ALC Game #23: America/Lincoln

Sisiutil said:

Huayna is incredibly close
As for Archery, ... I think in future immortal games I'll pursue Archery right off the bat.

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Not that it will do much good, if you have Incan Quechua bearing down on you.

The placement of Washington and New York is probably for the best given your cramped start. Monty may take one or both and allow you to decide where you want the cities to be sited for the long haul.

After your two Amerind neighbours, I was half expecting Pacal. As it was, the start made me wish America was isolated.

Building the first worker with half the food bar full... Chopping a forest before farming the corn?? Then building the settler with quite some food in the bar already.. Your early game MM really isn\t the strong part of the game eh? Not like it'll matter all that much in the end though... City 1 looks nice with double gems and borrowing food resource from the capital as well as claiming copper. City 2 really wants to be one E though as with that many flooplains you really want the river... The sugar won't matter for a long long time... Would probably settle cities further out before thinking about the blue and the red city though... The AI doesn't settle behind your borders early but it does claim the land early on immortal so just settle cities to block the AI's further out then settle the backsite cities later...

Also didn't check the save.. Posting a screenie WITH culture could help ALOT when it is highly relevant.. Still think you would settle that gorgeous cottage city before you go to war though(and get a worker over there asap).

oyzar said:

Building the first worker with half the food bar full...

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That's due to building the second workboat with one clam tile and a 12 tile. Waiting more just to get to 3 pop? Not sure it's worth it. It'd slow getting out the worker, hence slow the settler.

Chopping a forest before farming the corn??

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That saves a turn later when coming back to road through it, but yeah, getting the settler out first by farming the corn first was probably better.

Then building the settler with quite some food in the bar already..

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Eh, same as your first point, but there's even less food than in the first case. It's not like there's a fourth super tile. There will be 3 super-tiles once the worker finishes the corn farm, but I wouldn't consider the +1 or you'd get from a 4th tile to be worth the wait.

Sisiutil said:

Given how astonishingly early the barb military units are showing up, I think in future immortal games I'll pursue Archery right off the bat.

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Research either Bronze Working OR Animal Husbandry first if possible. If there isn't a strategic resource after researching one of them, go for Archery. Don't research Archery right off the bat.

As a lowly Prince level player, I don't understand why people are advocating settling the copper rather than settling 1NE of it (1N of the lake). 1 NE eliminates overlap with Washington and removes a mountain from the BFC. Can someone explain what I'm missing?

I haven't double-checked, but that may be too close to Incan territory, so you'd have to worry about culture issues. There's also the consideration of getting the Bronze instantly instead of having to spend turns on a mine. At this difficulty level, I would guess that saved turns on being able to build axemen are vital in a successful rush.

But then, I'm a Prince player, too.

Capellan said:

As a lowly Prince level player, I don't understand why people are advocating settling the copper rather than settling 1NE of it (1N of the lake). 1 NE eliminates overlap with Washington and removes a mountain from the BFC. Can someone explain what I'm missing?

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It makes the copper unpillagable.

It saves turns from not having to build a mine.

It saves turns on not having to connect the copper to a city, hence faster Axes.

As a Monarch player I thought 1N of the lake is a better city location, but on Immortal, it probably makes sense to build on the copper.

madscientist said:

By the time you tech hunting/archery you can have the second city built, teched the wheel, and connected the two cities via a road. I am one of the biggest fans of archery but in this case I think it's not the best option.

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In this game it may be but generally, if copper isn't closeby, you'll either have huge maintenance or be defenceless. Which do you prefer? In both cases, you won't get your cities up as you wish.

I might be a bit overcautious as I played a few openings on deity and I must say, they're nearly as bad as monty in the early game . I found that if you get the random event giving your melee cover one of the best ways to survive early; you almost get 2 warriors / archer and cover/combat warriors can manage archers more or less okay.

I agree with DMOC mostly though, you can shoot for either BW or AH first. BW if lots of forests in BFC and AH if cows/sheep/pigs in BFC.

Bandobras Took said:

I haven't double-checked, but that may be too close to Incan territory, so you'd have to worry about culture issues. There's also the consideration of getting the Bronze instantly instead of having to spend turns on a mine. At this difficulty level, I would guess that saved turns on being able to build axemen are vital in a successful rush.

But then, I'm a Prince player, too.

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in this case i think its more a matter of using overlap as an advantage in the short/mid term rather than a disadvantage in the long term.

as it stands right now, a city on the copper can borrow both the corn and one of the clams from Washington (which can't possibly use all 4 food sources except during a regrow blitz) and use them to push growth and allow for a good deal of whipping which wouldn't be available due to limited food sources and slow growth if he settled say 1N of the lake and had to rely on grassland farms to grow back whipped pop. with some really good micromanagement sis can probably even set it up so that Washington and New York never need the two tiles at the same time until well into the medieval era when monarchy etc. allows him to grow both cities more into their full potential.

there is also the consideration that settling on the copper makes it impossible to pillage if some AI he goes to war with is actually smart enough to get pillagers behind his lines and sis doesn't have anything to stop them with. further, as mentioned settling on the copper saves probably 10 turns worth of mining and connecting that can be used to pump out axes from both cities.

at any rate there is certainly a case for settling 1N of the lake as well seeing as how that would probably be a 'better' site in the 'distant' future when both cities are working more towards their full capacity, but thats a long way off and there are alot of critical turns between now and then and its hard to say what the overall cost and benefit of each site will be over the ENTIRE game and which will better until all is said and done.

