LotR28 - Random Rollicking for Returning Refugees

The turn count is a little odd currently. I purposely played til we had calendar so we can decide what to go for.

I took over at 31 turns as well. I think it was 21/10/11

Turn count is easy to resolve. Jaffa, play 14 and get us to something ending in 5, and we'll be good to go. Compared to incompatible saves it's trivial.

The very first turn is turn 0. I played to the end of turn 20, because that seemed to make sense. I didn't check the next save, except to verify that it loaded.

Jaffa, I can't check your save right now. At work, more or less.

Arathorn

ThERat said:

Turn 32 - 2720BC
settler done, warrior is 40 shields and spear 50
we currently make 7spt, thus 42 versus 56, it's clear we waste less with a warrior
but the production panel tells me its 5 turns for the warrior and 7 for a spear. Sth doesn't add up here

Click to expand...

You don't lose hammers/shields, they get carried over to the next production item. The game allows for this in the turns calculation, but you can't see anywhere how many got carried over until you get to the next turn .

And PS: got it, playing now.

turn 42
Research: Nothing seems desperately urgent. Trapping for Trading Posts or Writing for Libraries? Based on the original idea of going for a spaceship victory, I pick writing so we can start on Libraries and the National College before we have too many cities.

Buy the cattle tile for Orleans.

turn 43
Warrior 1 heads back towards Gay Paree to pick up settlers. Warrior 2 continues exploring east.



IT Gandhi and Harun al-Rashid have entered the Classical Era.

turn 44
Settler finished, Paris starts building a scout. I want to explore with the cheap, fast scout and bring the warriors back for territorial defence.

Settlers start heading south towards cotton/bananas/marble.

Our exploring warriors stumble into this:



Which means .. I need to be more careful about moving only one tile at a time in unexplored territory. And .. if we can grab the barbarian settler, that would be huge!

IT The barbarian unit that isn't in camp attacks our warriors. Barbs take 7 damage, we take 4 damage.

turn 45
Warriors retreat and Fortify-until-Healed. They could have taken out the injured barb unit, but would then have been vulnerable to being wiped out by bards from the camp.

I notice there is a cultural border poking out of the fog to the south which screws up my preferred city site

ITParis wants dyes (good luck with that!). Injured barbarians spotted near Orleans (injured by person or persons unknown).

turn 46
...

IT Our fortified warriors are attacked and killed by barbarian brutes. Damn.

turn 47
Paris finishes scout, starts on warrior. I feel a need for more military.

My settler and warrior are taking different routes to the same tile. WTF? They also found an unguarded barbarian encampment for a free 25 gold.

We now have 500+ gold and can buy the allegiance of the Venetians. Which I do. Love that bonus food.

IT Caesar calls to complain about our relationship with Venice.



Barbarians attack Warsaw, capture a Polish worker, return to what used to be their encampment until we destroyed it last turn.

turn 48
New social policy: Republic, for bonus hammers. We are France, after all.

Orleans bombards and destroys injured barbarians that have wandered into range.

Our warriors attack the barbs with the worker. Barbs survive with just 1hp remaining.

ITCeasar enters classical era, horses arrive from Venice, we learn Writing.

turn 49
Lyon is founded across the river from Dublin. We may need to do something to Dublin soon.



Lyon bombards barbs, kills the brute unit.

I encounter a bug. The governor of Lyon appears to be able to put a citizen to work on the tile with the barb worker, but if I try and select this tile manually it tells me I cannot work tiles that contain enemy units.

IT Both Caesar and Harun al-Rashid propose mutual open borders trades. We accept, for want of being able to think of any good reason why not.

Up north, our scouts are attacked and severely wounded by wandering barbs.

turn 50
Scouts retreat. The barb worker near Lyon has vanished.

turn 51
Orleans bombard team kills another barbarian brute.

turn 52
Paris finishes warrior, starts building another warrior. The new warrior heads north to look into clearing out the barb camp.

turn 53
...

turn 54
We finished research on Trapping. I stopped at the end of turn 54, instead of the start of turn 55, so the next player can pick the next research project.

Next: Kylearan

I had a look at the save. Maybe we should go for iron working and get some swords out to fight the more than pesky barbarians. Could gain us some workers too.

