GO1 - The Tsarina

Done. I think this SG might just win the Most Chaotic Roster award :D
 
The first thing that I did was insert Forges as the first build item in most Cities. With our Gold Resource having come online, a Forge will provide us with +1 Happiness, which will counter the 1 unhappiness due to whipping in the short term and will provide a permanent +1 Happiness in the medium term and longer. Where I'm whipping away unhappy citizens, it's a net gain anyway.

For example, in Moscow, with 2 Unhappy people, we can afford to build a Forege for at least 1 turn, whip it, and still come out ahead. Due to our excess Food, we'll still be able to regrow reasonably quickly while keeping those 2 Scientists hired.


Whipping tip: Don't whip when a build item has 0 Hammers invested in it, as you pay a huge cost to do so, only getting 66.67% of the Hammers that you should have gotten. I.e. On Normal Game Speed without a Forge and without Organized Religion, you would only get 40 Hammers for whipping 2 population points instead of the 60 Hammers that you will get if you have 1 or more Hammers already invested in the build item.

I microed Yoshivilled to manually finish its Forge on the current turn, which will turn that 1 Unhappy citizen into a Happy and productive citizen. I'd rather not 1-pop-whip a Forge, especially in a case like this one where we're just borderline on the Happiness and don't have a lot of excess Food for regrowing whipped population points quickly.



We're also going to want a bunch of Settlers badly...
a) another 2 off-continent Cities ASAP
b) A City to meet the Dutch
c) A City to grab the Magical Fish (aka Coastal Fish) + PH Gold + 3 Grassland River Dye squares plus a ton of Hills... it'll make for an awesome City and will net us another Happiness Resource
d) Other islands, including settling the Silver Resource if that wasn't counted in point a). So, I'm going to have to squeeze out a ton of Settlers from somewhere.

I'll also need at least 1 Galley but preferably more than one, so that Workers and multiple Settler parties can be shipped around simultaneously.


Prior to Civil Service and Iron Working, our Workers didn't have much to do so we laid down a lot of Cottages. Many of those Cottages will never get worked in Cities with a small amount of surplus Food like St. Petersburg, so we'll actually want to replace a lot of those Cottages with Farms.

In fact, since we have The Colossus, in most cases, I would prefer to work a Coast for 2 Food and 3 Commerce now than work and grow a Grassland Cottage or Hamlet. Sure, you can invest in a Cottage but the economics tend to work out that you will lose out on total Commerce for quite some time before you break even and only once you've fully matured the Cottage into a Town will you see your investement START to RECOUP some of the investment, but still not pay off for QUITE A LONG TIME to come.

Thus, while working Cottages are better than nothing, when you have The Colossus, you're generally better off working those Coast squares and saving the Cottage-working for later, perhaps after you have revolted into Emancipation, which is a Civic that matures your Cottages twice as quickly as normal.

Obviously, if we have a Grassland River Hamlet (2 Food and 3 Commerce) we will want to work that ahead of a Coast square, since the two squares will be equally valued while working the Cottage will improve its value over time. Similarly, in the few cases where we have Grassland Villages (2 Food and 3 Commerce), we will want to work those in favour of working Coast squares. In other cases, though, Coast squares (you'll probably have to manually do the citizen swapping as Cities grow, so don't forget to look inside of your Cities) will be better choices than Cottages or Hamlets which only provide 1 or 2 Commerce each. I look inside of Cities on each turn, but you could at least do it once every few turns, right? It doesn't take very long to cycle through all of the Cities if you use the right arrow key on your keyboard to cycle from one City to the next.



After learning Construction, we might as well go for Iron Working ourselves, since we won't be getting it from Alex. That way, we can get a Dye connected. A City like Corinth is really going to need Farms before it can do much.

