T1-4: Temple of Doom

I'm up? I'll pick up the save tonight and play it. I'm curious about the city siting. It seems to me that a location that includes the gold in the BFC of a new city would be more desireable?

I concur with the attempt at the Code of Laws slingshot. I'll try to head in that direction, making sure we get the prerequisites in order.

frankcor said:

I'm up? I'll pick up the save tonight and play it. I'm curious about the city siting. It seems to me that a location that includes the gold in the BFC of a new city would be more desireable?

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Not in this case: desert gold is rarely workable so there's not much point in getting it the BFC. This one seems to have quite a lot of desert around it too, which makes it not worth having unless there are strategic resources nearby.

Which gold are you talking about? When I look at the desert gold hill in the northwest I count no less than three corn fields in the neighborhood, or am I missing something?

Yeah, that's the one I'm talkin' about, too. I hope that Iron shows up in that desert area.

Inherited turn (2020 BC): As I took my seat at the head of the conference table, I informed the assembled advisors of the goals established for us by our great leader, Montezuma:
1. Establish a 2nd city
2. Construct the Oracle to obtain Code of Laws
3. Start building a freakin' army, for goodness sakes!

Reports from our scouts indicate that Montezuma's prefered site for a 2nd city has been settled already by the French:


Well good, Napoleon did us a favor. That's one less settler we'll be forced to train. We were training a garrison unit in our capital and when it is completed, we should begin training a settler for our 2nd city. I issued orders to have our western scout return to set up a watchpost for protection against barbarians. Meanwhile, our western scout was directed to continue his investigations of that part of the world. The current garrison, a warrior, was directed to scout the north in search of metals with which we train build better units when the garrison is trained.

Turn 1 (1990 BC): Our scientists discovered Priesthood and began researching Bronze Working(19).


Turn 3 (1930 BC): The Archer at Tenochtitlan was completed and work began on a Settler(13) just as the city grew to size 6.

. . .

Turn 7 (1810 BC): Our eastern scout stumbles into an ambush:


They would turn the tables on the invader and survive the attack.

. . .

Turn 12 (1660 BC): Our northern scout (former capital garrison died at the hands of a Barbarian Warrior. Our nearby archer moves into position to avenge the death.

Turn 13 (1630 BC): Our Archer killed the wounded Barbarian warrior.

. . .

Turn 15 (1570 BC): Our western scout got killed by a Barbarian Archer.

That's it. I lost two good scouts but killed two barbarian warriors. There are several Barbarian Archers wandering around the north. We found another source of gold up there so we may want to rethink where to put the 2nd city. The Settler will be finished next turn, and can start heading north. Our eastern scout might be able to bust some fog for him. Bronze Working will be complete in 5 turns so I'd wait to see if copper shows up before final selection.

Here's The Save. Good luck and have fun.

Ooh, let's move a citizen from a plains forest to a mine.

Because of all the land tiles on Oasis I think we'll see many more barbs, but AI expansion should cut them back.

I just realized that HC and Nap have been in Slavery for a couple turnsets. That might be partly why HC hasn't expanded toward us yet. By the way from GNP graph it looks like he just hooked up Gold (or those Furs). The French colony, I guess it was wishful thinking that it was Orleans rather than Lyons!

Gold is tempting and we could try it, but doesn't the area seem vulnerable to barbs? Settling in El Intestino Grueso would give us a smaller fog frontier. Speaking of which, here's another dotmap. No need to take this very seriously, I just really enjoy dotmapping. So I'd been thinking of a monster production city at A1, but even B is of Heroic Epic quality, IMO. C is surprisingly interesting - it doesn't have a ton of food, but at positive health it could start with a flood farm and gold and add 10 cottages, 2 oases, and 3 mines, always with a food surplus of at least 2. Anyway, I wouldn't settle this settler before finishing BW either, but IMO with Archers and Jags we can afford some flexibility about when we hook copper up. These other sites emphasize cramming "free" cities around Tenochtitlan, but it's unlikely that HC would put cities right were I'd want.

I would like to harp on my opinion that to get anything from Alphabet we'd have to do it soon.

When should we start the Oracle, right after the settler? To me, it's a tough call how many Archers (possibly zero) to build first.

Bede said:

Which gold are you talking about? When I look at the desert gold hill in the northwest I count no less than three corn fields in the neighborhood, or am I missing something?

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Yeah but there's only one that I can see would be irrigible before CS and this desert corn is only a 4-0-0 total yield.

