Von Münchhausen II

Nice grandad. We should throw elbows and claim those two city spots quick since everybody is so friendly (except Liz of course).

Took me bloody 4 hrs to post a message, so grandad has an easy life!

I'm good with the new city, after the explanations for why or not. And most likely, MY city would never reach 36 pop

So what do we do from here? I have a busy day tomorrow afternoon/evening, niece's bday and if we're not hard on making this game run quick, I'm happy to play the day after.

We need some ideas where to go next, I haven't even have time to look at the save. But if GL is close and we finish Philo before -> Civil Service. Right.

Then what? I see ideas of populating the world and grabbing 2 more sites, can we do that?

Ok, gotta run, but please give me a list of what-to-do tomorrow, because I'm fragged atm.

It was nice timing on philosophy and GL, next turn should see the Great Library give us Civil Service, bringing us into the medieval age in the 2000s BC. Nicely done. What is the city state boost per era. This could turn out a big boost for us. I think we should ally them soon.

I don't know if we would buy that CdP tile or not. It takes 17 turns to pay for itself and then we are losing a citizen. If we don't buy it though, by the time we get it it will have much reduced value to our empire. Still it's a good city site, I wasn't bothered by the choice to settle there.

I think next builds could be finish the monument in Sukhothai then settler. We have 2 warriors and a scout archer at home, maybe thats enough military for now? What about getting a worker from the next policy, then going tradition.

I think Ghandi should ordinarily beat us to the sugars but it would be nice to settle there, it would have a diplo cost I imagine but hey. The coastal city looks even better now, we have ivory there too. I also like the gems site south east.

gozpel said:

Took me bloody 4 hrs to post a message, so grandad has an easy life!

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The site is still filled with people who need to tell others Civ 5 is a bad game and you shouldn't be here!

Remember that for free Wats we need productive city sites, to get the prerequisite buildings up first. I don't mind Gandhi taking the sugar, it's not a great site. There are spots around that fit better into our plans.

Gozpel will probably not have much other choice than to get a few units out. The most feeble warrior rush would blow us off the map right now. Sidney is asking for assistance, but we don't even have a unit near.
Also we're not exploring. We know where the other civs should be; Ramesses' scout came from the west, he stumbled upon our capital at turn 11, so Egypt should be over the land bridge, south of the elephants. That's where we will probably meet the others.
I realize exploration is a distant dream right now, but we can change that.

I would rather get a settler out of Sukho before we finish the monument. Getting that sugar site (where ever that might be) and the Ivory site will block off most of what we can see.

I strongly favour a period of REX right now. We need to get our cities ready for Wats.

SPs I would suggest the free worker and then, depending on how long till the next policy and how close to being able to pop free Wats we are, then another one from Lib (Republic or the SP cost reduction). I don't see the need for any of the other Trad SPs at present.

If we're worried about a warrior rush then maybe a detour to Archery after Masonary?

We're somewhat suffering from Si Sachanalai, as settling it made us unhappy for a while and stopped us from growing. We still have this problem as we can't even sell a single luxury without going unhappy. Although things look good, the lack of lux is still a major weakness of this start. The start is very different from Von Münchhausen I, where we had 5 luxes around Memphis alone.
At least we can build a circus and a stoneworks in Sukhothai to compensate, also in Si Satchanalai a stoneworks is possible, so we do have some options to get into a situation where we can start selling our lux. Our current towns have excellent development opportunities. Sukhothai will hopefully get a library, then any citizen in Sukhotai will help us more for science than any citizen elsewhere.

It's more difficult playing this game without the income from sold lux. Of course permanent unhappiness and cities that remain at size 1 to 4 or so is not a way to play the game, I hope nobody thinks that. Preparing cities for Wats means it need to become at least average towns, with a reasonable production for their size.

I believe we shouldn't be too concerned about what the AI is doing. Inevitably they'll snatch a nice city site away from us at some stage. It's not a problem. If we develop our core towns from their strengths, we will deal with the AI in time.
I find it even amusing how most of us have units permanently around India and England to pick up 'info'. I wouldn't have had a single unit there, honestly, you get far more info from taking an occasional look at the diplo screen. It tells of their towns, resources, money, resources, attitude... Those units are better at home, or around a CS.