Here you can see that I decided to build a Lighthouse next but at the end of the turnset I changed my mind to a Granary, since we will have improved the Dye by that time and will also have Civil Service for Farms by that time, thus we don't necessarily need the Lighthouse ASAP. At the time of taking this screenshot, though, those Coast squares were the best squares available to us and we didn't have ANY Workers anywhere close to here, so a Lighthouse seemed like a Good option.

Actually, whoever plays next should make a note to Chop that Grassland Forest which is NE + N of the City into the Granary, so that the Granary can be 1-pop-whipped. We're going to grow really slowly in this City since it doesn't have any Food Resources so that earlier Granary is going to pay off. Consider that Forest Chopping idea as your "first TODO task."



Gah, I uncovered a Barb Galley that will soon cause us trouble unless we get a Trireme in the nearby vicinity before it starts pillaging all of our Work Boats.

As it turned out, I whipped a Trireme and saved most of the Fishing Nets but lost one of them to the Barb Galley. I have since built a Work Boat to replace the Pillaged Clam, so we're all good there.



A Forge is a very nice thing to build when you are Imperialistic and have Cities to settle, as then you can get extra value out of your Hammer-heavy Cities: they can get the Forge bonus and the Imperialistic bonus from working a lot of Hammer-based squares.



The City of Whale Flipping could desperately use a Lighthouse, giving us extra Food per turn from the Whales, but I'll whip a Forge first since we're already at Size 8 (allowing for a 4-pop-whip) and then will whip a Lighthouse.



Yaroslavl' is another good Settler-pumping City, due to having high production, not to mention being near to the City locations in the SE that we would like to settle.



I didn't even realise that we had a Quest but apparently my default behaviour made us complete it. I chose the second option of improving our Swordsmen, even though we don't have any and are not likely to build any or many unless we plan to go to war with the Dutch before learning Metal Casting. It WOULD be a good idea, if we want to go warring with the Dutch, to build a Barracks and some Swordsmen out of, say, 2 or 3 Cities. Most of our Cities are busy with other infrastructure tasks but you could aim to build a Barracks and some Swordsmen out of a couple of mainland Cities (so that we won't need Galleys to fetch the Swordsmen) which have a reasonable amount of high Hammers. Figuring out which Cities will be used (I'd pick 2 or 3) will be another TODO task for whoever is up next.

We'd have needed a State Religion in order to get the third Quest option and we don't have a single City with a Religion, so no luck there. Just to see what it would do, I saved the game and reloaded it just to see what the first option would do--it only put a Copper underneath of our City (what a silly spot to put it, if you ask me), which would only give us +1 Hammer per turn for the rest of the game... better than the second option if be build 0 Swordmen but pretty terrible if we build even a couple of Swordsmen. Note that we'll want to delay getting Metal Casting for a little while in order to be able to build Swordsmen without obsoleting them in favour of Macemen, but we do WANT TO GET Machinery soon, so that we can learn Optics and Astronomy. Thus, after learnign Compass, we might just stick our Science Slider at 0% on Machinery and we will eventually have to make the call as to when to stop building Swordmen with a free promo in favour of getting out Caravels and Galleons.



Yaaa, one of our two Incenses is online. The other one is in the south but I didn't prioritise connecting it as there are a lot of other things for our Workers to be doing now that we know Iron Working and can Chop Jungles.



Our other Incense is just to the NE + NE + N of Rostov, which you can barely see at the top right edge of this screenshot. We missed out on the Mausoleum of Maussollos but I think that it was alright to miss out on it since we got a huge chunk of much-needed Gold, which I used to fund research up to Literature. Someone generated a Great Artist near the end of the turnset, so it is likely that an AI already has Literature and Music, meaning that the Music Great Artist is probably gone and that we really do want to put a priority on Chopping out our Great Library before it becomes someone else's Great Library. I put signs on the map by our Great Person Farm for Chopping our Forests there, which, after completing the two Grassland Hills Mines there, should be a priority task for our Workers in the area. Consider that point another TODO: Mining and then Chopping at our Great Person Farm. You're writing these TODO things down somewhere, right? If not, you can always search on said keyword and go back and write them down and/or copy and paste them somewhere for your reference when playing the turnset.



