy.

Ryan and I will play until we get a pantheon and come back here, post a new screenshot, and update, and seek further advice. Thanks everyone!