ALC Game #5: England/Victoria

Pre-Game Thread

Round 0: 4000 BC
Round 1: to 2920 BC
Round 2: to 2000 BC
Round 3: to 1320 BC
Round 4: to 700 BC
Round 5: to 1 AD
Round 6: to 1110 AD
Round 7: to 1530 AD
Round 8: to 1700 AD
Round 9: to 1800 AD
Round 10: to 1870 AD
Round 11: to 1945 AD
Post Mortem

The idea of the All Leaders Challenge is that I'm going to play a game with each of the Civ IV leaders--mostly the less popular ones--that I haven't tried before on my current difficulty level, Prince. The other game settings are kept constant, at their defaults, for the sake of comparison. I will post the saved game files, screenshots, and status reports here as the game progresses. Everyone then has a chance to chime in with their strategy ideas, and to tell me how much better off I'd be if I'd just do exactly what I'm told. It's kind of like marriage, but with Axemen.

Everyone is invited to offer opinions and advice, and make your own attempt at playing the same game. But if you do play a "shadow game", I kindly request that you refrain from posting spoilers--i.e. any facts or even hints about the map, opponents, and so on, before I'm there myself. I'm trying to play the game as authentically as possible.

In this ALC game, I'm playing as Victoria, leader of England.

Here are the initial game settings:



And as for the starting position...brace yourself:



Okay. I did not go into Worldbuilder. I did not click "Regenerate Map" even ONCE. I just happened to draw FLOODPLAIN CENTRAL WHEN I'M A FINANCIAL AND EXPANSIVE CIV!!!





There are no less than 12 floodplains tiles visible. It's not possible to get all of them in the same fat cross, but most of them can be. There are several hills available for production; the floodplains will make those easy to work. Several forests are available for chopping, and two goody huts are close by. Sweet!

Okay, okay, calm down, it's not all good. I only see one resource for the fat cross, and it's a later one, though I suspect there's something else close by in the fog. I'm north of the equator, perhaps far north--I think I see a hint of tundra in the fogged tile just north of the eastern tribal village. If I settle in place, I'm on a grassland hill and I sacrifice a forest.

On that note, let's about where the settler should go.

Settle in place: 8 floodplains, 3 plains hills, and 5 forests, three on grassland, two on plains (one of them being the silk tile), one grassland. Health bonus for fresh water, defense bonus for the hill. Three tiles in the fog, though the one to the north looks like a plains tile, while the west one looks like river plains, southwest looks like forested plains.

I don't like moving east as I'll pick up both of those desert hills. Ugh.

1 south to the grassland river tile: 5 floodplains, 2 plains hills, 1 grassland hill, 1 desert hill (ugh again), 6 forests (including the silk tile), and it looks like 1 river plains and 2 forested plains in the western fog, and 1 plains, 1 river plains, and one river grassland in the southern fog. Fresh water health bonus. Hmmm...a lot less floodplains, more hills. More of a production city, less of a commerce city.

Moving 1 NW to the floodplains beside the tribal village is very similar: 5 floodplains, 3 plains hills, 1 grassland hill, 3 grassland river, 6 or 7 forests, and what looks like 1 plains, 2 plains river, and two more grassland river in the fog.

1 tile north to the plains hill: 9 floodplains, 2 plains hills, 1 grassland hil

I'll keep this first reply short and to the point. As was evidenced in VoU's LoE: Washington, there's a strong possibility that hidden tile nestled in the Plains Hills is an Oasis. Of course, it could just as easily be a (worthless) Plains tile. I'm hoping for the Oasis.

Settling in place seems fair enough. No move nets you any real discernable advantage based on that screenshot, and the only move I would even suggest would be to move onto a Plains Hill.

With regards to Stonehenge and The Oracle, I assume you intend on placing them in the same city. The only problem I foresee with this is that, unless started extremely early, Stonehenge will put The Oracle at risk of being built in a distant land. You may just want to pass on Stonehenge; building The Oracle first will probably mean losing Stonehenge, even with the relatively low emphasis put on it by the AI. You can choose to either found an early religion (might be tricky), or, alternatively, plan on founding a later religion, and in the meantime whip Obelisks in the early cities for border expansion (after Granaries, of course).

You could also consider massively chopping Forests for either Stonehenge or The Oracle in order to relieve the risk of losing one or both.

Nice start, btw.

PS: Good use of the

Just a lowly Noble players opinion here.

If you want to build your Stonehenge in the second city I think you should move the settler S, and found your second city on the grassland to the north. Only 1 square of crossover and lots of forests for production/chopping.

