TSG121 Opening Actions

I build my magnificent to be capital, start researching mining and producing a worker. Impoving those salt for +1/+1 is priority. Another turn later my warrior finds byblos. They give me 30 gold which allows me to buy the salt tile that i will need for my second citizen.

T8: Ruin gives pop, buy tile for new pop.

T10: Mining -> Pottery. Will build shrine to get god of sea pantheon.

T17 Pottery -> A.Husbandry.

T22. A.Husbandy -> Archery. After long deliberation, decided to capture Byblos before everyone is all over me.

T24. Shrine -> Granary.

T28. Archery -> Calendar

T32. Granary -> 3x archer

T41. Capture worker, get spearman damaged and heal to 91HP.

T44. Archers ready, mount for attack. Produce Settler.

T50. Byblos is mine, took a worker in the process.

T60. Optics -> Writing. Decide its too late for TGL and it aint that important anyways if i will be peacefull. Build small lighthouse instead.

T65. Writing->Philo

T67. Small lighthouse ready with 3 fishing boats out there.

T73. Purchased trireme meets portugal. Trade salt for silver.

T76. Philo->Next research goal: math for courhouse. Start building NC.

T87. NC->Oracle.
T96. Oracle-> Petra. Golden age starts. Tradition complete.

T103 demographics:
Capital size 14. producing 28.75 food, 33.6 prod, 40.5 science.
New york size 8.
Byblos size 6.

Opening:
Luxuries, river, mountain for observatory, hill for a second production. Looks like a settle in place, but lets move the warrior first.
I aint gonna move away from this mountain, river and luxes for sure so moving north is not helpfull, i move the warrior west acros the river and see marble.

Either i build in place and expand to the marble. My capital will have a bonus from the hill starting out with 2/5 food/prod, 2/7 at size 2 with territory expansion but no work done yet.
The second city will have a low production start but can get the sheep acros the water to bring it to 6 production using sheep, improved cow and salt.
That would enable it to build a small but not great lighthouse and become a nice city with great food and decent production after that. The capital meanwhile will have a little less food but more production potential.
Mid game, the twin cities would have about 20 - 25 base production respectively.

Or i move. Now my capital starts out with 3/4, 3/5 at size 2 with no work done yet. A bit less than staying.
Mid game it could grow to 35 base production although it needs some more population for that, but it does have the food potential to grow that.
This city would be a combination of magnificent food and good production. It would be able to build the wonders i want. After learning in civ3 not to bother with wonders, im a noob again and wonders look sexy.
Great lighthouse seems obvious to me. Would there be time to also squize in a great library ? (love those things that also give a free building). At 15% reduction makes me feel like im building a wonder for 85 shields.
And of course the national college. Ok enough for the noobish wonder drooling. I need to make choises.

I move. It starting out slower and taking quite a while before i can actually utilize so many awesome tiles, I still aint sure its the right thing, but i move because i have noobish visions of a magnificent city full of wonders. The whole world will be in awe of it. (why arent we doing cultural victory?)

I build my magnificent to be capital, start researching mining and producing a worker. If i understand it correctly, working the salt will give me both a food and production and theres 2 of those so this is priority.
Another turn later my warrior finds byblos. They give me 30 gold which allows me to buy the salt tile that i will need for my second citizen. (the noob that i am hadent even thought of this. Without the gold i would be screwed upon city growth for a few turns)
T8: My warrior finds a hut that adds a pop. Gotta buy another 2 food tile, i choose not for the marble as my city will take that in 8 turns anyway and instead take the grassland that leads towards the second salt.

T10 Mining -> Pottery. Plannig to build a shrine after the worker to get God of the sea pantheon i start researching pottery next. Tough decision since it means my first settler will be rather late, but i want this 1 city to be as awesome as it gets. Not even sure if i will build any more cities. Although they are nice to send cargo ships to the capital. Capturing Byblos might be an option too though.

T16-17 Pottery is coming 1 turn late. I spent 1 turn prebuilding a settler. My warrior has just picked up a spear and scouted the whole island. I sent the spearman to byblos to see if it can grab another worker for me there.
Proceed researching animal husbandry.

T22. First AI founded a pantheon, good they chose the same useless one they always seem to do. (godess of protection).
Lets pray that i will get my godess of the sea with this somewhat late shrine build. I think i dont care too much about the later religion stuff.