Since the difficulty level is rather low, it surely is no problem to beat up our neighbors, but do we really want that? Are we going to clear our continent of AI foes? Or leave them around for research pacts etc?

Land and people are a good thing. I would probably advocate for clearing our continent, assuming it's not too large, at some point, so we have projectable power and a better population base for faster research. I'm not sure we're in any hurry to do, however.

For now, I'd focus on expansion and happiness and commerce.

Arathorn

Somehow CFC didn't let me post yesterday, weird. Anyway: Got it.

Gyathaar said:

Actually decided to just do it tonight...

its a perl script.. and it will most likely not work on games where Babylon is actually in the game.. and it wont work on any possible future DLC civs (would have to be adapted for each) .. so hopefully Firaxis will fix this in a future patch.

Click to expand...

Nobody is having a problem with loading my save?

So it seems that removing everything from the DLC directory does work to downgrade a deluxe install to standard version. Which is good to know.

My apologies for holding the save for so long! Something unforseen came up yesterday, and we've been to a wedding the whole day today and now that I'm back I'm too drunk to play well. I will play and report tomorrow morning in ~10 hours, though.

Ky, thanks for the update. Prioritizing a wedding over playing Civ, though??? Just ridiculous!

Tomorrow is good. I don't want to delay it longer than that, though. At only monarch, though, probably playing drunk wouldn't be TOO bad.

One other thing I want to clarify. IMO, once the barbs capture a worker/settler, it's open season on him. We can return for the benefits (which I tend to for city-states) or keep (which I tend to do with other players). Claiming from the barbs fits within maximal ethics.

Arathorn

I've finally played my turns - I promise to be faster next time.

After some pondering, I didn't set research on Iron Working yet. I don't think we need to go to war that quickly, and we can easily fight barbs with archers and spearmen. Instead, I set us on Mathematics on a move to try to build the Hanging Gardens. Well, it got built on turn 58 by Harun al-Rashid, so then I switched us back to Iron Working after all. (Great Library on turn 41, Hanging Gardens on turn 58 - damn, I need to get used to these early wonder building dates! )

At Paris, I'd like to discuss some micromanaging stuff. I don't have a good grasp on tile improvements yet, so I hope I can learn something here:



The worker was building a mine on the riverside hill when I opened the game, while my instinct would have been to farm it. Growth will be very slow later on, and while we have maritime food at the moment, I'm not sure we will be able to get it all the time. Or do you think the other tiles provide enough extra food for mines? I let the worker finish the mine though.

Having said this, I immediately contradict myself on the second last turn and started to build a trading post on the other hill:



The reasoning here is that this hill is not riverside and thus yields no gold, so during a golden age a trading post will generate an additional gold on top of the extra production which it otherwise would not get. And since golden ages seem to come a lot easier in this game and are relatively stronger than in Civ 4, I figured the trading post is worth it. Does this make sense, or is it ? The next player can cancel that order if he wants to, since only one worker turn would be lost.

But now let's get to the detailed turn report.

Turn 55: Orleans demands spices, finishes a worker and starts an archer. I love ranged units, which we lack.

Turn 56: Our northern warrior wins a decisive victory against a brute. Paris completes another warrior and starts a library.

Turn 57: Our wounded warrior wins another decisive victory against yet another brute in the north - yay! He gains a promotion, but I hold off choosing for now.

At Orleans, our new worker ignores the cattle, the wheat and the horses. Instead, I decide to spend 110 gold to buy the furs tile - at only 2 happiness, I think this has priority.



Turn 58: I switch Lyons to production focus to get the worker in 11 instead of 15 turns. We work only unimproved tiles there and are only at 1 happiness now, so growing doesn't make much sense at the moment.
This is also the turn where Harun completes the Ganging Gardens.

Turn 59: While our wounded warrior fortiheals on a hill, our second warrior from Paris arrives at the scene to relieve him.

Turn 62: Our scout, which after healing at Paris had moved southwest to scout the fog, has found Delhi...and a brute towing a worker. A wounded brute, to be precise:



...so I take the opportunity and do not give Gandhi his worker back. I think we need him more urgently.

Paris completes the library and starts a spear, to protect our future archer. Our warrior attacks the barb camp for 5/3 (doing 5 damage, getting 3).