Okay, it is the end of turnset screenshots time!

I have littered the map with relevant signs and have removed redundant ones. There are a lot of signs but I felt that it was easier for you to keep track of so many things to do using signs rather than a long body of text in a thread that you might not look at while you are playing.

There aren't any game-breaking signs if you don't read them, but each sign was put there for a good reason, so it is in your best interest to read them, then remove them (using Alt + s and clicking on said signs) once they have become obsolete. Some signs should stay for certain, such as the "Do not whip" and "Do not Chop" signs... the "Do not whip" signs are for Cities with a low amount of Food surplus while the "Do not Chop" signs are for Forests where we'd prefer to work them as a "poor man's Mine" in place of a lack of Hills squares or in the case of Athens, a City that will get 2 Hammers for every 1 Hammer thanks to us putting the Heroic Epic there later.



On that note, I did go ahead and create a Super Medic, since I didn't see a feasible way for us to get a 10-Experience-Point unit within a reasonable timeframe otherwise. The next Great General should probably be settled in Athens, which will be our late-game Military Unit pumping City, but will not be suitable for our Swordsman-pumping City. Probably Cities that were building Settlers will be good choices for pumping out a Barracks plus some Swordsmen. As another TODO, you can unfortify the Super Medic pictured here (I left him outside of a City to be able to find him more easily but we'll probably still forget about him if you don't move him). I would move him to the north-west end of the continent, near where the Dutch are, in anticipation of throwing a bunch of Swordsmen at the Dutch during a future turnset. I.e. You will plan out where the Barracks will go but might not even get more than a Swordsman or two built in your turnset, so don't expect to be launching a war during your turnset. Do plan to set up Open Borders and trade Resources or techs, if possible.



For example, Yoshiville there could be a good Barracks + Swordsmen City after completing the Settler, since it has a couple of Mines to its name and has most of its important infrastructure already built.



Rostov might be another decent choice for building a Barracks plus Swordsmen, as would be St. Petersburg if we fail to be the first Civ to building The Parthenon.



Yaroslav' would be another good choice for putting in a Barracks and building some Swordsmen, since it has a ton of production available to it, but the Swordsmen would be trapped on the island--not a big deal, since we'll have time to transport them, but I would wait until after the Courthouse is built there before building a Barracks, since it is a City that is quite far from our capital.

On that note, another "TODO" idea would be to find a City location in the north-west to build the Forbidden Palace. Right now, I'm thinking of Yakutsk, the City to the north-west of our Great Person Farm, as a decent possibility, although it currently lacks much in the way of production. I'd probably aim to put a priority on Mining the Grassland Jungle Hills River squares at Yakutsk, so that we can get a Forbidden Palace out reasonably quickly. Recall that we need a Courthouse in a City before we can build the Forbidden Palace, there, and Yakutsk still lacks a Forge, which we really do want to build before building the Courthouse + Forbidden Palace combo. The Work Boat there can be whipped in a turn or two (don't whip the Work Boat on the first turn of play, though, as it has 0 Hammers invested in it) and since the Library there is ALMOST done, you might as well finish it off before building a Courthouse there. So, your "TODO" action is to queue-up a Courthouse to come after the Library and, more importantly, to remember to get a couple of Workers there (probably the Workers currently by "Gold Mines Inc." City once they are done Farming the Grassland squares up there), so that the GH Jungle River squares can be Mined, allowing for a reasonably-quickly built Forbidden Palace in Yakutsk.



