ALC Game 33: Korea / Wang Kon

4000 BC
I agree with the logic of moving the warrior 1N. No interesting tiles, so I'm in favor of moving the settler south. The plains hill is very attractive, though I risk a city with no hills! I can move the settler SE first to see if there's anything promising, however.

Is it worth the risk, to grab more resources and possibly some riverside financial grassland? Since I start with mining, I have chops (at least two) to fall back on if the gambit doesn't work, so I go for it. You only Civ once.

Southeast reveals that I have at least one hill, so I end the turn on the plains hill. Ahh, now I have plenty of food, marble, a 2-hammer tile, three hills, and two financial riverside plains wine that I can farm to solve my early commerce troubles. The only thing I'm lacking is great cottage potential, but I have enough food to run 8 riverside cottages—6 of them plains—if it's absolutely necessary. A good capital.

3960 BC
Seoul is founded in the hills overlooking Forked River.

We have the lovely possibility of working a wine tile while building a 15-turn worker. If I understand research bonuses correctly, this means that our research of 12+1=13 will get us hunting in 5 turns and then our research of (12+1)*1.2 = 15 will get us animal husbandry in 11 turns, exactly when our worker will land on the pigs. That's so perfect that considering any other opening seems pointless. (ha, the joke was on me! my addled brain failed to realize that the oasis is available at turn 5, so it should really be a 13-turn worker. ah well)

Now, where to send the warrior? Desert to the south and plains, possibly ocean, to the east. We're financial, so exploring the river seems very attractive. He'll check the northern coast for seafood, since he's one tile away, then he'll cut SW towards the river.

Whale is revealed. Doesn't mean much for us now, but the +2 happy faces later will be welcome.

3800 BC
In the west we find a desert, and a scout claiming to be sent by someone named "Cyrus", who likes vassalage and wears two earrings. He's imperialistic, so we'd better hurry to grab the flood plains here.

3760 BC

Gold! We can work the corn and a riverside financial gold without even getting a border pop. We want a settler there as fast as humanly possible without screwing Seoul too badly. Cyrus is probably SW, though possibly NW.

3640 BC
Meet the Romans, who come from somewhere in the south.

3440 BC
Our warrior is killed in the jungle at 9.1% odds. He ain't no fortunate one.

3320 BC
We're starting the pigs and a replacement warrior, while working our lovely financial oasis. Bronze working seems to be the strongest play here. We already have mining, we certainly have the commerce for it, and it will speed up our settler, which will speed up our access to the delicious gold tile.

There is a horse visible to the south of Seoul, but I see little reason to claim it with our second city. It will be accessible with a border pop on turn 51, and that can stand as our barbarian backup plan for the time being.

I would like more scouting information. I still don't know where Cyrus is, so prioritizing city sites is going to be harder than it would be if our warrior hadn't bit the big one.

3040 BC
In light of the previous comment, I'm going to get a second warrior before the settler. It allows us to grow to size 3 and work the pigs, cow, and oasis, while giving us a touch more commerce to line up our timing for bronze working. One warrior will go northwest to check for more land, and the second will guard the new city site.

2840 BC
A little tile micro and I get bronze working in time to save a worker turn without delaying my settler. No bronze in sight, though.

Now what to research? There are several attractive options, but here are the factors: My production will be tied up with workers, and until then my one worker will be busy improving the corn in my new city. After that I will have an explosion of commerce. I'm financial and my new city is ideal for cottaging, so much so that I am heavily motivated to move the palace there for bureaucracy. (three flood plains, five riverside grassland, and enough food to work the gold and all five riverside plains with a surplus) I do not yet have enough information to plan for future expanding. I have an unclaimed gold to the west with sheep, clams, a plains hill, and the ability to share the corn with my future cottage city. I have access to horse in 22 turns, but no copper. I already have bronze working, and plenty of trees in my capital. I have mysticism. Last but not least, I have access to marble.

Playing for the oracle takes advantage of my high commerce and readily available hammers from chopping, as well as my mysticism starting tech, and to a lesser extent the marble. But what tech would I play for? Feudalism is a distinct possibility, but it's hard to imagine what use I would have for it besides a very delicious trading chip. (though to be honest, I'm tempted to do it just for style points)

The real holy grail, though, would be using the oracle to take civil service. But is it even possible? I would need fast writing for a great scientist to bulb mathematics. I would have to run scientists for 17 turns, and writing will take at least 11 turns. That gives me the bulb at 1720 BC. In another thread AbsoluteZero claims that the oracle is safe 60% of the time at this date. Less than optimal. Self-teching both mathematics and code would require nearly 1200 beakers (accounting for discounts) for all the setup, assuming that I skip masonry. Even with two golds, that's well into the realm of fantasy in under 25 turns.

OK, so we won't go for CS, though I'm sorely tempted. The most promising oracle shot, in my eyes, is monarchy. We have two wine tiles, which is a big plus, but it's really about the future cottage city. +4 health from the forests, -1 from the floodplains, and +2 from the fresh water, as well as +6 health from our visible resources, giving us +11 health total. With the food surplus, tolerating some unhealth and chopping some of the forests, we should be able to grow to size 12 and run 11 riverside financial cottages plus the gold tile.

