Von Münchhausen II

We can settle 2 more sites if we want to, after settling ivory:

Sugar site and south to incence, only places that would help us.

Otherwise...time to go military or settle more?

I've been swung round to the blue side although orange was the obvious choice in the beginning because I believe we need a coastal town. If I learned anything though, it is that the obvious choice is not necessarily the best one. Also I never play on pangea so that probably is the reason why I gravitated towards a coastal town. Blue can get a stable for +3 and faster horsey units, maybe thats a good choice.

For happiness we will get incense when Sydney hooks it up. We need to find a trade partner for our ivory, if there is nothing west of Egypt then I think we need optics. The majority of land is south of us I imagine. The coast below Sukhothai could be a large inland sea as a guess. Maybe we stay on 3 cities for the time being and build up military and happiness. I agree with Optionals plan whatever he does. That's settling blue and going for the horseback riding tech route I believe.

We also might want to see where iron is before putting a 4th city down.

EDIT: lol at me guessing icon shortcuts and getting different ones than what I imagined.

grandad1982 said:

Trouble with blue is it is no longer coastal. Maybe not that big of a deal on Pangaea but it might be nice to have at least 1 coastal city.

I'm not so sure that OB affects DoW anymore. Could be wrong but I thought they already know your strength with out seeing your units etc.

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I'm not a big fan of coastal cities with CiV, especially on a Pangaea map. I agree that, eventually, at least one coastal city can be useful. The problems here are 1)we have to take a new research path to get use of some of the better tiles, 2) coastal cities always have to build so much more than a regular city, 3) half of the tiles in a coastal city don't have decent improved values, and 4) efficient trade routes are important not only for the gold, but for defense and happiness (Liberty policy) purposes. We can, eventually, build a coastal city. We still have several options to our east and south. Then there's always the possibility of taking London.

The AI definitely has insight into your MM score. My experience though, is that the AI likes to have visual of your military and city or cities it's targeting. One of the early warnings is a fake "friendly" switch and a request for OB. The good thing is the AI always give each other OB, so if there's any chance Liz is negative with Gandhi she may attack him first. Another problem for us is we're probably dead last in military and if Liz settles that city near us we'll surely have more negatives with her than Gandhi. I'm hoping Gandhi denounces her soon. Bottom line... it probably doesn't matter all that much, but I'd prefer not to speed up the DoW.

gozpel said:

If this was my own game, 1E of CdP would've been settled before SiSatch, then ivorytown would've been next. No trying for GLib. I did a try and I have 3 cities, all with workers and happy is +1. Not sure if that is possible tho, to keep them cities happy.

Except if I try the sugarspot..then it may be possible.

BUT, this was a playthrough, without looking further than the savestop.

3 cities by turn 50 is not unreal, but to keep them happy at that time is very unreal.

So, in our game, I understand Optional's views, we will go red hard if we plant more cities, even this one, so we need workers more than archers.

How do we tackle this problem?

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Some really good players can have 4 cities and 4 workers by turn 40-50. This involves some buying, stealing and good luck. We don't really have the extra resources to sell, so we're not in the position to buy any workers. We can still steal one from Hanoi or build one. You can see why a little growth (maybe 3 citizens) and production are more important in SiSatch right now than the gold we can get out of SdP.

As far as the anxiousness about unhappiness is concerned, we're going to get unhappy at some point and then we'll have to create more happiness. I always see hand-wringing about unhappiness like refusing to eat the food in the kitchen because you'll have to buy more. IMO, the only reasons to slow early expansion is because it'll get you killed, because of a bad map spot, or because you're using a tall cap/NC strategy, not because you'll be unhappy for some turns. Settling something like 7 cities too fast is unwise because there just isn't enough available happiness to support it and those cities become more of a burden than an improvement on your empire. There is, however, enough happiness to support 4 fast cities on almost any map. We also had "friendly" relations with most of our neighbors.

It doesn't do us much good to ruminate over it now though. We are where we are, and I think we're in good shape. The GL was a great choice for what we're doing now and we got it. If you build the GL, it naturally slows your expansion a little. I think trading the GL for a fourth good city spot is a good trade if you're building Chivalry units and can get access to 8 horse resources. It's almost a no-brainer. We have a settler on the way to another horse resource and a new luxury resource. We should be fine.

I don't like straying off the Chivalry path. We may even find ourselves in a position where we want to bulb it with a GS from the Liberty finisher.