EDIT: ooooh! I'm up already, so take this as a got it.

Re: Oracle. We've not followed the plan to take Writing before BW, so I'll to check the time for Oracle versus the time to Writing. What this does do, however, is open up an Oracle Ironworking grab.

Given the lay of land, this might not be a bad option. Jags will deal with Barb Archers and, on helpful terrain, they'll see off Barb Axes too. What do you guys think? Having gained XP on Barbs, we could maybe have a go at Lyons, though I think Parisian culture maybe a bit too much w/o catapults.

Re: Settler. We need to head northwards and any of A, B and D could work, though I favour an A site. I'll try to post up some screenies of the north before playing, along with an analysis of the Oracle build-times.

Jet said:

I would like to harp on my opinion that to get anything from Alphabet we'd have to do it soon.

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I'd have to disagree on this point: with HC finding Buddha, we'd only have Boney as a trading partner and that's one or two too few to extract good value from early Alphabet. Let's see who pops up out of the fog...

I know I probably messed up the plan going for Bronze Working instead of Writing. I hope the Oracle plan can still work but I thought it'd be good to know where copper is before committing to the 2nd city.

Well I've had a look at the save and I'm a bit concerned about the lack of fog-clearers to the north, so our settler will have to take the long way there: heading initially towards our warrior to the NE.

Position A is my preference but I've marked a2 on the map in case I feel we need a better defensive location.

PS: when we our archers become eligible for a promo, consider that Guerilla is just as effective as CD if our city is on a hill; it also means we can send out these guys to act a lightnin rods for barbs.

Hi Guys - interrupted my turnset for this update on discovery of BW. If a picture paints a thousand words then check these two. I'm gonna break for some food, so if I don't hear to the contrary by 1900 CET then I'll settle under the sign.

Why not settle ne of the copper, to get the gold within its borders, and it leaves more room for the original cityspot. To mention will be superfluous, but don't forget to use the plainforest in the capital.

I don't think a net trade of desert gold and one grassland pays out long term against 2 FPs. To work the gold you'd need also work the plains corn, which was envisaged for position A. I'd favour moving A one east to claim the oasis.

As the jury's out, as it were, I'll hang on a bit longer before playing.

The 2 FP's can be taken by the city on position A, so they don't get lost, and A can do fine without this plainscorn. IT's just having working a goldhill is great in the beginning of the game, plus the extra citizen.

I agree let's grab the copper. city2 and city2-1W per Asperger are both good. I think city2-1W is slightly better so that we can work gold for short-term beakers - even if we could, I don't think we could afford in terms of the variant to settle both gold spots in the near future.

At least at first trading tech with HC should be easy by switching to no SR, right? Point granted we haven't met many civs in total.

Iron Working? Hmm... Well switching to a plains forest we should certainly be able to get the Oracle as soon as Writing. I'd say probably not, since for the price of The Wheel (admittedly, not one we should necessarily pay) we could get Axemen. I wouldn't have a huge problem with IW, but it would commit us to an attack plan, and I'd think we'd need to attack HC in order to assimilate his religion.

Actually I think we may need an Archer for barbs before we finish the Oracle. Here's one possibility. At least put one turn of an Archer in the queue so that it can be whipped at less penalty if there's an emergency.

Well it's 1.5 to 1 for the goldmine, so I'll go there. I'll also give 1 turn to an Archer in the big T.

One thing to note is that City 2 will empty our coffers pretty rapidly. And Jet, Oracle will complete before Writing as things stand (18 vs 20).

Even after switching a citizen from a rice farm to a plains forest?

Well you seen how the first few went, except for meeting Shaka on turn 3...I met Ramesses in turn 7 and settled 'little T' on turn 8 (monument). Working the oasis boosts the discovery of writing considerably, so that it will now complete 1 turn before the Oracle. I'd taken some big FoW risks moving our worker over to little T and he was set on improving the copper on arrival. Judaism FIDL in turn 10 and the next turn we learn it was Ramesses.

Switched to max production in big T, but we have some barb troubles. Luckily for us, Boney's warrior took out an archer, so we only have 1 archer and 1 warrior closing in...

However, we can afford to let Oracle production slide as we will be able to whip it after 1 more turn's work. Thus I’d recommend switching to the Archer in the queue before hitting enter.

YAY! We got copper! And gold too? I lost track of dot maps there.

I like Swiss Pauli's suggestion for building some archers after the dust settles and posting fog busters. But not too many. We'll need some barbarian archers to help train our axemen.