The question is, is that really better than using the oracle for the more expensive code of laws and self-teching monarchy? Hard to say, but I don't have to decide right now. The oracle it is. First agriculture, then masonry, then the wheel, then priesthood. Probably.

2520 BC

Cyrus is already creeping in to the west—I think he settled on the stone. That leaves me with only one possible city site to claim the clams, gold, and sheep, and block off cyrus from the northwest, without border problems. I should get it soon. Going up to four workers to prepare for the sudden barrage of necessary chops and tile improvements—I should be able to chop out a settler before the oracle. And the sooner I can get a chariot, the better.

1760 BC

Bad, bad news. Not what you want to see as soon as you found a city. My chances of losing the city are high, though I'm not certain whether he can enter my borders yet.

1720 BC
He went for P'yongyang instead, which now has two warriors and a chariot on the way. Seoul has two archers looking menacing on the borders, but it's a hill city with two warriors. It might slow down the oracle though.

1600 BC
Oracle'd monarchy. Waiting for writing would have delayed me a few turns, so I went for pottery instead. Revolt into slavery and HR. Time to farm the hell out of P'yongyang, as well as fogbust and settle more blocking cities as production allows. Heading for writing to get my GP on.

1240 BC

Rome has Praetorians out, and he's going to steal my sugar and spice!

1120 BC
Getting aesthetics. I can settle the SE wheat and fish so I do so. P'yongyang will love the health.

1040 BC
I spy a fish up north so I grab the last sugar instead.

925 BC

P'yongyang is coming along nicely. Time to start the cottages after whipping a library and monastery. I'll start the palace shortly as well.

825 BC
Somehow it slipped my mind that aesthetics is a lower priority given that I already have monarchy. No matter, now I can trade to my heart's content. I give aesthetics to Rome for alphabet, then pick up iron working and fishing from Persia for meditation, priesthood, writing. I'll get sailing next turn, and I'm going to go directly for code of laws, to try to get civil service ASAP. It would be nice if I could trade for mathematics, so I gift writing around.

700 BC
A great prophet. Saving for a golden age, at least for bureaucracy and pacifism. Seoul will be my GP farm. It's not great but it can run five scientists.

575 BC

Founded confucianism, which I'll spread to religionless Mongolia to stir the pot. I'll stop for now. My worker count is too low, but besides that I'm in great shape. I'm going to try to expand for the NE crabs, fur, and iron if possible, and otherwise I'll seal off my borders and take the barbarian city. Cyrus has just planted a city that should culture flip shortly, though I think I'd rather burn it to the ground and rebuild 1E.

My research pace will explode soon, and I'll have a lot of options for liberalism.

I just noticed that Cyrus is plotting war, and it's quite likely to be me. I'll explore my options there, but maybe I can convert to Judaism and bribe Caesar into war. Or maybe I can just rush for feudalism and abuse my protective trait. We shall see.

Well, long story short, I awkwardly tried to go after Caesar with cavalry and got dogpiled by the entire continent.

i could maybe see it on deity but this is only immortal i believe. Even on deity... nah... taking advantage of stupidity, sure, but begging 1 gold to get a 10turn peace treaty is the next thing to abusing a bug. IMO.

Begging for a ten turn grace period is a programmed part of the game, and it's a major reason that diplomacy is so important at higher difficulties. Using someones pleased status to avoid war declarations like that is no cheaper than luring AI defenders out of cities, backstabbing, pre-chopping wonders, or any of the various other ways to get an advantageous position over the AI that has huge flat bonuses to make up for it's lack of actual strategy.

I consider this more of a work-around than an exploit; there really should be ways to make short term agreements like that. It probably should involve you giving something up, but this way works, too.

By the way, people have said that AIs are supposed to choose different targets during this grace period, right? Because I just tried this recently, but the AI just waited out the ten turns and backstabbed me anyway. That makes it even less exploitative, imo.

the extra room they have to expand as I left it on standard size when the map script gives extra land compared to most map scripts. So they were expanding for longer than normal instead of wonder whoring

The game began with a decision between researching Hunting or Agriculture as the required prerequisite to Animal Husbandry. In the end there were two main voting issues. The first is that Agriculture opens up the ability to improve corn, wheat, and rice, while Hunting allows improvements of fur, ivory, and deer. The agriculture resources are more frequent. On the other hand, Hunting is quicker to research and means that our worker would spend less time waiting to work. So I chose hunting as the first tech and braced myself for all the grains in the fog. Given that I'd already moved, settling in place was a no-brainer.



I started on a worker while working the wine. The wine here is best as there's no reason to hurry the speed of our worker since it's still going to get in before Animal Husbandry. Therefore we want to get that tech as quickly as possible and the way to do that is by focusing on commerce.

Alright, with the player moves out of the way let's go explore the demographics screen.



Using the links I used previously, lessons from r_rolo1 and the demographics screen explained, I'm doing my best to get some information from this screen.

