Yelü Chucai's surprising ascent

Yeek! Land looks pretty sketchy so far. Hopefully something above that stone like seafood. If you were Kublai, settling 3W1N would be passable.

I'm might consider Mining after Ag. I think you might end up saving worker turns and being more productive sooner. Otherwise, I might have gone AH first here. Pigs are the better yield, regardless of Ag bonus. Ofc, you have the wheel so the worker can always be doing something, but in terms of productivity, Mining might be better. Could be wrong though.

I don't ferociously disagree with Mining, but personally I'd feel more comfortable with the two food-rich tiles improved before anything else. I still feel seeing where we sit with Horses is our best bet, but saving a couple of turns with that 'discount' on Agriculture - given our Corn - is a safe and solid play.

You're right about the land - few spots that look like solid farms for our Philosophical leader right now! Hopefully north of the Stone has some better yielding tiles.

the land is worrying really.

the only other good food is that fish which is settlable from the GH, but needs yet another tech, which is a bit no go.

best prospect seems to finish scouting around stone and hope for some land food.

land is very commerce poor so wouldn't delay pottery or writing much beyond mining. those 4 forests don't scream to me "chop me" right now.

AH is needed for that "awesome" spot like 6 tiles west from cap around that GH+plains cow...

I wonder why the gods of the game was in such bad mood.
With start like this I always look for green pastures.

Can it be Cam that Saladin was in the FOG nearby your scout at the time you met him? that would mean something like 10 tiles west from cap?
Sometimes the meetings happen even through fog.

Very amusing intro ... and I incidentally read 'accent' instead of ascent

I'll (try to) play my turnset this evening, so a couple of hours for intense thinking ... we just might need it on this map, you know ...

Thanks for doing the leadership thing, Cam! And you definitely did a better job than me in moving the scout around

I think W shouldn't wipe too much - that fish looks too enticing to leave it to Sal when it is in our reach!

I watched - listened might be a slight exaggeration - to Cam's video and if I'm correct in asuming that the handles imaged on You Tube there were of his other videos, I am very happy to see Anand there (I should have clicked on it, I guess, but I'll do it while awaiting inputs).

Ok, so: AH after Agri, then Mining (although I suspect that Sid has to compensate for the land by giving us a nice horse pasture within the fat thing called cross - why should we dislike what we feed from? shrugs Yely) - but it will be peaceful laboring, not arrogant shooting - just to keep you happy, labor-unionists of the great comrades' republic of Mongolia, and far away from thoughts of a socialist revolution, whatever it might mean.

Scout pops hut and tries to get an idea of what is around the stone, then widens the circle of useless knowledge.

Production: war pigs, sorry, that's from TW Rome ... warriors - and looking into the jungle a bit.

Diplomacy: war with Sal, sorry!, wor-shipping the great Sid together with Sal, and maybe some other Eastern (sorry for the Euro-centrism, Cam!) guys.

Did I forget something? Maybe some barracks early on? This might be something delicious, says Yely.

vran - Arabian unit in the fog seems to be as good an explanation as any!

strijder - I'm the one with the unexpected accent!

Thanks for the plan FiveRings:

Personally I'd be looking at Warrior/Chariot(?) fogbusting and getting out a couple of Settler parties as soon as practical. As noted, west and north look slightly more enticing than the jungle to our south for possible spots.

Tech'-wise; Agriculture > An. Husbandry > Mining at this point looks fine by me.

I don't know if we'll get Horses, and if so, where, so I'm reluctant to forward plan too much. We have to assume that Arabia is close, so a rush could well be in our thinking - especially given that our land at this point isn't great. We could also look at a Worker-steal from Arabia, although it's not something I normally do.

I'd leave the Barracks for a short while as we're not Aggressive, so we don't get their fast production or a second unit promotion, but I suggest that they could well figure in our plans once we get out some fogbusters and Settlers.

Been away from the forums for a couple of days and suddenly this game has taken off!