Edit: To clarify, the grassland north of the hut.

Edit again: Now that I look again, the forest hill e of the hut looks better than the grassland.

Sisiutil said:

I'm torn between settling in place and sacrificing a turn to go 1 NE. I think I should move the Warrior NW to see what's in the fog there, especially since it would be in the fat cross if I move NW.

Click to expand...

My inclination would be to move the warrior NE (up the forrested hill), which I believe would allow you to see both tiles above the hut up there. After that, choose between in place and settline 1NE next turn. The mystery tile directly above you is in cross for both sites, so it doesn't matter which it is.

The hidden resources won't be on a floodplain, nor on a plot with a forrest. There are seven other plots, moving NE loses three of them. Coin flip.

I say settle in place as you actualy get 10 FP ( the 10th being the square south of the west hut in the fog). Also, you have 18 tiles on the river instead of the 17 in the NE position. Finnaly there is the resource and the free turn. I see no real benifit to moving NE

Edit: I forgot to mention that with 1 boarder exp., you pop BOTH huts, allowing a warrior to explore freely

The plains hill one tile north seems like the best tile to settle. Although expansive might not be enough to compensate for the loss of fresh water. Scout a bit with the warrior to the north, move the settler north west through the plains hills, see what you've got, and settle on a good plains hill if you find one.

Edit : settling on the plains hill right next to the hut might be a better idea. You'll keep fresh water, and will have a great spot on the southern plains hill for your second city, with lots of flood plains for it as well, and only one tile of overlap. As long as the terrain in the north isn't too bad, i think that's your best choice.

Either way, first move should definetely be the warrior on the hill to see more of what lies up north.

I say settle in place. Not only do you get more of a forest health bonus to counter the floodplains, you get to keep the recource and the fresh water, while still giving you plenty of floodplains

Remember, you are expansionist, you can Expand... and build more cities! Thats why settling in place is important, it gives you one or possibly two EXTRA cities to the north east and north west, catching all the floodplain tiles you would have gotten whil moving, but with the added bonus of some productoin(assuming that it isn't just desert beyond your border fog... that would suck)

For this reason, i say bring the warrior ne to see what else there is beside your lil valley.

Wow, what a start! Definitely check NE with the warrior, but I'm leaning heavily in favor of settling in place. If there is another resource in your fat cross it will be in the fog to the west. Moving away from those tiles would deny your capital a chance at that resource.

The only other site I would consider would be the plains hill directly north of the settler. You would end with the same number of forests available for chopping, lose the fresh water bonus but gain the extra hammer per turn. That is so close to even that I wouldn't consider it worth the one-turn delay.

ArmoredCavalry said:

Edit: I forgot to mention that with 1 boarder exp., you pop BOTH huts, allowing a warrior to explore freely

Click to expand...

Or steal some Workers.

I just wrapped up some moderate testing of Vicky starting in heavy Flood Plains (I had to regenerate a few times, but I felt mimicking this start was the best idea).

Anyway, I'm beginning to think Fin/Exp is, quite possibly, one of the most powerful trait combinations I've encountered yet. It requires far more micromanagement than I'd normally get involved in, but if you do mm carefully, you can really get some extreme mileage out of the combo (especially on a start like this).

Perhaps I'm biased in that the game I eventually settled on provived not only an awesome second city site (Copper, plus riverside Grassland Cows and riverside Grassland Rice.....irrigated agriculture at its finest) that also happened to be between me and my closest neighbor, and chosen Worker-theft victim, Cyrus (who is, quite possibly, one of the best Worker-theft victims; I don't think he ever learns to guard his Workers, ever).

Regardless, some notes I'd like to relay are as follows. Screw Stonehenge. Who needs it. It's a waste of your production capabilities, though you may strongly consider grabbing Hinduism or Buddhism, depending on what tiles are around. I founded Hinduism using only Flood Plains, not the 3C Wine tile that was within my starting fat cross, so it's definatly within reach if few (read: none) of the religious fanatics are in your game. Definatly something worth considering.

Religion aside, the key here is to whip, whip, whip. Yes, use The Oracle for Metal Casting. Your Financial trait combined with Flood Plains Cottages will certainly provide enough research capacity to cover CoL long before you need it. However, you'll be able to more readily employ Zombie69's whipping strategy using a MC slingshot.

Whip Obelisks, whip Granaries, whip Forges, whip units, whip everything (except Settlers, which you could chop rush, and Workers, which you should steal, and Wonders, which you can largely ignore I think).