My value is 19. Remember that GNP is all sources of where commerce can go: gold, beakers, espionage, and culture. So my 19 comes like this: 8 commerce from the palace, 1 commerce for free (thanks Vranasm), 1 commerce from the city tile, 3 commerce from the wine, 4 espionage points from the palace, and 2 culture from the palace. 8+1+1+3+4+2=19. Excellent. Looking at the other AIs we see that somebody is at 22! I'm not sure if this is high. I'll have to look more into the research bonuses AIs get at Immortal as I'm not at all familiar. If anyone has a link handy that'd be great. If not, I'll go find one myself at some in the future.

Mfg goods at this point in the game is very simple as it's the raw hammers produced. Again, I'm not sure on the details, but I don't think an expansive AI building a worker has a higher Mfg per turn. Although I'm not certain. More reading by me is clearly required here. But settling on the plains hill looks good for us as we're leading the pack!

Crop yield is also what it sounds like. An AI with 5 means that somewhere an AI is working a 3F tile, so either a flood plain, a corn, a pig, or a fish. Skipping ahead to Life Expectancy we see that there's an AI with a super super low life expectancy. I think we can safely reach the conclusion that somewhere an AI has a flood plain heavy capital and is working one of those and suffering from the unhealth (remember that fractal replaces all jungle with forests, so we know no AI has jungle in his capital). In this case we don't know about traits, but for future reference an AI can only have a life expectancy of 93 or above if he is expansive.

Land area is easy to interpret at this stage. You get 1000 square km for each land tile in your borders. So we have 9 land tiles and therefore 9000 square km. But somewhere there is a coastal AI with only 6 land tiles. It's possible that an AI has a lake, but fractal doesn't usually produce large inland lakes. This particular demographic can be very valuable if for instance you can determine that there are no coastal AIs and the Great Lighthouse can therefore be delayed.

At this point population doesn't mean anything, but we'll talk about it later.

Finally, the approval rate from the most popular AI means that there's a Charismatic AI out there.



This screen shows land area. The game rounds to two decimal places so it's not perfect, but quite close. In this game we know that 9 land tiles means 1% of the land tiles. So we can determine that this map contains 900 land tiles. Aren't we awesome!

Two turns later the situation has changed.



The important thing from this screen is the land area. Note that we've had some borders pop which indicates a creative civ somewhere. We could use the information we have about traits and leaders that are not in the game to narrow down possible leaders, but I'm just not going to bother. Two more turns later we see this:



Everybody who settled in place has now popped borders and we see that some poor civ has just 11 land tiles. This confirms our early belief that there's a coastal civilization out there somewhere. We can also reach the conclusion due to the high food count and plummeting life expectancy that the civ with the flood plains heavy capital has grown and is now working two flood plains. More analysis can be done on these demographic screens and for those who want to spend the time a lot of information can be extracted from them.

Back to playing!



Animal Husbandry was next for super obvious reasons. We have cows and pigs and a worker soon to be finished.



Our borders popped this turn and I made sure to switch to the oasis. The oasis is identical to the wine for our worker building purposes plus another food. So no reason at all not to switch as the oasis is far and away the best tile we have to work.

My warrior had continued east and discovered a coast to the south. I was confident that there was coast to the north. So I had a decision to make. I could continue east to discover more land that was too far away to settle but land where I could meet another AI. Or I could double back and learn not too much about the land but could explore directly to the west. I flew around in my chopper.



Above we can see what's going on to the east. There are definitely lots of trees and at least half a dozen more land tiles. It becomes likely that there's an AI over there. To the southwest, seen in turnset 0, was jungle and probably also other civilizations but I wasn't wanting to go over there since I thought it likely I'd find something further east.

And in very quick succession we meet three leaders. These first two from the southwest somewhere.





And Bismarck to the east.



Unfortunately in a greedy attempt to unfog more land tiles I didn't move on to a forest which meant my warrior had only 76% odds to win if the lion attacked him from across the river.





I ended the turnset soon after when Animal Husbandry came in.



I have my worker ready to start pasturing the pigs and I've selected Bronze Working as a place holder. It's worth mentioning at this point that Julius recently revolted to slavery meaning he went Bronze Working first and we therefore get a discount on it. The surrounding land looks like this:



Note the horses and gold right around Seoul.

So we have some options about what to do. Whenever I see horses and gold I think horse archer rush. But we do have a unique unit that meshes better with a slow moving army. Comments?

Is this game typical of immortal games? All of these blood-thirsty civs who still manage to tech way faster than me was quite discouraging. I don't think I'm gonna try Immortal for awhile. I mean, it seems like Ceaser had a lot of jungle. Sure, he also had double gems, ivory, and iron, but it should've taken him a long time to dig his way out of that, right? And Cyrus. Good ole Cyrus had to have had at least three cities by the time I got my second, and probably more. He is imperial, but I don't remember his cap having the kind of production he would need to take advantage of that--iirc, he had a lot of seafood but no production.

And it just so happens that scouting west first instead of east will reveal a more-or-less perfect site on a desert hill with floodplains, second gold, wet corn and plains hill sheep with all but the gold immediately workable if i recall correctly. Being slow to settle west will probably lose you that spot to Persia you make the game way, way harder for yourself.