But take your time to make up your mind, Gozpel. I feel ill, flu, and I wouldn't like to play for a couple of days anyway unless I start feeling better. I'm not really counting on NotaDummy, we never saw him here.

Lurker Comment: So I like to see my comrades from the last one going strong. I like that second city placement, I would have argued that settling so far away from happiness resources was ill advised. But you guys will make it work, of that I have no doubt. My piece of advise is to keep an eye on the AI's relationships. Getting Ramses and Ghandi to pick on Liz would be nice for an early strat focused on war. Keep them all focused on military builds instead of wonders and settlers. Get your 4 cities built then start picking off capitals. If all the AI stay friendly this won't do any good of course. With this start however you will have pikeman before they have swordsman most likely... crazy. Definitely going to be fun to watch... I think an agressive third city would be good if Ghandi's hatred is focused on someone else already, otherwise you may want to give him some space to drop a second city. I'd have to study the maps more to pick em out but grandad does great with those dot maps

REXing out to Sugar and Ivory gives us the Lux we need to carry on expanding and to generate gold income from trade. As it stands we need to go horizontal to go vertical, unless we take tech detours to HBR and Construction (we'll open stone works with Calendar on the way to Education).

I would maybe put the Ivory site as the next spot to settle. We get 8 from Lux, potential 2 from a circus and multiple trade goods (Ivory *3 and horses). I'd consider the location1W of the barb camp but need to scout in the fog to say for sure (I was stupid to heal our scout outside of our territory).

Hi Emstinson! Good to notice you're following us. Please drop some advice when you feel so, people from outside the game often have a refreshing view.

A tech plan we need, indeed, although Masonry > Calendar for now seems fairly logical.
A Stone Works will boost production quite a bit in at least Sukhotai, that's on top of the one happy. Construction I wasn't thinking about personally. Horseback Riding would be an interesting tech for Siam, to get some units for later upgrading to Naresuan's.

grandad1982 said:

REXing out to Sugar and Ivory gives us the Lux we need to carry on expanding and to generate gold income from trade. As it stands we need to go horizontal to go vertical...

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Well, going vertical... that's maybe the other end. Our current sites are so lux poor that we certainly need to think beyond them, regardless from plans involving Wats, that's true.
The Ivory spot seems best, inbetween the mountains, that looks extremely defendable.
Because the place is more productive and gives more happiness, I favour it over the sugar.
I sense there's a majority in the team for expansion just now, so I will have to fit in that. May ICS rule or die a graceful death in this game. But a couple of more units are really needed. An extra worker and settler cannot defend themselves.

The ivory site is interesting, more so than the sugars and second marble as that site would take as long as my suggested site for SiSatch. So I prefer going for the phants, but we have a barbcamp there.

So I suggest, we let the scarcher in SiSatch move over there and have a look, we have a warrior healing nearby and we can take that camp out in 2 turns, if we choose to. IF we build another settler, he should go over there and settle 1w of the current barbcamp. We get 4 more horses and 3 phants plus in a near future Silk. There's also fish closeby. Maybe ON the hill where the barbs are is good too.

Let Ghandi take the sugars, they're all on marsh anyways and it's really hard to find a better spot to settle, except on the tile where we have some sleeping warriors.

Teching: Masonry -> Calendar
Builds: In capitol -> units, 1 hammer overflow won't change anything so I build 2-3 warriors during my turns. We CAN build either a settler or worker in 6 turns and settler would be interesting for the ivory-site.

What about SiSatch? 14 turns warrior, 25 turn library or 84 turn Oracle?

Next policy is within my turns, so a worker it is.

I'll check in tomorrow after work and if you all agreed on something, I play then.

OK Goz, since you're not going to play until later today you've given me some time to ramble on with some more of my opinions. Here goes...

Normally, I don't think anything good comes out of making DoF's, except sometimes you can pull some shenanigans on an AI you've locked into not declaring you. We've got three fairly close ones (I'm guessing about Ramesses), and now two of them can't really declare on us. So why don't we spread out a little while we can? If we politely give those sites to the computer, like the gentlemen we are, then they use that land to produce units we have to fight later. If we take it.. well, you get the picture.