I'm blaming the developers for pushing harbours way too far back in the tech tree. Coastal towns have their benefits, but they come way too late. I hope we'll get a coastal town somewhere, though.

The Great Library is not a must build for me, but we had the exceptional circumstance of being gifted both Pottery and Trapping through ruins, while our capital was productive. Such good chances of a sling shot to Civil Service are rare.
Apart from the situation in this game I'm actually bored with 99% of players and strategy articles going blind for liberty and Great Library all the time. Why did the developers put so many goodies in one wonder? Both liberty and the Great Library might have to be banned from SG's to open up other possibilities in the game again, unless the expansion sorts something out.

Question about turn 8, I'd like some team input:

Sidney has still not got its worker replenished after we've let the place overrun by barbs. I refrained from putting more money in them, because of no lux.
But I sent a scout over to Warsaw, Warsaw has got its whale hooked up. I'm now tempted to put 500 gold into Warsaw, if we sell a lux we have that, and we'll get the whales back, so no loss of happiness. Also Warsaw is strategically nicely placed, and neutral.
Are people okay with me putting money in Warsaw?

And there's a worker working on the ivory just now, that's safe. We will want Sidney on our side as well, of course.

Can't remember what type of CS Warsaw is off the top of my head. If Maritime or Cultural then yes. If Military maybe not for the time being. I actually don't mind military CS but in this case I think my order is food > culture > units, with food and culture being basically interchangeable.

Its your call as its your set

Warsaw is of course military.

well its your call. I guess they might give us some lovely horsemen to upgrade...

I might as well put the first 8 turns up, continueing my habit - I don't know whether it's a good one - to not play my turns in one go:

2000BC, turn 50; Inherited turn, I can still get a warrior close to Ramessas' settler for an attempt to block.
1960BC, turn 51; No longer friends with Sidney. Sidney still has no Incense hooked up.
Calendar > The Wheel.
Elizabeth settles Hastings:



We are blocking Ramesses' settler. A dance starts, for the rest of the set I'm moving the same warrior back and forth, leading to Ramesses doing the same thing with his settler pair:



1920BC, turn 52; Gandhi settles Vijanagara, north of Delhi:



1880BC, turn 53; A cow pasture finishes for Si Sachanalai. I decide to take the worker to the ivory now.
1840BC, turn 54; Little of note. The dance with Ramesses continues.
1800BC, turn 55; Si Sachanalai demands silver.
The Wheel > Horseback Riding.
1760BC, turn 56; Marble comes in.
Found Muang Salaung > monument.
Muang Salaung can work one of Si Sachanalai's cows for the time being.
1720BC, turn 57; Renew Open Border agreements with India and Egypt. Ramesses hardly has cash in hand, the agreement with him looks a bit strange:



Sukhothai has finished the circus, but the happiness situation is still such that we can't sell a lux. I'll put a turn in the monument now.
1680BC, turn 58; Notice Warsaw has got whales, stop for team input...

I'd say sell it if you can (can anyone afford it?). We will soon have enough money to put back into Sydney, that's what CdP is for isnt it. We will soon also have the ivory.

Then the upsides of getting a military unit and maybe an easy quest.

Ghandi that settling location is so stupid really we might be forced to take him out later for being so bad.

Brichals said:

Ghandi that settling location is so stupid really we might be forced to take him out later for being so bad.

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You mean Liz's Hastings, right?
Yeah, we can sell gems to Gandhi for 240 straight up.

Well I don't mind Hastings location but I would think the plains hill is better. But Ghandi settled in the tundra when there are 2 sugars below, it's just madness.

That was the reason why I mentioned that the AI is hardcoded to settle 5 tiles away from their cities, they rather found a city 1 tile away from the coast just to get the town down, no matter if they miss out on 3 fish and 5 whales.

Sweet spot was the plains hill, yeah Lizzy missed that one as predicted, she only settled close enough to us to make us upset.

Warzaw is cultural, I believe? Go and buy their friendship, by all means, we'll need them one day. And sell the lux so we can give some money to Sydney, they might just need a road afterwards...?

And the OB deal with Egypt, you have to pay interest when you take a loan, it's 1g less for every gpt THEY have to give, so a fair deal should've been 2gpt(60g) -2 - our OB is 48g, the deal now stands at 47, so he pinched 1g from us, which is still ok.

Brichals said:

Well I don't mind Hastings location but I would think the plains hill is better. But Ghandi settled in the tundra when there are 2 sugars below, it's just madness.