I need to start a new tech. Time to have a plan. Looking at this island, it looks like byblos should be mine. 3 cities on 3 penensulas surounding my capital seems so perfect.
I have 4 wishes: The great lighthouse. National College. Capture Byblos before anyone gets to know me. Expand with self made cities to the north east and south east penensulas.
Both expanding and the national college are not contested but they are very important boosts. TGL and byblos must happen asap or they wont happen at all.
TGL is also a nice boost trough it giving me a normal lighthouse and thus quite a worthy investment even on the short term, though not as worthy as the expansions or NC.
Byblos is going to be a heavy, investment, but it might be so valuable in the long term. I am not sure if i can combine it with TGL though. It requires me to research at least archery, possibly also the wheel.
It would be nice if i could get my spearman damaged and healed to 9x HP so it can stand in the forest and take the city defences attacks there while healing itself. Receiving 20 and healing 10, it would be able to stand there for at least 6 turns and still be able to capture the city.
In those 6 turns ill need to deal about 300 dmg to the city including its healing. meaning 50 per turn. 3 archers or 2 chariot archers should be able to do that.
If he has a defending unit as well, id need one more. 1 unit difference clearly isnt worth researching the wheel. So archery and 3-4 archers it is.
Then comes the happiness. I will need Calendar and masonry to connect 3 more luxuries that enable me to handle the capture. I can research those while i build the archers. But how late is my TGL going to be ?
Doesnt matter that much actually, if id go for TGL instead of capture, id be expanding first anyway and still need those luxes. TGL aint that important that i set aside all forms of expansion and NC for it.
So its either settler(s) - TGL or archers - TGL. I choose to be bold its now or never, i cant take that city after meeting all the other civs. Archery it is. Lets hope the poor sap builds me a worker before i take him.

T24. Shrine ready, 4 turns till archery. What to build in those 4 turns (meh, should have gotter archery before animal husbandry)
I choose to prebuild 4 turns on granary because it wont halt my growth and after capturing byblos i probably wont have the happiness to expand anyways.
Other than that i could prebuild worker, but i hope to capture 1 instead. I actually just end up finishing the granary.
If i choose to use that food to work a hill during archer production, i will finish them in the same time. Or i just keep growing at max speed and probably win back much of those 4 turns also....

T41. Out comes a worker ! perfect timing. My 3th archer is almost done. I take the worker now and have a few turns to heal up my spearman to just not full health before the archers come in.


T44. 3 archers, a 91 HP spearman. Ready for attack. Unfortunately my capital doesnt have anything usefull to build for the comming 6 turns while i research sailing so i start building a settler after all.
Ill probably not be able to use it before i get down a courthouse in byblos though which i find out now takes a bunch more tech.
I build it anyway. I will soon be occupied building workboats and TGL for quite a while so its not to bad if its there.(90% prebuild at least). And i really dont need anything else that i can build now.
Didnt realise i need math for courthouses. Starting to get a little nervous, but with 2 more luxes i should be at 16 happiness and then ill have monarchy pretty soon. Hopefully it will work out.

T46. Uh oh, upon moving onto the forest i see yellow borders. I guess someone is going to whitness my agression.
T47. They didnt speak to me. I move it out of the forest to keep it that way. I need just 2 more rounds of archer fire, 1 of my archers can take a hit while spears move around to hill on the other side.

T50. Byblos is mine and noone knows about it. Still at + 5 happiness before the spices are connected ! Awesome.
I aint sure if i should go on with my TGL plans though. Its already turn 50 and i got 12 turns of reasearching optics to do before i can even start building it.
Had some messages about AI entering classical era already. Ill keep researching optics though, if not a great lighthouse, ill want a small one at least and it seems math can be postponed a bunch.
+9 with spices connected - 3 for the expansion leaves 6 for population till monarchy. That will add another 4.

T60. Optics ready. Capital could produce TGL in 12. I aint going to risk it, ill build a normal lighthouse. The TGL benefits arent that important anyway as i intent to be quite peacefull from here on.
Ill first research writing now so that my new towns can start working on the library and then hurry for math before philo. They will need their time for those libs anyways.
The guy across the water still hasnt send a unit to his beach but now i can embark so my spearman pays him a visit. I sell him 3 horses for 2 gold each but hold on to my extra salt for now. Hopefully i can trade it for different luxes somewhere.

T65. after writing i go for philo after all. With monarchy coming in 2 turns, i should be able to grow new york from 2-4 and washington 7-10.
Byblos has to stay size 3 for the time being but it doesnt have much food anyway and should focus on production to get his library done asap.