TS done (27 turns, but seems appropriate to stop here, as it might be time for the worker to road to the potential site of the 2nd city.
Overview: we are with one city at cap, building a Settler (7 moves to go) and teching BW (we'll get it a couple of turns after the settler emerges).
We avail ourselves of a warrior in the city, a chariot by the city and intended to go have a look at the land to SE, ie whaere the fish is, a worker that has just finished the pig pasture, and a scout to the NE after locating Sal and defogging the dreary North with a lot of plain cows, some silver, a couple of ivories, deers, corns 9this is our 2nd scout from a hutpop, the old man scout was killed by a lion.
We have already met Wang Kon and Peter.
How we came here:
3760 BC ff: Scout moves in the North
3720 BC: Wang Kon, hutpop produces 2nd scout, some ivory close by
3600 BC Old Scout killed by lion, Agri>AH, Arctic Waters discovered, some deer
3560 BC hutpop 1/2 moves faster than Sal: $46
3520 BC: Peter comes into the picture, with a bear - most appropriately
3400 BC: Worker>warrior
3360 BC: Wolf attacks scout: 2t to heal
3320 BC: 2nd wolf attack on scout, survives
3240 BC: 3rd wolf attack on scout, still survives. I don't promote him as am divided between making him a faster explorer thru woodmanship and getting him learn - eventually - the medic profession, if we don't have horses close by
3200 BC: Corn Farm ready
3160 BC: AH>Mining, as expected, Horse in the fat cross (also by the Arctic Ocean in the North)
3120 BC: Peter discovers slavery means pleasant life, worker starts Horse pasture, try to MM the warrior-buildup but fail by a turn
3080 BC: BUDDHISM fdl - evidently WK is not bathing in sweet rivers as well, bear wanders round our SW corner, panther round the SE one
3000 BC: horse pasture ready, lion wanders in the North, 4th wolf attack on the scout
2930 BC: Warrior> Settler, noticed that the bear is at 1.3, decide to move warrior to it and get rid of it- don't like those heavy hitters, scout starts moving to East, Horse roaded and production changed to Chariot, MM to get it at the coming of the new upmost - as of now - city level
2880 BC: Mining>BW (decided it's too good a civic and being spiritual find those axes, uh, copper gadgets, very attractive
2840 BC: worker starts working the pigs, bear attacks and gets killed
2800 BC: Sal's greenish land pops up amid the desert and the intense smell, sorry, aroma of incense
2760 BC: HINDU fdl - quite late, too - not many true believers around
2720 BC: Chariot>Settler, chariot makes a move toward the area of the Fish, Worker finishes pig.

I think next comes the settling of the rice-ivory-stone and, perhaps first, the fish with a city on the river that might use the pig to grow and has some nice tiles around. Copper will show us the (third) One.
Techwise hunting and masonry seem most appropriate or Archery-HBR, but Sal is a bit far away, and WK and Peter might be in the jungle.

Save and thumbnails should get uploaded below if I haven't forgotten how to do it.

Sorry, save didn't upload, 2nd try:

Thanks FiveRings!

I'm happy to 'go along' with what I understand you're proposing, being;



I'm quite concerned about our tech' rate given lack of decent yielders, and would like to see Pottery in the next two or three tech's (ideally the next) so we can start cottaging Karakorum's river (shared with 'B').

If we are going to settle adjacent to Stone, I can't help but raise the question of either The Great Wall (Great Engineer points in Warlords) and/or The Pyramids.

Keshik rush? Thoughts?

I would too go for the "A" spot...seems most logical...improves rice, ivory and stone without border pops

agree that the tech speed will be problem soon, not sure if the cottages are the right answer though. The capital has plenty of grassland, but only 4 riverside, I call it borderline...

I wouldn't opt for HA rush here...you have plenty of land to fill in, especially in north if you go for aggressive lock towards north sea.

there is good food up north with some good resources, settling 3-4 cities there should be without much problems.

Mids are very strong option here.

Yes, those were the days, ahum, sites that I thought of.