My input for future turns wold be something like this:
Research: We should go with Archery first if we think we can peacefully make it to Education. If we don't believe that then we should move for Chivalry and settle next to those horses immediately or Iron Working and start spamming warriors. Next (assuming the peaceful route) would be Masonry, Calendar, Theology and Education.

My personal preference would be to get to Chivalry and build the horses, upgrade to elephants, and move to Education feeling a little safer. There's a risk of missing the OP wonders doing this but I have a feeling relations are going to sour when those DoF wear off and we've got 4 early settlements, the Great Library, and some covet-worthy land.

Capital build: settler, settler, archer, archer/monument (did we build that yet?), archer/monument.

2nd city build: monument (already in progress), archer, worker, library.

3rd city build: monument/worker, monument/worker, archer library.

4th city build: monument, library.

After we get the four cities down, the capital can work on the NC and everybody else can do temples or units, depending on how dangerous it gets. I have a guess which one it'll be, but we'll wait and see.

Settling order: The tile that our warrior is fortified on is as good a place as any. It's on a hill, has sheep and cows in the second ring (another cow in the third), marble in the second ring, two granary resources and, eventually, two sugars. It keeps Gandhi out of our area (do we really want him planting a city next to our capital?) and saves room for at least two more cities after we've done our Wat thing. It's hard to tell whether Gandhi or Ramesses is going to beat us to where we want to settle, but my bet is on Gandhi. I'd prefer to go east first, but if there's going to be long delays building our first four cities, we should probably get the horses first.

Personally, I don't think we're going to have enough time to build all the workers, units, and prerequisite buildings for Wats in the time it's going to take us to get through Education. The sooner we get the cities down the sooner we can get working on it. Not ICS, REX. The only question I would have is whether I wanted to research Theology right away or work on getting closer to a better defensive tech, which brings me back to the Chivalry point one last time (I promise).

If there's any doubt that one of the AI is going to attack us it might be better to consider a slightly different approach than the straight run to Education. I always prioritize Education but seldom rush it on harder difficulties, because I don't have the patience or skill to suffer through the 100 turn bum-rush that comes when your military looks weak. We could either: A) Change those archer builds to warriors and research Iron Working, or B) make a beeline to our elephant UU (and change some of the archer builds to chariot archers). If we need stronger units to protect ourselves, they should probably be units that we can upgrade into. Pikeman cost 90 hammers to build, which is ridiculous. We can still spam warriors for swords, and if we stop selling our horses, we can build chariot archers and horsemen for the elephants. The detour to Iron Working would take less time, but it's more uncertain. In either case, I don't think we should change our settling strategy. Earlier is better.

Optional said:

The site is still filled with people who need to tell others Civ 5 is a bad game and you shouldn't be here!

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I didn't blame Civ5 this time, mate, I blamed my bloody server.

So where should I be?

Civ5 sucks when compared to the others in the series, but they're working on it fortunatelly and send out a patch now and again, and even now an expansion.

But did they FIX the game, we'll soon find out?

That said, it IS playable....but it is missing something, some somethings that made you want to play an extra turn. In this shape, it doesn't offer that.

Well, maybe an SG can take care of that!

Barbie was washed out, so party will take place on Saturday.

I'm not sure about expansion, it's good in one way but so difficult in another. Say we get 4 cities up, we will be in the red for ages. Unhappiness, I mean which mean less growth and less money.

I DO like to expand, but that is on king or emp and I can handle that most of the time. But here we sit and play domination and go for sugar instead of horses? I can't follow that melody.

If we dawdle and wait for Mandu's until post 100 turns, then Lizzie will sit there with her frigging LB's and pick us off one by one.

We have to make a choice here, I'm FOR the Ivory site, against the sugar site! IF we build another settler, which should be started during my turns. So, I can start building one warrior, change to settler one turn from finish...sometimes works well.

gozpel said:

If we dawdle and wait for Mandu's until post 100 turns, then Lizzie will sit there with her frigging LB's and pick us off one by one.

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Wrong SG its Naresuan's Elephants for us

As I've already said I favour Ivory site for our next city. Its much stronger much sooner (new happy is quicker to hook up and more trade goods).