T67. Lighthouse ready, 3 fishing boats out there. 18 food, 17 production. Building a library and cargo ship now before NC. I purchase a trireme in New york for some scouting. Its time to meet people and trade luxes.
T73. Trireme meets portugal. Trade salt for silver. It may soon be time to expand again, but first the NC.

T76. From here i suppose its mostly a tech game. I dont even know what i will need for diplo victory yet, but i assume it happens in later ages.
So ill focus on tech. I guess my most significant mid term goal is university and observatory. If along the way i can also develop religion that might seems interesting to me too.
Chichen itza is also something i really like a lot even though civil service is maybe not the top priority with so little river and so much food from the water already.
But i guess its time to take a break now and read up on diplomatic victories before proceeding.

Research goals: Math(Courthouse) - Currency(petra) -Trapping(Camp) -Civil Service(Chichen if bored) - Education(University) - Compas(Harbors+gold) - Astronomy(Observatory) - Banking(Forbiden P) - Architecture
Maybe i can take a little sidetrack in the production boost tree, but probably after astro.

T83 My scouting spearmen come across an interestingly positioned barbarian archer quite similar to the interestingly positioned barbs in the north.
Surprisingly they allow my embarked spearmen to live, so i can discover the natural wonder they guard.

T87 NC finished - Oracle.
T96 Oracle - Petra. Golden age starts. Tradition complete.

T103 Petra finished.

I planned to build Petra in New York because it had a lot of desert tiles; didn't realize the city tile has to be on or adjacent to a desert tile. (I know it says that right in the description, but I thought you just had to have desert in your cultural borders) But Washington was settled on a desert hill, so I built Petra there. It overlaps several of New York's desert tiles.

Portugal and Greece have both sent prophets to my largest city and converted it. I told them not to do that and they agreed, but then Greece did it again 5 or 6 turns later. We have a declaration of friendship that must have started the turn before he sent the 1st GP because it has 43 turns left, so if I denounce him that makes me the bad guy.

Now that I have caravels frigates and privateers out and about, I'm finding lots of CS's and they are all strongly allied to Portugal. I'm researching Refrigeration right now (a bit out of order because I don't have Replaceable Parts or Plastics yet), so I can buy a hotel in Washington and start spamming submarines for when I have to declare war on one of them in the near future. I have the smallest military, so when I declare war they should immediately send waves of ships and embarked units at me. I'm stockpiling cash (got about 10000 gold in the bank) to buy-out key CS's first, and to survive my cargo ships all getting plundered.

Poland just pick the Order ideology and I'm getting 6 unhappiness from that, and I don't have a lot of happiness to spare because my cities are so large. I'm almost finished building the Eiffel Tower, and that should help. I'm still 3 policies away from Treaty Organization, but I should be able to get a free one from the World's Fair.

HG went much earlier in my game.

I went Education -> Navigation, meanwhile getting a +100 gold religion and building Borobudur to get enough money for Frigate upgrades. Went after Portugal first and annexed Lisbon because it's a pretty good city.

Next was the PP beeline and delay. My rule of thumb is to finish PP when I'm able to get to Sci Theory in 10 turns afterwards with one bulb (so typically I take Acoustics and Banking first). For a 1-cycle game you have 32-34 turns after PP to finish up all the techs, so 10 turns to get ST, 10 turns to build schools, 8 turns to get max bulb value and then a few turns to bulb usually works fine. You can delay less if you have a kickass empire and/or are able to buy schools once they're available. You need to delay more or just go for 2 cycles if you think you can't finish Rationalism in time, or you have very low production, or if the conquest is going slowly etc.

Once you reach Industrial it's a good idea to invest into cultural CSs and pop a GA. This maximizes your culture output (and helps build schools quicker) so you can just burn your GWs once the golden age ends. For ideology I took Freedom because the extra influence from unit gifts is a very good tenet for warlike Diplo, and it's nice to work all the specialists and still grow a bit.

Having a warmonger AI to gift cities you capture helps so much. You avoid the stupid 5% science penalty and all the unhappiness issues. I should've let Genghis live after killing his units. Another huge mistake was getting the second army too late to kill Sweden... And another thing I should've done was to declare war on AIs far away from me and take their cities in peace deals (and subsequently gift them to Mongolia).

Faith requirement is just 1000 for one scientist. Usually that + Rati finisher + LToP and PT + natural-born scientists is enough. Sometimes it's overkill, other times you lose the race by 1 turn, depends on how strong your empire is. I've lost by 1 turn way too many times, so take my advice with a grain of salt.