SGOTM 04 - Geezers

Sorry to post late, but we had some family business the whole Sunday.

One more thing I should have mentioned after my set. There is a barb axe in the North, so be aware of this when moving the settler to the iron spot (which ever we take).

As a compromise I would agree to Htadus' suggested city site between blue and the iron.

We have to build up pur military. It would be very dangerous not to do this. Khan has his horses connected, so if he has horseback riding he will have Keshiks around, so spears will be important to have.

I have not checked how long it would take to research construction, but I feel we will need cats earlier than later. Without them I think we will have quite some trouble to go for him, so maybe construction might be a good choice as next tech. However I have not checked how long it would take. If it is below 20 turns I would seriously consider to go for construction next.

If we want to get the Pyramids I do not think that we can disturb Nidaros in building it. If Khan declares it is another story, but as long as we are at peace we should let it go. I think you can let Nidaros grow into unhappiness. Each pop point we can use for whipping the Pyramids. Or am I mixing something up ?

El Do should start military after the settler. Spears and chariots first. Uppsala should join El Do in the military build up as soon as possible, so maybe switching to a barracks now might be an option. I do not have in mind how much of the library build is left, though. If it is not much let it finish the lib first.

I think we are getting towards agreement on a general approach for the immediate future. Good point about the gems as a happiness factor. The gems are currently 12 turns away from being mined, so maybe I need to send another worker down there to help. It's going to be a tradeoff between gems and pre-chopping. I vote for gems because there is not as much value in having pre-chopped forests quickly.

I think the library is about 10 turns away.

I pretty much agree with the approaches proposed by Htadus and markh. Not sure if we are expecting to hear from Thrallia given his internet problems.

Only point of contention at the moment is Alphabet vs Construction. Maybe the tie-breaker here is the number of turns they will take, and the position of our foreign affairs at that point in time. Both are very valid for our current position although I would feel safer with Construction.

I will be ready to play in 8 hours time but will wait and see what other comments we have by then before deciding whether or not to proceed.

Just to make it easy for you , If construction is achivable by no more than 3 or 4 turns more than Alpha, you have my vote for it. They suck against horse archer, but they do wonders against cities.

Now we are clearly going the monger route.

Good night. You will not hear from me until next turn set.

I think going the warmonger route is just pre-empting the position that Khan is likely to put us in anyway before long, especially if we maintained our low power rating.

I have no strong opinions atm - I've been checking the thread about every two hours all day but nothing new to add right now. Don't wait for me to post again before playing but if I do happen to wake up with a sudden flash of brilliance I'll be back (just don't hold your breath!)

OK, the barbarian axe is still there, sitting right on our proposed city site (75% defensive bonus). How would you like to deal with that in as risk free a manner as possible? Our chariot is 8 turns away from being able to reach there.

Given the possibility of losing a military unit or two at this point, versus delaying the settlement of the next city, I will stop playing until I get a view from some of you on this.

Harbourboy said:

OK, the barbarian axe is still there, sitting right on our proposed city site (75% defensive bonus). How would you like to deal with that in as risk free a manner as possible? Our chariot is 8 turns away from being able to reach there.

Click to expand...

A pic would have been helpful. However, assuming that you are on the desert hill immediately N of the copper, I would suggesting moving to the forest NW on the coast and fortifying. I doubt the barb is promoted and with luck it will be tempted off the hill and attack you there. Assuming no horrendous RNG it should conveniently suicide against you.

EDIT: I don't think we want to bring the chariot back. We want it to do the scouting. Another alternative is to wait until El Do finishes the spear(?) that it is building and have it join you but that'll take a while. Hopefully the first suggestion will do the job.

Send the chariot before the settler and let the axe attack. It will attack if you move the chariot beside the axe. Just make sure you move the chariot into a forest or hill beside the axe. If our chariot defends successfully bring in the settler and found the city. Good luck !

Sam Yeager's suggestion worked. Our axe defended on a hill against an axe and an archer. Hooray! But there is now a barbarian city on the coast 3 squares north of proposed city site.



Does this affect our decision to settle next to the iron?

Actually, I have run out of time to continue playing today. I will complete my remaining half dozen turns in 23 hours time. In the meantime, here is the current save for anyone with the time or interest to analyse it.

View attachment Geezers_SG004_BC0505_01.CivWarlordsSave

It shouldn't affect it. In fact, placing the city between blue and the iron now is pretty much the only place to put it. We can't devote the military necessary to raze the barb city, so unless we want to wait quite awhile, we should just found it where it is. The axe you've got there should provide plenty of defense for that city, and protect Nidaros from having to deal with any potential barb axes as well.