So, yeah, I combined my turnset report together with suggestions for the next player, making for a long message but an information-packed one that I hope you will find to be well worth the read. Good luck! :)


EDIT: Another point... we have 2 Settlers... one on a Galley and another that should board the same Galley next turn before the Galley moves. One Settler can be sent to the Fish + Silver location, while the other Galley can collect the Axeman from the island with the Silver on it and can head to the north-east of the Silver island, where you will have created yet another Cultural Bridge by settling the Settler near the Fish, Copper, and 2 Grassland Hills. There may or may not be another City location up there, but it doesn't hurt to drop off a Settler and Axeman party to explore any island or islands that you do find, so that if there is a spot to settle, we won't spend 10 to 15 turns sailing back and forth before it can be settled. Our economy isn't in perfect shape but it can handle additional expansion, particularly as we build more and more Courthouses in our existing Cities.
 
Right... so it looks like it's back to me. I guess I'll play this tomorrow, since the winter sports season is (finally!) over. Cheers for the overview Dhoom... I think I might need it. I haven't played Civ much lately.
 
Right... so it looks like it's back to me. I guess I'll play this tomorrow, since the winter sports season is (finally!) over. Cheers for the overview Dhoom... I think I might need it. I haven't played Civ much lately.

As it is 4.00 in New Zealand right now, will you still update?
 
Oops! I guess I'll play this tonight. I nearly forgot :blush:
 
Playing now.

While I'm gone (see my sig), it'd be great if this could keep going. Keep to the same roster. When you finish playing, just as a courtesy thing PM the next person on the list. If for some wierd reason we get back to the start of the list and I'm still not back, just skip me. :D
 
Done, no time for a writeup though. Signs have been updated, feel free to take a look at the save.
 

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Can the next person
- Settle all land we can see - the island with the axe, the barb warrior and the hut on, the southern tip of Hannibal's island - it might form a bridge if you settle it as far south as possible - the fish- clam island to the NE...
We could also do with some extra exploration of Hannibal.
Nice round, Olaf! Seems you completely restored our economy. The AI is quite slow, though - Classical wonders in 1000 AD still available :lol:.
 
Can the next person
That's me :salute:

- Settle all land we can see - the island with the axe, the barb warrior and the hut on, the southern tip of Hannibal's island - it might form a bridge if you settle it as far south as possible - the fish- clam island to the NE...
Sure thing.

Nice round, Olaf! Seems you completely restored our economy. The AI is quite slow, though - Classical wonders in 1000 AD still available :lol:.
My guess is that the AI's are probably isolated without a trading partner, thus putting them behind in the tech race

Although Classical Wonders in 1000 AD IS pretty sad :p
 
I played the turnset this afternoon, then CFC crashed. So I might not remember all the details that well

Anyway, we trade some resources with Hannibal. It's quite sad when you have no fish on an archipelago map :lol:
Spoiler :

It's not screenshoted, but after we got Alphabet, I noticed that Hannibal had absolutely no techs to trade us. That would be funny, except we also have no techs to give him :p

Well the Great Library was completed in the GP farm
Spoiler :


And the Parthanon was completed in the city that was building it. West of the capital, as I recall
Spoiler :


I settle on the wide open desert island. I now proclaim this island to be called: Yoshi's Island
Spoiler :


Started researching paper...
Spoiler :


And we get a great merchant
Spoiler :


Who I decide to use to rush paper. A nice 7 turn freebie
Spoiler :


Hannibal be hogging dem religions
Spoiler :


And after the purchase of a world map for a good 5 gold, this is what is revealed. A whole new island! Who want's it?
Spoiler :


I've also nicely labeled some potential city sites (And Names) for Yoshi's Island
Spoiler :


I didn't manage to settle on that tiny island there yet. Someone better settle there soon.
Spoiler :


And we beat Hannibal's settling party by a mere 1 turn. He's fuming right now, probably.
Spoiler :


And the glorious "Yoshi City" is settled here! Oh yeah, so I could claim the spot before Hannibal, the city is completely undefended. Somebody please send a unit over there at once.
Spoiler :
 
Nice.
And don't be embarassed, EVERYONE forgets to attach saves :lol:
 
I be derpin...
 