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Ghandi is one of the few you can trust when you have DoF, he will rather settle a tundra city, than closer to you. No matter what resources in the area, he sticks to his word.

That's why I always feel bad when I kill him.

Optional said:

Warsaw is of course military.

Click to expand...

Sadly not cultural.

I guess it comes down to are we going to get much use out of the extra food in the short term or would we benefit from a free unit in however many turns it is (20ish is it?).

The food in our capital even when we're unhappy can allow us to work food poor production tiles. Two things to mention here. First up is that production is probably going in to units but what unit can be controlled unlike a gift from a CS. The second thing is that we have quite a few food neutral production tiles in the capital so the extra food is maybe less important to boost production than if it was coming form hills.

Also our UA only works for Maritime and Cultural as far as I'm aware.

If only Lz had settled were WE wanted. Silly cow.

I think we should use the riverside tiles around SiSatch to make it grow, make it 4 pop at least and we can use CdP forever after that.

If now Warsaw is Mil, we might be better off buying Sydney, still we might need both. I still like free units, even if they are random and you get units even on friendship level from Mil CS, so that might be the better choice for now. We'll get at least 3-4 units for 500g, what units the Lotto ticket will show.

So get Warsaw, sell lux to India and buy Sydney's friendship...sounds like a plan.

It's not quite about making a choice between the 2 CS's in my view. I value food more, but we already have an interest in Sydney, while we have ignored Warsaw. It's Warsaw that can come up with a kill my neighbour quest any time.
We've already met them in the second set. I had seen their border in my first set, but managed to avoid meeting them. Then we still met them in the second set, so this is forcing our hand. I believe we should try keep an interest in both CS's.

1680BC, turn 58; So I had our scout walking over to Warsaw with the sole intent to see whether they have their whales hooked up, and they do.
Make deals; sell gems to Gandhi for 240 gold, put 500 gold in Warsaw.
Sukhothai starts on a stone works, for production gain mainly.
1640BC, turn 59; Elizabeth complains about our involvement with Warsaw. "We're sorry this has caused a divide between us."
The Great Wall has been built in some faraway somewhere. Not anywhere near us.
Sukhothai grows, I had put put a citizen from the gems to the marble to speed this up a bit in the last few turns. New citizen takes the gems again.
Horses to Gandhi ends. I resell; 3 horses for 135 gold. He would have had money for all 4, but I like to keep 1 for ourselves for now. The first expansion in Maung Salaung seems to go not to the horses, but the cows.
Si Sachanalai finishes the warrior > err... leave for NotSure to decide what next.
Hanoi has a serious dispute with Sydney, etc... Hanoi is the military CS just south of us with incense, we'll probably end up ignoring them for the rest of the game.
Ramesses has a go with another settler, we can also block this one, if we like that game:



We do still have 250 gold available to put in Sydney, or, with the ivory coming in next turn, we might have more if we sell it, although our neighbours won't have much cash anymore, or in the case of Elizabeth, might not give us the best possible deal.

I gave the first save a bit of a stupid name, one that everybody stuck to, but I think 'Siam' is a nicer name than 'Ram':

Just checking the save. Warsaw is cultured in my game oO. Anyway we get 18 from them compared to 10 from us. Nice medieval bonuses! This is for 13 turns, by which time we will have ivory anyway.

I noticed we need to squeeze in 1 more worker, we're starting to work unupgraded tiles, I'd even buy one for 310 gold. I think Si will go straight for the gold tile. We need an extra worker to hook this up and also many stones around Sukhothai can come in to play shortly and with our stone works it's good. I'd let Ramesses past and scout with scarcher. Si will grow to 3 in 2 turns then I think we can go back on CdP and we then need another stable there. When the stone works is done it might be worth considering taking Sukhothai off gems for a bit and working stones, if we quarry them of course. It's 27 turns to grow which is a bit slow. Need a granary really. But we cant get all of these things and a horsey aswell.

What about open piety next. Cheaper temples and monuments. Or republic maybe? I think we are too underdeveloped to benefit from a golden age but i may be wrong and this may be the exact time for a golden age.

Thats just my thoughts, mainly I'd rather have another worker than incense less Sidney. If they had a worker stolen, where is it?

Are we beelining to chivalry? I might prefer to get iron working in first until we advance our empire enough to research medieval techs. Just to see where the resource is more than anything.