After having slept a bit last night, I am of the opinion that going into BW was a mistake, and I am sorry I didn't stop at that point. The logical way to proceed was to go pottery and use the capital for settlers / workers till the time for BW comes, and that might have been after pottery-masonry-hunting. Might have been better as well to start a second worker instead of the settler.

If my reasoning is correct, this still cane be done - with some delay, and a possible settling of the B first.

If we are to go strongly after TGW, esp after both TGW and Pyramids - and I think even the fail money could be very welcome, it might be better to switch to masonry right away, but finish the settler then go workers. The available worker can pave the way to the 2nd city & the stone, and that could be done also with the chariot doing some recon around the fish (but # of moves has to be well calculated, if I remember correctly, the worker needs a couple of moves [three, to be precise - after returning to the screenshot] to get to the first PH that has to be roaded, then 2 turns for roading it then going to the open land onto the stone (with char support or without it but at the risk of being eaten or forced to retreat) and then two more moves on roading.) With the char there, the settler will come up just in time to settle the 2nd city, and the worker will be able to road the stone then quarry. We will be very thinly spread in the North, but maybe it's worth trying. The soft point in this case is that we'll be a bit slow in getting enough chars to keep the barbs away, so might live thru hard times and on the brink of defeat.

Going pottery / cottageing seems much less risky and it seems more fitting to settle B first - to have some more GPs for cottages and a source of military units.

Frankly, it's beyond me to decide which way is better to go, but I am very tempted to gambit in the North on the way to TGW AND mids...

Finally installed warlords. patched to 2.13, loaded the hofmod and opened the save so Got It.

A proposal. Build the Great Wall
Research: switch to masonry now, then finish BW.
Karakorum settler>chariot>Gwall.
Beshbalik: chariot.
Worker: mine plain hill then road to Beshbalik via stone then quarry.

If we get Gwall then after 25 turns we pop GE for (hopefully) pyramids while rexing away.

Played a longish set up to 1760bc.



Nearby copper



Messing up the dotmap. How barbaric.



We've got masonry and BW, researching pottery.

Our scout survived a barb warrior, there's a field marshall's baton in every scout's backpack (6xp, medic 1).

We met cyrus and qin.

woopdeedoo is UP

Thanks for the turnset Pigswill.

I feel that we're already at a crossroads; war or REX?

The land around us isn't great, but surely good enough to expand to half a dozen cities, build The Pyramids along the way, and eventually put together a War Elephant - Catapult stack.

otoh, we're two tech's from "Keshik mayhem", and we do need a food rich city for our farm after all!

Thoughts?

Elepult Rex.

We might very well use Kara as a GPF. The real problem in my eyes seems to be that we don't have a nice site for GSC. We have usually gone hybrid, at least in the beginning, but with an emphasis on science. We could still do it, with an initial focus on GrEng.

As I don't play Mongol usually, I'am more comfortable with the Elepult Rex. Don't mind seeing first hand what the Keshiks are capable of, though.

I'd like woopdeedoo's input on the 'rush vs REX' question, but I'm OK to wait for a bit and later go with Catapults and War Elephants. As above, I'm a bit wary of the lack of an apparent Farm, and because of the bonus of Bureaucracy, I'd prefer to cottage-up the capital and put the National Epic somewhere else if possible.

We should therefore start looking at dotmap options, and I guess the next matter is how 'in your face' do we want to get with Saladin? This below might be too aggressive, but I'm throwing it up I guess as a talking point;



The other matter to me is what to do about the wet Corn to Beshbalik's west? Incorporate the Silver in the BFC, or leave the Silver to pair with the Deer more in the north? Some options could include;



Possibly worth noting that "E" is capable of building a Lighthouse and getting 3 from the Lake tiles

I don't have my disk handy to load the save right now. From the SS, I would Build Eastwards (E and H). At the same time, I am also kinda keen to see what the Keshiks can do! I will only be able to check the save and comment tomorrow, I'm afraid, so skip me if you prefer to keep the game going faster.