Capellan said:

As a lowly Prince level player, I don't understand why people are advocating settling the copper rather than settling 1NE of it (1N of the lake). 1 NE eliminates overlap with Washington and removes a mountain from the BFC. Can someone explain what I'm missing?

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1 NE has the exact same mountain in its BFC as settling on the copper. Anyways, the main things I can see are:

(1) The severe food shortage.
If you place it 1 NE of the copper, then it only has two surplus food tiles (pastured cow and 2 farmed grassland) in its BFC... and those aren't even available until after a border pop. It will take a very long time for this city to become productive.

Placing on the copper gives three surplus food tiles, two of which are immediately available. Furthermore, it can borrow food from Washington (which has more than it can use!) during its initial growth phase.

(2) Faster copper
Settling on the copper means that it saves you the time to build one road and the mine. This means Sisutil can build axemen sooner, which means faster barbarian protection and faster conquering of the Incans.

(3) Lower maintenance
Settling on the copper is closer to the capital, and thus the city will be cheaper to maintain. (And will be connected more quickly to the capital for the trade routes)


The advantage to 1 NE is.... no overlap? What benefit does that give you?

Capellan said:

As a lowly Prince level player, I don't understand why people are advocating settling the copper rather than settling 1NE of it (1N of the lake). 1 NE eliminates overlap with Washington and removes a mountain from the BFC. Can someone explain what I'm missing?

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In addition to what Bandobras and TM said, overlap on excess food resources is a good thing in the early game. With the already-developed Corn and Clams in NY's workable radius, it will be a much more useful contributor to the coming war than it would be a tile or two further out. The extra food from those tiles can be used to alternate growth (and whipping) between both cities, so that their production isn't wasted while the capitol waits for whip-anger to subside.

Thanks for the explanations, guys!

Overlapping tiles is generally nice. Be it if your city has been whipped and can't work all its "good" tiles anymore until it regrows, or your science city is building an university (working mines), then your surrounding cities can borrow & develop its cottages, ...

ranion said:

at any rate there is certainly a case for settling 1N of the lake as well seeing as how that would probably be a 'better' site in the 'distant' future when both cities are working more towards their full capacity, but thats a long way off and there are alot of critical turns between now and then and its hard to say what the overall cost and benefit of each site will be over the ENTIRE game and which will better until all is said and done.

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It's been my experience that Civ IV is either won or lost in the first 150 - 200 turns or thereabouts. So I am willing to make sacrifices that will only come home to roost in the long term if they will yield significant benefits in the short term.

Sisiutil said:

As for Archery, yes, BW was a bit of a gamble and I'm lucky it paid off. Given how astonishingly early the barb military units are showing up, I think in future immortal games I'll pursue Archery right off the bat.

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In my experience at Immortal level, you have time to make such a gambit. Fogbusting can help to delay the arrival of the first archers.

Sisiutil said:

It's been my experience that Civ IV is either won or lost in the first 150 - 200 turns or thereabouts. So I am willing to make sacrifices that will only come home to roost in the long term if they will yield significant benefits in the short term.

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i wholeheartedly agree with this, which is one of the reasons i think its so hard to measure the benefit of a longterm gain vs a short term gain in this game, given that most of the time a short term gain ends up becoming a huge long term gain when its leveraged properly.

DMOC said:

Research either Bronze Working OR Animal Husbandry first if possible. If there isn't a strategic resource after researching one of them, go for Archery. Don't research Archery right off the bat.

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Hear hear. As a fledgling immortal, I'd say you always have time for one, but not necessarily both unless you've got immediate early commerce (eg gold/gems in the capital). Which you choose will generally depend on local food resources or the abundance of forests.

BW first was a very strong opening in this game due to the lack of a livestock food resource in the capital and availability of forests to chop (thereby speeding up the workboats). You made the right decision IMO.

Now get rushing!

Sisiutil said:

It's been my experience that Civ IV is either won or lost in the first 150 - 200 turns or thereabouts. So I am willing to make sacrifices that will only come home to roost in the long term if they will yield significant benefits in the short term.

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For me, the game ISN'T won in the first 100-150 turns. Someone can always come up from behind and surprise me and give me a good challenge or I can be doing poorly all game only to come up and win.

I wouldn't like the game as much as if I always knew who would win by the mid game.

My games are usually won in the last 150-200 turns.

That being said, I should give more thought to overlapping cities depending on the happy cap, but I often can't bring myself to micromanage tiles worked to such a level.

For me: my games are always won on the last turn I play. Also, for those who care, I always seem to find missing items in the last place I look. There seems to be some sort of common factor that causes this phenomenon but I'm not exactly sure what that factor is....