Whip til your fingers bleed, then whip til your eyes pop out from counting in order to make the most of the rounding bug, then whip some more. No, really. Whip like it's going to be nerfed tomorrow. And then slip in Drama for the Globe Theater once you get a chance (no need to beeline, but you'll certainly want to with all that whipping).

I have a feeling that this ALC, unlike most others, will employ more solid strategizing than any before. Not to toot my own horn, but I suggest stealing Workers from your first target. Read and reread Zombie69's article and master the art of whip cracking. War often and war capably with the ridiculous number of units you can muster via the whip. And research respectably through abuse of the Financial trait.

As I said, this could be a highly defining ALC, and will certainly provide solid evidence that Vicky is not the ugly first cousin, eight times removed (or not, as vormuir pointed out in the pregame thread).

Probably settle in place. Had a quick look at the save. Blue circles=resources(either obvious or hidden). If there's a tie for locations then blue circles are the tie-breaker.
I presume that you'd build a settler before building any wonders so decision about location of SH/ Oracle and GL can wait until then, by which time you'll have explored more and found either an even better commercial site for GL or a good production site for SH.

I played the save to 425 BC and this is what I've got (without any spoilers)

-3 cities, with another settler almost completed (research still on 90%)

-CS slingshot completed several turns back, using Stonehenge and Oracle to get the GP

-Leading all other civs I've met in tech

-Leading all other civs I've met in score by 100 or so

I got closed in by other civs relatively quick so there isn't that much more room to expand, maybe 3 or 4 more cities will be able to be built.

How does this sound? I can't wait to compare with Sisiutil!

That's what I love about these threads: consistent advice! I'm reminded of that line from Stephen Leacock: "Lord Ronald said nothing; he flung himself from the room, flung himself upon his horse and rode madly off in all directions."

The one thing we all seem to agree on is moving the Warrior NE onto the forested hill, so I did that and stopped there:



(EDIT: sorry, something went awry with the image file. I may go back to the save to recapture the screenshot.)

Interesting. I see snow and tundra. I also see grasslands--good --and no resources--bad .

I am leaning away from settling in place for various reasons. First, to support rapid expansion, I'd like to preserve the forest for chopping. Yes, I'm going to use the whip, and I hope CFC's resident Grandmaster of Micro-Management, Zombie69, will continue to weigh in on that. But a forest is a forest is hammers.

In addition, I'd like to eventually mine the grassland hill the settler is on. Consider this: two citizens can work a cottaged floodplain and a grassland hill mine and break even on food. Working a plains hill mine requires another citizen to work a second cottaged floodplain, or a farmed floodplain. I'd rather have the cottage for the cash myself. Of course, this doesn't take into account the overall food production of the city, but we're not seeing any food resources yet.

Finally, I am increasingly mindful of additional cities. Hogging all the floodplains (10 if I settle in place) not only wipes out the Expansive trait's benefit, it also denies those floodplains to other cities. I may be better off sharing those tiles between two or more cities, which makes all of them lucrative, and flexible, too.

So if I build London 1 tile south of the Settler, on the river grassland tile, I claim what looks like 6 floodplains--just within the Expansive tolerance--and allow a city to the northeast, say on the forested plains tile 1 E of the Warrior, to claim 4 of the floodplains (along with several lovely grassland river tiles). Another city to the NW can claim what looks like another 3 or 4 FP over that way. I don't lose a turn, keep the fresh water health bonus and the silk tile, and preserve a forest for chopping and a hill for mining. And any hidden resource in the fog to the west remains in the fat cross. Downside: mainly that I trade a plains hill for a desert hill.

Thoughts?

Sisiutil said:

So if I build London 1 tile south of the Settler, on the river grassland tile, I claim what looks like 6 floodplains--just within the Expansive tolerance--and allow a city to the northeast, say on the forested plains tile 1 E of the Warrior, to claim 4 of the floodplains (along with several lovely grassland river tiles). Another city to the NW can claim what looks like another 3 or 4 FP over that way. I don't lose a turn, keep the fresh water health bonus and the silk tile, and preserve a forest for chopping and a hill for mining. And any hidden resource in the fog to the west remains in the fat cross. Downside: mainly that I trade a plains hill for a desert hill.

Click to expand...

Hmm... I like that. The one food you free up from mining the grassland hill will be offset by the one food loss from the desert hill. The difference being that the grassland hill will be used almost constantly throughout the game, while the desert hill won't matter until the capital is at maximum population. That site also allows, as you pointed out, more even use of the flood plains. Since one city can't work all of them from the start it would make more since to give several cities a piece of the pie to work on. That means more cottages being worked earlier. Sounds good.