Sorry for my disappearance this weekend. As far as the Pyramids goes, I think we'll still be in the safe zone when it finishes, the fact that the Great Wall and Stonehenge were both built post-900BC, and that AFAIK the Oracle is still unbuilt, means it is very unlikely that wonders will be an issue to get in this game. I think we will safely get Pyramids and the Great Library.

I'm of the opinion that my looming turnset will be fairly straightforward in nature...I'll finish Construction, start Alpha, and build up our military while chopping the Pyramids. lol

I think your turnset looks like it's gone pretty well, if a barb city N on the coast is the biggest news to take place so far

edit: It also looks, from the minimap, as if Khan has a lot of cities, but none of them except his capital can match either El Dorado or Nidaros in production...which means he shouldn't be as hard to combat as it sounded earlier.

This may be too late but I just looked at the save and what about settling 1 south of the iron. It would put us on a plains hill instead of a grassland hill but mainly would eliminate all the unworkable coast tiles. I don't like the idea of having coast tiles in a city where we can't build a lighthouse. It loses the food but has plenty of irrigated grass so would still do ok and would have room for another city north (or take barb city) in the future.

Otherwise I'd prefer Mark's original blue dot site so at least we can use the coastal tiles.

If this is too late no worries.

Thrallia, the Oracle has been built in far off land during the last few turns. And yes, things are looking OK. All of the Mongolian cities we have discovered have all only had archers in them (either 1, 2, or 3). We have seen no other military units other than one trireme.

I think that once we get Construction and have the iron hooked up, that a bunch of catapults and swordsmen should be able to start taking control of things.

Given Khan's rapid expansion, I doubt his economy is up to much so maybe he wouldn't have been much use as a tech trading partner anyway. Somewhere out there in the fog there are some big guns who are probably storming ahead of Khan, if the wonder building and top five cities are anything to go by.

Jenarie, wouldn't settling 1 south of the iron mean losing the food resource? I'll be settling 1 east of the iron unless I get any strong objections in the next 19 hours.

ah, so the Oracle was built in the 500BCs...that's very late for Monarch. We shoudln't have any issues with the Pyramids then, especially if we don't see the great Lighthouse built yet when we start getting close.

my only problem with settling 1E of the iron is that it appears we then only have 1 food resource? On the other hand, the presence of the barb city means if we want to settle in any reasonable amount of time, we'll need to settle 1E. The only alternative is to hold off on settling and sending the first 2-3 troops we build N to deal with the barbs first.

I am favour of settling 1E, just because the settler has already been hanging around waiting for the barbarian threat to be dealt with and I don't think we want to stuff around on this any longer. The main issue with the barbarian city is the threat of constant pillaging attempts on our iron mine. Given that we will be ready to attack barbarian city before we are ready to attack Khan, this should not be an issue for too much longer and will probably be the focus of the next turnset.

I agree with sticking with 1E of the iron and getting that city founded.

I guess the other thing we could discuss is worker priorities over the next few turns once they have finished chopping the Pyramids. Some of our cities will soon be working unimproved tiles, but there is also the iron to be connected up.

Just thinking out loud. Would it be really bad if we were to build on the Iron? Does it not give us 3 shield city center? We would have a powerhouse there since the monument will get done in no time and for the time being we can irrigate a river tile to speed up growth. They can never pilage iron. The loss hammers (3) is returned when we work another plain hill mine with the 2 extra in the city.

Just being mad as usual.

I like the idea of settling ON the iron much better then settling one east of it.

Htadus, you were the one who first suggested the 1 east of iron. I can't believe we can have so many options of where to build one city!

I like the idea of unpillagable iron (that is just one less thing to worry about), but I will leave it to others to work out the maths of tile usage, but I will be playing my last few turns in 14 hours so you'd better have something concrete by then otherwise I'll be settling wherever I feel like (because clearly nobody has a really strong preference one way or the other).

EDIT: The more I think about it, the more I like the idea of unpillagable iron that also does not require worker time to mine. This is very short-term thinking, I know, but it does meet our immediate needs (and in Civ IV - short term thinking is often the best because the game is shorter than you think and we're in a race here), and given that 1E of iron was also considered to be a compromise solution, settling on iron can surely be no worse. Unless someone comes up with a strong objection, that is what I plan to do. We will then still need to get rid of the barbarian city as soon as possible because once we start improvements around that city we don't want to have muck around contiually defending them against pillaging loin cloth wearing savages.