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Nice set--good job in rushing to get that City settled before Hannibal.


That's pretty funny about Alphabet--finding that you have the exact same set of techs as your neighbour already has. :crazyeye: :)


I do like the idea of settling the island to the east of Hannibal "of the Dutch" (oops, I guess it was Carthage after all), particularly to grab a Fish Resource in our City's fat cross.


I can't see the seafood Resources around the island in the far east, the one where you (Yoshi) put signs for 3 Cities, but I would suggest roughly 1 City per seafood Resource... if there aren't any more seafood Resources, then simply 1 City next to but not on top of the Flood Plains squres is probably going to be the best bet. We don't really need another City that is unable to work a square that provides more than 2 Food. I.e. No Food = no City, since we don't have a need for non-Food Cities on that island. If it makes you feel better, there is another island to the north-east of there that could get settled, but like you said and I agree, the number 1 settling location should be on the island to the east of Hannibal--again, 2 Cities if we have 2 Food Resources otherwise probably just 1 City to grab both the Fish and the Horse. If I'm not mistaken, it looks like there is still a Hut on the west side of the island to the east of Hannibal, too.


I am not sure what the Food Resource situation looks like, but we may actually keep the Barb City on that island to the far east in the south of the map where Yoshi already settled a city on the southern tip of the island if said Barb City has a Food Resource and if keeping said City won't mess up the usage of another nearby Food Resource. Feed your people and they will provide you with plenty of Hammers and Commerce. Starve them and you'll be stuck with a tiny City for most of the game.


Did we ever get a start on Swordsmen that start with a free Shock promotion? If yes, we should probably consider massing them near Hannibal, getting a few Galleys (5 or more in total) and some Catapults near him, too, with the aim of going to war with him after another turnset or two, depending upon how quickly we can raise an army.
 
Oh yeah, don't forget that that City in the far south, Yaroslavl', is a great City for pumping out Settlers, which we'll want to build for the far south-east.

Essentially, you'll want to manage expansion in two directions (the north, first by Hannibal and then the islands to the north-east, plus the south-east) simultaneously while also raising an army of Macemen, Catapults, and Galleys. If we have any Shock-promoted Swordsmen or promoted Axemen that can be sent toward the north-west of our continent, send those units, too, as we can upgrade them to Macemen later, just before we are ready to attack (there is no point in wasting our Gold on upgrading units until later, when the units are just about ready to see battle). It's not a lot to manage if you take the time to review what each of your Cities are building on each turn--I noticed an unhappy City in one of Yoshi's screenshots--consider whipping a Forge or other Happiness-producing building in Cities with unhappy people (make sure that you have been building said building for at least 1 turn in order to dramatically reduce the whipping cost relative to not waiting at least 1 turn--that's why you want to look in each of your Cities on each turn so that you won't forget to whip after having waited 1 turn).


We will want to be well-prepared with plenty of troops when we declare war on Hannibal, so that the war can go quickly. In fact, by the way things are going, we might pay to upgrade Galleys to Galleons right before attacking, so that we can hit him from multiple sides at once--that fact won't matter for this turnset--you just need to worry about getting us the Macemen, Catapults, and Galleys.


Did you PM Mosher?
Feel free to do so yourself--an extra reminder doesn't hurt.
 
I apologize, I must drop out. I no longer have CivIV installed after switching to my new computer...
 
NI can't see the seafood Resources around the island in the far east, the one where you (Yoshi) put signs for 3 Cities, but I would suggest roughly 1 City per seafood Resource... if there aren't any more seafood Resources, then simply 1 City next to but not on top of the Flood Plains squres is probably going to be the best bet.
Hmm, I don't really remember about the seafood resources. Although I remember that the desert of Yoshi was not a completely useless spot, so there must be some seafood there...

I think...

EDIT: Hey wait, I double posted. Oops.
 
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