Sisiutil said:

\
So if I build London 1 tile south of the Settler, on the river grassland tile, I claim what looks like 6 floodplains--just within the Expansive tolerance--and allow a city to the northeast, say on the forested plains tile 1 E of the Warrior, to claim 4 of the floodplains (along with several lovely grassland river tiles). Another city to the NW can claim what looks like another 3 or 4 FP over that way. I don't lose a turn, keep the fresh water health bonus and the silk tile, and preserve a forest for chopping and a hill for mining. And any hidden resource in the fog to the west remains in the fat cross. Downside: mainly that I trade a plains hill for a desert hill.

Click to expand...

Seems sound to me... go ahead! I'm going to bed here, be back in a couple hours, don't completely ruin the game before i can moderate you all

I feel that you should settle in place. I don't see any compelling reason to move as you're grabbing a lot of flood plains and hills in place. You don't have to get them all with one city. You're going to found others after all.

I do get the feeling that there are more resources present at your starting location. 1 sugar cannot be all there is I hope but a very very nice start anyway. The tile 2 north could have incense or there are some cows to your left. Just a gut feeling. On the other hand sugar has a tendency to stick together so if you would go 1 S you might get more of those. Tough choice. If it is the only resource then it is very likely that copper or iron will pop up in those mountains. And with so many flood plains working these hills won't be much of a problem.

I like your reasoning behind the grassland hill and the forest save. On the other hand by staying on the hill you will gain a lot more hammers from your starting point then the measly 20 hammers from the chop, so..... And on the hill you get the extra defense bonus and you are not loosing a turn.

I would stick to the starting spot. And build my second city 1E of the warrior right now. That could be your production city. 3 grassland hills, 4 flood plains and some other hills and propably 1 or 2 resources present. And almost a perfect dotmap location.

I'd go for 1 S too,

First you can settle immediately

Thing to remember is that you won't be using all the tiles till near end game, so you are trying to se what you get and lose rather than avoid.

Moving South basically gets you the Grassland Forest Hill you are on, and a bunch of Mystery Tiles in exchange for a few Floodplains, of which you have plenty... so go ahead and get it. [trading a few extra Floodplains that won't be used until midgame for Possible resources is fine.]... and those Floodplains can help boost the Cities to the North East and North West

i would settle in place because i'm sure there are special ressources in your fat cross.
Since you don't see too many, i'm inclined to think there is copper or iron in those plain hills to the north.
And it's very much possible there is something on the grassland too (iron on grassland = very good production, and food.
I'm afraid moving will cause a significant loss.

Second guess would be settling in the grassland south, so you can still have a city in the first turn.

You already moved your warrior, so my second point will fall flat, but i would have moved the warrior to the hut right after settling (please, give me bronze working ).
The point being to avoid lost research (no research done yet = no possible loss).
too late

edit : don't go for stonehenge early. In fact, don't wait for GP to help you much, you're not philo!

Sorry to interrupt the flow, but I wanted to go back to the earlier discussion of beelining. I'm intrigued by this notion of skipping techs, and wanted to look at what it might cost you.

The list of techs that are off the beeline:

Hunting
Archery
Monotheism
Horseback Riding
Optics
Drama
Music
Theology
Divine Right
Military Tradition
Nationalism
Constitution
Economics

Hunting -- no big deal unless you need camps, which so far you don't. Should pick it up in trade later.

Archery -- everybody's favorite to skip anyway. Commonly traded.

Monotheism -- So, you're giving up on the early religions... okay.

Horseback Riding -- no great loss.

So far, so good. But then we have:

Optics -- Eek. You're giving up on caravels, circumnavigation, and whales? I think this depends very much on gegraphy and neighbors. But even of both of these break just right, this is not an easy tech to ignore.

Drama -- No theaters, no culture slider. No biggie, but if you skip this for long, you're implicitly giving up a Culture win.

Theology -- No Christianity either.

Divine Right -- And no Islam. Okay, so you're going to steal your religions? This implies one early war. But, um, without Theocracy.

Military Tradition -- And without Cavalry. Well, okay, early war. But no West Point.

Nationalism -- Hmm. I see a pattern here. You're beelining to Redcoats so you can fight a war. But you're passing up several key techs that are commonly used for warfighting.

You could grab these quickly afterwards, I guess; and it should certainly be possible to fight a midgame war with Redcoats but without Theocracy or cavalry. Still, you are taking some hits.

Will watch with interest.


Waldo

you will need nationalism :
drafting a redcoat costs only 1 pop!