I don't see us having 4 cities with Monuments, Libraries, and Temples along with the need to build units etc, by the time we hit Education if we straight beeline it. Maybe 2 or 3 cities but not 4. I guess this would make going for Chivalry more attractive to start with as we'll be able to consolidate our position in preparation for a veritable deluge of GSci. Or something.

grandad1982 said:

Wrong SG its Naresuan's Elephants for us

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I'm gonna pinch your sloppy buttock for that!

Me meandering through 2 SG's and half drunk, I will never win. Good catch, grandad!

So instead of protecting warriors, are we going for another city? It's a good idea in itself, but we don't need to be stalled by unhappiness right yet.

We can build 4 cities and then the unhappiness just make the growth shutdown. Below -10 you can't even build a settler.

I favor 3 warriors before a settler, when we have those troops, then maybe ivoryspot?

gozpel said:

I'm not sure about expansion, it's good in one way but so difficult in another. Say we get 4 cities up, we will be in the red for ages. Unhappiness, I mean which mean less growth and less money.

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We'll have about 30 available happiness at the locations we've identified. That only works out to about 4 citizens per city. Obviously we won't hold the capital down to that so the last city may only get two or three citizens until we can get happiness from a CS, wonder, or to the point where we can build colosseums.

This is one of the reasons why it's important to be able to upgrade units. You want to build units quick, so you can squeeze in a circus or stone works and just be able upgrade to something better. I wouldn't call the time it takes to get to colosseums or Notre Dame "ages" either. We'll be just fine. Don't get me wrong, if we want to try it with two or three cities, we can. We just won't be any "happier" going that route.

I DO like to expand, but that is on king or emp and I can handle that most of the time. But here we sit and play domination and go for sugar instead of horses? I can't follow that melody.

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I have every intention of getting the horses... and the sugar. Are we going for domination? I didn't think that was decided already.

If we dawdle and wait for Mandu's until post 100 turns, then Lizzie will sit there with her frigging LB's and pick us off one by one.

We have to make a choice here, I'm FOR the Ivory site, against the sugar site! IF we build another settler, which should be started during my turns. So, I can start building one warrior, change to settler one turn from finish...sometimes works well.

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Longbows are a problem. If we were looking to take someone out early we should have focused on that. We could have researched Bronze Working and been on Iron Working with a few warriors by now. But we're not. We can try it now, build warriors, pray for iron, and still be up against a wave of archers/longbows. Ranged units are tough on the elephants because they're slow and don't get defensive bonuses. Swords are worse because they're just as slow and half as strong.

We've already taken too long for a sword rush. Even a swarm of regular archers present a problem for us now. The good news is, we have researched somewhat properly for a chivalry rush. We can be settling... building horse and ranged units... and then upgrading them to near rifle strength elephants way before Elizabeth can put together her longbow spam. Then we can make a much safer decision about where to go from there.

My sloppy buttock?! I read that as sloppy bucket to begin with! I'll have you know my buttocks are taut as a drum skin. You could play them like bongos. Except bongos are rubbish.

Longbows are a serious problem. While Lizzy probably still be gunning for the Great Lighthouse, she sometimes have other plans. She might go into self-protective mood and research.

Then we're stuffed. I had China killing my 12 LS-army in 3 turns.

Either we go on and place more cities, or we try to defend what we have. Or one more city and then focus on furure wars. We can't sit and diddlewaddle as the AI doesn't exist, they come for us sooner or later.

My view of the game:

I want Ivory-town, one E of current barbcamp. We kill barbs and settle there. Then shutdownmode to get us another worker.

Then all forward for Phants!

gozpel said:

I favor 3 warriors before a settler, when we have those troops, then maybe ivoryspot?

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Nah, these are not the droids you're looking for. You want to go settler then archer in the capital, worker in the second city. Research masonry then archery. Scout to the southwest, find Ramesses...

grandad1982 said:

My sloppy buttock?! I read that as sloppy bucket to begin with! I'll have you know my buttocks are taut as a drum skin. You could play them like bongos. Except bongos are rubbish.

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Yep, stretch that skin and we all play bongos. This is a SG after all, so we can all play with that loose skin.

And seriously grandad, you're right, you're buttocks is UNDER the skin...so now what next? Ebay?

grandad's exlusively treated buttskins?