Turn 63: We destroy the barb camp. But on very sad other news, we are no longer allies with Venice, our supplier of fresh seafood! We lack the money right now to buy them again.

Turn 65:

On my last turn, the worker at Orleans is finished with improving the fur and our happiness increases. The question is what to improve next: Cow, wheat or horses?



We have some happy room to grow again, but not much. I think we should go for the wheat next, which besides food also gives a hammer and a gold. The worker has been ordered to build a pasture on the cows this turn because this doesn't lose a worker turn while moving to the wheat (same micromanage trick as it often worked in Civ 4). If we really want to improve the wheat or the horses next, the next player should interrupt the worker next turn!

In addition, our wounded warrior in the north has won another decisive victory against a barb archer. He is at 1 (2?) health. I don't see another barb unit at the moment, but in case the next player fears for the warrior's life against attacks from the fog, you can take the insta-heal promotion before ending the turn if you want.

Roster:
Arathorn -> UP NOW
Corbeau -> on deck
ThERat
Jaffa Tamarin
Kylearan -> just played

Oh, one more thing: We should probably start to think about connecting our cities with roads, both for income and logistics. (Should have made an overview screenshot...)

Kylearan said:

The worker was building a mine on the riverside hill when I opened the game, while my instinct would have been to farm it. Growth will be very slow later on, and while we have maritime food at the moment, I'm not sure we will be able to get it all the time. Or do you think the other tiles provide enough extra food for mines? I let the worker finish the mine though.

Click to expand...

My thinking for the mine was:

1. We have many hexes with 2+ food. In the short-term, if we want to emphasize growth, we would not want to be working the hill. If we want to emphasize production, this is one of our best tiles.

2. Long-term, we can always replace improvements depending on how the game develops.

Also roads, yes.

Got it.

Do we have a long-term plan? Build cities and tech and make things work? Do we want another city now?

Tech path? Calendar seems important for happiness. Anything else we need/want to do?

I see no hurry for war. We'll probably want to at some point, because it's a very efficient expansion mechanism. But enough for defense and for barbarian control seems sufficient to me.

BTW, Ky, great job grabbing that barb worker. Very handy pick-up of a very expensive unit.

Arathorn

Calendar seems a significant short-term goal, if we don't have it already. If there's room for more happiness and cities, then let's keep pushing growth. After that I'd suggest Writing and Philosophy for technological infrastructure. Our plans are long term (space victory), so let's get a big research base prepared.

Great job grabbing that worker.

I agree with calendar soonest. By the way, do we want to nurture some great scientists by employing a single scientist in one of the cities (once we built a library). In my mind, this great scientist is quite powerful to bulb us an expensive tech.

Also, with 3 cities now, shall we grab those 2 national wonders before taking over more cities? It would require 3 monuments and 3 libraries in our cities? I have not done this before, but maybe the benefit is worth the effort?

ThERat said:

I agree with calendar soonest.

Click to expand...

There's a screenshot from your last turnset (turn 42) on the previous page where it says "Finished: Calendar".

By the way, do we want to nurture some great scientists by employing a single scientist in one of the cities (once we built a library). In my mind, this great scientist is quite powerful to bulb us an expensive tech.

Click to expand...

Good idea. I think we have to make sure we don't grow all of our cities too fast anyway.

No comments from anyone except Jaffa about how the hills at Paris should be improved? Too bad, looks like I have to do some more trial-and-error in my games, then.

I pretty much always mine my hills, or occasionally put trading posts on non-river hills for the golden age benefits. I'm on a hammer kick though.

For me, hills depend so much on the rest of the terrain. Irrigating freshwater hills seems nice, though when I have excess food (like Paris), I tend to mine (or even trading post). If a city has good culture, it will have way more tiles to work than its population will ever work. So I will often do multiple things with hills to let the city customize itself depending on its need at the time.

Since I also tend to run near the really angry border, I tend to try to have my cities in a good position to optimize for gold, since both both food and hammers are hurt by angriness, but gold is not. So trading posts tend to get heavily built in my games...

Early on, though, I'm about maximizing food and production. Even with relatively easy golden ages, I don't worry quite so much about making each tile produce gold and commerce, though maybe I should....

Arathorn